Dear _________,
I'm thinking of you, right now. I wish I could remove the blindfold from your eyes. I wish you saw just how valuable you are to those around you. I know you want to be perfect, you want to be thin, and you want to be beautiful. You think these things are the only things that give you value.
If you aren’t thin, then you are worthless. That’s what your mind tells you every time you sit down to eat, every time you do eat, every time you glance in the mirror, every time you step on that scale. Your worth comes from those numbers; those numbers are you. Oh, but they aren’t. How you limit yourself by defining yourself by a scale!
It feels like all you do is count… calories, the pounds, the weight still to be lost. You can’t stop thinking about yourself. I don’t say that to insinuate you are selfish or self-centered. I say it because you are caught in a whirlwind of your unhappiness, and you can’t escape.
You just stare at the mirror and cry and cry and cry, wishing you were anything but who you are. Your mind repeats itself again and again and again. You aren’t enough. You’ll never be enough.
I wish I could open your eyes. I wish our personalities were worn as clearly as the expressions on our faces. Maybe then we wouldn’t stress being thin so much.
You live such a restricted life; you can’t eat food without thinking about it all the time. You live to compare yourself to the women around you. You compare even when it's unfair. You don’t even realize how you push away those you love. You don’t see your siblings hurting for you, worrying about you. Your mom and dad reminisce about when you took your first steps, remembering when their baby wasn’t hurting so badly.
You can’t see past your hurt, and that’s OK for now. You are sick. That is what an eating disorder is; it’s being sick. Something in your mind isn’t healthy. But you can get better; you can heal. It’s going to take time, but you don’t have to live like this forever. This overwhelming sadness, this self-hatred, it doesn’t need to last.
I know you are thinking. This is the only way I can stay thin though. This is just my lifestyle. It’s not a disorder. If I give this up, I’ll be fat. I don’t think I’ll ever be normal again.
It’s all lies, darling. Do you remember what it was like when you stood tall? Back when you were proud and strong. You didn’t compare yourself to others. You were just blissfully yourself. You didn’t worry about your weight. You were who you were made to be. It’s going to be like that again, some day.
There is going to be a light at the end of this tunnel. You’ll see what I see one day. I think you are really going to love her. I know, I sure love her.
