Letters to People Who Clearly Need Letters

Dear Anorexic Girl:

Eat something.


Seriously. Please eat something.

I know that you must be sick and tired of people being suspicious around you and encouraging you to eat, and I know that you are not going to listen to them.

But please eat something.


You are suffering from an eating disorder that alters the way you view yourself. I've seen how gaunt your cheekbones are and the way dark circles rest underneath your hollowed eyes. Do you not see this yourself? How puckered and scary your face has become?

Do you not see how your ribs and hip bones jut out pointedly against your skin?

No. Of course not. You look in the mirror and see a fat girl.

Normally, I would have sympathy for you, but today, I must confess that I had absolutely none for you.

You may think that the only person who is affected by your maladie is yourself...but have you considered that maybe, just maybe, you will interrupt others' lives because of your health woes?

Well, today, that happened.

Today, as I rode on the first bus I must take to go to work, you became so fatigued and weak due to your lack of energy that you collapsed on the spot! In one second, your composure of thiness teetered upon your high heels and crashed with a "thud" on the bus's dirty floor.

A frantic flurry of hands rushed to your aid. They helped carry your light frame unto the nearest empty chair. A window was opened to let in fresh air for you to breathe. The bus driver had to stop and wait for you to recover.

This lasted all but four minutes, but those four precious minutes were just enough to make me miss my connection by two minutes.

I don't want to sound heartless. I don't want to sound petty. I should be more compassionate towards your case. After all, you had just fainted.

Nevertheless, I remained quite annoyed with you. Because of your brief fall, I had to stand waiting under the cold rain for an extra 21 minutes to catch the following bus to my job. Because of your descent, I barely arrived with enough time to spare to make photocopies for my lessons. I arrived five minutes late to greet my students. They had to revise for a test they had today in a different class. They needed those extra five minutes to practice their English with me.

You affected not only my students' and my schedule. I'm sure the others on the bus had their own times to be conscious.

So, please, eat something. It is unhealthy for you to keep living like this.



Dear Bulimic Girl:

I saw you and you know it.

Rather, I heard you. And you know that I did.

I was in the nice café having a nice coffee at the same time that you were having your nice lunch with your nice boyfriend.

We both had to use the bathroom around the same time. The café has only one toilet, so I had to wait for my turn and let you finish using it.


I waited outside that door for nearly five minutes. During that time, I heard muffled groans and retching emit from the other side. I wondered what was wrong with you.

Then you opened the door and I knew: your cheeks were flushed, you looked as if you had cried. Your large clothes were doing a good job hiding the lack of fat on your body. Your crevassed cheeks were a dead giveaway.

We made eye contact and you knew that I knew. But I won't tell your secret, for it is etched right on your face.

You went back to your nice table and joined your nice, smiling boyfriend.

You threw up the nice lunch that your nice boyfriend had nicely paid for you. Is this how you repay him? Has he not noticed this odd behavior of yours in the time that he has dated you? If this is what you do every time you two go out for lunch, then that is such a complete waste of his money and time.

I don't want to sound holier-than-thou, but if I had a nice boyfriend who offered to pay me a nice lunch in a nice café, I certainly wouldn't be blowing chunks afterwards (unless it had been contaminated and gave me food poisoning, which I doubt was the case because you ate at a nice café).

Please, Bulimic Girl, realize that what you are doing to yourself will have grave consequences on your well-being in the future. I'm sure that something in you may just be beginning to be damaged as well.

Your body is not a toy. You only have one body in this life.

Please take care of it. And of yourself.


Barb the French Bean