I just found out recently (and accidentally) that a good friend of mine is a newly purging anorexic. I had no idea.
We met two and a half years ago at college freshman orientation and became very close over freshman year. Since then, we have both transferred but still live within 20 minutes of each other. We call each other every once in a while to catch up or make plans, but the main medium of communication is maintaining blogs on LiveJournal, along with half of my other friends from freshman year.
In my LJ, I directed a question to her and an unfamiliar username reponded, though obviously her. I went to that username's page and to my horror, it was a series of progess reports in losing weight through restriction and purging. Since early November.
What disturbed me the most was that she belonged to an eating disorders support group-- not meaning that they are there to comfort each other and encourage another to overcome the illness, but rather, they support and encourage each other to achieve their weight goals of sick measures...one of them even came up with a plan to eat less than 400 calories a day in ten days and gives out prizes as an incentive. It's disturbing that she has this embracing eating disorders community that gives her the motivation to keep starving herself until she reaches a weight that she has not had since she was fourteen.
I called her after reading her "secret" journal. Without mentioning anything that was on my mind, I made plans to see her two weeks from now. I will not bring this to surface on the phone. I don't want to start a chain reaction of her withdrawing from everybody that cares about her. I am certain that mutual friends will also discover this new journal and I do not want to be the twelfth person in the day to make her feel like everyone around her is walking on eggshells.
I have another friend who has been struggling with bulimia for the past six years-- part of the same group of people that I was close with at school. When everyone found out by the beginning of the spring semester (through her telling most of us while she was intoxicated), there was an outpouring of support and concern which she perceived as condescending and out of pity. After walking on eggshells for a month, I firmly told her that her health was more important to me than our friendship and that I would seek help for her if she did not seek help for herself. Although enraged at the time, she grudgingly admitted later that it was helpful that I said that and has improved immensely in two years.
It's different now with the newly anorexic friend because she has not directly come forth about it. Although I considered the possibility that by posting from the different username, it was a subtle cry for help, I believe that she spends so much time under the different username that she did not realize that it was not under the usual name.
Has anyone had an experience like this--from either end of the spectrum?
I plan to bring it up when I see her. No long lectures. Short, simple, and direct. That is the plan for now...I just have no idea what to say but I've got two weeks to think about it. Right now, she is out of state. I'm trying not to think about her for now and just concentrate on homework, but it's quite difficult, considering that I'm writing an assigned research paper on the effects of anorexia--and that's not a sick joke--I really am.
