t

Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder. Every 62 minutes a life is lost as a direct result of their eating disorder. This weekend, that life was one of a beautiful lady I shared time with in a treatment center.

Nothing prepares you for death, much less the death of an old friend. There are no words that bring her back. There is no love great enough to resurrect her. But there is so much love and so many words of regret left now that she is gone.

I don’t know how to process all of my feelings so I’ve decided to writer her a letter. For anonymity purposes, I will address her as T.

My Dear T,

You were incredible. I remember my first day on the unit with you. You immediately came and welcomed me. I was a wreck, inside and out, but you kept your wreck on the inside and showed your grace to everyone. You calmed the unit, making everyone feel safe in a room of competitive strangers.

Your grace was always there but I saw your demons too. I saw the disgusting disorder that consumed you. I saw the battle you were up against. I can only understand parts of it, as we battled together for a fraction of our lives, but T, I know the darkness was there. I know there were years of life that destroyed you, I know you tried, I saw you try. I also know that an eating disorder doesn’t just end when you leave a treatment center.

T, you were beautiful. You were beautiful in a way only the most divine spirit can create. You weren’t beautiful because you starved yourself; you were beautiful because your smile enchanted everyone. You were beautiful because you didn’t back down when life (or your treatment team) threw a curve-ball at you. Your beauty radiated so far out of your physical body that it seemed as though your body was just the vessel to hold your strength and undeniable poise.

I hate that you weren’t in love with that vessel. I wish I had pushed you harder to see your own beauty but this isn’t about me.

I will cherish our texts. The ones saying you wished we could program together, the ones calming me from my level of care step-up, the ones apologizing that my disorder was so yucky. You didn’t have to do that but T, I’m sorry your disorder was so yucky. I’m sorry you lived a life that was full of shame and hatred. No one deserves that.

I’ll miss your creativity, creativity that was sometimes cunning but only showed that you had insurmountable amounts of passion. I’ll miss seeing you in the maroon chair, in the corner of the day room, where we sat in front of the fake window. We joked so many times about how ugly that “window” was.

I hope, wherever you are now is a place of peace and comfort. I hope you can finally breathe. I hope you can think there. I hope you can smile there and laugh. Your laugh always caught me by surprised but it felt like a window into the healthy T, the one without your disorder.

l live everyday with your memory. I will live the better life that you deserved. I will do it for both of us.

I will pray for your peace, T. I know one day, in heaven, we will sneak another cup of coffee at breakfast. Until then, I’ll drink all the coffee and I’ll live a healthy life in honor of the one that was stolen from you.

With the most love and sadness,

Ashlyn