This blog is a continuation to:
Day 155: Introduction – Starving Myself
Day 156: Wanting Passion and Purpose in Life
Day 157: Generating an Eating Disorder – The Power of Thought - Part 1
Day 158: Generating an Eating Disorder - The Power of Images - Part 2
Day 159: Generating an Eating Disorder – The Power of Writing – Part 3
Day 160: Eating Disorders and Contradictions
Day 161: Become an Image and be Treated as an Image
I was 'lucky' to have two friends who also had eating disorders – although it was never specifically states as such, their behaviour and attitude towards food, eating and gossip about other people and themselves made pretty clear what was going on.
I would spend my days around them if I could, since we supported each other's state of mind and would not ask questions about the other not eating - quite the opposite, we cheered it lol.
Something unexpected happened though. I would still hang out with my 'bigger group' of friends with one of the two people who also had the ED -- and after they had noticed our behaviour and how much weight we had lost - they started doing the same thing.
Oh oh
I did not prepare for that.
I did not want them to go through what we were doing, because even though we were doing it, we knew it wasn't 'right' and it's something that starts consuming and controlling your whole life.
I always believed that what I was doing was 'innocent' from the sense that it was only affecting my life, my reality. But now through my acceptance and allowance of adopting an Eating Disorder, and the fact that 'no man is an island'-- I was having a direct, negative impact on the life of others. Not only did I aid in supporting my two friends their eating disorder, but was also part of the cause of other people going down the same road.
This is an example of 'living as an example' and a bad one at that -- where other people see you change, and start doing the same. This is where I realised that whatever I do and however I decide to behave either actively or passively through my acceptance and allowance, will have an impact, an influence on others -- through better or for worse.
Now, this was just what was happening within my small little circle of friends, but you could see the same pattern occur in the school in its entirety. It was an art school, so everyone's very much visual/image based and very much pre-occupied looking all 'cool' and 'artsy'-- and being a 'pretty skinny girl' was kind of part of that whole scene.
A lot of girls were unnaturally skinny, and each year as new people would join the school, you could see them 'turn', see them adopt the same destructive life-style as those who were already there, those who were functioning as an example of 'what it means to be someone in this school'. And I mean, it was scary -- but none of the teachers or other staff members seemed to notice. It was this whole secret, hidden, hush-hush subculture that existed and no-one talked about it.
Like I said before, with my friends who had EDs, we never acknowledged to one another what it is we were doing (because then also we'd be admitting to one another that we're 'superficial'). So it was more of a silent acceptance, a silent agreement.
So now, this is one group of friends, one school -- you can only IMAGINE what goes on, on a society/world scale. We are constantly being bombarded by bad examples, by unsustainable life-styles where we promote compromising our human physical bodies to attain some freaking image -- which most of the time is not even possible to attain because it's been manipulated and modified with make-up, specific lighting, specific clothing and photoshop and what not. So you end up compromising into infinity, chasing a reality which has never even been in your reach, it's such a trap.
I mean, is this what it means to live in the 21st century? Is this what it means to live in 'modern times', is this what it means to be 'evolved'? Sure, we have some nice gadgets and technologies which made our life more comfy (and even that, only for a minority) -- in the meantime you have the majority of the world living in physical suffering because we've been unable to overcome our selfishness and then those who do have material comfort live a life of complete unprecedented mental disorder. All in all - we're a very destructive race and are the worst example for future generations.
We really have to reconsider and re-evaluate our whole way of doing things and the way we live our lives, because it's simply not worth it.
Day 155: Introduction – Starving Myself
Day 156: Wanting Passion and Purpose in Life
Day 157: Generating an Eating Disorder – The Power of Thought - Part 1
Day 158: Generating an Eating Disorder - The Power of Images - Part 2
Day 159: Generating an Eating Disorder – The Power of Writing – Part 3
Day 160: Eating Disorders and Contradictions
Day 161: Become an Image and be Treated as an Image
I would spend my days around them if I could, since we supported each other's state of mind and would not ask questions about the other not eating - quite the opposite, we cheered it lol.
Something unexpected happened though. I would still hang out with my 'bigger group' of friends with one of the two people who also had the ED -- and after they had noticed our behaviour and how much weight we had lost - they started doing the same thing.
Oh oh
I did not prepare for that.
I did not want them to go through what we were doing, because even though we were doing it, we knew it wasn't 'right' and it's something that starts consuming and controlling your whole life.
I always believed that what I was doing was 'innocent' from the sense that it was only affecting my life, my reality. But now through my acceptance and allowance of adopting an Eating Disorder, and the fact that 'no man is an island'-- I was having a direct, negative impact on the life of others. Not only did I aid in supporting my two friends their eating disorder, but was also part of the cause of other people going down the same road.
This is an example of 'living as an example' and a bad one at that -- where other people see you change, and start doing the same. This is where I realised that whatever I do and however I decide to behave either actively or passively through my acceptance and allowance, will have an impact, an influence on others -- through better or for worse.
Now, this was just what was happening within my small little circle of friends, but you could see the same pattern occur in the school in its entirety. It was an art school, so everyone's very much visual/image based and very much pre-occupied looking all 'cool' and 'artsy'-- and being a 'pretty skinny girl' was kind of part of that whole scene.
A lot of girls were unnaturally skinny, and each year as new people would join the school, you could see them 'turn', see them adopt the same destructive life-style as those who were already there, those who were functioning as an example of 'what it means to be someone in this school'. And I mean, it was scary -- but none of the teachers or other staff members seemed to notice. It was this whole secret, hidden, hush-hush subculture that existed and no-one talked about it.
Like I said before, with my friends who had EDs, we never acknowledged to one another what it is we were doing (because then also we'd be admitting to one another that we're 'superficial'). So it was more of a silent acceptance, a silent agreement.
So now, this is one group of friends, one school -- you can only IMAGINE what goes on, on a society/world scale. We are constantly being bombarded by bad examples, by unsustainable life-styles where we promote compromising our human physical bodies to attain some freaking image -- which most of the time is not even possible to attain because it's been manipulated and modified with make-up, specific lighting, specific clothing and photoshop and what not. So you end up compromising into infinity, chasing a reality which has never even been in your reach, it's such a trap.
I mean, is this what it means to live in the 21st century? Is this what it means to live in 'modern times', is this what it means to be 'evolved'? Sure, we have some nice gadgets and technologies which made our life more comfy (and even that, only for a minority) -- in the meantime you have the majority of the world living in physical suffering because we've been unable to overcome our selfishness and then those who do have material comfort live a life of complete unprecedented mental disorder. All in all - we're a very destructive race and are the worst example for future generations.
We really have to reconsider and re-evaluate our whole way of doing things and the way we live our lives, because it's simply not worth it.
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