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eb08051
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Why?' She nods. 'She had everything: a family who loved her, friends, activities. Her mother wants to know why she threw it all away?' Why you want to know why? Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and falls off, roll in coarse salt, then put on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are tight. Smoke gunpowder and go to school to jump through hoops, sit up and beg, and roll over on command. Listen to the whispers that curl into your head at night, calling you ugly and fat and stupid and bitch and whore and worst of all 'A disappointment.' Puke and starve and cut and drink because you need an anesthetic and it works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it's too late because you are mainlining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can't stop. Look in a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everythingsinglething is wrong with you. 'Why?' is the wrong question. Ask 'Why not?
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suicide
anorexia-nervosa
anorexic
starve
why
self-harm
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Laurie Halse Anderson |
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7d936fb
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...she was afraid of losing her shape, spreading out, not being able to contain herself any longer, beginning (that would be worst of all) to talk a lot, to tell everybody, to cry.
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body-dysmorphic-disorder
anorexia-nervosa
dysmorphia
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Margaret Atwood |
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798e95d
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Deception' is the word I most associate with anorexia and the treachery which comes from falsehood. The illness appears inviting. It would seem to offer something to those unwary or unlucky enough to suffer from it - friendship, a get-out, or a haven - when, in fact, it is a trap.
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illness
escape
false-friend
haveb
anorexia-nervosa
falsehood
treachery
deception
trap
self-deception
anorexia
eating-disorder
mental-illness
|
Carol Lee |
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5b97562
|
Looking down, she became aware of the water, which was covered with a film of calcinous hard-water particles of dirt and soap, and of the body that was sitting in it, somehow no longer quite her own. All at once she was afraid that she was dissolving, coming apart layer by layer like a piece of cardboard in a gutter puddle.
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body-dysmorphic-disorder
anorexia-nervosa
dysphoria
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Margaret Atwood |
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a35d17d
|
Emma says her illness was a kind of self-hypnosis which obliterated the outside world, a way of escaping life and reducing its proportions to what she could manage.
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anorexia-nervosa
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Carol Lee |
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e2d6e3b
|
I think maybe they come out into the grounds in nightwear. But no, in typical anorexic stype they have read the fashion magazines literally. This is their version of thin girls in strappy clothes. The girl in the petticoat talks to me, as Emma has done on occsasion, in a rather grand style, as if she is a 'lady' of some substance and I a visiting guest. Do they chat much about clothes? I ask Emma in the car. She shakes her head. So, does she, Emma, see the difference between underwear or nightwear and 'going out' clothes? 'Yes,' she says, her voices strained again. 'But it's one of the things you don't know properly when you're ill and confused. You see these pictures and the people in the magazines are real for you.
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reality
fashion-magazine
anorexia-nervosa
anorexic
mental-illness
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Carol Lee |