Restricted Access page 1 (page2 or new page 3)

NOTE : If you know the basics about anorexia nervosa and related eating disorders, then keep reading, if you don't, this may not make sense to you!

{The second page... is a thought on the competition that goes on in Eating Disorder Support Groups... click here; The thrid page has your responses... click here.}

Among some people struggling with anorexia is a competition with other anorexics. I see it in the hospital units and in the high schools and on the college campuses. Chronic anorexics can pick another anorexic out of the crowd in a heartbeat. We do tend to recognize each other, as if we are able to see into this "nether world" that "normal eaters" can not see. Although some skeletal bodies are obvious to everyone, even the bulimics and compulsive eaters can recognize one another before the "normal eater" can. (I put "normal eater" in quotes because if you are living in a westernized country chances are you do not have truly normal eating habits at all times, but if you don't have an actual eating disorder you are considered "normal"... to find out if you do have an eating disorder please search the sites on my Links page!).

We see each other (eating disordered person to another eating disordered person) all the time. We assess each other with our eyes, and perhaps, rate ourselves against the other, asking: who's sicker? who's thinner? and other morbid questions (such as: does s/he have the body hair growing all over like I do? does s/he have the visible veins or ribs or collarbone?). This is a competition like no other. It is part of the illness. The illness dictates that we must starve and be thin... thinner... the thinnest. As we progress, we learn the details of emaciated bodies: how body hair thickens & grows (this is to keep the starving body warm) but the head hair thins & breaks (without nutrition), how ritualized food intake can actually get (taking up to hours to have one small meal, with calculated measurements and bites), how the bones begin to show (hips, collarbone, ribs, kneecaps, elbows...) and jut out through clothes, how wearing layers of clothes can help keep us warm and hide the diminishing flesh (though some of us will strip off the clothes in effort to "show off" our victorious anorexic frames, proud of the hard work we have endured, and secretly desperate for someone to notice our internal pain as it is nearly visible through our physical selves), and so much more.

We read the books, we especially love the personal accounts (Wasted of course, Life-Size by Jenefer Shute, The Passion Of Alice, and more), and we study our disease not to free ourselves from it, but to become experts. We ARE the experts. We peek at the pictures on the internet to see emaciated bodies on display, and we are part traumatized and part fascinated with it all. We are terribly clever people, very smart and very manipulative when we have to be in order to "protect" our disease. If we have the strength, we could write about it and the writing would be intense, scary, and powerful. If we end up in treatment and are not ready, we will play the role of "the worst anorexic" on the ward, we will happily compete with the other anorexics and soak up the love we get from the care-taking compulsive eaters and hostility from the bulimics... but we aren't going to be stopped by mere therapists... we are hunters always hunting and outright ignoring the feasts that are before us.

What are we doing??!?! What are we REALLY looking for?? What statement are we trying to make? We like the astonishment from others, yet we want to be left alone. We like the rituals we have, yet we are controlled by them (we have NO choice but to do them or our FEARS will take over). We are walking contradictions and we know it but we can't seem to get out of it.

Or do we want to stay this way?? Career anorexics will eventually die prematurely (some live longer than the untrained eye would suspect, while some die before their "careers" have even taken off), after a host of medical problems that will cause pain and discomfort but not death (for a while). Career anorexics are VERY VERY difficult for the mental and physical health communities to treat. Medical doctors don't understand us, they shake their heads and wonder why we would do such atrocities willingly, as they compare us to their cancer patients (but we DO have cancer, its a self-inflicted cancer, yes, but we don't know how to stop it now). Therapists find the challenge of chronic anorexics to be daunting, but the good ones will take us on and perhaps make a wedge between our real selves and our anorexic selves (despite how tight the love affair has grown). Psychiatrists will medicate us and we will reject them. "Normal eaters" will simply be on another planet to us, and vice versa.

