It Controls Everyone

My mind has been very unfocused today. Actually, my mind has been too focused on a situation I find myself in that I was in once before. One that nearly killed my best friend, ruined friendships, changed lives and controlled everyone's life for a very long time. For some the control is still continuing. For me, it's always there and has made me hyper aware to my own body issues, as well as to how my friends, family, the media and the world look at "health" and the human body. My best friend when I was a teenager struggled and probably still struggles since Eating Disorders are diseases and don't go away. They are dealt with day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute with every sip and chew a person takes, with every step or push-up. The constant need to be thin and control that one thing in life to make things seem ago is ever present. Now being a 20-something my best friend is starting her battle it seems to me and she's an Ocean away. When I was a teenager dealing with this, it was new, I didn't know exactly what I was facing, I didn't realize the toll it would take on me, on my other best friend, on my relationships outside of the ED. It's not a simple solution and never knowing if your best friend is going to make it to her 16th, 17th, 18th birthday makes you go a bit crazy yourself. It puts so much strain on your relationship and making life or death decisions about who to tell and how to help makes you grow up in ways faster and stunts you in other ways. Anorexia, bulimia, exercise anorexia, and all the combination's in between scare me to no end. I worry when my own self-esteem drops and I worry about gaining weight. I worry when I try on clothes and they don't fit me like they did the week before. I worry that I will fall into the disease and watch my friends and family watch me die slowly because I can't see myself the way they do. I worry when I look in the mirror and see someone different from what the truth is.

I worry even though I will never let this happen to me. Silver lining in every life situation. The truth is in our world I don't think these diseases get the proper education and attention. Instead our attention is focused on the photo-shopped images of people who don't exist. Our attention is focused on "surgery" and "fitness programs' that don't take into account individualism and how each body functions uniquely and on various levels of caloric intake and exercise. As we progress as a species our vanity becomes harder and harder to hide from, our insecurities become more prevalent and when we can't control our lives we reach for something that is controllable-our bodies are our own. My life-long friend denies she has a problem. States she is just a "health nut" yet when I say her body is probably entering starvation mode and that's why she isn't losing weight on a "renowned" fitness trainer program she says "well eventually it'll eat the fat?" and that when she doesn't get results she eats less to get them while working out everyday from 90 to 120 minutes. I'm scared for her and I'm scared for our world when on the Facebook pages for these fitness kicks participants post pro-ana propaganda and their co-participants write "haha awesome" and "so true" underneath. I'm angry that the fitness trainer hasn't removed the images and addressed the issue.

This is the image that was posted. Why Women and Men feel the need to fit into a cookie-cutter image drives me batty. I fall into it as well on more than an occasion. I think we've conditioned ourselves too far to not to. I just know the affects that ripple out from the diseases that take hold if we fall too much in step with striving for perfection. Humanity deserves more. From itself and from each other.

Always remember this.

And this are true. If only scales could be programmed to tell everyone this. "There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore. I am thawing.” ― Laurie Halse Anderson, Wintergirls