I was thin once.
I mean, I'm thin now, But once, I was really really thin.
Scary thin.
As in, people stared. As in, I dressed in baggy clothes to try and keep them from doing it. As in, a total stranger walked up to me after a show and said, Wow, you really are that thin and then turned on his heel without even trying to hide his disgust.
Of course he didn't know I was thin because my colon was in tatters and food slid through me like water through an oiled pipe making it hard to make things stick to my bones and not because I had my finger or a toothbrush or whatever else was handy shoved down my throat.
No one knew it then except one colorectal surgeon who forgot to give me the results of my colonoscopy.
Oops!
Anyway. I wasn't an upchucker but I was pretty judge-y about the girls who were.
I thought, you'd have to be sick to do something like that.
And then yesterday I made myself sick. Not because I had something down my throat unless you count the pound of cherries I ate on an empty stomach some of which looked "funny" (and not in the ha-ha way).
I was just sick.
And as I raced to the bathroom and flipped up the seat with some hesitation because I wasn't sure which end should go first...
and as I gripped the bowl heaving wave after wave of bile soup into the toilet...
and as I tried not to look at the film of yuck coating the porcelain because seriously, if I didn't already have to puke it would have made me...
it occurred to me: those skinny, skinny girls who look so sick to me probably are.
Probably worse than I know.
Because seriously, would you do that if you didn't have to?
Frankly, whoever did make them think they had to, those are the sick ones.
So the next time you go to pick up a magazine with a skinny skinny girl on the cover... don't.
And the next time your daughter begs you to give in and buy her a Barbie... don't.
And the next time you hear someone rag on an actress or a model or a whatever for being a little fat or a little old or a little "whatever"
and you feel like jumping on the pile don't.
Because really, if you think about it, you'd have to be sick to do something like that.
xxx c
TAGS: poetry, anorexia, bulimia, pro-ana, eating disorders
Image by Cade via Flickr, used under a Creative Commons License