Wintergirls

I read a sad book yesterday - Wintergirls by Laurie Halse Anderson.

It's a very well written book about a girl's battle with anorexia, Anderson really understands the inside trauma that goes on with an eating disorder. My cousin doesn't think I should be reading books on anorexia but I guess I want to understand more about the illness. Find out why I act the way I do. Also back in the UK, I could talk to loads of friends who knew exactly what I have gone through and am still struggling with. Here no one does and in a way I find it hard to deal with.

What also made me cry in the book was the traumatic death of the main character, Lia's, friend, Cassie, who dies from bulimia.This is the description:

"She drank, binged and purged for two days. Her esophagus ruptured. Ripped open. Boerhaave's syndrome, usually seen in alcoholics who regularly upchuck after drinking too much. Vomiting forcefully enough can tear the esophagus. She was purging when the rupture occused. She went into shock and died. She died in terror and she died alone."

I copied this to remind myself and hopefully you that my eating disorder is not worth losing my life over, even when I do hate everything about myself.

There is also postive words when Lia decides to recover. I think her words describe beautifully how I have felt myself:

"I breathe in slowly. Food is life. I exhale, take another breath. Food is life. And that's the problem. When you're alive people can hurt you. Its easier to crawl into a bone cage or a snowdrift of confusion. It's easier to lock everybody out. But it's a lie.

I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.
I am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night, instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating ice cream or kissing a boy.

I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.
There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day; an unexpected laugh; a mirror that doesn't matter anymore."