Dear Eating Disorders,
I really hate talking about you. I hate reading about you when other people write about you, even when they write about you well. But until you stop being a thing that happens to young people and women, I'm going to have to talk about you.
When I was fourteen, I became anorexic. I had been going down that path for the majority of my life, when I think about it, because when I was in kindergarten I thought I was fat. The culture of thinness is hitting girls at younger and younger ages--I was just a casualty, like every other young girl who has looked at their body and thought, there's something wrong with this over and over again until something in their mind just snaps. And that's where you come in.
You are a false sense of control. When everything else in life was spiraling out of my hands and I didn't know what to do, I turned to you. Sometimes I still turn to you, even though I'm a recovered anorexic by this point and most of the time I like my curves. But you're a security blanket, a bright and shiny feeling of emptiness that I can tuck around me like a suit of armor. Unfortunately you don't actually address the real problem--you don't cover up my Achilles heel, as it were. So even though I felt more and more invincible with every meal I threw in the trash, I was actually getting weaker, physically and mentally, and I didn't actually feel better about myself like I thought I would. It almost became a sick game, a challenge that I had to meet--just another ten pounds gone, and I'll be pretty and worth loving and life will start to make sense and I won't hurt anymore.
If that sounds sick, that's because it is. You're sick, eating disorders. You're poison to even the healthiest little girls' minds. You're sick because being a recovered anorexic is like being a recovered alcoholic: you never stop being an alcoholic, you just stop drinking. Similarly, you never stop being anorexic or bulimic or a binger--you just learn how to control those impulses and manage your diet in a healthy way. But those demons never stop following you. And sometimes it's easier to say no to them than others.
I hate you, eating disorders. There aren't many things in this world that I hate, but I hate you. I hate you for what you've done to my mind and the minds of so many other women and girls in this country. I hate you because even though the news media has been talking about you for years, nothing has really been done to correct the damage that you do--ideal body size has fluctuated up and down with fads but nothing has been done to relieve women of the pressure of living up to that standard, so body image disorders (which lead to you) have flourished for a long time. I hate you for how physically ill and weak you make people. I hate you for the lives you've taken.
I don't want pity from anybody. I don't want to self-aggrandize or make myself seem brave for having faced you because I'm not the only one that's done so and it's our stories together that make us more powerful than you. I will fight in the crusade against you and I'm not going to stop fighting until you no longer touch human lives. Because I might have a daughter someday and I don't want you anywhere near her. Because fighting against you for even her hypothetical sake is the right thing to do. And I'm not going to be fighting alone.
That's the funny thing about messing with people's lives: you make enemies. And the enemy of my enemy is my friend. That's how alliances are formed. That's how someday--we're all going to beat you.
Vehemently,
Hilary
No comments:
Post a Comment