Thin Girls

Our worlds are only as big as the spaces we create for ourselves.

Something that happens when you start dieting: You notice bodies. You notice everybody. You notice every body.

It’s easy to be consumed by one’s suffering. How can I possibly live this day? is how it feels. How can I possibly pretend everything, anything, is normal?

Before I was admitted, I had to answer a questionnaire: - Do you monitor what you eat? - Do you count your caloric intake? - Do you think you need to lose weight? - Do you skip meals on purpose? - Do you feel fat? Ask any woman these questions. Admit us all to the facility! This is what you have done to us. This is your monster, and it’s starving.

When the pain is too much for the mind, we take it out on the body.

I don’t think there’s one girl left in the world who isn’t fucked up about food. Sorry, Grace. I meant messed up. How are we meant to be normal about eating when we’re taught to count calories before we learn long division? None of it is normal.

Ask any woman these questions. Admit us all to the facility! This is what you have done to us. This is your monster, and it’s starving.

What I had not learned yet: unconditional support is not the same as unconditional love, even if it might sound similar.

Living beings don't care how you treat them. We just don't want to be alone.

But just because something is routine doesn’t mean it has to be your forever. Routines can, and should, be broken. Or you’d be doing the same thing your whole life, wouldn’t you?

The truth is, why I was doing it didn’t matter; what mattered was that I couldn’t stop.

This was what makes a leader, this certainty in one’s own existence.

sometimes it’s okay to be uncomfortable. Sometimes it reminds you how to be human.

Anorectics experience extreme weight loss. But you lose more than that. Hair, fingernails, teeth. You lose your friends, family, yourself. You lose your sense of the world. Of what is important beyond the not-eating. And, eventually, you lose it all. Your life. She’s greedy, anorexia is.

Animals love to follow one another. Their collective is often named for the verb they enact. A group of bees is a swarm. Crocodiles, a bask. A group of elephants, a parade. Flamingos, a stand. A family of hippopotami is a bloat. Lemurs make up a conspiracy. A leap of leopards. A crash of rhinoceroses. A knot of toads. Parrots are a pandemonium. Skunks are a stench. A group of thin girls, in recovery, we are surviving.