WEIGHT OBSESSION..MIRROR MIRROR ON THE WALL WHO IS THE SICKEST OF US ALL?

I recently wrote a blog that described what it was like for me to be in the head of a girl who was starving herself to death. I went into great detail with it, primarily to take someone who has never suffered from weight obsession into the mind of someone who did have an eating […]

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I recently wrote a blog that described what it was like for me to be in the head of a girl who was starving herself to death. I went into great detail with it, primarily to take someone who has never suffered from weight obsession into the mind of someone who did have an eating disorder.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into..or perhaps I should have, but quite honestly being that I don’t roam around in dark forests anymore, forgot the evil the sadness, and yes the madness that still resides there.

I had handfuls of angry women who found it in their own words “triggering”..”glamorizing the disease”, and “alluring”.

I am still trying to understand what it was about that blog that made it seem juicy and delicious when it’s content was quite bitter and did indeed leave a bad taste in most people’s mouth after they read it.

                               

It then became very clear to me why some of those people were irate over it, and realized that all of them had eating disorders, and all the talk of mine caused theirs to flair up. I forgot that there was actually a time when I saw sickness as a competition, and that if somebody dared appear sicker, or thinner, or had more horrifying food rituals, habits, etc then it sent me into a frenzy. How dare they…how dare they be sicker than me, and it drove me to want to get myself down to a point where nobody could beat me.

I remember lying in a hospital bed with a tube down my nose, famous for being so ill, when the news of Mary Kate Olsen being Anorexic broke. It sent me in such a panic, that somebody else was getting all the attention for her Eating Disorder. I was pissed, and I almost tore my tube out, so I wouldn’t gain anymore weight…so so sick!!

This is what often happens in weight obsession treatment as well, I should know because I lived it. It’s the unspoken envy that goes on among yourself with other patients. For Anorexics it can turn recovery into the “hunger games”. I remember being “queen of the skinnies” for awhile, until one day another girl would come in, and she would be thinner, sicker, greyer, colder..bonier..damn it…I did not want to hand over my crown. It was worse if I was in a place where I had actually been gaining weight or eating for awhile because it would throw me off course, causing me to want to slide downhill. I would grill her for her number on the scale,cringing when she would say it was lower then mine. Believe me if she wouldn’t have been starving herself to death, I would have given her a poisoned apple. Yes…I admit it was horrid.

If she started hiding her food, then it made me want to hide my food, if she was getting more attention than me by the doctors or the staff,it really pissed me off, and would make me act out so the heads would look at me.

This is also what goes on outside in the real world. People with Eating Disorders secretly just eat up (no pun intended) other people’s sicknesses.

Back when I was my sickest I loved reading this book called “Wasted”, by Marya Hornbacher, which pretty much anybody who is the depths of your disorder just loves because she details all of her weight loss escapades, hospital visits, food rituals..etc. Now if you find yourself wanting to run out and buy that book for the sole purpose of getting your Bulimarexia ”rocks off”, then I highly encourage you not to. Instead don’t read it at all, and if you do, look at it for what it really is, and that it is just another story of a girl who almost died due to the insanity of this disease. I used to read that book like the bible, and it would actually get excited reading about all of her adventures with her head down the toilet.

I am pretty livid right now, and it’s not the fact that not everybody agreed with my blog. Believe me, I can take criticism if it’s handed to me, and I welcome it. Nope… I am angry that people would use the word “triggering” and accuse me of throwing “glitter” on my Anorexia. First of all anybody who knows me, can tell you I would never even flirt with the thought, and second of all…I hate the  word “trigger”. OMG…. I’m going to get  T-shirts made that say “trigger this”!! Let me ask you…are we supposed to hide from anything and everything that has to do with weights, or scales, or skinny models or Oreo cookie shakes, and Jenny Craig commercials. Listen up…the whole world is an “effing trigger”, and if you wanna get mad at something perhaps get mad at all the “Pro Ana” and “Pro Mia” websites that are out there. Those sites are saturated with images of skinny girls, tips on how to stay that way, and they marinate in the unacceptable insanity of teaching people how to get sick.

If anything my intention is to steer away from living in “skinnyville”, and to migrate towards the healthy. My story is not pretty, and it’s sad that some people actually want to try on that ugly disease I wore for so long. They actually envy me and are jealous that I got so sick and  look at me as “thinspiration”… not “inspiration”. To all of those people all I can say is…..OMG I pray you get the help you need, because I know you are living in hell and hell is not a place I intend to go back and visit.

To me it’s like looking at somebody with a giant Brain tumor, and going….”Dang it..I really wish I had a bigger brain tumor then her”…shit.

I will never wear a bandage over my mouth when it comes to telling my story, and if you find it wanting you to go back to your anorexia or stay in it, I really really feel sorry for you.

If you want to be the sickest girl in the world, I will gladly hand you the crown. You can proudly sit on the throne and rule the kingdom of Nervosa..but don’t expect me to shout “Long live the Queen” because your life will most likely be pretty darn short if you keep all that nonsense up.

There are countless number of people in recovery who have wrote their memoirs and in them explained where this disease brought them. Tracy Gold retraces a lot of her struggles in “Room to Grow” and if anybody knows what it is like to go into competition to be the thinnist actress on TV it is “Portia DeRossi”. In her book “Unbearable Lightness” she writes about the “win to be thin” games that went on behind the curtain of Ally McBeal, games that caused her to starve herself down to a corpse. I know for her and myself included writing down where you have been is a very healing process. It’s explaining about the hole you fell in, what went on in that hole and then explaining to the world how we climbed out. Our attempts are not malicious, they are simply to perhaps help people crawl out of their own holes, and to at best prevent others from falling in one.

Even when I was really sick and going on TV it wasn’t to try to get anybody else to be like me, it was trying to get people to not be like me.

I wanted to put a mirror up to this disease so you could see it has a very ugly reflection. That is still my goal, but the cool thing is, is that I can also show you a prettier reflection to this illness, and that is by looking at where I am at today.

I will never stop writing about this disease, and if sharing my war stories is what I do, then so be it. My goal is not to be Miss Anorexia…my goal is to be healthy, happy, and whole. I strive to dedicate each and everyday to this.  When I get up in the morning I say “mirror mirror on the wall, who is the healthiest of us all?”…and to that my mirror replies.. “everybody who wants recovery is today ..everybody”.

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