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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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c42ff60
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While she is still hospitalised, I take Emma out for strengthening walks, for her muscles and been under-used for a long time. She is sometimes breathless, I notice with concern, and there are other changes in her, either through a nerve her therapy touches, or through her illness, or both, which make her, quite often, disagreeable to be with.
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anorexic
eating-disorder-recovery
anorexia
mental-illness
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Carol Lee |
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e2d6e3b
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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 |