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Have you ever wished you could travel back in time, to the girl you once were, before madness and calorie-counting and dogmatic rules consumed your waking thoughts, to a time when you cared not the thump of your step or the physical space you occupied, when food was just something to be eaten, not dissected, analyzed or dominated?

Do you ever wish you could travel back and whisper over that girl’s shoulder and tell her: “You’re beautiful – exactly as you are.”

I stopped in a popular clothing store tonight in search of the elusive pair of perfect jeans. A teenage employee mindlessly folded t-shirts as I browsed the nearly empty store. A friend of hers walked in, maybe 15 or 16, pale, with skin as fine as a china doll and blonde hair so platinum it shone beneath the fluorescent lights.

As I perused the store, I couldn’t help but overhear the girl speaking to her employee friend. Standing before a tall mirror, she pinched the skin beneath her bicep, frowning at the reflection staring dismally back.

“I’m so fat,” she announced declaratively to her friend. “I’ve got to lose weight.”

The employee friend commiserated, too, her gross “obesity” (the two probably each wore a size 5/6), sharing a bond that has become almost exclusively feminine in nature. They lamented imaginary thunderous thighs and picked at rolls on their waist, mentally dissecting their bodies as fragmented parts of a broken whole, in need of perfecting.

I circled the pair, wanting immediately to go up to them, and place their hands over my chest to feel the irregular thumping of my heart, damaged by years of malnutrition, ipecac, diet pills, and forced vomiting. I wanted to show them my teeth, their edges ragged by stomach acid, the enamel veneer worn and cracked.

I wanted to hug these girls, and tell them they were perfect as they are; that really, in the end, weight doesn’t matter; that I have spent half my life obsessed with changing my body when I could and should have been out changing the world instead.

I wanted to shake these misguided girls, and make them understand that “thin enough” is just a delusion, and that while delusions contain within them an ability that allow us to live, they can also kill us.

Instead I hung back, slowly made my way to the counter and paid for my purchases, ignoring the impulse to turn back. It was a long drive home.

Cross-posted on Disordered Times, www.disorderedtimes.org