reflection

Anorexia is the beginning of the evil. It tells you that you are not thin enough. I’ve actually come to the conclusion that it is not actually anorexia in and of itself that tells you this, it’s a twisted, violated, uncontrollable, intolerable mental tumor that one gains from being exposed to other’s mental and emotional deficiencies or disorders. Growing up I was verbally abused, not as severely as some, but still enough to affect me enormously. My dad had anger issues, he couldn’t control his words. An undiagnosed case of tourettes in my opinion (ha-ha). Anorexia is simply a term used in books to describe, “An eating disorder primarily affecting adolescent girls and young women, characterized by pathological fear of becoming fat, distorted body image, excessive dieting, and emaciation.” This definition describes what anorexia is to someone who has never experienced it. This definition was written by someone who never felt the stomach clenching panic of gaining a single pound. How is it possible to sum up a seventeen years of pain of disorder and imbalance in a dictionary definition?
The mental and emotional ailments are more contagious than any physical malady. Our bodies have so many defense mechanisms but our emotions are completely vulnerable. It is usually the one’s closest to us that inflict the most damage; they feed the insecurity, which grows into a cyst and then develops into a physically and emotionally dehabilitating tumor. It poisons one’s core and consumes them. Ironically, while one is scared of eating, this tumor is eating at them. The disease disguises itself as friend. It fakes productivity: “Don’t eat. Food hurts you. It makes you fat, you don’t want that, do you? Thin is beautiful. Maintain beauty. It’s all in the keep up. Once you start, form a habit, its easy after that.” Anorexia whispers to you as it gently caresses your shoulder. Anorexia is the fulfillment of one’s insecurities, it is the person you wish to be and thus your best friend.
How does it start? That’s the real question. If you could find the source of the sickness, you could cure it, right? There isn’t any singular source. Anorexia cannot be blamed completely on body image issues, or past abuse. It cannot be pinned on one person’s comment that you’re fat, or someone else’s disapproving stare. The source is never the same and its never one individual cause. It is impossible to pinpoint the infected strain of DNA or the brain waves that just do not connect. Anorexia is not a physical illness, although it does affect your physical body. It is instead a wholly mental and completely psychogenic issue. It attacks you with complete and utter indifference. One is lead to believe that you don’t need anyone or anything else, the control you need, anorexia temporarily provides. Then when you need the authority the most, the realization that after all this time you never really had any to begin with shatters your carefully-assembled glass façade.
Anorexia infiltrates, anorexia consumes, anorexia lives and breathes you, instead of you living and breathing anorexia. The victim is controlled instead of the fallacious thinking that you control it. There is not negotiating and there is no compromise. One is either consumed or healthy. There is not now and there will never be any middle ground. One is either tainted or clean. Yes, it is possible to be clean and pure after being tainted, but it is difficult. I’m not there yet. The mentality that I hold off seeps into my psyche.

(more to come)