The overweight individual looks at the model-thin person
and longs for the svelte body never seeing anorexia,
unable to imagine addiction to laxatives, purging
to maintain the illusion. The class clown, robust and rotund,
seems the life of the party but cowers inside, afraid to reveal
the pain, the shame of the extra weight. The healthy body weight
Pete maintains may seem effortless, a gift…but he obsesses
over food, thinks only of what he just ate, what he’s eating,
what he will eat, when, whether he can afford to, what it will be…
We with compulsive food behaviors live lives of quiet desperation
believing virtually everyone better adjusted, possessing greater willpower
than we have. Then we have the chance, by chance, the courage,
the luck to meet others. And when we hear our stories from their mouths
we can finally understand what we saw as reality was less than real.
Then with comfort from knowing we’re not alone, we find out
how alike we are.