My best friend has lived with anorexia for the worst part of six years. Outsiders merely see the physical effects of the debilitating disease in her head. And not the monsters lurking in her mind, like strangers in dark alleyways.
The past two years have been the worst for her. Her weight dropped to an alarmingly low number, for her Amazonian height of 177 centimetres.
Her brain so starved she now has irreversible damage. The veins in her body escape so far out of her tanned skin; it is as if they are gasping for air.
Her face is sucked into her skull, as if someone has vacuumed it in. Her once chubby cheeks no longer create dimples when she smiles.
What is perplexing is how a woman surrounded by so much love – a close family and a huge circle of friends – can have so many personal demons? Mental illness is a heart breaking thing to watch a loved one endure, and it’s so hard to know how to support them.
She has a devil in one ear and an angel in the other, except someone gave the devil a megaphone.
***
What I feel so compelled to write about, is something that happened which made me question what the hell is wrong with the world. In January this year, my friend and I were sitting outside at a café in Brighton. A well dressed woman in her 50s or 60s with her husband walked up to our table and bent down to my friend with a big smile on her face, and jokingly said ‘I’ve got to know what drugs you are on to be so thin, you are glowing’.