Raise your hand if you know where I've been. The priorities of fifteen, the power in pain, the delicious chill of an empty stomach.. Spirituality through self-deprivation. Don't I see me in your eyes?

We've forgotten now, failed the entrance exam for eating disorders. But we keep those lessons somewhere. Three meals is three too many. Not even water can be trusted. Count mass, not merely calories. Our own teachers, and it makes it hard to blame society. Cause we never really wanted to, hard as we tried to. We were as sane as puberty permitted. we never quite made it.

There were, of course, those months. Every three days, a dry bagel. Fasting purified us, football games and high school hallways were less fearsome. The genuine masochists, the popular girls, smelled our aspirations and stroked our dizzy heads. Their personal heros, the broken dolls we never saw, lay in hospital beds.

But the time comes when the true martyrs must be seperated from the rebels sans causes, and we found the glory not all we had hoped. Distracted, we had missed ourselves. Sensuality, the love of tastes, slowly returned, hobbled and untrusting.

Some girls stayed in that artificial purgatory, but now we can laugh. They're not so tough, skin taut over uncomfortable protrusions, still turning to a magazine rack to find structure in the straight lines of emaciation. Some didn't make it, and now we can cry, because they weren't heros after all. We played their game and lost, but we're recovering. The strength ebbs back, in little waves. Maybe we falter, but we catch ourselves in time. We've lost the ability to be sweeter after days without glucose, we're bitter when our stomach acids turn on us. No longer willing to suffer with a smile, the thrill of crucifiction revealed to be overrated.

Now we want to be the girls who never tried, the sisters and momentarily abandoned best friends who went the opposite way and were chastised for it. They were right all along, and paid for it. It's amazing that those poor thin prom queens managed to wield two whips - one to flog themselves, one to punish the heathens. What's more, the healthy ones, the strong ones, proved themselves and never broke. The agnostics in the middle can't help but hang our heads.

Maybe the mistakes made an impression, maybe we've gained a different kind of strength, from experience. But maybe the real women knew without being told.

The paper dolls we emulated have blown away. The ones who were truly sick.. we pray for them, gently give alms of second-hand wisdom. The right answer is plain. We don't love ourselves, but we're working on it.

When I am alone, I pretend that people are around me. In the way that a child might have an imaginary friend rather than actually hearing voices. That is what I am; the child who could never grow up. It was easier to stay in that state rather than face a terrifyingly lonely adult world and it is also a state where I could be easily controlled.

My anorexia was a direct result of never wanting to be a woman; to be forced into a world of adults that according to my narrow world view, would be suffocating or abusive like the adults I have known.By restricting my food, I was restricting my growth into an adolescent female figure and therefore not having to face the inevitable growing up. I thought that there would be just those two types of adult, one who would cry and tell me how much they loved me and the other who would call me a fat cow and tell me that I was not worth the dirt that I walked upon. So that I did not spoil too much dirt and did not cause too much anguish, I tried to make myself disappear but in the act of doing so, I brought more and more attention to myself. Tinier and tinier I physically became; fatter and fatter I mentally became and certainly in the eyes of those around me. I was drawing attention to myself in the way a small child will throw a tantrum- a self destructive act.

People draw attention to themselves to boost their self esteem. Different people need different amounts for different reasons. I needed attention because the adults closest to me were unable to supply unconditional love and shew it in detrimental ways. I do not want your sympathy neither am I asking for it; the past is the past but I want you to understand that low self esteem is there for a reason. Refusal to eat food, cutting myself, disallowing myself sleep and continuous self criticism was the ways that I showed my lack of self esteembecause it was not created in the first place.

For awhile, when I left home, I thought that I had moved away from this cycle but slowly yet surely I was back in the tight grip of it. I cut myself less and my food restrictions were lowered yet I escaped into a fanstasy world where I surrounded myself with images of people that I knew and loved. I could manipulate their characters to do whatever I wanted them to do- they became my puppets just as much as I had been one. However, they do not exist,yes they exist in real life but the characters I have created for them do not which leads to life totally unfilled due to an inability to relate and interact with the real world. I am too frightened by the fact that real people exist that do not fit into the two boxes I have created for them; those who adore me and compliment me and those who abuse me.

Now, I have to be a grown-up. I have to realise that not all men will hurt me and that not all women will protect me. I do not need to manipulate figures, I need to just allow them to be.