Anorexia

Ok, I'm sorry I can't help myself.

I was searching on Google for information about Eating Disorders, because I had to do a paper on them when I ran across and article in Time Maganize about "Anorexia Goes High-Tech" from 2001. The article was old news, the fact that there were Pro-Ana, as they call it, sites running around the internet was old news.... for everyone but me. Using a creed, a prayer and even commandments like a mockery of organize religion (point to them) and promoting through the internet tips about how to control or ignore hunger pangs for example... I even found the commandments on internet and thought I should paste them here for you to understand why I was so in shock!


1. If you aren't thin you aren't attractive.
2. Being thin is more important than being healthy.
3. You must buy clothes, cut your hair, take laxatives, starve yourself, do anything to make yourself look thinner.
4. Thou shall not eat without feeling guilty.
5. Thou shall not eat fattening food without punishing oneself afterwards.
6. Thou shall count calories and restrict intake accordingly.
7. What the scale says is the most important thing.
8. Losing weight is good/ gaining weight is bad.
9. You can never be too thin.
10. Being thin and not eating are signs of true will power and success.



How come I had never heard of this????? Maybe because back in 2001 I was in high school, with my head in the clouds and no one I knew had an eating disorder. Isn't that hard to believe? I try to think back and see if maybe now after all these years I can remember one single person in my class that was rumor to puke her guts out after lunch... and I can't for my life remember anyone. This became a shock to me... and obsession of 20 minutes doing nonstop research, thinking all the time "What the fuck is wrong with the world?".




I mean you read some of the explanation for their obsession, how it all began and it makes sense. I get it! I'm a fat chick in a country obsessed with looking like flat surfboard movie stars!!!!!!! Half the country is overweight, hell half my family is overweight! But this... this is as bad as the people that sit back and become morbidly obese. This girls become simply bones, bones... their skin elastically holding on to the bones, to the hollow existence they are... Empty inside and out! Because this is psychological disease, it's mental... It's not them being fat but thinking that they are over and over... like a mantra. Like something out of a horror movie, walking skeletons... killing themselves a bit every single day. No eating, drinking, exercising like possess people, thinking it would all make a difference but it doesn't.



At the end of the day it is never enough because society will never accept you. If you are fat, you are unattractive, if you are skinny, your nose is too big, if your nose is right then your are too short, if not too tall... They will never be satisfied! And the sooner we learn that the better! I stopped trying to please people a long time ago, and now I try liking myself for who I am, fat or not, chubby or not, skinny or not, tall or not... liking myself is more important! Liking myself without killing myself!



I don't mean to be offensive, I really don't. I think the most important thing in life is to be healthy. To be sane, to be whole! Which is why when I set out to write this, impulsive as it was, I just wanted to expressed my astonishment, to make clear my sadness, my pity for these people. Not only for anorexics, because every coin has another face, but for morbidly obese people too, for over-eaters and bulimics and every kind of eating disorder there is.


And I know you don't want my pity, or my criticizing... who does? I know if any person with an ED read this would think, who does she think she is? And truth is, I'm no one, I can't help you! I'm not a therapist, I'm not a physician... I'm just a person with an opinion, a person that wishes she could help because at the end of the day we are all people, and we need someone that can help us up when we've fallen down and have no idea how to get back on our feet.