Thanks for the love, my friends. Your courage, honesty, and encouragement are inspiration to my life.

I've only read thru maybe the first 100 or so comments from the 1300 that have to be reviewed and either posted or deleted. As I reminder, I don't publish any links, and I don't publish any hate, so don't waste your time. But one hate comment caught my attention. It's nothing new, just another someone spouting about "why would you do this to yourself?" and "get a life." To this person (and all who think like you) I would like to encourage you to continue reading my blog, or better yet, reading it from the beginning. This is not the "life" of someone who really "wants to be this way." This is the result of endless pressure from media images, from work, and most acutely, from a deep-rooted mental imbalance which does not allow me to love and accept myself the way I should. For every image I get of someone saying, "You are perfect just the way you are!" there are at least 100 images saying, "You are not good enough, thin enough, pretty enough, and you'll never achieve success in your present state of being." Please understand, dear reader, that eating disorders are not always the "choice" of the affected person. Try to show some love and understanding. Keep reading.

Case in point, I've recently been contacted by a production company for whom I have worked many times before, but not long enough that they know about my long, tumultuous history of disordered eating. Their exact words to my agent were, "We want to shoot her in a month, so tell her to go ahead and start losing weight now." No inquiries about what I currently weigh or look like, even though they haven't seen me in almost a year. Just the straight-up assumption that no matter what I am, I AM NOT THIN ENOUGH, and something must be done about that.

Luckily, my agent is slightly more understanding and gentle about it. But sure enough, it has been quite the trigger. I've immediately (and without much thought) begun to severely restrict, and dropped five pounds in as many days. Ugh. And in my mind, the familiar battle begins to rage again... I've been "in recovery" for nearly three years now, I think. But what is "recovery" really? Just a state of limbo where I am not fully immersed in my eating disorder, but still not completely normal either? Am I just beyond the threshold, poised to step over it the moment an opportunity is offered? Am I not truly *anorexic* until I am under the *safe weight* zone??

And what am I supposed to do now? Since they demanded that I should lose weight without having seen what I currently look like, I'm not entirely sure what they are expecting to see when I do arrive. If I stay here in my "safe zone" and continue the therapeutic "I am alright as I am" mantra, will they be angry that I am not what they have expected, and will I lose my job? Or do I dive headlong into the system I know so well, give them the results they could not possibly be disappointed with, and potentially get lost again in that cesspool of darkness that is my world of disordered eating?

Why is there no in-between? What is normal? Why can't I just feel and be that way?