The Consequences of Eating Disorders and the Judgment of others…

By Marissa Alessandria-Kweens ©2007

I made my original MySpace account a bit over a year ago. Never really used it too much for the first six months I would have to say, I just had it to have one like everyone else. In June of 2006, I progressed from what was at first a seriously serve depression back into the cycle of my eating disorder as well rearing its ugly head to me. Something that I thought I had put behind me for at least a while came back full force. I joined groups like Cerulean Butterfly and Behind These Eyes (a very very dangerous Pro-ED group).

I joined to find support for myself and to hear others speak, what I found instead was I myself was causing harm to others, helping them encouraging them to fast with me, use other things to lose weight and to be honest after about a month or two, I wasn’t much happy with myself morally. Cause what I was doing was helping girls who didn’t have an eating disorder yet into getting one into getting something to achieve starvation at any cost, I didn’t get so much of it the “thinspriation”, “ana/mia quotes and creeds” during my worse times I never needed any of these things to lose weight all I needed was my own mind to poison me. Needless to say this sort of encouragement and behaviour didn’t last very long morally I couldn’t willing participate in the harm of others especially as so many who were so young and desperately trying to lose weight any cost. I think the breaking point for me were three of the following… finding a recommendation of taking highly addictive drugs to curb your appitite, a group owner demonstrating in detail how to make yourself purge effectively, and the starvation of a woman before my eyes while others encouraged her to continue when all she weight was 37kilos last time I read.

I joined myspace groups looking for support since so many pro-ana groups were on the web and had pretty much the same shit supporting in my opinion death. It was then I learned in certain groups of the quote “wannarexia” amongst a group of women who felt it was their right and mission in life to either be the most sickest one or challenge the other person by height/stats that they were not anorexic and quoting the DSM verbatim, over and over again and calling them fatso at the same time. When this didn’t work they would pull their pictures from their MySpace account before the hack got fixed that you couldn’t read a person’s private profile without being their friend first and further more ridiculed, by not only them but by 5-10 of their friends.

In honesty it makes me angry when I see girls who say hey “I wanna be Bulimic”, “I wanna be Anorexic” however, one thing I have learned with my own disease is that I never said either one of these things, they just happened. The freedom of saying no to food, of eating a few bites and saying no more and then the eventually self-induced vomiting when I ate too much no one had to teach me this or god help me give me support to stay that way, why would anyone in their right mind who cares for you encourage you to hurt themselves?

These girls or more disturbing grown women wanting to become Anorexic or Bulimic snap out of it… seriously they starve a few days and well get over it, they continually throw up their food and it simply becomes too hard to continue and the answer to this is that an Eating Disorder is simply that a disorder of the mind, the body and the soul. The self-hatred it encompasses is beyond my own explanation, I wish it was so simple to explain it because if I could explain it perhaps I would have an answer in how to stop it but I don’t have the answer to it and may never will.

However, calling someone a wannabe, making bullshit sites to make fun of them and cause them harm for what WHAT does it make you feel better as a person? Do you sleep better at night knowing someone might of cried themselves to sleep because of the invasion of their privacy? Ok. Wanting an Eating Disorder is not something anyone wants these children need help not to be trashed made fun of and stalked to the point that it yes does it become bullying. It does become stalking when you contact people on their friends list to see if they were really quote “Anorexic”, it becomes factious when you question their stats, demand a picture at their lowest weight for confirmation of who they are when in fact why would any sane person want to keep those types of photos? Who would want to relive that pain over and over again.

For some of you it’s a game and a game because in honesty you don’t want to be better or get better no matter how much you cry you do or the problems you have, because if you did you would not engage in such behaviour, you would not be so miserable to do that to another human being. But then its because of all the repressed anger and so much of it within yourselves that its rotted away your very soul, your being to the point you smile and laugh on the outside while inside you are already dead.

I’ve made some wonderful friends that I can hold in my hand and I have met many many two faced individuals who justify their behaviours through their own defensive mechanisms that stop them from being whole, that stop them from being human and of being whole. These are the consequences when you bully, make fun and judge others you hurt them but you kill yourself because you don’t grow, you don’t change, you all just stay the same.