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Dear Eating Disorder

By: Kara

Dear Eating Disorder,

I am writing to you because I want you to know how much I hate you, and how sick I am of you interfering with my life. I hate the way that you make me feel and I hate the control I feel like you have over me. You make me feel like such a failure. You make me feel like I am so out of control, and I can�t stand it! You make me think such bad things about myself, and you make me feel so hopeless and worthless sometimes. I hate always wishing that I was thinner, and I hate how fat you always make me feel. I hate feeling like I constantly have to compare myself to everyone that I come in contact with, and I hate feeling like I have to be more like them and less like me, in order to be "OK." I feel like I am striving to be perfect, but nothing I do is ever good enough.

I feel like you are always with me. I wish you would just please go away and leave me alone! I do not want you in my life anymore. You have taken so much away from me already. You have taken away my self-confidence, and my ability to be myself and be comfortable . You have robbed me of much happiness and many opportunities in my life. You have replaced that with a lot of loneliness and sadness and self-hatred. You have made it so difficult for me to get close to people and you make me feel like I don�t deserve the love that is offered to me.

I want you to know that I am ready to give you up completely. I have done it before. I have felt what it feels like to live my life without you. I have experienced the freedom of life without and eating disorder, and I loved it. I feel so good about myself when you are gone. Life is so much more meaningful and enjoyable without you. My eyes are open to so much more that life has to offer when I stay away from you. But, you keep creeping back into my life. Just when I think you are gone, you show me that you are still there. You always come back. You try to make me feel like I need you, like I can�t go on without you.

I want to tell you that I don�t need you anymore. I don�t need you to control my life, and I don�t need to listen to the lies that you tell me anymore. I am a better person without you. I can focus and accomplish so much more when you are away. I want my ultimate focus to be on Jesus, and what He wants me to do with my life. Not on you, my eating disorder. I know that God has great plans for my life and I am not going to allow you to interfere with that anymore. I want to go to college and experience new things and meet new people, and I don�t want you to come along. Someday, I would like to get married and have a family, and I want you to stay away. I want you to be something from my past, not something that continues to haunt me.

There was a time in my life when I kind of did need you, because I felt like I had nothing or no one else to turn to, so I would turn to you. And at the time you have me what I needed. You gave me a feeling of comfort and control. You gave me something to hold on to, and you were there for me when no one else was. You were consistently there for me when nothing else in my life was consistent. I felt like I could depend on you. You gave me a way to deal with things when I knew no other way. You were always there for me, you didn�t let me down. But now the problem is that you are still here. I have become so used to you being there that it makes it really hard to let you go. But I am going to be strong, and I am going to hang on to the promises of Christ now, instead of hanging on to you.

So much has changed in my life, and I do not need you any longer. I have Jesus in my life, and I have many people that love and care for me. They love me for who I am, not what I look like, or who I wish that I was. I never felt that before. Now that I have people in my life who build me up, instead of tear me down, I don�t need to turn to you for help anymore. I can turn to them. I have allowed you to stay with me for too long, and I am really ready to say goodbye... for good this time!

I am drawing a line between you and I. Maybe you will never completely leave, but I will not allow you to cross my line anymore. I am separating myself form you. If you continue to hang around, I will acknowledge the fact that you are there, but I will no longer embrace you, or turn to you. You may still try to deceive me and continue to tell me lies about myself, but I am not going to believe you anymore. God has told me the truth about myself, and I like the truth a lot better then the lies you tell me.

I do not hate myself anymore. I am learning to like myself. There are still things I would like to change about myself sometimes, but I have decided to accept myself the way that I am. The only way I need to change is to be healthy. If I am healthy, I will be happy, and I will accept whatever being healthy is.

Thank you for being in my life when I needed you. I am grateful to you ONLY because I have become a stronger person and because I have become closer to God through all this. Thanks for the good things you have given me, but I need to turn away now because the bad things you have given me far outweigh the good. So, I need to end my relationship with you.

I am not going to allow you to creep back into my life this time, so please make it a little easier for me and just stay away. I am a good person and I am worthy of being loved and of loving myself. And I am willing and able to allow myself to live without you!

©2001 Kara. Reprinted with Permission.

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