when you have anorexia, the world stops.

you don’t grow, you don’t live, you don’t die, you’re not there. the disease makes you lose track of time little by little, almost without realizing it, and not only that, it takes you away from everything and everyone, from you as well. then, you wander like a lost spirit between two worlds; that of the living and that of the dead, and you go crazy. you go crazy with disaffection, loneliness, sadness, emptiness and you fly over in a dantesque nightmare from which you think you will never be able to wake up, where nothing is what it seems, because it does not even exist.

meanwhile the world continues faithful to its course, out there behind the mirror. it moves at a dizzying speed, it changes constantly, without waiting for anyone, and when you come out of the illness, inevitably, you feel overwhelmed, nostalgia, restlessness, bewilderment and a tremendous desire to cry. they are tears of happiness that are intermingled with longing.

you can see again through the eyes of life, that your environment has changed. the streets you walked before you fell ill, now have other names, have opened new shops and closed those that remained in your memory, there are other people who are walking down its avenues and other children who are playing in their parks. everything is different after the illness, that is beautiful because life gives you a second chance; and it shows itself before your eyes expectant and disturbing, curious and promising, like the rays of the sun that are born one day after another, at the level of the deep, dreamy and infinite ocean.

yet it also brings with it black and melancholy brushstrokes. you are aware that illness has stolen stages from you, it has ripped life out of you. when you manage to crack the crystals of an eating disorder such as anorexia, you cannot help but bleed and suffer after-effects, you have the feeling that you have been lost, outside your city, rather than your country, or perhaps, and i dare say, you feel that you have been locked up in a terrifying, hellish and indescribable parallel universe.

anorexia kills your smile, the shine of your eyes, weakens your bones and your heart until it stops beating. your body stops having forms, except for those of a skeleton. anorexia feeds on death, pain, tears, fears, isolation and anguish. and we do not know, we feel unable to express what we are afraid of, because not even we are aware of the wounds that our soul contains.

no one in their right mind chooses to have an eating disorder, even though they may voluntarily engage in risky behaviors that could trigger it tomorrow, such as excessive dieting or exercise. eating disorders are very serious multifactorial illnesses that affect an individual’s overall identity, severely damaging every organ and every area of their life.

a big THANK YOU to all the people who contribute a grain of sand to make these diseases more visible. thank you to those who go beyond the symptoms, because that is precisely where the root of the disease lies. thank you to those who refuse to dress eating disorders in morbidity and yellowness. thank you to those who join in prevention from information and reality.

no more eating disorders, no more lost lives.