"Girlhood Stolen" by Sophia Memon

I became scared of eating when I was 14 years old. My favorite color was emerald green, my favorite song Clarity, and my favorite hobby counting. Steps, pounds, calories—it was an ever-constant cycle of adding and subtracting the untouchable things reaching out to strangle me.I suppose this was a selective pastime; I didn’t count the falling strands of hair in my hairbrush each night, or how many seconds it took for the black and blue fireworks in my mind to dizzy themselves to stability when I would stand, or how many times I lied to my parents,“I’ve already eaten,” without thinking twice. When I was 14,I was a child. When I was 14,I was a woman, because 7,000,000 women in the United States of America have eating disorders, and without treatment, 20% of those women do not survive. Women are being killed, and everyone is to blame. 

Over cups of tea this winter,I asked a friend what it took for her to seek help in the depths of her eating disorder.“The scary thing,” she remarked,“is that it’s hard to tell how hard you’ve fallen until you’ve hit the ground.” Eating disorders sneak up on you.It’s hard to know that you have one until it’s too late. When the mirror is playing tricks on you, when photoshop,Instagram, and your own mind are playing tricks on you, it’s hard to notice when two pieces of toast become one, when a “diet” becomes everything you are. At first, it feels that there’s no reason to question whether something is wrong. Then, suddenly, you’re too scared to question it at all. My beautiful friend explained,“By the time my family and friends realized something was wrong and tried to convince me so,I didn’t want to get better.It took the realization that thisis a cycleI will always belosing for me to accept that I had a problem.” She smiled warmly and lifted her mug to toast to our growth.“I never thought I’d be proud of myself for drinking tea.” 

Comparison is powerful. When I look at my experiences compared to those of others,I sometimes wonder if I ever truly suffered. However, it’s comparison at the root of this fatal dilemma. Women are conditioned to fight each other tooth and nail in this world built for men. We’re taught that there’s only so much space and so much love in society, and that if we are not the prettiest, the smartest, the absolute best, we’re unworthy of the world we’ve worked to build. When it’s been decided that the most beautiful girls take up the least space, it becomes a bloody war to become the smallest.It becomes a competition of how far you can go. 

When, at 15,I met the beautiful young women who are now my dearest friends,I realized that beauty is love more than anything else.In growing up alongside strong, incredible women who show me unconditional love and goodness,I realized that I couldn’t give away health, picnics, coffee, golden memories to something that could only take from me. These powerful girls reinstilled in me confidence

and the gorgeous rawness of real women. Eating disorders are a cycle that cannot be defeated.I finally acknowledged that I needed to find peace before I lost myself.I realized I was paying away my girlhood, core moments that despite my full recovery,I won’t get back. So many of us get better, but so many of us can never fully shake our losses. 

Eating disorders do not affect only women, but they do affect so many of us. So many that when I asked each of my friends what issues they felt affected women most, this topic was the first one each of them listed.It is devastating to glance through a room full of women, to recognize the unshakable and undeniable beauty in each one of them, and to know that so many of them might be struggling. Our sisters, daughters, cousins, mothers, and friends are at risk of losing everything. And for what? To be “pretty”? 

Every 62 minutes, a person dies from an eating disorder, and we must refuse to lose another. Little girls deserve to grow up in a world that nurtures their innocence and loves them without hesitation. Society must heal, for recovery is possible, but we deserve to live in a world we aren’t forced to recover from.