let the sky fall.

I understand this will probably be a very unpopular post, but I don't really care. Stop reading if you're uncomfortable with honesty and profanity. It's not getting any prettier from here on out.

Lisa Lampanelli wrote a piece for xoJane about being a food addict. The only problem I had with this article was its lack of preface explaining that it was presenting only a slice of Ms Lamapnelli's history with food addiction. In case you don't already know, she had bariatric surgery in 2012 and lost a ton of weight. Her words in the xoJane piece still carry weight, though.

I've never been to rehab or "fat camp" or counseling or anything of the sort. Not that I didn't want to. Never in a million years would I have been able to afford those luxuries at a time when it mattered, not from my parents' finances or my own. In my 26 years of thinking and praying and searching, I still cannot say that I have discovered a definitive cause for my weight issues; it's just too complicated to boil down.

I can, however, say that it gave me chills to read someone else's words on the harsh realities of ED treatment that match up so closely with mine. You see, my sister is bulimic. It began while she was in high school (I was 12) and it's been plaguing our lives ever since. I purposely use the collective "ours" in this sense because eating disorders are not personal struggles. It's not self-contained, it doesn't stay with one person, it creates shock waves that affect family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, passing strangers. I hope to never offend anyone who has ever struggled with an eating disorder, I hope you know that my thoughts are with you and I pray for your healing.

That being said, there is value to my story. It was far from easy being the fat sister at the dinner table. I can only imagine how impossibly difficult it was for my parents to have to be shouting commands from across the table: "You need to eat" directed at my sister in the middle of a hunger strike; and though they never articulated it, "Should you be eating that?" was always painted on their faces as I reached for my second, third, fourth helpings.

To put it simply, it has been a mind fuck. Strangers who didn't know that my sister was rotting away her own teeth and esophagus would see her new trim figure and say, "You look great!" meanwhile my dumpy self was off to the side contemplating which eating disorder would garner me the same compliments. Let's be straight: I never purged, I never starved myself, but there was certainly a lot of hate.

I can't say I blame my sister for what happened to me during this time, the wisdom of age has taught me that she was far too deep in her own trenches to realize that I was fighting a war too. I am still fighting that war to this day, but the terms have changed. I am singularly responsible for what enters my body, for the way I feel about myself, and for the way I choose to spend my time. I can make the point that (as a child) someone else was putting the spoon to my mouth, but those days are long gone. All the people in my past who taunted me, mocked me, insulted me, well... they're just background noise now. And the best part about life is knowing that, if you're lucky, you'll get to wake up tomorrow and learn from your mistakes.

If there's anything I could go back and do differently, it would be two-fold: first, I would tell my sister that I love her even though I know she doesn't always love herself; secondly, I would tell myself to smile even when it hurts and never let anyone take that away from me.

The biggest lesson to learn here is that we're all fighting something, we're all hurting in some way, and it certainly wouldn't hurt the world to show a little more kindness.