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Apr 2016
To the boys who like girls with eating disorders.

1. Be unafraid to call her beautiful. Feel no hesitation when articulating the grace in her intricacies. The delicacy she wields when flicking back her hair. The shape her semblance set in as she sleeps. The way… she holds a fork.
Even as you call her beautiful  you may experience pangs of guilt. Acknowledge that despite your appreciation for her formation you do not want her to be like this forever. Watch as polite small talk and casual compliments get swallowed up by half full plates and half empty stomachs. Watch her try to chew and words you feed.

2. If you make if to boyfriend status. Her disease may begin to look like the ex partner she’s still hung up over. Watch as she quotes all his favorite things he use to tell her. Do not tell me, I look like I’m getting better I can’t look like getting better. She may look like the embodiment of the phrase “old habits die hard”. But remember… Mother taught you patience and forgiveness. When someone abuses you, you may be vocal about it or you may repress it but you do not forget, and boy... she has some scars. Across every angular bone protruding where a body use to be. In every atrophied muscle where disease did once grip and seek to claim something as it’s own. In every mirror. In darker shop windows where that display mannequins sport the latest illness and in every look you give her. There is no vaccination for this victimization. It will take time.

3... If her condition has left her anxious...

Left her white in the face like porcelain plates serving a future that tastes like insecurity.

If her condition has left her hopeless. Left her thinking that a full stomach means an empty future.
If her condition has left her broken, in any sense of the word, he is not without fixture.
She was a woman before she was a victim. She was a person before she was a patient. She is still a woman, she is still a person. She has a destination outside of disorder. She has dreams that could be bigger than these demons.

And 4… and this is not is not for the boys who like girls with eating disorders, this is for the boys who love!
4. Do you think she is worth it? What can you outweigh?.. Can you make her smile, can you... fill her?
Robbert van Dongen
Written by
Robbert van Dongen  Nottingham
(Nottingham)   
688
 
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