My best friend Leah is not fat. She is healthy. She may not be "skinny", but her curves are beautiful. There have been times I've felt envy for her bust, as I feel I lack in that area. But I know she still struggles, rarely seeing her own beauty, if she does at all.

We would go shopping, for example, and if she needed to take the large size of a dress or some other piece of clothing, I could see the hate for her body creep on her face.

She would never go swimming, telling me that she doesn't have a body worth presenting at the beach.

When looking through a magazine or Pinterest, she'd show me something cute to wear, but then comment how she hated the model for having the figure to pull it off.

I began to worry when she began to exercise obsessively. I was seeing her less and less. When I met up with her one time for a planned lunch, she got there, ordered only a water, stating she'd already eaten.

But nothing could compare to when I broke into her house, having not heard from her in a week. It wasn't hard, I had a spare set of keys. The house was dark and quiet, and there was garbage everywhere. I called out for Leah, but there was no answer. In the living room there were pages torn from a book, the cover of which read Loving Yourself: A Healthy Body Image.

I headed up the stairs, turning on lights as I went. But the silence was eerie, my ears straining to jump at every creak of the house. My heart pounced hard as I focused on trying to slow my breathing to climb the stairs. I tried to ignore the racing of my mind, playing out scenarios in my mind of what I'd find in Leah's room.

I turned the handle to her bedroom door and peered into the darkness. I almost couldn't turn on the light. When I did, I saw there was nothing, other than the mess that trailed the rest of the house.

The bathroom... I could hear something in there. Someone moving around, and sharp breaths.

"Leah?" no reply.

Pulling the door open, I froze, unable to move at the sight of my best friend hacking off bloody slabs of her own flesh with a meat carving knife.