Some things bear repeating

I posted this over a year and a half ago and, in honor of the 8 year anniversary of me picking myself up and dusting myself off after what could have been a life-ending fall, I thought I'd post it again:


Before Beaner calls the police to report a stolen topic, let me beg that this be considered more a riff than a lift as this is something that has been on my mind quite frequently lately. You see, I was sick last week. Really sick. Out of nowhere, I woke up Tuesday morning unable to breathe or talk. I spent last week in bed as I couldn't stand for more than 10ish minutes at a time without feeling like I'd run a marathon. I slept 30 hours almost straight from Tuesday afternoon to Wednesday evening and here's the best part; I forgot to eat for three days. Its not that I didn't feel like it, its that I forgot completely that I needed to indulge in this basic human function as part of my day. I tried to go back to work on Saturday and a couple of hours into my shift my heart started beating really fast and I had to lay down in the back room because I was having trouble breathing. When I got home, I decided to step on the scale (naturally) and found that, through the miracle of flu, I'd lost eight pounds in one week.
Now, I'm not gonna lie. My first reaction to this was one of excitement. "That's like, a month's worth of dieting!" I said to myself. And then I had to go lay down because my heart was already beating too fast and I'd already been on my feet for two whole hours that day. Later on I was angry for allowing myself to even have that thought. You see, there was a time in my life where absolutely nothing was more important to me than being thin. My family, my friendships, the dream I'd had since I was in grade school of being a musician, my self respect, my sense of worth in my relationships with men all took a back seat to the absolute need to lose five more pounds. Just five more. Then five more after that. I sabotaged an entire education and every opportunity that was handed to me in the two years I was there because I didn't feel I was thin enough to deserve it. I allowed men to treat me like shit, I allowed exercising to get in the way of studying, I allowed the University to charge me several hundred dollars a semester for meal plans I would never use and ultimately, I allowed fitting into one pair of Express precision fit flare jeans in size 3/4 to get in the way of the most important audition I had in my two semesters there.
I never went into treatment. I just quit and told everyone things like, "I'm just not ready for college yet" and "music just isn't for me". I threw myself into the real world without facing this demon and through the miracle of the amazing people I manage to have in my life coupled with a little bit of good hard work I was able to box up this issue and store it away.
Yesterday, a coworker said to me "Wow! Being sick really suits you 'cause you look really thin!". My initial reaction to this was the same as it always is with people I don't know very well; laugh and smile so as not to make the other person feel uncomfortable. I know she didn't mean to be rude and there's no way she could (or will ever) know my history in this arena, but I still can't get that statement out of my head. My health was in jeopardy. I was sick enough to wonder a couple of times if I should have been in the emergency room and I am still not quite fully recovered, but apparently this suits me because looking thinner is more important than being healthy.
I have lived this philosophy before and although "the media" gets the blame for its place in society, I can ignore and rise above Vogue and Glamour. I can't, however, ignore a woman who is a grandmother of eight reminding me that it is still perfectly acceptable to perpetuate this damaging idea. If this comment had been made to me a few years ago, I would have taken it to mean that I wasn't thin enough yet. I would have wondered endlessly what "look really thin" meant then I would have gone home and revised my entire diet to match whatever I'd done to "look really thin" so that I could one day "be really thin". Luckily this time, I knew well enough to just be offended.