A thinspo letter from August 11th, 2012

Peaceful right?

Hey Claire, How's life? I hope you are doing well... I hope you are everything I want you to be. I hope you have a boyfriend. I hope you are pretty. I hope you are skinny. I hope you finally got your butt just like all of those girls you idolize. I hope you could pass for a model. I hope people are jealous of you. I hope you are popular. I hope you are as happy as you thought you would be. Hopefully you are skinnier than I ever imagined. Maybe you are 110 lbs. Maybe even less. Maybe you look so delicate that people are afraid they will break you. Maybe, just maybe, you are so skinny that you don't even want food anymore. Maybe you are finally strong... Or maybe not. Maybe you quit. Maybe you looked in the mirror one day and decided that you were happy with the person who looked back at you. Maybe you realized that being skinny wouldn't make you prettier. Maybe you gained weight. Maybe you weigh 125, 130, 135 lbs. Maybe you don't mind. Maybe you look back sometimes and wonder why you stopped. Or maybe you look back and wonder why you even wanted to lose weight. Maybe you forgot that the summer before freshman year was the summer of green tea, thinspo, and calorie restriction. The under 800 calorie summer. Summer of the scale. The summer of weight loss. As of right now, I haven't lost any weight. I just keep waiting, waiting waiting, and nothing happens. Sometimes I want to give up. But then my stomach aches with hunger, and I feel so perfectly empty, with my flat stomach and my light head, and I know that I must keep going. Failure isn't when you binge, or when you gain a few pounds. Failure is when you decide to quit. Keep going, Claire. Keep going until you are the prettiest, the skinniest, the fittest friend. Keep going until you are the best.

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ceiling.shoe:

over 1 year ago

wait lol this is me!!!!!!!! rip. i can't write an epilogue because this was on a different account (actually, i think it was before you could even have an account). plus, no one will ever see this except for me. BUT i do want to say, hey little claire. this was such a silly thing to say. i'm sorry you were so mean to yourself, so hard on yourself. you still are, just in different ways.

at the end of the "under 800 calorie summer," you had to go to pre-season training for penncrest's soccer team (yes i'm doxxing myself, who cares) and you practically passed out on the first day. you panicked and pretended it was dehydration, and luckily that was the wakeup call you needed to stop starving yourself. i think you may have gotten down to 111 pounds, but i don't remember now.

sadly, that decisions was fear-driven. it was external. you stopped because you were scared of getting caught, not because you had some newfound love and respect for your body. you thought it was over, but that disease lurked inside you for years.

freshman year of college, it reared its ugly head when you started the long, grueling process of ending things with your ex. you thought it was different; you thought you had control. you refused to starve yourself. instead, you tracked calories meticulously, aiming for 'healthy' weight loss. but it consumed you. by the end of freshman year, you knew you had a problem. you would lose yourself in binge/restraint cycles. your brain was clogged with all the calorie counts you had memorized for common foods. you realized you were still ill, still obsessed, even if you weren't passing out when you exercised.

i can't remember how or when you got through it, but you did. jesse helped a lot. he still helps a lot. i don't track calories anymore. we don't own a scale. i do still struggle with my self image, but body dysmorphia is mostly a thing of the past. i understand now that food is fuel, and extra fat can be a sign of abundance, and besides, if the world ends tomorrow i will want a little extra meat on my bones. someday, i will be eating for two if my years of starvation did not wreck my fertility. someday, i will have new body image issues to grapple with-- gray hairs and wrinkles and loose skin and sagging breasts and unwanted facial hair and i will try, try, try to love who i see.

i'm sorry we are so mean to our self, hard on our self. i hope that in 10 years, if the internet still exists and i still have access to it, that i can find this thread and leave another update. maybe i will be a little kinder.

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