by Mark Mahon

Created on: August 13, 2009

I desperately love a woman who battles the complex affliction of an eating disorder. I say woman because she is in her forties and has struggled and grappled with the condition for over twenty-five years. I also say woman because if you lined up my woman with any number of women and a vote was taken as to who appeared to be the most classiest, most beautiful, most socially intelligent, most professional and the friendliest woman in the line, my lovely woman would win every time. The only person who would not vote for her is her. Ah, the misery of what is loosely termed 'eating disorder.' Any person who is privy to the experience of the condition will usually resign himself or herself to declaring, "It is complex, way too complex." If you unfortunately have been one to be privy to the condition, especially if you love someone with the condition, you will share the wisdom of knowing that it is not only the condition sufferer that suffers.

I think that the term 'eating disorder' is a misnomer. I prefer something like 'personal condition' or more appropriately, 'private condition'. The physical body is quite responsive to 'feeling' what is happening to it. It feels hunger, it feels food entering the stomach and it feels when the stomach is full, even overfull. It definitely feels the violent purging of the stomach contents because it is not really a desired feeling that the body yearns for. The physical body feels pain. If the skin is cut, the body feels it as something not desired. If the skin is severely scratched, the body feels the aggravation. Not surprisingly, those thought to have an eating disorder can also scratch or cut themselves. Thoughts and emotions do not manifest themselves in physical feelings. Sometimes the face can distort in the anguish hidden in the depths of the sufferer, but there is no blood, there is no swelling, there is no pain. Thus, the sufferer of their private condition seeks validation for their feelings.

My beautiful woman's condition budded in a normal way. I say budded because over the years of observing her mother, grandmothers, aunties and nieces, I am sure that the condition was always dwelling within her roots, in her genes. She remembers the catalyst being when as a fifteen year old she was walking through a shopping centre with her older sister. She had not seen her grandmother for a couple of years and on this day, they had a chance meeting. Granny was pretty old and probably losing some functionality.

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