I am always afraid that people will think I "chose" to become anorexic so that I would be thin and beautiful. Maybe they will think I starved myself for the attention and darkly glamorous life. I even thought maybe people would accuse me of lying because someone my size could never be anorexic. I could lie and say that I've never heard these things in the 5 years since being diagnosed. One bitch did. She mocked me when I was at my lowest and called me fat when it was in remission. Even though no one with a moral compass or smidge of sensitivity ever said anything negative, that one still keeps me from wanting to talk about it.
Well, this goes out to that one bitch.
It is because of people like her that there is a stigma.
If anorexia was a choice I made to become beautiful, I clearly did something wrong. Anorexia didn't turn me into a waif-like movie star with a narrow waist, big boobs, and luxurious hair. I was a skeleton with bones. And bad hair. And brittle nails. And dull skin. No amount of hot oil treatments, manicures, or makeup could fix the way I looked. But that wasn't the point. The point was that there will still an ounce of fat on the outer part of my left thigh, and I had to get rid of it. That ounce of fat stood between me and my desire to be completely clean, totally empty of anything that was bad in me, mentally or physically.
If I did it for the attention, why did I isolate myself when it was at its worst? That is how I lost all attention. After canceling on friends for months, they stopped calling. I didn't have the energy to make new friends. Or the time. I had a lot of calorie counting, exercising, and pretending to be functional at school to do. I didn't want attention because doing things with people who weren't crazy meant that they would try to get me to eat or ask me why I've lost weight or gossip about me after I left. It was easier to stay holed up in my apartment staring at my books.
And as for anorexia being glamorous? A bony butt that hurts if you have to sit for more than 15 minutes isn't glamorous. Going to sleep every night mentally planning how to not go over your 300 calorie limit for the next day isn't glamorous. Exercising at 2 in the morning because you woke up from a nightmare that you ate a piece of what used to be your favorite cake isn't glamorous. None of it is.
The last accusation: that I couldn't be anorexic because I wasn't skinny enough. That is kinda the nature of the illness in action right there. Anorexia makes you think you're fat when you're not, and deliberately calling someone who has this illness "fat" is like handing someone who is suicidal a loaded gun. I was almost 40 pounds underweight, and I still thought I was fat. I was terrified of other people thinking so too. Obviously, anorexia had a pretty firm hold on my body and mind. But even if I wasn't grossly thin, even I was a "healthy" weight, who is an outsider, with no professional right to diagnose or personal right to comment, to judge what mental illness I may or may not have?
No one can truly understand what this illness is like unless they have gone through it, but as a society, we should have enough sensitivity to the issue to allow those who suffer from it to feel comfortable sharing their experience, asking for help, and healing without judgment.
