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.