The crack addict is also in his or her own world, with only other crack addicts to understand... the autistic, schizophrenic, manic-depressive, multiple identities, heroin junkies, sex addicts, gamblers, alcoholics... they know about each other too. Some of them try to help each other, some of them compete like we do. But unlike those illnesses, we are often given positive feedback from the outside world, the society, because our fragile thin bodies are sometimes seen as trophies. This makes it a bit more confusing. We also face the task that our DRUG OF CHOICE is one that we cannot be SOBER from. We can't learn to put down our cocaine and never taste it again, though we would like to! Food is not something we get to be completely abstinent from (nor should we, as it may, someday, be a delight again). Anorexia, because of these truths, becomes a VERY difficult disease to handle (for us and them).

We all knew Calista Flockhart was getting thinner before the press did. We secretly admire her (and the other famous skinnies). But we would prefer to have the media represent the REAL world which we ALL know is full of every size and shape imaginable.

Our "insiders" study of anorexia makes us the most qualified to help anorexics. So why aren't we? Some of us are, even before we have our own recovery firmly in place. Maybe if we can turn all this frantic, anorexic energy into something else, something positive, something fun... maybe we could organize and change some things on this planet, maybe we can come out from under our carefully-placed rocks and stop comparing our dying bodies and start to feed ourselves and each other instead. Feed our already brilliant (but quickly decaying) brains, find our EXTREMELY UNDERNOURISHED SOULS, find our broken hearts, and find our broken bodies. It would be a revolution like no other.

I do not have the "answer" but I have the experience. And I have also the experience of a recovery life and I can tell you the recovery life IS BETTER than the anorexic life. You can get all there is to get out of anorexia in about three months of it (though I took seven years to be sure). But to get all there is to get out of recovery will take the rest of your (longer) life.

Stuck in anorexia, I did not feel the magic of the wind on my face. Stuck in anorexia, I did not feel the true sparkle of laughter or the warmth in friendship or the giddy smile in playfulness. I missed out on everything around me and even those things I was directly involved in! I was so utterly lost, I tell you my friends, and it hurt and the hurt did NOT actually get healed as the scale went down, that turned out to be a bright shinning LIE. My loving and silly personality got swallowed up and I became as DULL as my eyes were (you know that empty anorexic stare, like in the girls' photos on this page). I understand I was searching for something, I was trying to fix things, I was trying to feel better and get the attention I craved (all humans crave it, you know, its not a bad thing), and find a spirituality that felt right, and find power and control and strength...

I had the right intentions, I really did. We all do. ALL PEOPLE WITH EATING DISORDERS (not just anorexia! I'm never just talking about anorexia because the disorders are all tied in together, its a blurry thing)...

ALL OF US: We are the nicest of people, the most sensitive of people... and this world could really use us, alive and well!!

Please try to stop, or at least calm down, the competing for sickest. The winning prize is NOTHING. I've met tons of patients who would have been considered "winners" in this very sick game, and TRUST ME, they had NOTHING. No happiness, no self, no MIND of their own (it stops working you know, it EATS ITSELF up), NOTHING that anyone (even them) would want. Don't continue to LIE to yourself, because you know I'm telling the truth. It is so hard, so so very hard, but we have gotten on the WRONG PATH and no matter how far we take this path it is NOT going to be what we thought it would be. I've lost years of my life to this stupid path, that once looked so pretty and so perfect for me, and I see now that it isn't even a path at all, its a dumb horrible circle that never goes anywhere and just leaves you dizzy and tired and sick and no better off than before you got caught in it.

I want to UNTANGLE this WEB and I need your help. All you have to do to help me is think about these things and write about your own thoughts and start giving your energy to something positive instead of the eating disorder and do whatever you can to begin to pull yourself out of it...

the more of us who begin to pull and tug and try to break free the less of a huge overwhelming web it will be...

Every ounce of my hope, Lisa

Ask yourself: Is this struggle worth it? For what? To endure this and then die???!!??