A letter to You

Jag har nu under några månaders tid följt en himla massa tjejer på instagram. Det är tjejer som skriver på engelska, därav kommer detta brev vara på engelska. I alla fall. Dessa tjejer är "recovering" från ätstörningar, oftast anorexi. De postar bilder på deras mat, som ofta är helt uppåt väggarna. De säger "såååå bra gjort" när de kan ha ätit en middag på 100 kalorier. Jamen, säger de, de är starka som äter NÅGONTING i alla fall. Jag är less på det. Jag är hemskt less på det!

Sorry,

This message to you all will be long, but it will come from the bottom of my heart.

This isn't dedicated to any one special, but to all of you. If you feel like my words hit you in the chest – so be it. I'm all right with being a bitch, as long as I feel like I've said what I believe is the truth.

I'm tired of this. I'm tired of seeing lots of pictures with “food”, hearing words of praise when in the end the winner almost always is Ana. I've the brutal opinion that you can't defeat an eating disorder trying. You have to go all in, with all your might. You have to leave those low-fat products behind. You have to meet your fears, it's the only way to defeat them. You have to take the anxiety after every proper meal you eat, avoiding it will just make the process of recovery longer. I've been there, believe me. After more than two years of sickness, I've come to the conclusion that stamping around at the same place isn't for me. Taking one step forward (I ate!) and one step backwards (what I ate was nothing) is, in my opinion, Ana winning.

I know you can't defeat an eating disorder in one day, not even a week or a month. But I also know that fighting against Ana and still follow her is just contra productive. For one year and a half I've been stuck in-between. I've managed to eat regularly, to eat candy and ice-cream sometimes, to eat in restaurants and to travel alone. But I've only managed those fears because I knew that when I come home, I could go back to old, Ana-friendly habits. I could eat my food in my way, sometimes challenging myself, but in the end Ana's winning by avoiding those foods that are difficult to eat. It's like giving a heroin addict some heroin every second time she asks for it.

I can't see this any more. I can't stand seeing beautiful young girls destroying themselves and throwing away their adolescence. I'm done with this. I want to leave this world behind, to move forward in my life and fill my days with other things than food, weight and eating disorders.

I feel so bad seeing your thoughts and pictures. I think I know what your parents go through, or almost. I don't love you, I don't even know you, but feeling totally powerless and knowing that I can't help you destroys me. It destroys me more than eating my worst fearfoods. It's inside your head. It's all inside your head, yours and yours only. It's you that can make the change happen, unfortunately you won't wake up tomorrow morning feeling that this is the day everything changes. You have to decide it yourself, you have to decide it NOW and do it. It will hurt. It won't be easy. Life isn't easy. But it will be worth it, in the end.

I've always been very drastic. It's all or nothing. So being stuck in that in-between, where Ana and I live side by side and even though I sometimes hit her in the face – it isn't enough. It isn't enough for me to recover, I can't live my life to the fullest with a demon whispering in my ear what's good and what's bad. Perhaps you can live like that. Perhaps you can live, “trying” to recover, perhaps even recovering, but still with the eating disorder there. But I can't. I can't live with it! My days are just filled with food and school. I don't have space for anything else. I don't have time for hobbies nor do I have time for friends friends. For a girl with every possibility in the world, that's not a life. I'll turn eighteen this year, I won't be a child any more. I don't want to look like a child nor do I want to be mistaken to be twelve. Therefore, I have to meet my fears, my angst, my weaknesses and make something good come out of them.

You know, if you are underweight it's not healthy if you have eaten a low-fat yoghurt, nor is it healthy for you to eat an apple for snack. Actually, you should be eating full-fat products and loads of energy dense products. If you were perfectly fine in your head, you would right now sit with a box of butter and eat it with a spoon. That would be healthy for you. I'm underweight, but do I eat pure butter with a spoon? No. I don't. Because I'm sick. I begin to calculate – how many apples to I get from this? I begin to think, to see myself as fat if I eat it. I begin to calculate how many calories I would get from that and I fear them. This will change. Keeping an underweight is the same as dieting. Keeping an underweight when we do have access to food, is just insane. I'm sick. I don't know that have gotten into me, but this is not the person I want to be in the future and it's not the person for any one to be.

Healthy eating is eating what your body needs. If you need to gain weight, healthy for you is food that makes you gain. If you need to lose, if you are dangerously obese, healthy for you is to eat food that makes you lose some pounds. Ice-cream is healthy for those who need to gain, cucumber isn't.

I'll unfollow a bunch of you. Feel free to unfollow me if you want to. It's not that I hate you nor do I think you aren't worth my time. It's just that, that I feel I need to leave this world of eating disorders behind me. I need to move forward. I still have plenty of work to do. I'm not perfect. I do sometimes follow Ana. But I feel this is one very important step for me in recovery – let the obsession with eating disorders go.

I wish you all the very, very best

Meet your fears,

Tua