This Isn't a Contest

I'm popular... at least, in my little mind. :) Two thousand of you who aren't me (not on a Firefox browser, at least) have been kind enough to click on my little corner of the internet, mostly by way of Scarlett who runs a far more eloquent and articulate shindig than I've got over here. Even still, I appreciate it. Though I'd like to pretend that this personal weblog is just that, personal, I would obviously be lying. If I didn't want anyone to read it or to notice me, I wouldn't be putting it on the internet in the first place.

I have a love-hate-love relationship with my eating disorder's relationship to the world wide web. Like a lot of kids self-isolating with an eating disorder, I didn't have any friends to confide in about all of this. I was very lonely in that I felt like I was the only one going through what I was going through. I wouldn't dare ask any of my friends about it--bulimia is the gross kind of eating disorder, you know. So, '87, Heather. To me, it was nothing short of a miracle to be roomed in the psych ward with a same weight, same height, same sort of high pressure prep schooled girl who also baked entire pans of brownies just for herself and her toilet. Ever since I've craved that connection, the kind you get with someone else who "gets" it. I've found it through re-watching documentaries like Thin and reading Wasted and, eventually, logging on to some of the more disordered (or imitation disordered) corners of the internet. I was a faithful member of Fading Obsession for several years, and this past summer I found a solid, wonderful, genuine group of girls through a muck of pro-Ana message boards.

I love my "girls," these girls who I've only "known" for less than half a year, like they are my soul sisters and closest friends. When they struggle I hurt, and when they succeed I am overjoyed. I follow their weblogs and chat correspondence religiously, hungry for the details of their lives. I laugh at the ridiculousness of this disease with them, and I cry with them when things are hard. I cannot imagine having made it through the past few months without their unyielding love and support.

That said... it is hard for these relationships not to turn competitive. Not in any malicious way, I'm sure of it--the last thing I would harbor toward any of these girls are ill intentions. But it is hard not for me to want to be thinner, or sicker, or more in recovery with any one of these girls dependent on my mood. I try to repress any malevolence or schadenfreude, but secretly I wonder if their failures or weight gains only serve to make me feel better. Or worse. It is so hard, so desperately difficult not to compare myself to them when making comparisons is what my brain does best. I want to be better than them. I want to be worse than them. I want to be the same as them, and that makes our differences in symptoms and recovery so hard to bear.

I love having a clique with in jokes and secrets. I love that they like me.

I hate that they aren't tangible people. Though I have been more honest and intimate with them than anyone "IRL," I have yet to hug them or hold their hands. Or hear their voices. Connecting with people in real life is so different than these relationships I've forged on the internet, and I wonder how our bonds would be if we knew each other in the real world. Would they still like me? Would I be too irritating, too self absorbed, too young, too stupid? Would they think I was too fat? Would you?

I am being real here, honestly, I swear. But maybe the film of my computer screen is a safety net.

So that we all can be winners, or I won't have to see the score.