Like a lot of problems, it's almost impossible to understand how someone going through one must feel. So what angers me is when people take it upon themselves to be your advocate. To be falsely understanding of what you're going through.

Here's my mentality on life in general: I will never fully comprehend what anyone else I know is going through because I am not them just as others are not me. Even when people share the same disorder and some of the same symptoms...they do not have the same lives, or problems, or feeling. Like I've said before, no two disorders are exactly alike. No two cases can be more then compared because they are never, ever the same.

Where am I going with this?

I am sick and tired of people's ignorance of this disease.

The thing is, I understand that you just want to help. I understand how helpless people must feel to see someone they know and love suddenly change before their eyes...how unable they must feel to helping them.

My problem is when it becomes more than concern, when it becomes more than support and love. The last thing you ever want to do to help someone with an eating disorder is to try to control them. That is the last thing you want to do.

I understand if you're a nurse in a hospital and you have to make your patient eat so they won't die from feeding off their own body.

But if you are not a certified nurse, and if you have no experience on the subject yourself, it is useless and unhelpful to harp and lecture us.

I am tired of people looking me in the eye and acting like, "Oh...you have an eating disorder? Yeah...I know about those. I read about them in my health book/saw a movie about it on lifetime/had a friend who was anorexic...you should really do such and such...I know exactly what you're going through. Don't worry...some day you'll wisen up."

I especially hate it when people embarass me in front of my friends and family and outright exploit me by loudly announcing, "Yes, she has an eating disorder...don't worry though. I talked with her about it. I'll get her to eat, she'll be fine."

There are so, so many things wrong with that. Ignoring the fact that you should never take over someone's life or ever announce their personal condition in front of others like that, where is this ignorant mentality coming from that once a person with an eating disorder appears to be eating again, they are well and healthy and recovered?

I am sick of people giving me that pitying look on their face and telling me that I shouldn't worry about it. 'You don't need to lose any weight!' 'You look fine to me.' 'Don't worry about the models and what they look like these days...that's unrealistic.' 'You know...starving yourself, that'll kill you.'

First of all, no offense, but...duh!

Do you think you would know more than I do about how this is affecting my health and my social life and my personal relationships and my dreams and every waking second of my life?

Do you think that I haven't figured out already that a lot of my obsessions with myself and my weight are unrealistic?

Do you think once I hear someone tell me I don't need to lose weight, some mystic veil over my eyes will be removed and I'll suddenly go, "oh! Really? Woop dee doo, silly me...I guess I'll completely drop all my unhealthy thoughts and habbits and basically how I've been living for as long as I can remember and be a normal person because you have saved me by telling me that I am not fat."

Our society makes a lot of mistakes in assuming things. Especially when it comes to the subject of eating disorders. What scares me is, I sometimes wonder if I would make that same mistake if I weren't experiencing it as I am now.

After all, I never knew I would ever let myself let it come to this.