#like in regards of mental illness i've been healthy for almost two years

[alex-the-bringer-of-chaos]

Gosh the new messy state (always been complicated, the motive is just different) that my relationship with my parents has entered a few months ago has finally decided to combine with the patterns of behavior and paranoia that became the pattern of thought and behavior from my childhood and teenage hood, and now I've been stuck for over a month in the same old cycle of self sabotage with the added factor of anxiety and fear that makes me terrified of taking an action and fucking things up.

And like, who am I gonna tell this shit? This happens all the time, the motives just change. So really, whose even gonna want to hear me talk about the same old shit of how I feel frozen and terrified of acting the wrong way, just because the motive is different. People have it worse and still can act, but no, Alex is always getting stuck in their head, he's always terrified of fucking it up on accident so she goes and fucks it up on purpose or does nothing in an attempt of making people leave. Cause that's what they deserve. Fucking hell I was a kid when I made one stupid decision towards myself and this is the outcome. What the fuck man?!?

[hiveruled]

character info sheet.

name. Kai Joseph Langdon

name meaning. The name Kai has Welsh origins but means different things in other cultures. Most often if you look it up it gives the Hawaiian meaning; 'The Sea', but in Welsh origin it means 'Keeper of the keys and earth'

alias( ses ). Divine Ruler (by cult members only), Councilman or Councilman Anderson.

two pictures you like of your character.

three headcanons you never told anyone.

( ** There really aren't many if any headcanons I've never shared with people, I've had Kai for 6 years as a muse in total. But I'll recycle some really old ones from my first blog fgbfdhbg )

i. Kai knows how to play piano...or knew how to play piano at one point I should say. He hasn't touched one since he was in high school. ii. His handwriting is awful. Like good luck reading anything he's ever wrote on paper, even he has trouble deciphering it sometimes (example below of how I wrote it once and I still think it's neater than what he'd do.)

iii. This is kind of implied canon more than a headcanon but who cares. Kai changes out the rose on his parents bedroom door frequently, even adding some other flowers his mom liked sometimes.

three things your character likes to do in their free time.

i. Play video games like Mortal Ko.mbat, Ca.ll of Du.ty, GT.A, etc.

ii. Browse and post on redd.it / 4c.han / tw.itt.er because he's one of Those.

iii. Explore abandoned buildings.

three people your character loves.

Winter Anderson - His little sister, practically almost like a daughter in his eyes in my personal headcanon. Kai helped raise her since they were both kids and their mother suffered from mental illnesses and sometimes had trouble putting her attention on them and taking care of her abusive husband at the same time. Regardless of their differences and everything they've been through, they've stuck by each other's sides. Even though they shouldn't have. It would've been better for Winter in the end at least if she hadn't.

Julie Anderson - His mother whom he holds at a higher regard than she most likely deserved. But Kai was always a momma's boy and definitely Julie's favorite child out of the bunch, you'll never catch him admitting anything negative about her. He'll say that she did her best despite the situation. Kai just wishes he could've stopped her from aiming the gun at her mouth that night. Losing her like that broke something in him that never did recover.

Jon Stark ( @perzysprumia ) - His childhood best friend. Honestly these two are the trope of they're a similar character with one of them getting corrupted over time. Jon is someone he was always able to turn to and entrust the true nature of his home life with. Though, it was fairly easy to do so when Jon actually lived with the Anderson family at one point. Kai has always had a difficult grasp on romantic love, wasn't sure if he ever felt it a day in his life. Until Jon returned, until he devoted himself to him and the cult despite not agreeing with the murder aspect of Kai's movement, despite Kai not being the man he once knew. Kai is undoubtedly in love with him, but it doesn't mean its healthy for either of them.

two things your character regrets.

i. Killing Winter and Vincent. More-so Winter than Vincent since he discovered she didn't actually betray him so he basically killed her for nothing. As much as he believes it was necessary with his older brother, looking back after he's gone, he really wishes he had him around to give advice. ii. Not killing Ally. He knows it was a mistake to trust her, but his own curiosity to push on people's fragile mental states and manipulate mixed with his paranoia and delusions at the time really just made him cling on to the idea that maybe just maybe Ally was a good person to have on his side. That Ozzy may in fact be his son despite him knowing he wasn't. And despite him literally encouraging her wife to torment and leave her smh.

three phobia's your character has.

i. Failure, more specifically not leaving behind or doing anything to be remembered for. ii. Open / deep water or drowning, this is something that makes him uncomfortable more than fearful, but it isn't really a factor in most cases. iii. Being betrayed by those closest to him. He has major trust issues.

