crack or coke

I know what it’s like to stand in front of a mirror, and hate everything you see.

I know what it’s like to spend every minute of each day, every second, fixated on food and when you’ll have to eat next.

I know what it’s like to stand too long in the lunch line, mental calculations of how many calories this will be and how to lose them running through your mind.

It gets to a point where you can’t control it. Even half of an apple feels bad, wrong.

When it gets to that point, where you can’t control it, when even less than 100 calories is just too much, the problem becomes serious. It can be life threatening.

The average person eats 1600-2400 calories a day. The average anorexic person, eats between 700 and less than 100, sometimes even going into the negatives. That can be up to (or even less than) 1/24th of the average intake.

Less than 1000 calories, can cause medical problems when this diet is not being regulated by a doctor. Only 1 in every 10 people get treatment for their eating disorders.

Anorexia is not a joke. It is not something to belittle. Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness, as high as 20%. Over the course of a year, up to 11 million people in the US alone suffer from an eating disorder. Nearly half of all Americans personally know someone with an eating disorder.

I know what it’s like to not be able to eat. I understand that there are times when it gets to the point that it’s no longer about weight, or body image, or any of that. You just can’t.

I know what it’s like to tear yourself apart in front of a mirror, To measure your worth by your body image, As if those were the same thing.

I know what it’s like to avoid a meal, then avoid another, and another Until it gets to the point where you’re blacking out when you stand.

I know what it’s like to constantly get hunger pains, and know what they are, but brush it off as your stomach hurting from you having eaten too much. To grab another bottle of water, tea, anything to avoid food again.

I know what it’s like to constantly tell yourself that you have this under control, Until it gets to the point where you can barely force yourself to eat a 5 calorie piece of lettuce, Let alone an entire meal.

I know what it’s like to be stuck in this cycle, day after day, for it to feel like it isn’t ever going to end.

I know what it’s like to sit at a table with a bunch of people and talk your way through the meal, as they sit there, blissfully oblivious to the fact that you’ve barley touched your plate.

I know what it’s like to sit alone at a table with one of the few people that knows, and to see their concern, the disappointment and simultaneous understanding, the flood of emotions, and concern written all over their face like a pen on paper.

Treatment can take anywhere from months to years, and some people never fully recover. They might, for example, still count calories every time they eat. Old habits die hard after all.

I know what it’s like to struggle between anorexia and recovery. I know what it’s like for it to feel wrong if you eat, but wrong if you don’t. No matter what you do it feels like there’s no “right way” as your brain tells you The taste of food won’t ever be as good as the feeling of skinny, and it lasts half as long.

I know what it’s like to feel sick when the slightest thing enters your stomach. I know what it’s like to be ecstatic when you lose weight, and feel dead inside when you gain.

I know what it’s like to know that you’re becoming dangerously unhealthy, to know when things are going way too far, but not know how to stop it.

It’s terrifying. Every day is a struggle, and you begin to anticipate the blackouts, the dizziness, the headaches, But still not be able to stop even when you know you’re taking things too far.

I know what it’s like to say you don’t care about society, That that isn’t why, But what you don’t realize is that “society” has been made out to look like it consists solely of models and celebrities, When in reality, it’s everyone around you.

I know what it’s like to hate every inch of your body, to hate it even when your stomach is flat because it isn’t good enough, you can’t see your ribs yet. But what about when it gets to that point? Will it be good enough then?

Anorexia is a disease that screws with your brain. It makes you think that the only way to be pretty is to be skinny, but you want to be perfect, It makes it so that even when you do get to that point it isn’t enough.

I hate to break it to you, but It will never be perfect.

It gets to a point where it isn’t that you don’t want to eat. You can’t. You can’t. You’re no longer physically capable of it, your body can’t handle it.

I know what it’s like to not accept compliments because you know they can’t be true. You aren’t skinny, you aren’t pretty. You’re trying to fix it but you just can’t make it good enough.

I know what it’s like to look in a mirror, and to tear apart your reflection the same way a little kid tears open a present Christmas morning.

I know what it feels like to struggle daily because you know you need to get better, and yet there’s a constant voice in your head telling you that the only way to do that,is to just stop eating.

I know what it’s like to not know when the last time you ate an entire meal was. To lose track of how long it’s been since you’ve had certain foods because you can’t eat them, they aren’t good for you.

They aren’t safe.

But what you can’t see, is that the reflection you see in the mirror, distorted or not, does not, in any way, emblematize your worth.

Your worth is determined not by how you see yourself when you stand in front of a mirror. It is not measure by the distance in space between your thighs, whether you can connect your hands around them, whether you can lock your fingers around your wrist.

No. I’ve been there. I’ve done that, I’ve tried it all.

Your worth is not determined by what your body looks like.

Your worth is determined by your personality.

Your worth is determined by what’s on the inside.

And until you realize and accept this, you aren’t going to be able to get better.

I know what it’s like to stand in front of a mirror and suck in as far as I can, to see how much farther I have to go. To stand in front of a mirror with my feet together and push the muscles in my legs out as far as I can to see how far I have left to go.

I know what it’s like to constantly think of ways to avoid eating, to avoid the entire area containing the food if possible.

I know what it’s like. I’ve been there.

Please. If it’s at the point where you still have control, chose recovery.

Skinny isn’t worth the constant cold, the dizziness, the blackouts.

Skinny isn’t worth death.

Please.