okay- a tiny bit of background:
I’m in recovery for an eating disorder. I’ve suffered with it for five and a bit years now. My best friend from high school is a bit of an attention whore and her chosen methods of getting attention have been, in the past,
- making sure everyone knows about her depression/ how suicidal she is
- making sure everyone knows how horrible her parents are
- various other little things (she NEEDS twelve hours of sleep a night, she used to “have a very high metabolism” so that when everyone else was just tired and hungry after a long rehearsal, she was OMG DYINGGGG!!!)
So this past year we were in separate colleges. I found her online and started talking to her again (we’re both a bit phone-phobic and far away from each other. AIM and livejournal were our only means of communication.)
So we talked a bit, and over the course of one of our conversations it came up that I was getting a good bit of attention at school because of my ED. It was a stupid thing to say, because next thing I know, she’s going on in her livejournal (I know, I know, LIVE JOURNAL DRAMA!!!1!ONE) about how fat she is, how much she hates herself, and how she only ate a salad and three big macs today and she’s so proud!
There are a lot more factors that make me believe, almost beyond a shadow of a doubt, that she’s faking.
- She and I have no common livejournal friends, so just about every time I mention or whine about an “ED thing” she mentions the exact same thing days later.
- She told me at one point that she had no concept of calories (after she told me that 500 calories sounded like a lot)
- She drinks regular soda, and lots of it.
- She asks for food, has asked us to take her out to dinner, etc.
- She claims that she started around the same time I did, but I can pinpoint the exact day she started. It was in March.
- She has, in the past said that purging is disgusting and she doesn’t see how anyone could do it. This was when she thought I was a pure, unadultered, restricting-type anorexic who never purged. Recently (like yesterday) I idly mentioned purging to her. She said, “you do that?” I said, “yeah, but I’ve only done it a couple times. Only when I’m really desperate” “oh. yeah, puking is icky when it gets stuck in ur braces so don’t do it as much anymore.” yeah.
So, first of all, it pisses me off beyond belief that she’s PRETENDING to have an eating disorder. It’s people like that who made it so hard for me to be taken seriously. My parents wouldn’t help me the first time because they thought I just wanted attention and would quit soon enough. I had to have heart problems and almost die in order to get help. They still thought I was looking for attention, so there was very little followup and I relapsed x 10 when I went away to colege. When I sought help again, was told that I was faking. I was told that I wasn’t sick enough. Now, why would the widespread idea of eating disorders be “something that teenage girls do to get attention”? because of people like her, who DO IT FOR ATTENTION! I didn’t look for this. I did do it to myself and I won’t blame anyone else, but I NEVER tried to become anorexic.
If it weren’t for people having to weed out the people who think this sis something fun and glamorous that will make people feel sorry for you while you lose weight, if it weren’t such a “pretty disease” doctors and counselors and the like wouldn’t have to worry about separating the fakes from the real deal. People who are really sick would be more likely to get help when they need it. People who really are sick and need support wouldn’t be so afraid to look for it if they didn’t think they’d be ridiculed.
And the idea, from my friend, that I’m some sort of anorexic idol just makes me sick. Just because your skeleton goddess thinks purging is glamorous enough for her to do, it’s suddenly okay! It’s not icky anymore (it’s icky. trust me.) What the hell? I don’t want to be put on a pedestal because I’m sick! This isn’t some great show of willpower. I’m in no way superior because I need less food. It’s not going to make me pretty, and it’s really not meant to. People don’t think I’m cool because I can starve and it doesn’t make me any friends. It doesn’t make me a better dancer, either. It just makes the second half of class an absolute hell where I’m concentrating more on not falling over than I am on my technique.
I’m at the point where I quit telling her to take care of herself and am about ready to jump on her and just say, “quit being such a damn fake! you don’t need to make up problems!” but… the nature of the beast is that if you try hard enough and for long enough, it’s very easy to actually have it stick. I already blame myself for what truth there already is to the girl’s stories. If I called her out for being fake and she went to great lengths to become “real” I’d never forgive myself.
so, in conclusion, my best friend is faking my disease. People like her make it hard for people like me to get help. She idolizes me because I’m sick and I don’t want her to. I’m afraid that she may actually become sick, and then it would be my fault. (and it took ninety-four pages to write that.)