Tagged by: @langdhon <3

Tagging: anyone that sees this and wants to do it, you're tagged now!

[protectbrowngirls]

hey i've been struggling with depression (or i assume so) for as long as i can remember and i didn't want to label it as so because i've never been professionally diagnosed but it's getting to the point where i feel like i need to get help but my parents don't have a concept of mental illness and i feel so stuck because they keep telling me that i just need to drink more water or eat properly and i don't know what to do.

To be honest, this hits incredibly close to home. I’ve struggled with depression for at least 7 years, although I’ve never gotten a professional diagnosis, either. (My two cents regarding self-diagnosis: you know yourself best. If you think you have depression, read up on it online and do some research, but there’s nothing inherently wrong with self-diagnosis. Trust your gut.) I know it’s difficult for brown parents to accept mental illness can happen to anyone, and it sucks that your parents aren’t being supportive of you. It might be harder to help yourself if you can’t rely on them, but I promise you it isn’t impossible! 

I do want to disclaim that I am not a mental health professional. This advice comes from a mixture of firsthand experience and observation. If things get really bad for you (i.e. you start self-harming or have intense suicidal ideation), please try your best to see a mental health professional! In fact, I strongly recommend visiting your school counselor or uni health services if you have one; they’ll be able to help you much more than I can. Still, I’ve tried to give some of my own advice under the cut. I hope this can help at least a little bit.

To begin with, drinking more water and eating properly and maintaining a proper sleep schedule are all good habits to have! (I’ve been told that exercising and going outside also help, but I’m lazy as hell so I can’t speak to this personally. Still, it’s worth a shot!) They won’t magically cure you but they do keep you healthy and give you the energy to work towards recovery. But I know that it’s difficult to find the energy to maintain those habits, so don’t feel bad if you can’t. 

It’s really easy to get caught up in your own head when you’re depressed. It’s also really easy to isolate yourself. I definitely recommend telling at least one or two of your friends what you’re going through and asking if they would be okay with you reaching out to them when you’re in a depressive slump. And then don’t be afraid to reach out to them! Ask them to hang out or remind you that you have positive qualities or help you study or clean your room. It’s okay to ask others for help; I promise your friends will understand.

One of the things I struggle with is vicious cycles of negativity, self-deprecation, and insecurity that sap me of energy and then leave me feeling even more worthless because I haven’t been productive. So I do two things to help me with this particular aspect of my depression. When I hit a low, I set small goals for each day, like “do the laundry (folding is optional)” or “finish one reading”. I also try the “touch it once” method, in which you make a to-do list and then work on each thing on the list for two minutes. After two minutes, you can move on if you want, but it still provides the feeling of having accomplished something. I also let myself take as many breaks as I need. If that means I can only work for 10 minutes before I need a 10 minutes break, then that’s okay! I still got 10 minutes of work done, and that’s better than nothing. 

To help with self-deprecation/insecurity, I personally just faked it til I made it. I did a lot of active reshaping of my mental processes. For example, every time I caught myself thinking “I’m worthless,” I forced myself to come up with one good thing about myself. Every time I doubted my abilities, I forced myself to think of one thing I succeeded in. I was overly confident in my daily life (sometimes almost arrogantly so), saying “damn I’m hot!” or “I’m gonna crush this” even if I didn’t believe it. But! It’s really hard to do that actively all the time, especially since depression saps you of energy, so start small! Write down one good thing about yourself each day in a notebook. Ask a friend if you can tell them one good thing that happened to you and one thing you’re looking forward to each day. Pick up a hobby you enjoy, and indulge yourself with small treats.

Finally, it’s important to recognize that recovery and dealing with depression takes time and effort. You will probably relapse. You will have bad days. You will have days when you can’t get out of bed because you are so exhausted. And that’s okay. It doesn’t detract from your worth or importance. There is always tomorrow; the pain you feel now will pass. You’re stronger than you think. I believe in you, anon dear!

