That's something I've had to deal with for quite some time now. Doctor's don't know how to classify it because I fit into both categories of bulimia and anorexia and so I am "Unspecified". This leads to the common, terrible misconception that I do not have an eating disorder or that I am "not as sick" as the other anorexics or bulimics or binge eaters.

The thing is, I don't think that this dilema is mine and mine alone. I believe that almost every other woman I've met has an eating disorder. I don't mean they all have a 17.5 bmi and they all throw up their dinners. No, I mean, they have unhealthy, ...disordered approaches to food and emotions.

The problem is that when I approach someone carefully about their eating habbits and tell them I've been there and wouldn't mind hearing them talk about it sometime, they all say, "Oho, I don't have an eating disorder! Do you see me stick thin and not eating?" No, but that's just the problem. Since when was it that to qualify to be starving to death did you have to be thin? Since when are you only eating unhealthily if you're a stick or a whale?

This ignorant thought process is what I think is partially responsible for doctors who turned me away when  I still had a fighting chance to get better and wasn't so far gone. But no, I wasn't thin enough to have an eating disorder. Another thing I failed at, another thing I wasn't good enough for. That just made things worse, that just made me want it more, crave it like I craved acceptance, to do something right for once.

"I am too fat to have an eating disorder."

Shockingly, it is not uncommon to hear this. The idea of this is very appalling. The fact that after all the standards and things that we set for ourselves, that we can't even let ourselves be healthy unless we're sick enough, good enough to realize that we have a problem and we need to get better. Can we not even give ourselves the right to be sick? Are we not good enough unless we meet someone else's preconcieved standard of what "too thin" or unhealthy looks like?

It seems to me these days that eating disorders are glorified too much. They are not seen as psychiological diseases but merely extreme lifestyles for the tragically self controlled lucky few who got magically thin.

I am so tired comparing myself to something that does not matter. Tell me this: what is your standard of living? How do you know if you had a good day? If you're in a good enough mood? If you're looking good today? If you're looking bad today? What is your comparison.

I bet that the answer is not a simple one. When you think you're too fat, who are you comparing yourself to? When you think that your hair looks bad? What is it that it should be and why is that?

It is my belief that we are taught at an early age to hate ourselves. To hate our natural, instinctual needs. To fear imperfection. And to endlessly, tediously compare. We compare our cars, our bodies, our friends, our lives to others that we do not understand. We don't know why these compared, unattainable things are better than what we have but all we know is that we want them. We need them, or we are not good enough.

What this all comes down to is that we need to watch ourselves. When you're thinking something, think about that thought. I know it sounds redundant, but it's important. What are you really thinking? Are you thinkinig for yourself?

Watch what you say and think and be careful because your words have such an amazingly strong affect on others.

The thing is what are we reaching and trying so hard for? What is it that's good enough for you?

Because you know nothing is, I know nothing, no number on the scale will ever be good enough for me. Nothing is ever good enough for us, is it? Things could always be better, smaller, kinder, prettier, perfect.

But what is our goal? What is it that we're shooting for?
It is after your life has been reduced to nothing but wasting away and trying and trying only to fail repeatedly and never be good enough for yourself, that you will realize that what you have been craving is: unattainable, unreachable, and unspecified.