I Have Not Lost My Fascination With

Bear In Mind, People With Eating Disorders Tend To Be Both Competitive And Intelligent. We Are Incredibly Perfectionistic. We Often Excel In School,athletics,artistic Pursuits. We Also Tend To Quit Without Warning. Refuse To Go To School,drop Out,quit Jobs,leave Lovers,move,lose All Our Money. We Get Sick Of Being Impressive. Rather,we Tire Of Having To Seem Impressive. As A Rule,most Of Us Never Really Believed We Were Any Good In The First Place.

I Threw Up Again That Night, Half-afraid That My Eyeballs Would Explode. But It Was, By Far, More Important That I Get Rid Of Dinner. Of Course, By Then, Throwing Up Was The Only Way I Knew How To Deal With Fear. That Paradox Would Begin To Run My Life: To Know That What You Are Doing Is Hurting You, Maybe Killing You, And To Be Afraid Of That Fact--but To Cling To The Idea That This Will Save You, It Will, In The End, Make Things Okay.

There Is, In The End, The Letting Go.

If I Had Been A Different Sort Of Person, Maybe Less Impressionable, Less Intense, Less Fearful, Less Utterly Dependent Upon The Perceptions Of Others - Maybe Then I Would Not Have Bought The Cultural Party Line That Thinness Is The Be-all And End-all Of Goals. Maybe If My Family Had Not Been In Utter Chaos Most Of The Time, Maybe If My Parents Were A Little Better At Dealing With Their Own Lives Maybe If I'd Gotten Help Sooner, Or If I'd Gotten Different Help, Maybe If I Didn't So Fiercely Cherish My Secret, Or If I Were Not Such A Good Liar, Or Were Not Quite So Empty Inside... Maybe.

My Brain Sometimes Departs From The Agreed-upon Reality, And My Private Reality Is A Very Lonely Place. But In The End, I'm Not Sure I Wish I'd Never Gone There.