[ongames]

I've Never Felt Worse Than In The Moment I Looked My 'Best'

There is a photo of me, the best one I have. Maybe the best one I’ll ever have.

It was one of hundreds taken by a professional photographer whose pleasantly scruffy assistant spent hours flitting around her, holding a disc reflector to throw the Parisian summer light onto me just so. Before she’d even picked up her camera and he’d reluctantly put down his cigarette, a makeup artist had spent 90 minutes on my face, my hair, my nails. They were going for a ‘50s bombshell look – I’m not entirely sure why, now, but it made sense at the time – so there were hair extensions and curlers and false eyelashes and very bold red lips. In this photo, I’m sitting on a staircase, my hair mimicking the a curly black wrought iron bannister, with my hands demurely in my lap but my mouth slightly open in a Jessica Simpson-ish kind of way. My wrap dress, which I almost never wore in real life because it was too revealing, too clingy, is showing just the right amount of flesh. My eyes, thanks to the falsies and whatever witchcraft the surly makeup artist did with my brows, look enormous.

After the shoot was over, the photographer culled just three photos from the hundreds she took in the space of a few hours, and sent them to me. This is the best of those three. Years have gone by, and this is still the best I’ve ever looked in a photo. It’s also the unhealthiest I have ever been.

When it was taken, I’d been heavily restricting my food intake and compulsively over-exercising for about a year-and-a-half. I was the thinnest I’d been in years, and not that much thinner than I’d been when I fell down that hole, which, now, makes me feel both relief (thank god I didn’t do too much permanent damage) and regret (if I wasn’t even skinny, what the hell was all that suffering for?).

I was unspeakably miserable, literally: Despite being a professional writer, I couldn’t muster the courage to explain to anyone but a therapist how unhappy I was, or marshal the words to do my misery justice. But I was functional: working, traveling, and maintaining a social life ― even though I had to run extra miles to compensate for whatever I ate when people were watching. And this photo shoot was to accompany an essay I’d written for a well-regarded weekend magazine, an international byline, a big deal. The night before, I went for a run and ate lettuce for dinner. The morning of, I drank coffee and ate nothing.

The photo was taken before the rise of Instagram, though Facebook and Twitter were already in full force. Had I had access to a photo-focused social media network at the time I’m sure I would have posted it, probably with a performatively self-effacing caption, and watched with grim satisfaction as the likes and approving comments piled up. This week, in honor of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, I decided to post it, and to be honest about the wide chasm between what that photo shows and the truth. 

Thinness is an achievement for women, one we’re expected to work for if we’re not blessed with skinny genes, and offer sheepish, secretly-smug apologies for if it is gifted to us by nature. It’s a trophy we’re expected to hold on to at all costs.

The truth was that I was drowning. On the outside, things looked pretty good: My career was humming along, I was dating a great guy, I was spending the summer in Paris doing research for grad school, and hey, I’d dropped two pants sizes. For young women, this is what winning looks like.  

In fact, scratch the first three-quarters of that list, and just keep the newfound sense that you’ve earned the right to wear shorts in public: for young women, this is what winning looks like. Skinniness covers all manner of other failure, just as failure to be skinny can dim the sparkle on all manner of other success. There was a reason people were complimenting me on my “accomplishment,” praising my shrinking body. Thinness is an achievement for women, one we’re expected to work for if we’re not blessed with skinny genes, and offer sheepish, secretly-smug apologies for if it is gifted to us by nature. It’s a trophy we’re expected to hold on to at all costs.

Never mind that much of what I produced that summer was garbage, limp and listless writing that had to be redone because it lacked rigor. Never mind that I was lying to that great guy, pretending to be the healthy, naturally slender woman I knew he wanted to be with. Never mind that I spent those months denying myself French food and running along the pretty streets of Paris without ever really seeing them. Never mind; look what I’d accomplished. It was right there in the photo.

