Anorexic for life.

Anorexia. It's like alcoholism: you are never "recovered," always "recovering." You are better for a while, and then you relapse. I've been anorexic for about 4 years now. I know some people who have been for a lot longer. It's scary, really. Now that I'm "recovering" I think about all of those website, and blog pages. "Pro-ana" or "pro-mia" sites where (mostly) girls give each other tips on how to not eat for longer than you ever have before without passing out. Share cover-ups and lies about how to sound convincing when you say "I don't feel well" or "I already ate." Websites I used to spend hours on every day. Looking at "inspirational pictures": impossible ideals. Sometimes even those pictures used to show how severe anorexia can really get, you know, those ones of people who are literally only skin and bones, people use those for inspiration. There are people who actually WANT to look like that. I remember some of those pictures, even though I have been avoiding those sites for the last 3 years. They are burned into my brain. Especially this one.. it was my favorite. A girl in a loose t-shirt, standing by a rock. Turned to the left, staring at the camera. Her thighs looking smaller than my calves are now, and I'm borderline underweight. That's how I try to think about it now. As "underweight" rather than thin. To try to remind myself that it is unhealthy, that 1 out of every five people who have this disorder die from it. There is absolutely nothing glamorous about this disease. It's not a diet, and it's definitely not a "lifestyle." It's an illness. One that is a result of our obsession with being thin as a culture. If we didn't have to look at tiny stars on tv everday, see pictures of tiny people in magazines, a lot fewer people would feel like they need to be skinny in order to be accepted. A lot fewer people would suffer and die from this disease.