This is anorexia...

It doesn’t discriminate

There is not one age, social status, family model or culture it attacks

For it cares not of its victims

And only of itself

It starts with a piece of truth, a thought, or an innocent comparison

Unassumingly it twists and bleeds the truth of its substance until it is something altogether different, consuming and caging

It hisses and curses and distorts

It calls you “fat, undisciplined, stupid, a failure”

You frantically look in the mirror but your reflection no longer belongs to you

It shows you only what it wants you to see

Your eyes deceive you and so you believe it

Conformity to its commands doesn’t make you happy but at least it offers relief from the incessant mutterings

It is always whispering and when it’s not it’s screaming

Food has no taste, life begins to lose its color, and so do you

The noise of it starts to sound normal and so you listen

It hates those that love you, and anything that brings you joy

It wants you exclusively for itself

So it feeds you a steady diet of lies, hoping to make you hate them too

It questions the goodness of God, and if He even exists

It steals away the joy of music, and snuffs out the light of your talent

It hurts those that love you the most in attempt to push them away

The lies fill you, instead of food

No matter how it hurts them - they keep loving you

And This will be its undoing

Love

For love does not discriminate, and cares nothing of itself

Love protects and hopes and perseveres

Love waits patiently

Love never fails

I promise to keep loving you until you come back to us and for all the days after.

To the reader, be it intrigue, interest or desperation that drove you seek out this title, may I ask, what do you picture when you hear anorexia?  

Now, take all those preconceived ideas, stereotypes and ask instead ‘what if all you imagined is wrong?’

What if anorexia steals the minds away of the unsuspecting, and of the best intentioned?

What if anorexia hurts kids whose parents love them?

What if anorexia isn’t gender discriminative?

What if you can’t understand until you’ve been in it?

I didn’t understand

Mental illness is a full-frontal attack on our humanity, it’s the poisoning of the human mind, heart, soul and body until all that remains is a hollowed out shell resembling the physical form of what once was.  But, it’s not without hope or the possibility of healing.

Mental health battles are real, they are misunderstood and under discussed.

And though love seems an unlikely and nonsensical weapon - it's a weapon that has stood the test of time, for when we are unlovely God chooses to love us through the ugly.