My illness never manifested as anything other than an achievement, because it was largely invisible. In that photo, I’m the thinnest I’ve been since hitting puberty in earnest, but I’m not skinny. I do not look sick. I do not look like a person who is suffering. I look like a person has succeeded at losing weight – and so I was. Very few people noticed that something was terribly wrong, because it looked like I was doing something right. This is not uncommon: eating disorders are exercises in secrecy, and while some of us fit the stereotype of the hyper-skinny anorexic, all bones and eyes, many of us don’t. Many of us hide our worst behavior behind closed doors, and hide the rest in plain sight.

I starved myself for two long years, with very little to show for it in the way of weight loss, and even less in the way of proof that I was sick. Again, this isn’t uncommon: There are lots of us out here starving, bingeing, purging and over-exercising, looking nothing like your mental image of a person with an eating disorder. You may think this makes our suffering less real, less corrosive. We may even think that ourselves – I did. I was wrong.

There are so many people walking around looking the “best” they’ve ever looked, and paying far too steep a price, a hidden cost they feel compelled to keep paying.

When, after a year-and-a-half of seeing a therapist, something finally shifted, and I started eating properly again, it showed in photos. In pictures from that year, I look puffy in the face and arms, like my body is clinging to every scrap of fat it’s given. Which, of course, it was. The body is smart: if you starve it once, it will forever be preparing for the next famine.

In those newer photos I am the picture of health, or at least, the picture of healthier. And yet, I don’t like to look at them. I don’t like the photo of me clambering on an ancient Sequoia with my colleagues on a work retreat. I don’t like the photo of me smiling at a dear friend’s wedding and surrounded by brilliant, loving women. I like the old photo, the bombshell photo, the photo that tells lies. It’s in a frame on my new boyfriend’s windowsill. I’m healthier now, and lucky to be so, but if there had been a oath to mental health that had involved no weight gain – well, I’d have been in recovery sooner, and I would have recovered faster. 

My suffering made me look great. There is no getting around this: my self-inflicted pain was rewarded with praise and sexual interest and even short-lived flashes of self-confidence. And there is no getting around the truth that I like the old photo better than the new ones. Just as I am working to accept that some people will always offer, “you’ve lost weight!” as a compliment, I am working to accept the uncomfortable, unhealthy truth: I have never looked “better” than when I was at my worst.

And I know I wasn’t alone. There are so many people walking around looking the “best” they’ve ever looked, and paying far too steep a price, a hidden cost they feel compelled to keep paying. To those people I say: I know your pain, and I promise it won’t always feel this way. It took work, to travel from that hungry day on the staircase, all dolled up and empty inside, to where I am now. It takes work every day, sometimes every hour, and it’s never a straight line. I look fine now, I suppose. I feel fierce, and I mourn the years I lost.

So the photo stays. As reminder of where I used to be, as a way to mark how far I’ve come. And as a reminder of the gap between truth and pretty fictions.

If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

I've Never Felt Worse Than In The Moment I Looked My 'Best' published first on http://ift.tt/2lnpciY

[yes-dal456]

I've Never Felt Worse Than In The Moment I Looked My 'Best'

There is a photo of me, the best one I have. Maybe the best one I’ll ever have.

It was one of hundreds taken by a professional photographer whose pleasantly scruffy assistant spent hours flitting around her, holding a disc reflector to throw the Parisian summer light onto me just so. Before she’d even picked up her camera and he’d reluctantly put down his cigarette, a makeup artist had spent 90 minutes on my face, my hair, my nails. They were going for a ‘50s bombshell look – I’m not entirely sure why, now, but it made sense at the time – so there were hair extensions and curlers and false eyelashes and very bold red lips. In this photo, I’m sitting on a staircase, my hair mimicking the a curly black wrought iron bannister, with my hands demurely in my lap but my mouth slightly open in a Jessica Simpson-ish kind of way. My wrap dress, which I almost never wore in real life because it was too revealing, too clingy, is showing just the right amount of flesh. My eyes, thanks to the falsies and whatever witchcraft the surly makeup artist did with my brows, look enormous.

After the shoot was over, the photographer culled just three photos from the hundreds she took in the space of a few hours, and sent them to me. This is the best of those three. Years have gone by, and this is still the best I’ve ever looked in a photo. It’s also the unhealthiest I have ever been.

