![]() ![]() And she feels a little, just a little, dead inside. And she calls when she’s going to be late. And she is always where she says she will be. She is pretty, maybe, if anyone would bother to look. This isn’t to say she doesn’t have qualities. Of course, she’s also aware that the reason no one teases is because no one ever notices her. She knows there are other people who have it worse-she isn’t poor or ugly or friendless or teased. Truth be told, she prefers books to people, and the librarian always seems happy to see her. Sometimes, when she can’t stand it anymore, she eats in the library instead. She has a group of girls she eats lunch with every day, but God, how they bore her. Her best friend became her best friend when another girl moved away. In point of fact, she’s nobody’s first choice for anything. She always has a date to the dance, but is never anyone’s first choice. When asked, she has been known to paints sets for the school play. Sometimes she is the secretary usually, just a member. She joins clubs, but is never the president of them. She sits precisely in the middle of the classroom, and when she used to ride the school bus, she sat precisely in the middle of that, too. ![]() Her hair is neither long nor short nor light nor dark. You don't have to think about any of the nasty minutiae of the real world, you don't get caught up in that awful boring thing called regular life, with its bills and its breakups and its dishes and laundry and groceries and arguments over whose turn it is to change the litter box and bedtimes and bad sex and all that, because you are having a real drama, not a sitcom but a GRAND EPIC, all by yourself, and why would you bother with those foolish mortals when you could spend hours and hours with the mirror, when you are having the most interesting sado-machistic affair with your own image?” Eating disorders provide a little drama, they feed into the desire for constant excitement, everything becomes life-or-death, everything is terribly grand and crashing, very Sturm and Drang. They are also an addiction and illness, but there is no question at all that they are quite simply a way of avoiding the banal, daily, itchy pain of life. Eating disorders, on any level, are a crutch. “The leap of faith is this: You have to believe, or at least pretend you believe until you really believe it, that you are strong enough to take life face on. ![]()
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