I Am the Problem, and Not the Solution

Psych ward 2011, refusing to eat the Chinese food my aunt and uncle provided while I sat on the hospital gurney, waiting to be processed, like cattle, or a criminal.

It contained rice, which was carbohydrates, which was bad news, if you were me in 2011.

Ever since I was sixteen, I have had the desire to rewind time. At what moment did it all fall apart? More likely, there were many moments; a trail of bread crumbs leading to some witch's manor, where I was to be in bondage - forever. Instead of Hansel and Gretel, I was completely alone - and the impending desire of the witch to eat me alive was my cross to bear, my penance and my life sentence.

I dropped out of college, spectacularly, if we rewind time to right before I was being processed like just another patient, a Young Girl With Depression And An Eating Disorder.

The nurses probably scoffed in some secret corner, while I judged them for their love handles almost hanging out of their tight, polyester uniforms.

My aunt detected right away that I wouldn't eat the Chinese food because it contained rice. "Rice will fill you up," she said, rather icily. That, right there, was the problem: when you have an eating disorder, you remain perpetually hungry, because fullness means you have failed on some fixed, spectacular level.

Here's the other problem: the judgement.

People judge young women, or probably anyone, with depression, with an eating disorder. They thing they're helping you (actually helping you) with their repeated attempts to get you to eat, to get out of bed. I found that other women were the worst example of this. Their bitterness, perhaps that it couldn't be them, with that level of self-control, with their thighs rubbing together and their relentless crusade against exactly what they would want for themselves: being underweight.

You're probably thinking, "Who's judging who now, bitch?"

But it is, in fact, relentless. And the only person you have to blame is yourself: you know this, like you know that once you are processed by the doctors, you will lose all control, eating sugary jello and hospital soup one bite at a time like the prisoner you were processed to be.

It's only you, honey. It's all in your head, and when people point fingers at you, they are 100% correct to blame the person who dared stray from the herd, the person who ingested weight loss commercial after weight loss commercial and dared to believe the message, that women are inferior, required to be skinny - and then hated for being so.

It's a cycle, like laundry.

I think back to sitting on that hospital gurney, refusing Chinese food, and my skin crawls. Did I really think I was some kind of martyr?

I don't know, what subliminal messages are women getting?

Ask yourself this: if you are the problem, how can you also be the solution?