When it was taken, I’d been heavily restricting my food intake and compulsively over-exercising for about a year-and-a-half. I was the thinnest I’d been in years, and not that much thinner than I’d been when I fell down that hole, which, now, makes me feel both relief (thank god I didn’t do too much permanent damage) and regret (if I wasn’t even skinny, what the hell was all that suffering for?).

I was unspeakably miserable, literally: Despite being a professional writer, I couldn’t muster the courage to explain to anyone but a therapist how unhappy I was, or marshal the words to do my misery justice. But I was functional: working, traveling, and maintaining a social life ― even though I had to run extra miles to compensate for whatever I ate when people were watching. And this photo shoot was to accompany an essay I’d written for a well-regarded weekend magazine, an international byline, a big deal. The night before, I went for a run and ate lettuce for dinner. The morning of, I drank coffee and ate nothing.

The photo was taken before the rise of Instagram, though Facebook and Twitter were already in full force. Had I had access to a photo-focused social media network at the time I’m sure I would have posted it, probably with a performatively self-effacing caption, and watched with grim satisfaction as the likes and approving comments piled up. This week, in honor of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, I decided to post it, and to be honest about the wide chasm between what that photo shows and the truth. 

Thinness is an achievement for women, one we’re expected to work for if we’re not blessed with skinny genes, and offer sheepish, secretly-smug apologies for if it is gifted to us by nature. It’s a trophy we’re expected to hold on to at all costs.

The truth was that I was drowning. On the outside, things looked pretty good: My career was humming along, I was dating a great guy, I was spending the summer in Paris doing research for grad school, and hey, I’d dropped two pants sizes. For young women, this is what winning looks like.  

In fact, scratch the first three-quarters of that list, and just keep the newfound sense that you’ve earned the right to wear shorts in public: for young women, this is what winning looks like. Skinniness covers all manner of other failure, just as failure to be skinny can dim the sparkle on all manner of other success. There was a reason people were complimenting me on my “accomplishment,” praising my shrinking body. Thinness is an achievement for women, one we’re expected to work for if we’re not blessed with skinny genes, and offer sheepish, secretly-smug apologies for if it is gifted to us by nature. It’s a trophy we’re expected to hold on to at all costs.

Never mind that much of what I produced that summer was garbage, limp and listless writing that had to be redone because it lacked rigor. Never mind that I was lying to that great guy, pretending to be the healthy, naturally slender woman I knew he wanted to be with. Never mind that I spent those months denying myself French food and running along the pretty streets of Paris without ever really seeing them. Never mind; look what I’d accomplished. It was right there in the photo.

My illness never manifested as anything other than an achievement, because it was largely invisible. In that photo, I’m the thinnest I’ve been since hitting puberty in earnest, but I’m not skinny. I do not look sick. I do not look like a person who is suffering. I look like a person has succeeded at losing weight – and so I was. Very few people noticed that something was terribly wrong, because it looked like I was doing something right. This is not uncommon: eating disorders are exercises in secrecy, and while some of us fit the stereotype of the hyper-skinny anorexic, all bones and eyes, many of us don’t. Many of us hide our worst behavior behind closed doors, and hide the rest in plain sight.

I starved myself for two long years, with very little to show for it in the way of weight loss, and even less in the way of proof that I was sick. Again, this isn’t uncommon: There are lots of us out here starving, bingeing, purging and over-exercising, looking nothing like your mental image of a person with an eating disorder. You may think this makes our suffering less real, less corrosive. We may even think that ourselves – I did. I was wrong.

There are so many people walking around looking the “best” they’ve ever looked, and paying far too steep a price, a hidden cost they feel compelled to keep paying.

When, after a year-and-a-half of seeing a therapist, something finally shifted, and I started eating properly again, it showed in photos. In pictures from that year, I look puffy in the face and arms, like my body is clinging to every scrap of fat it’s given. Which, of course, it was. The body is smart: if you starve it once, it will forever be preparing for the next famine.

