Latest of Savory's posts got me thinking. My thoughts are a bit jmbled, so this post will probably be going all over the place. Just to warn you ^_^

Why is being ana considered a childish disease? Is it childish to want validity? To want our pains and problems recognized and treated respectfully? Is it childish to try to express emotions too deep for words?

That's how mine started. I don't even know how old I was. My childhood bedroom (from @10 to post-high school so about 20) had a lovely deep ocean blue carpet that was so soft.
I often daydreamed that the carpet would become an ocean and I would turn into a mermaid and go swim away and live happily ever after. Or perhaps the carpet would become a deep pool and i'd swim out the drain. And then with that magical thinking children are so good at, I wondered if I could get small enough to actually sink into that soft carpet. I was dealing with daddie dearest either hitting Mom or using the divorce to bankrupt her. Then stepdaddie dearest yelling about how *i* would never be good for anything but sex. I just wanted to disappear.
if you've noticed my weight in the sidebar you saw how I don't have a low weight. That's because I honestly don't know my low weight. I didn't step on a scale until college. I'm sure I was weighed at the doc's when Mom could afford to get a basic checkup but I didn't remember the numbers.
It wasn't about my weight. It was simply about getting smaller, and I could measure that by how my clothes fit. And I always got hand-me-downs from better-off cousins so my clothes weren't expected to fit well, so when they got baggy it was shrugged off.

I thought (and still think) ana was a good way to cope because it was something I could do without bothering anyone else. Mom was very busy just trying to keep a roof over our heads. And me eating less meant more food for Mom and my baby brother. How was I being selfish? I found a way to cope with my sadness without bothering anyone else. I left more food for my family. I kept to myself. And I never got attention for it. No one had a single fucking clue. So I would very much like these "professionals" and "treament providers" to explain how I was selfish and childish.
Anorexia isn't what makes us childish. But "treatment" sure does. Going ana at a young age can make someone look like a child, but Vikki Hensley is proof that an ana's mind is perfectly capable of adult-level thinking. But "treatment" seems to infantilize us.

Ok, I've never been inpatient. I hid what I was doing and we were too poor anyway. I'm going by some bloggers here who wrote about their inpatient experiences. And they were told when to get up, when to go to bed. When to eat and what to eat...and even what to wear. If a girl huddled by a heater with a sweater on she'd be told to stop trrying to get attention and to take the sweater off since it was a nice day and plenty warm. Or a girl who is very bony will be told to cover up so she can't show her bones off. So if you cover up it's because you want attentiona dn if you don't cover up it's also because you want attention. Basically you're treated like the doc knows more about how you feel than you do. You're told what you can and cannot talk about. You're even told how to feel. You're told to feel grateful for the staff and this great chance at "recovery". Told when to be angry and at what. It's like you're not considered a person. You're just another "patient" and you are 'sick' so you can't really be trusted with yourself. And you get released based on your weight, not on your mental state. Your "progress" is based on gaining weight, not your mental state. You're not even allowed to talk about the stuff you most need to talk about. Like how to deal in a world where damn near every women mag out there has diet plans and diet tips in nearly every issue. When tabloids regularly have before-and-after pics of various females in bikinis. With weights given, even if just estimated weights. The "treatments" don't always work, and when "treatment" predictably fails, the ana is blamed for it.

I did try to seek understanding in my way. Sometime in 8th or 9th grade I read a little book called Going Crazy. It was about a teen named Sandy who felt under great pressure by her parents and developed anorexia to cope. Tho anorexia isn't quite right because she did binge/purge at times. I can't find that book again. It was a library book and already old.
My Google-fu is lacking, but I did find a mention of a book Going Crazy by T. Hemmings that has an eating disorder tag, but there is no synopsis or even a character list.

Foodwise I've binged for the past 3 days. Bad bad bad. I did successfully get to the gym today and proceeded to kick my own ass. So that's a step in the right direction. And I am very tired now.

Ofc no post of mine would be complete without a Ronson reference ^_^ so here is adorable Samantha Ronson cornered by the paps after she finished DJing the CoverGirl party. Ellen and Portia were there and there are pics of them laughing with Samantha, but the paps didn't catch my fave gayelle couple.
Anyway here's a trapped Sam trying to dodge personal questions. It does come thru clear that she doesn't like the paps knowing where she lives. Poor girl. Sam had to leave EW in order for Caddy to live with her again. What reason did lindsay have for leaving? She has no pets.she could have stayed at EW but nope, she wanted to be next door to Samantha. And ofc lindsay has to have the paps around to take her picture. That's how she keeps herself in the news.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cs0_bAqtEMo