I collapsed on the queen size bed looking up and studying the patterns on the ceiling. With drops of sweat rolling down the side of my face, I used the little energy I had left from playing two hours of exhausting basketball to turn around. With eyes wandering around Mia’s room, I found her figure standing right in front of a mirror. “I’m fat,” she mumbled holding onto a clump of flesh on her thigh.

“Huh?” with disbelief in my eyes I pushed myself up, staring at her more closely. Frankly, I wasn’t shocked because of her blunt statement, I was shocked of how she could still stand after the torture that is basketball she put me through. Because this wasn’t the first time I heard her complain about her weight, her comment didn’t seem out of order. I know that she didn’t like the way she looked, she’d complained about her cellulite endlessly, and how she needed to lose weight.

“I’m fat,” she repeated, looking back at me. “Look at my huge thighs, and my arms, and my belly. It’s all just fat.”
  I stared at her, staring at herself. She pointed out everything that was wrong with her body, things that I never noticed. From her pore size to her big second toe. But how? She was gorgeous. How can someone so physically perfect  say that about themselves. Isn’t that against the human race manual? I flinched, not knowing what to say.

See, I’ve always looked up to Mia. I’ve always envied how her smile could light up an entire room. I’ve always loved that she puts her heart in everything that she did. I’ve always admired the fact that she’s always so caring and selfless, how she puts other’s needs in front of her own. I’ve always thought that if she’s ever hard on herself, then that’s just plain dumb. Then, my thoughts took me back a couple of months. Someone told me that she was diagnosed with an eating disorder. At twelve.

At twelve a little girl was taught that she was fat. Somewhere along the lines of magazines and models and blindly painted expectations she was taught that loving something as insulting as her body was unacceptable. A sin. She was taught that she was worthless if she didn’t drown herself in diet pills, skipped meals and miracle creams. That she was nothing but skin and flesh and bones and the inches of her waist, an inanimate object for the world to critique and mock. Everything she did was an invitation for assessment.

She lived on the scale, her breath reeks of desperation that if she didn’t eat dinner, she could mark off a few pounds. She spent hours wandering around the grocery stores reading labels and counting calories. It’s funny how something as uncomplicated as “skinny” could haunt someone’s thoughts, dreams, take over their lives. Because no food in the world can taste as sweet as a thigh gap, and nothing is as soothing as the sound of, “Hey, did you lose weight?”

The little girl somehow found a devilish warmth of the closest thing she’s ever known to home in starving herself. It’s almost like a drug, it’s almost as if she’s addicted to the feeling of what she thought was finally doing something right in her life. If she couldn’t be the prettiest girl, or the smartest in the room, at least she could be the skinniest. Yes, there was a part of her that screeched for help to get out of this hell, but the dark clouds of what was taking over her soul would mercilessly cut any specks of hope she had left down. It became a routine, like the overpowering obsession of beauty has found its way to seep into her skin. If she ate a piece of cake, or drank a gulp of Coke, it would feel like something was off, like a part of her was missing. No, the little girl wasn’t just Mia, but she was millions of young souls who has ever struggled with body image issues.

The sickening thing about eating disorders is that it’s somewhat alluring. It also doesn’t help that the over-romanticization of mental illness on the media, specifically tumblr. It puts starvation out as something beautiful, something that everyone should strive for. But in reality, there is nothing even close to exquisite about any kind of mental disease. You can’t scroll five minutes down the app without finding a picture of cuts, or pills on a plate.
But who cares, right? As long as you smile, look pretty and act as if nothing is wrong, no one will notice. You’ve just got to clean the tear stains off your pillowcase, and apply concealer on your dark circles from staying up idealizing of utter perfection, and if you could achieve that someday, or even come close to it. Besides, it's not just you. No one seems to be content with the way they look these days.

I came home that day, with an abundance of thoughts swirling around in my mind. I couldn’t help but look at myself in a mirror. Little by little, I started noticing the muffin tops that I have, and how my arms aren’t stick thin. I could feel myself getting heavier and heavier by the second. “I’m fat,” I mumbled holding onto a clump of flesh on my thigh.