You Think You Know, Eh?

My hope through beginning a blog was essentially to change the way people view eating disorders, first and foremost. My second hope was to maybe find a certain level of healing and comfort by finding the courage to make an extremely private story, so incredibly public.
I have reason to believe I have yet to accomplish either goal, with the exception of blatantly exposing my ridiculous life. Maybe this wasn't such a good idea after all.

Unless you have personally lived through something, you can not feel it with every single fibre inside your soul. It is virtually impossible. To change an individuals outlook on a certain topic generally proves to be quite difficult. To make people passionate about changing the way, say eating disorders are looked at, is an entirely different story altogether.

It's not a diet gone astray, it's a death sentence being lived out. We're not picky eaters, we're petrified of what you just placed in front of us. We're not anti social, we're trapped behind bars inside a very tiny jail cell. Just eat, you say... Just dive into that concrete pavement from 5000ft above, we say back. We don't know how yet. And you won't. We're not "stupid girls" or vain, get to know us and we probably possess more intelligence then you ever thought possible. You know, once you can look past the whole ED thing. I've met countless people effected by an eating disorder who are some of the smartest, most kind hearted caring people I have ever met in my life. Should we know better? Yes. Do we? Sometimes. It's not entirely about being convinced "that voice" that perpetually taunts us day after day, is lying to us. It's about learning to believe that what we are being bullied into hearing All. Day. Long. Isn't actually true. To somehow look deeper into the mirror, deeper into ourselves, directly from the borrowed eyes of another and see what they so clearly see for a change. That maybe... Possibly... We are good enough in every way possible by just being us. It's about wanting to be good. Needing to feel loved unconditionally. Thriving on human contact that we tend to run from whenever it presents itself anyway. I can preach, man can I preach. And I can give advice to another. But I can't believe it for myself. I say I know. I know I should know, but I don't know anything. I just so desperately want to believe that the thoughts I'm being ambushed with aren't real, aren't true, or that some day they will indeed be silenced without my having to try so hard to shut them up. I feel crazy sometimes. When I despise who is glaring back at me, it's impossible to believe anything remotely good at all. I crave to be a good person. Pure and loved. But when things go askew, I believe anything but and the only thing that I can make sense of is turning to what I know, my eating disorder. Somedays I really do feel alright, somewhat normal. In times of stress, uncertainty, or hardship though, I haven't a clue how to deal but to try as hard as possible to fade away as quick as I can. To become smaller, unseen, invisible.
Light as a feather, I'll be.
It's incredibly easy when the eating disorder has always been here in times of need. To numb me out when I refuse to feel. To have Ed, so consistently, so utterly punctual, so goddamn reliable. It's so easy when I find myself distraught, sitting in my apartment seemingly alone, and I turn to look and He's the only thing sitting next to me. He's so conveniently accessible in moments of hurt. Ed, I believe he's actually saved my life at times when I believed I couldn't get though what was happening to me. He must care, right? How do you learn to separate from something so controlled?

Now tell me again it's just another fad diet gone a bit too far...