Kesha has finally opened on the subject of the eating disorder which sent her to rehab last winter and forced her to take time out of her singing career whilst she recovered. "That first day at the treatment center was the scariest of my life," she wrote in a self-penned Elle article.

One of the first issues the 27 year-old chooses to address in her piece is that of her reckless party animal reputation and how nowadays that may not be necessarily true. "My dirty little secret is that I'm actually incredibly responsible," she wrote.

Referring back to her early career and image at the time, the pop star was critical of societal hypocrisies. "I didn't want to be just pretty - I was wild, crazy and free. I talked about sex, about drinking. When men do that, it's rock and roll, but when I did it, people assumed I was a train wreck," she continued.

She then explained how her eating disorder had begun. "I felt like part of my job was to be as skinny as possible and, to make that happen, I had been abusing my body," she wrote. "I just wasn't giving it the energy it needed to keep me healthy and strong."

"The music industry has set unrealistic expectations for what a body is supposed to look like, and I started becoming overly critical of my own body because of that," she wrote in Elle. "I felt like people were always lurking, trying to take pictures of me with the intention of putting them up online or printing them in magazines and making me look terrible. I became scared to go in public, or even use the Internet. I may have been paranoid but I also saw and heard enough hateful things to fuel that paranoia."

Despite having written such individuality-positive anthems such as 'We R Who We R' and 'Warrior' Kesha reveals she began to feel like a phony. "I convinced myself that being sick, being skinny, was part of my job," she wrote.

More: Kesha to start "cat cult"?

Kesha reached her lowest point in December 2013 and was forced to call her mom from a gas station, pleading for help. From then on, she began a process of recovery, entering rehab the day after New Year's. She says she woke up at 5:30 a.m. each day to go to therapy and wasn't allowed access to phones or cameras.

"I was terrified and vulnerable," she wrote, revealing she didn't speak for the first week until she'd felt ready to participate. Two months went by and Kesha emerged with an enhanced feeling of self-worth and a renewed sense of confidence in the face of the inevitable photographers she'd attract.

More: Kesha struggling with 'Rising Star' role.

"I feel stronger now," she wrote in the article's conclusion. "Strong enough to admit that I needed help and strong enough to have faced it head on [...] Even I need to be reminded that we are who we are."

Currently, Kesha is serving as an expert on ABC's brand new reality singing show Rising Star, alongside Ludacris and Brad Paisley.

Kesha
Kesha Speaks Openly About Her Eating Disorder In A New Elle Article.