In those newer photos I am the picture of health, or at least, the picture of healthier. And yet, I don’t like to look at them. I don’t like the photo of me clambering on an ancient Sequoia with my colleagues on a work retreat. I don’t like the photo of me smiling at a dear friend’s wedding and surrounded by brilliant, loving women. I like the old photo, the bombshell photo, the photo that tells lies. It’s in a frame on my new boyfriend’s windowsill. I’m healthier now, and lucky to be so, but if there had been a oath to mental health that had involved no weight gain – well, I’d have been in recovery sooner, and I would have recovered faster. 

My suffering made me look great. There is no getting around this: my self-inflicted pain was rewarded with praise and sexual interest and even short-lived flashes of self-confidence. And there is no getting around the truth that I like the old photo better than the new ones. Just as I am working to accept that some people will always offer, “you’ve lost weight!” as a compliment, I am working to accept the uncomfortable, unhealthy truth: I have never looked “better” than when I was at my worst.

And I know I wasn’t alone. There are so many people walking around looking the “best” they’ve ever looked, and paying far too steep a price, a hidden cost they feel compelled to keep paying. To those people I say: I know your pain, and I promise it won’t always feel this way. It took work, to travel from that hungry day on the staircase, all dolled up and empty inside, to where I am now. It takes work every day, sometimes every hour, and it’s never a straight line. I look fine now, I suppose. I feel fierce, and I mourn the years I lost.

So the photo stays. As reminder of where I used to be, as a way to mark how far I’ve come. And as a reminder of the gap between truth and pretty fictions.

If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from http://ift.tt/2mjj9Ac from Blogger http://ift.tt/2lyoEGU

[imreviewblog]

I've Never Felt Worse Than In The Moment I Looked My 'Best'

There is a photo of me, the best one I have. Maybe the best one I’ll ever have.

It was one of hundreds taken by a professional photographer whose pleasantly scruffy assistant spent hours flitting around her, holding a disc reflector to throw the Parisian summer light onto me just so. Before she’d even picked up her camera and he’d reluctantly put down his cigarette, a makeup artist had spent 90 minutes on my face, my hair, my nails. They were going for a ‘50s bombshell look – I’m not entirely sure why, now, but it made sense at the time – so there were hair extensions and curlers and false eyelashes and very bold red lips. In this photo, I’m sitting on a staircase, my hair mimicking the a curly black wrought iron bannister, with my hands demurely in my lap but my mouth slightly open in a Jessica Simpson-ish kind of way. My wrap dress, which I almost never wore in real life because it was too revealing, too clingy, is showing just the right amount of flesh. My eyes, thanks to the falsies and whatever witchcraft the surly makeup artist did with my brows, look enormous.

After the shoot was over, the photographer culled just three photos from the hundreds she took in the space of a few hours, and sent them to me. This is the best of those three. Years have gone by, and this is still the best I’ve ever looked in a photo. It’s also the unhealthiest I have ever been.

When it was taken, I’d been heavily restricting my food intake and compulsively over-exercising for about a year-and-a-half. I was the thinnest I’d been in years, and not that much thinner than I’d been when I fell down that hole, which, now, makes me feel both relief (thank god I didn’t do too much permanent damage) and regret (if I wasn’t even skinny, what the hell was all that suffering for?).

I was unspeakably miserable, literally: Despite being a professional writer, I couldn’t muster the courage to explain to anyone but a therapist how unhappy I was, or marshal the words to do my misery justice. But I was functional: working, traveling, and maintaining a social life ― even though I had to run extra miles to compensate for whatever I ate when people were watching. And this photo shoot was to accompany an essay I’d written for a well-regarded weekend magazine, an international byline, a big deal. The night before, I went for a run and ate lettuce for dinner. The morning of, I drank coffee and ate nothing.

The photo was taken before the rise of Instagram, though Facebook and Twitter were already in full force. Had I had access to a photo-focused social media network at the time I’m sure I would have posted it, probably with a performatively self-effacing caption, and watched with grim satisfaction as the likes and approving comments piled up. This week, in honor of National Eating Disorders Awareness Week, I decided to post it, and to be honest about the wide chasm between what that photo shows and the truth. 

Thinness is an achievement for women, one we’re expected to work for if we’re not blessed with skinny genes, and offer sheepish, secretly-smug apologies for if it is gifted to us by nature. It’s a trophy we’re expected to hold on to at all costs.

