It's not easy being green....

I always knew I was different. Growing up, I really did hate the muppet show, but I did love that song.

As ED sufferers, we are so similar to each other in our differences from the rest of the world. These differences wear on us sometimes. So please world, please be kind to us, please be patient with us, please give us the compassion and the dignity that we need. We are trying our very very best to be our best possible selves sharing your food planet with you.

We are very soft people with hard exteriors and strange circuitry.... we sense everything, but don't always feel everything, hear everything, or understand everything. Our cuing systems are "off". Things that are simple to you, are hard to us. Love, trust, self confidence, receiving compliments, truth...These concepts in the world around us confuse us. We will do odd things to protect ourselves. We often really don't know we are doing these things.

We live to please. Pleasing others is the only way that we know our value on this planet. It's the only way we can form our identities. Just look at the vast numbers of us who choose caring or performing professions where there is IMMEDIATE feedback in the form of helping or pleasing others.

We are secretly fearful people. We are ashamed of this. We hide our fearfulness through control mechanisms that are unique to each of us. Some but not all of them have to do with food. When you tap into our fears, we will act out against you, panic, or shut down.

We are highly impulsive. While we can be very intelligent, our impulsivity often makes us do "stupid things"... hence my favorite catch phrase of late.. BE NOT STUPID. It creates contradictions in how we sometimes act, our beliefs, our goals, and what you expect from us. It frustrates us as well. We live lives of regret and kicking ourselves the "day after" due to our impulsivity. It is an impediment to recovery and a frustration to those around us.

We feel very very alone with this disease. It separates us from you. We want to recover very badly and be like you. We just don't know how. We need to feel accepted and ok in your eyes. It is overwhelming and HUGE in our lives. It occupies more of our minds than others can possibly imagine. Getting better and getting free of the ED yoke and traps is harder than you can imagine too. From the outside you wonder why we can't walk away. You have no idea how it follows us and holds onto us.

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We are not children. We are adults. If you treat us like children, you hurt us deeply. We do, however, need to be held accountable for our behavior. But our learning curve is slow. Nobody can learn it for us. We have to. Recovery is a long process and can require many supports of which there are not enough.

Tonight, I ask for those of you helping ED sufferers, loving ED sufferers, for patience and compassion and respect for us. We are..... who we are. We are different.

But please remember who we are that is greater and beyond the disease. We are much much more than the eating disorder. And help us to remember that too, because we forget that sometimes.
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Don't walk in front of me, I may not follow
Don't walk behind me, I may not lead
Just walk beside me, and be my friend
-Albert Camus