I just learned today that there is another journalist with anorexia. But unlike myself, she is in the early stages of the illness. She has been starving herself for less than a year. She calls it anna, a term made popular by internetters who post about the beauty and joys of being anorectic -- glamorizing this illness. I have seen these websites -- death traps. I can't go there. I won't go there.

Oh, but I kept reading her journal. Was I wishing to learn that she is not that thin?! She couldn't be as thin as I was, right?! Because you see, I still want to be the best at this illness. Even though I am no longer emaciated, I want to have done it best. I was thinner -- the thinnest.

I feel like a failure for giving up my anna -- my best friend and choosing to live instead. But is this living? I dunno. But it is life. If I were not eating today, I wouldn't have the energy, drive, or ability to write even a few sentences in a journal. Actually I would be dead.

I am better off being fatter. I have to tell myself this every day. I cannot glamorize anorexia any longer. It is a mental illness not a pair of shoes that one tries on and wears comfortably. It is not pretty.