Author(s): Kelsey Osgood

Eating Disorders

At fourteen, Kelsey Osgood became fascinated by the stories of women who starved themselves. She devoured their memoirs and magazine articles, committing the most salacious details of their cautionary tales to memory to learn what it would take to be the very best anorexic. When she was hospitalised for anorexia at fifteen, she found herself in an existential wormhole: how can one suffer from something one has actively sought out? Through her own decade-long battle with anorexia, Osgood harrowingly describes the haunting and competitive world of inpatient facilities populated with other adolescents, some as young as ten years old. With attuned storytelling and unflinching introspection, Osgood unpacks the modern myths of anorexia, examining the cult-like underbelly of eating disorders in the young, as she chronicles her own rehabilitation. How to Disappear Completely is a brave, candid and emotionally wrenching memoir that explores the physical, internal and social ramifications of eating disorders, and subverts many of the popularly held notions of the illness and, most hopefully, the path to recovery.