I need to get a little better at photographing my art. These are two pieces depicting what my eating disorder and recovery looked/look like.
The first piece is a little insight into what my inner dialog looked like when I was deep in my eating disorder. It starts of with the word "guide". In my mind it was like I was following a guide to happiness, when in reality, it was a guide to killing myself. "What we live for"..."the perfect body"..."Rules"...."Skinny, Skinny"....(when in reality, the number will never be low enough, and only keeps the disorder alive, I kept thinking if I could just be skinnier it would be ok)..."Wrong-you start dieting & stop living"...(in the end, if I kept doing this to my body, if I kept repeating this mantra that I was fat, that I needed to loss more weight, that I just needed to be a little skinnier)..."You can't write this down:"....? "your dead!" EATING DISORDERS KILL, TRUTH!!!" While I was in the grasp of my eating disorder, in all honesty that didn't matter. I felt invincible. Sure I was skinny, I couldn't think, I hurt and not just inside, but every muscle and bone seemed to hurt. I didn't think I was skinny, no matte how people put it, I looked in the mirror and saw fat. In this piece, there is a photo with a sheer piece of paper over it. There are models with the word FAT covering their faces. To me this was how I felt, everyone told me I was to skinny, that I was sick. It was as if I had something wrong with my eyes, I was seeing myself through my eating disorder, and that meant I was fat no matter what others told me. The broken heart with its two halves on either side of the photo, signifies to me the split between my true self and the self that was my eating disorder. It was like having a split personality, part of my knew that I was not ok, and that I was to skinny, and other part that told me I was fat. I needed to loss more weight.
This second piece is what I needed to do, but couldn't see at the time. What I needed to come to terms with. "Relax"..."beautiful"..."Aim-for-long-term-success-start-little" (in this piece the message I was trying to relay can be read from top to bottom down both sides).. "relax beautiful" (being the beginning to both sides)..."step-away-from-the-scale" (now like the top being able to be read from both sides with two meanings, the bottom can also be done this way)..."Get treatment"..."it"..."speaks volumes"...&.."a-break".."speaks volumes".
This piece means a lot to me, because I was not able to comprehend this until I was finally able to get treatment and start to see my eating disorder for a what it was, a disease. That my value was not defined by the number I saw on the scale, that it was Ok to take a break, that I needed to relax. And most importantly, I am beautiful.
Eating disorder kill. They are the number one killer of all mental illnesses. They are not phases or being vain. They effect girls, woman, boys, men, old, young, they aren't prejudice to sex, ethnic or demographical background. Someone with an eating disorder doesn't choose to be sick, and more often than not, they don't choose to seek treatment. Because when you are seeing yourself and the world through the eyes of an eating disorder, you think your fine. That your not sick, skinny enough, ext. I know that how I felt, and I have a feeling I'm not alone. Fact, I know I'm not alone. Being able to be involved with eating disorder awareness/education/treatment, I know I'm not alone and you don't have to be either.
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