The Art of Starving

I used to imagine Better was a place you could get to. A moment when I would look around and see that Everything Was Fine. But that’s not how this works. Being better isn’t a battle you fight and win. Feeling okay is a war, one that lasts your whole life, and the only way to win is to keep on fighting.

The strongest people aren’t the ones who are born strong. They’re the ones who know what it’s like to be weak, and have a reason to get stronger. The ones who’ve been hurt. Who’ve had things they love taken from them. The ones with something to fight for.

The greatest power comes from love, from knowing who you are and standing proudly in it.

Congratulations! You have acquired one human body. This was a poor decision, but it is probably too late for you to do anything about it. Life, alas, has an extremely strict return policy.

Depending on what the body you’re born into looks like, you get put in a box marked either Boy or Girl. That box is packed with expectations and requirements, demands and obligations. The box says you can like This, but not That. The box says you can wear This, but not That. The box might fit you perfectly. In that case, everything will be wonderful. Alternately, the box might be so cramped and tight and full of horrible things that you’d rather be dead than spend another minute in it.

I still wasn't entirely convinced that if somebody suddenly gave me the power to snap my fingers and cease to exist, I wouldn't use it. I wasn't suicidal anymore. But once you go there, once your mind has seriously weighed it as a possibility, it never really goes away. It's always there - always an option.

Without your problems, you wouldn’t be who you are. You would be someone else. Someone significantly less awesome.

Straight men will insult and assault and beat and kill gay men because they are terrified. Because masculinity is the foundation they built their whole worldview on, the set of lies that lets them believe they are inherently better than women, and gay people expose how flimsy and arbitrary the whole thing is.

Bad things will happen to you and they won’t be your fault. Life is a miserable shit-show for lots of very good people. Lots of very evil people have it easy in life. When bad things happen, it doesn’t help to blame yourself, or wish you’d done something differently, or shake your fists at the sky. Accept that the bad things happened, but do not allow them to continue to hurt you. Bad things will also happen to you that will be your fault. Part of being Better is being able to tell the difference.

She thinks I’m a child who needs to be protected from the horrors of grown-ups, because she somehow forgot that the world of children has its own horrors. And that the world of teenagers holds the horrors of both.

Every superhero, every Chosen One, goes through a painful and difficult process of Becoming. On this, all the relevant literature is in agreement. Ask any comic book aficionado, any movie buff. The heroes doubt themselves, even when confronted with irrefutable evidence. They've spent their whole lives listening to weak and powerless people who hate and fear anything that is different, who say that superhuman abilities simply don't exist, and they believe it.

This is the hardest rule. The one I still have to keep repeating. The one I accept, on an intellectual level, but still cannot truly believe. Your body is just a thing. Whether it’s strong or weak or beautiful or ugly is all in your head. In your mind.

Silence was my sister's weapon. When people hurt or angered her, she never got loud like Mom or mean and smart-ass like me. Silence was how she fought back. It wasn't passive, or an act of helplessness: it was a cold cruel withering blade, lasting far longer than my mother's rage or my own antagonism, strong enough to make us practically beg for forgiveness every time. Except now her weapon had gone haywire, turned on herself, driven her from her home and her support system and into what-knew-what kind of danger.

As they approach true mastery of the Art of Starving, students will see that eating disorders are merely one part of a broad spectrum of self-harm. Cutting, addiction, suicidal ideation. These are all ways to assert your power. To prove that you're not weak. To show you're strong enough to control your own destiny by destroying yourself.

[. . .] Your first time should not be like this. Maybe it should happen because you're both super excited about it—not because you're terrified you're going to get dumped because your significant other found out just how damaged you are. Not because you're using sex to fill an emptiness inside you.

Should you ever need a reminder of what a savage animal your body is—should you ever start to doubt that you are chained to a wild creature—just hurt someone. Hurt them bad. And see how your body feels after.

Don’t the stars make you feel so small?” Bastien said, and there was a slight roughness around his words from where his lip was already swollen. “People always say that,” Ott said. “I don’t understand it. The stars make me feel . . .” I could hear the gears turning, the struggle as Ott tried to cram the whole huge tapestry of his thoughts into the meager words of his vocabulary. “They make me feel big. A giant cosmic accident. Like—what are the chances that I would even happen? You know? If my parents hadn’t met, if the dinosaurs never died out . . . we might not be here. But here we are. And we get to look up at the stars at night. Who would appreciate them if we didn’t?

What is the point of living when I am so clearly less than human?

The strongest people aren't the ones who are born strong. They're the ones who know what it's like to be weak, and have a reason to get stronger. The ones who've been hurt. Who've had things they love taken from them. The ones with something to fight for.

She thinks I'm a child who needs to be protected from the horrors of grown-ups, because she somehow forgets that the world of children has its own horrors. And that the world of teenagers holds the horrors of both.

I thought about puking up all those sandwiches once I saw what I had done, but that's a line I won't cross. If you make yourself puke, you have a problem.

(...) And through it all I thought of my mother and the lives she didn’t get to live.

(....) It would kill her because she’s spent her whole life worrying about How She Messed Up Those Kids, and what better proof of her failures as a mother than a son condemned to a miserable life of abuse and loneliness?

saw with razor’s-edge clarity, so plainly that I laughed out loud from the Disney Movie obviousness of it: The greatest power comes from love, from knowing who you are and standing proudly in it.

Many a magnificent supervillain was motivated by revenge.

Mom clapped her hands. “Okay, grown-up conversation over. You are now officially children again. And you must obey me immediately no matter what I say.” “We never did that when we really were children,” I said. “Silence,” Mom commanded, and we ate.

Oh, baby,” he said, and kissed my forehead. He hugged me again, and I realized I had never heard that tenderness in his voice before. I began to sob, and I hugged him back, and we sat on the bitter-cold ground of a mostly empty parking lot, while the whole world celebrated a holiday without us. “Your parents,” I whispered into his ear when the sobbing calmed somewhat. “They could come out.” “Fuck them,” he said. “I don’t care about that right now.” Eventually the position got uncomfortable for him, and he sat back so his knees were touching mine. “Come inside,” he said. “You’re shivering.” I nodded. I was.

I worried I would break her heart by being gay. Instead I broke it like this.

They are angry at the same world I am angry at, I thought. They accept me. I am one of them. All I have to do is step forward and claim it—