Never Felt So Alone?

I think for me, the absolute worst part of anorexia was the total feeling of being alone. The sense of isolation; of watching life pass you by from within your own little bubble, where nobody sees you or cares. How you can be surrounded by crowds of people, friends and family and teachers and strangers, yet still feel horrifically lonely.

Maybe it's the effect of starvation on the brain, God knows lack of food will cause you to feel depressed and like shit. Or maybe you're so focussed, so totally absorbed in your own personal hell that is anorexia, that you can't connect to anything around you? I would be in his arms and still feel alone. I would be with my family and feel like there should only have ever been three people there. I would literally start to wonder if my existance mattered to anybody at all.

Of course, now I know and see that it does, and always has done. I managed to convince myself that the looks of terror in my parents' eyes were about something else, not the fact that I was becoming more skeletal by the second. I managed to drown out the sound of my sister crying because she thought I was going to starve to death. My friends' desperate pleas for me to eat were them trying to make me feel better, or because they were jealous I was getting thinner, not because they cared. I just returned to my little world where all that mattered was the fact that you could see my ribs through my t-shirts and my hipbones were so sharp my tummy wouldn't touch the floor when I lay on my front. Nobody there but me, and my personified eating disorder.

You see, when anorexia is present, there isn't room for anyone else. Not only does nothing else really matter, but if you don't throw yourself into weight loss one hundred percent, the voice will scream in your ears again.

"Don't be stupid, Kelly, of course you can't go to that party, you'll have to eat food and then you'll get even fatter"
"But, I want to see my friends, I feel so lonely"
"Pathetic, they don't want to see you anyway, they just invited you because otherwise you'd probably cry"
"No, they want me there, I think?"
"You're too fat, they're all prettier than you, why would they be friends with a fat little slut like you?"
"True... *turns down invite*"

On and on this conversation would rage in my head until finally I took the stand.
I broke the little bubble.
I picked up the fork.
I accepted the invite.
I launched back into life again.

"Life begins at the edge of your comfort zone"