'I wish I was you'
It was once my dream to hear this phrase but when a little girl told me this the other day, I felt crushed. I was such an insecure child and the only thing that ever made me feel idolised or desirable in the way I idolised and desired others my age was adhering to anorexia's rules of being thin. Years after the fact, the life that insecure little me would've thought to be the ultimate dream is, behind closed curtains, a world of despair, struggle and pain. And maybe from a distance, that ultimate dream is what this little girl could see. But that 'perfect' little anorexic world is far from desirable. This is why you mean to say 'I wish I wasn't you.'
The body you leer at, are intrigued by or riveted with is one that looks the way it does due to years, days and hours of self-punishment, unkindness and self-sabotage. It is a body that has been carved, brutally, by the mind of a wounded young woman. My body continues to be carved with less and less meat every waking hour I decide to starve it rather than nourish and nurture it. It may appear glamorous but often, bodies that are an outcome of an eating disorder are severely malnourished. The true experience of a body like mine is shockingly cold, numbingly weak, constantly aching and has brittle, porous bones. To wish for my body is to sentence yourself to a death wish.
Would you wish to spend a life that is spent chasing death?
I've had friends and colleagues aspire to my personality as they've sweetly praised me for my sensitivity to others' emotions. It's kind to appreciate kindness, of course, however, what most of them don't know is the kindness I give is from the unkindness I was shown. There were so many moments of my childhood that could've been filled with beautiful memories but were instead filled with missed opportunities, screaming matches, cries of hatred and antagonising arguments. My kindness to others becomes apparent mostly when a particular moment, phrase or action takes me back to the immense emotional suffering I experienced growing up. The last memory I lose will be the one in which I sat next to a person who felt as though they were miles away.
It is my mind that has allowed for the manifestation of my particular case of anorexia. People have told me that they wish they had my 'discipline' or 'self-control' so that they too could be thin. It hurts me when people say this because it feels like they're glamorising something that I hate having to live with. Wishing to live in my mind is not wishing to be perfect, it is wishing for perfectionism, two very different things. Perfectionism throws middle ground, next-to and close enough out the window. In this toxic space, I cannot be gentle on myself one day and harsh on the next. I live constantly in the anguish that it is to know that I have no room to be less than outstanding. I've found this fanatical mindset to leave me spending 99% of my life in misery chasing a single moment of relief from the pain that drowns me.
I thought the day I heard 'I wish I was you' would be one of the best days of my life. But it was one of the worst. Because I would rather die than lead a beautiful little girl to hate herself in the way that I do.
Kisses,
COS
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