Whenever I start something (important) like this, I'm afraid afterward. Doubts creep up like moths, and I try to burn them with the light of my brain...but...sometimes they stay a little. I guess that's the job of doubts, to stay where they aren't wanted, and teach what maybe I am (after all) ready to know. That doesn't keep them from sounding like bratty, supposedly superior classmates at times. I think, for a minute, that I know who I am, and they return with, "But who are you to do something like this? What gives you the right?" And honestly, what does? Why me?

The first answer is that it isn't just me, or it won't be, if people start submitting the way I hope they will. The more difficult one has taken me time to understand, time long before the start of this journal just a few short days ago. Once, the question was, who am I to talk about eating disorders when I don't even have one? Then: who am I to talk when my eating's just a little off? Who am I to talk when I'm not diagnosed? Who am I to talk when there are people so much worse off than I am?

The best answer I have is that I'm me. I'm me, and the most I plan to offer here is what I would ask from anyone: the voice that's mine. We've all been around this issue- inside of it, outside of it, on one side or the other. Some of us are sick, some of us have never been, some are well, some are working that way, some are scared to, some are still confused. Some don't think they'll ever understand how an individual could quit eating, or could *not* quit eating, or could make themselves sick. Some don't think they'll ever know how to stop. And the point, I'm starting to realize, is that all of that be voiced. The people who don't know what they're talking about need to step up to the same microphone as the people who've been around this block until the sidewalk's worn. Who decides which person's best equipped to discuss this? Who could really be a spokesperson for an entire population and all the subcultures and realities therein? I started this, but I did so in response to something far too huge for me to have started. I started this, but it has far less to do with me than it does with all of us.

I'm asking people to speak up, honestly- because I finally realize the best person to discuss this is...everyone.

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