The truth was that I was drowning. On the outside, things looked pretty good: My career was humming along, I was dating a great guy, I was spending the summer in Paris doing research for grad school, and hey, I’d dropped two pants sizes. For young women, this is what winning looks like.  

In fact, scratch the first three-quarters of that list, and just keep the newfound sense that you’ve earned the right to wear shorts in public: for young women, this is what winning looks like. Skinniness covers all manner of other failure, just as failure to be skinny can dim the sparkle on all manner of other success. There was a reason people were complimenting me on my “accomplishment,” praising my shrinking body. Thinness is an achievement for women, one we’re expected to work for if we’re not blessed with skinny genes, and offer sheepish, secretly-smug apologies for if it is gifted to us by nature. It’s a trophy we’re expected to hold on to at all costs.

Never mind that much of what I produced that summer was garbage, limp and listless writing that had to be redone because it lacked rigor. Never mind that I was lying to that great guy, pretending to be the healthy, naturally slender woman I knew he wanted to be with. Never mind that I spent those months denying myself French food and running along the pretty streets of Paris without ever really seeing them. Never mind; look what I’d accomplished. It was right there in the photo.

My illness never manifested as anything other than an achievement, because it was largely invisible. In that photo, I’m the thinnest I’ve been since hitting puberty in earnest, but I’m not skinny. I do not look sick. I do not look like a person who is suffering. I look like a person has succeeded at losing weight – and so I was. Very few people noticed that something was terribly wrong, because it looked like I was doing something right. This is not uncommon: eating disorders are exercises in secrecy, and while some of us fit the stereotype of the hyper-skinny anorexic, all bones and eyes, many of us don’t. Many of us hide our worst behavior behind closed doors, and hide the rest in plain sight.

I starved myself for two long years, with very little to show for it in the way of weight loss, and even less in the way of proof that I was sick. Again, this isn’t uncommon: There are lots of us out here starving, bingeing, purging and over-exercising, looking nothing like your mental image of a person with an eating disorder. You may think this makes our suffering less real, less corrosive. We may even think that ourselves – I did. I was wrong.

There are so many people walking around looking the “best” they’ve ever looked, and paying far too steep a price, a hidden cost they feel compelled to keep paying.

When, after a year-and-a-half of seeing a therapist, something finally shifted, and I started eating properly again, it showed in photos. In pictures from that year, I look puffy in the face and arms, like my body is clinging to every scrap of fat it’s given. Which, of course, it was. The body is smart: if you starve it once, it will forever be preparing for the next famine.

In those newer photos I am the picture of health, or at least, the picture of healthier. And yet, I don’t like to look at them. I don’t like the photo of me clambering on an ancient Sequoia with my colleagues on a work retreat. I don’t like the photo of me smiling at a dear friend’s wedding and surrounded by brilliant, loving women. I like the old photo, the bombshell photo, the photo that tells lies. It’s in a frame on my new boyfriend’s windowsill. I’m healthier now, and lucky to be so, but if there had been a oath to mental health that had involved no weight gain – well, I’d have been in recovery sooner, and I would have recovered faster. 

My suffering made me look great. There is no getting around this: my self-inflicted pain was rewarded with praise and sexual interest and even short-lived flashes of self-confidence. And there is no getting around the truth that I like the old photo better than the new ones. Just as I am working to accept that some people will always offer, “you’ve lost weight!” as a compliment, I am working to accept the uncomfortable, unhealthy truth: I have never looked “better” than when I was at my worst.

And I know I wasn’t alone. There are so many people walking around looking the “best” they’ve ever looked, and paying far too steep a price, a hidden cost they feel compelled to keep paying. To those people I say: I know your pain, and I promise it won’t always feel this way. It took work, to travel from that hungry day on the staircase, all dolled up and empty inside, to where I am now. It takes work every day, sometimes every hour, and it’s never a straight line. I look fine now, I suppose. I feel fierce, and I mourn the years I lost.

So the photo stays. As reminder of where I used to be, as a way to mark how far I’ve come. And as a reminder of the gap between truth and pretty fictions.

If you’re struggling with an eating disorder, call the National Eating Disorder Association hotline at 1-800-931-2237.

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from Healthy Living - The Huffington Post http://huff.to/2mQdWfM