What’s there to speculate about, did you see what she looked like?
Watching someone you care about turn into a husk of their former self is really gut wrenching. Sorry you had to experience that.
Any relationships she had left where probably maintained through mobile social media apps, so she probably had at least one or two internet friends she was communicating with. Its possible that whomever her caregiver was in her final days notified some of her friends, but who's to say. I'm just making assumptions.
I think she was scared. There was something about her final Instagram stories that made me feel like everything was finally catching up to her. I don’t know how much her mental illness took from her, but...speaking from personal experience... at some point in my late twenties, I became acutely aware that a lot of the “depression” and drama I suffered through as a teenager and young adult were trivial in the grand scheme of things. Maybe she was hit with that same realization over the past few years as she watched life pass her by. Perhaps some of her internet friends moved on—had kids, started families, built careers (probably not, lmao)... while she was left to decay in a flesh prison of her own making.
Not eating robs you of your energy, she was probably just trying to recover a bit of it so she could do basic day-to-day things she enjoys. In a sense, it might have also been her way of subconsciously clinging to life as well.
Her standing there in the Target mirror, wearing children's clothes, with the kawaii digital stickers around the photo. So
My least favorite was sending trigger/binge foods to other people with ED. That was downright evil.
My guess is that the reality about what she really did to herself probably finally hit or she got a terminal prognosis that brought it home big time. I watched a lot of death and dying videos after my really old cat passed away, and often there is a 'passive' dying phase that tajes place before the more well known active dying phase, often it's can be a sharper decline over months. A decline isn't always 'proof' someone is about to die, but many times it can be. She probably sensed she was starting to decline and realized she was well and truly beginning the dying process, and it could have scared her because she thought she could survive and maintain life as a skelly forever. I think there is this level of delusion that ana won't really kill you, you can live for a long time as a spoopy skelly, but rational minds know that isn't true.
Maybe that's why she (and others) strive so hard to create these little proana communities with their own symbols and drag others into the 'lifestyle,' it's not just enabling each other's mental illness, it's to create a 'world' where reality can't intrude, people won't want families, jobs, friends or religion and nobody ever moves out of their angsty teen Tumblr phase.
I think proana sites love to emphesize and post the feeding tubes and gaunt frames. I don't think they ever acknowledged needing diapers and being looked after by stressed, overworked, underpaid nurses in state-run facilities who don't have patience for the manipulative dramatics of anas.
Looking for the puppeteering rods in photos where she was "standing". It was like a real-life episode of Fraggle Rock.
I'll miss the "NO NEGATIVE COMMENTS I'M MENTALLY ILL!" at the end of every post. You just know she had an alt to send nasty comments to other anachans.