Animal Quills

Wow. I'm a little shocked to see this, because I had a very similar experience. I've never seen anything like this written about animal and eating disorders, and I've only met a couple of people who said that their ED had anything to do with identity, so I felt a little alone.

For me it was a few things... being bird meant being thin and fragile and light. And the lighter I was, the more it would be possible to fly, if it ever did become possible for me to have wings. As well, the bigger I was, the more of my body, my wrong human body, existed. Not having a body, making the body disappear, would be better than having the wrong body.

I think there was a real dysphoria, too, as well as delusion. My body image is an animal that IS very light, being a bird. (A swan is one of the heaviest living birds, but compared to a human, still light.) So it's natural that my body would feel "too heavy". In a way, it was right, which makes it more difficult to fight, because you want to be closer to your body image and that's a true goal... but I had to realize, in a human body, that is not possible by starving.

I think two things helped me to begin on the path of recovery. One was, admitting to my self that I never would want to stop. There was no end to this, it was just destruction and destruction without end, and so the fantasy of "when my body is right, I'll stop..." was wrong. It never would be right. The other, actually was watching a video on Youtube made by recovering anorexic who had suffered many health problems. I had seen videos like this before, and even challenged my self to watch them because I wanted to "be strong" against them. But, for some reason, this one affected me and I got scared.

And I do still have damages in my body because of that. So, I'm glad I stopped. I'm not the kind of person who can say "love the human body as well", my dysphoria is too strong. But I realize that this is not the way.