i have an eating disorder.

my eating disorder does not want me to tell you this. my eating disorder wants me to qualify that statement with some very smart, women and gender sutdies, funny intellectualizing, like "i don't think you can be a woman in this society and not have an eating disorder." my eating disorder wants me to tell you that i am not and never have been in the hospital. i've never looked like i had an eating disorder (my eating disorder is ashamed of this). i've never gone a full 24 hours without eating (my eating disorder says that i must not have an eating disorder, then). but i have an eating disorder. and we are at war.

sometimes there are too many of me in my head. there's me - fierce, feminist law student, smart and funny and loyal and loud, loving and loved. there's jake - the eating disorder - who is happiest when i am small and standing up for others while making myself miserable. there's an as-yet unnamed anxious part of me, who is happiest with her head in the sand about anything crucial to functioning in the world (opening the mail, paying bills, applying for jobs, cleaning the house, taking the cat to the vet) until it starts to wake her up at 3 in the morning. i have only recently begun to realize that this is not every person's experience of life. not everyone thinks 900 calories a day is excessive. not everyone is convinced that every piece of mail they get is going to illuminate some new huge wrong proving that they are (just like they thought) incapable of taking care of themselves, unworthy of a full and satisfying life. there's a very melancholy, distant part of me, who's happiest when i am making up stories about how different i am from my family, how i'll never fit in, making myself an only, getting farther and farther away until it's like looking through the wrong end of a telescope when we're all sitting around the table.

i have excellent help. i have support. my life, on balance, is really pretty amazing. this is me explicating the shadow parts of my brain, in the hopes that if i say them out loud, they will lose some of their power over me.

Dear Mr. President,

I want you to know, before you get to the rest of this letter, that I voted for you. I was excited about your candidacy, I believed in what you stood for, and I wasn’t confused about your position on issues that are important to me. I knew that you weren’t as progressive as I am, and I know you never said you were. I knew that you believed marriage equality is an issue for states to decide, and while I disagree with you, since I would like to get married someday, I believed in you more than I have believed in a politician in my entire life. Over the last almost two years, I have defended you to my friends, saying that this is not your mess, that you never promised to fight for marriage equality, that you were being realistic about getting out of these wars, and it’s important to me that you know that I still believe those things. I have had arguments with people who are dear to me about your policies, your positions, and the actions you have or have not taken while in office, and I believe that you have done, up until very recently, the best that you could do with eight years of reckless and indulgent government and a petulant Congress refusing to get anything done.

However, tonight I read that the injunction on “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is being frozen indefinitely. I understand that you want to repeal this policy legislatively. I challenge you to tell me exactly how you plan to do that given what I suspect the results of tomorrow’s elections are going to be. The Tea Party stands to gain considerable ground, and I don’t think that repealing DADT is high on their list of priorities. Forgive me, Mr. President, but from where I’m standing this looks an awful lot like cowardice, and even more like outright bigotry. Why allow Congress to continue stonewalling this issue when it could so easily be resolved right now? Why pander to those who would like nothing better than to see you out of office? Let me assure you that your stance on this is not going to change their minds. Why betray a community that has, by and large, been among your staunchest supporters? I am a part of the LGBTQ community, Mr. President. We voted for you.

Someone said recently, “Doesn’t it seem that ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” is backwards? Doesn’t it seem, based on the Constitution of the United States, that we are penalizing the wrong soldier? Doesn’t it seem to you we should send home the prejudiced?...The straight soldier whose performance is affected because he is homophobic?” Do you know who said that, Mr. President? Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga said that. Now Lady Gaga is intelligent, but she is not a rocket scientist. This is not difficult to understand. You don’t penalize the servicemembers who want to fight for freedom and justice in the world. You don’t penalize the soldiers who want to defend their country. Our country. You don’t penalize the soldiers who are willing to fight and die for a country that won’t even grant them full equality, you don’t penalize the servicemembers who are willing to hide who they are and who they love and lie about themselves in order to fight and die for this country. If you have an ounce, an ounce of integrity or courage or backbone, you send home the soldiers whose homophobia prevents them from being able to do their job. You let the injunction stand, Mr. President. You let it stand, because it’s the right thing to do.

Be the person I believed you were when I voted for you. Understand that even if my girlfriend and I make you uncomfortable, we are human beings first, with certain unalienable rights in this country. Understand that you cannot legislate the rights of a minority. Understand, as you should if you've had any history at all, that sometimes change happens in the courts precisely for that reason. That your "orderly process" is just another way of prolonging the discrimination, bullying, and outright hatred we face every day. And understand this as well: we are not going away. You are delaying the inevitable, and that hurts us, but it does not stop us. It sets us back but it does not make us weak. We have been fighting for our rights for a long time now, and we are not done.

Sincerely,

KT Crossman