I left the stop-pro-ana diaryring today, something I've been considering probably since before I joined it. I've never felt exactly solid on the subject, except when I'm in tears over it, a point at which I tend to think in absolutes. In the most painful moments, I can say- fighting only sobs- that this is an entirely bad thing which must be stopped. I am pro-recovery after all, something I feel offended to even pronounce. I hate that there's a term for people who don't support eating disorders. I hate that there's a need for that term. I am anti-heart-disease and anti-cancer, too, but I never need to say so. It's understood, when people talk about those illnesses, that they are despised. Why is there a question here? I ask that because I don't want to answer. I don't want to have to say- this is how I really feel. I just want to do whatever needs to be done to speed this healing process along, make it as quick as is possible. It seems I deal with social problems in basically the same manner I handle personal ones. I'm a definite "let me kiss it; make it better" caretaker. That gets in the way, often. It's hard to listen, sometimes, through the need to solve.

In a lot of ways, though, it's my tendency to treat social issues the way I do personal ones (which gets me into trouble, as I miss important influences on the larger scheme) that led me to question and eventually leave stop-pro-ana. Quitting the ring, for me, had nothing to do with believing in and certainly not with condoning the material which glorifies eds and claims them as valid "lifestyles." Acting intellectually, I would stay in the ring. I believe that pro-ana/mia material needs to stop existing. It needs to pack its bags and go away; I believe that. Based on my beliefs, I should be in the ring, but I'm not acting intellectually. I'm acting on my heart, on the place where those absolute-defining tears come from, the place most hurt by this propaganda and the least able to find logic for it. I'm acting toward a movement based on the way people once acted toward me.

I don't know one soul who has or has had an eating disorder without being told at least a million times to give it up, to snap out of it, to just quit their behaviors, so on and so forth. I can't list for you all the times that I was told the same, and since I've been in recovery, I've heard so often, in moments of great pain, "I wish you'd never gotten sick." Do you? It's not comforting to hear, for me. I hate being told that. I hated being told to quit this illness, and I hate being told I'd be better off had I never had it. Recovery has given me all the good that's in my life, and let's not forget all the reasons I had an eating disorder in the first place. All the reasons I needed a way to cope, to quit feeling, to survive. (At the same time, developing an eating disorder and not getting help for it kept me from finding healthy, more fulfilling ways of meeting those needs. And plenty of times, I've said myself that I wish I could just make it go away.) I could just as easily quit the behaviors as I could quit having a heartbeat. I doubt that anyone who knows me, who cares for me, would suggest for a moment that there weren't legitimate needs and pains behind my illness. The problems communicated in the coded, confused language of my eating disorder were legitimate, and to take away that language would not have taken away all that I used it to say (or to not say. All that I needed to communicate.)

And I wonder how different that is for the subculture of people who view these illnesses as lifestyles. If hosts keep choosing to take your material offline, that keeps me, in my grief and my struggling recovery and all my pain, from stumbling across it and feeling more grief and struggle and pain. It stops the communication of "tips" on how to be sick, the support centered on helping each other die. It stops the mis-education of non-sufferers that this disease is chosen and all about weight. It doesn't take away the needs- the real, legitimate needs- that are putting people in this subculture. Why are so many people choosing it? They aren't different than me. They aren't far from me. They aren't another breed. I need support and help and love and inspiration, too. Once, when I couldn't meet my needs or find people to help me meet them, I developed a deadly illness. If I couldn't meet those needs now, might I try this subculture, which does offer a support network, even if it seems deviant, even if I feel it *is* deviant...? I don't think I could. Because of what I know, what I've learned in my own recovery, and because of the losses I've suffered to this illness. But I understand why one would "meet" a need in a way that will be deadly, when a less-than-ideal means defeats not meeting it at all. I quit the stop-pro-ana ring because I don't think we can just stop it, or that we should just stop it, even if we have that power. And that doesn't mean I'm less hurt or hate it less than others do or than I ever have...It simply means...I don't think we need to walk around telling people to "quit" this culture, the same way I didn't need to have people ask me to quit the illness on an individual level. I think we need to dialogue, the way we're doing here and commit to identifying and meeting the needs.

There's a Joanne Greenberg quote I love that says, "You will not have to give up anything until you are ready and then there will be something to take its place."

I think we need to focus on the parts of us that aren't ready, the needs that still won't be met in any other forum. I think we need to focus on finding replacements, so that no more people who are loved so dearly lose themselves or are lost entirely to this disease. Focus on that - because with eating disorders, the time is short, and we've no way to measure it accurately. So let's kiss it, make it better, but let's do it for real. I don't want to condemn, to push away, to separate, to hide. I don't want to shove this community underground. I want, as painful as it will be, to invite this community into my living room, and let them tell me what they need. I want them to let me tell them how I've found ways to meet those needs. I want to build a network that stretches across perspectives and supports people, supports healing, supports growth beyond pain.

Like I say to myself and my friends who are sick, "It's not that I want to 'take away' your illness; I know how awful that would be. I just...want to take away your need for it." Let's do one better. Let's meet the need. Let's solve this honestly, on a cultural level, the way some of us are managing as individuals. Let's commit to each other with that much integrity, humility, and hope.

Mary

previous // next