Sixteen

When I was sixteen, I thought I had to be perfect. I thought I was an adult. My years of having the priviledge of growing up were over.

I was wrong.

The term 'adult anorexia' came to my attention recently, but that's not what you have at sixteen. When I was sixteen, I was still a child. And I wish I had known that.

I wish someone had said: You are so young.

I needed - how do I put this - to be whole. I needed a perfect moment, one frozen in time, where I would be at my lowest weight, and finally good enough. There would be a perfect moment, one where I would have starved just the right amount. A perfect moment where I was empty, disappearing. Erased from earth.

I wish I had been told that there is no perfect, that the body is not an erasure.

There was a moment at the lake in the summer I turned sixteen when my sister took a picture of me in my bathing suit. She said, I can't take any more pictures. You're too thin. You look sick.

I wish I had been told that there is a lifetime ahead of me, in which to thrive, to be well.

There was a moment at an apple orchard in the summer I turned sixteen, where I watched as a fully grown man ate an apple cider donut in one bite. And I was so stunned that I rudely stopped to stare. How could he justify those calories? He had just consumed more calories than I had in the past week.

I wish I had been told that eating does not need to be justified.

There was a moment in the summer I turned sixteen when I was eating dinner on my grandparents' couch, and it was steak. Red meat was horrifying, and fattening. So I hid the steak in a napkin in the couch cushions. There was no purity in getting fat.

I wish I had been told that there is no purity in shedding weight.

I wish someone had told me to take a deep breath in, and shed my fear of myself.