Dearest Ana

Dearest “Ana”,

Allow us to introduce ourselves. Our names are Megan and Alex. Hopefully we will never encounter you again. In the future we will invest a lot of time in avoiding you, and we expect the same from you. In the past, we have felt all of your comments slice into our skin like sharp daggers; how we are “so worthless” and “fat”, and how we possess “nothing of importance.” And where has this gotten us, may we ask? Absolutely nowhere! Nobody’s perfect, but making an effort is what counts.

Our friends love us. They are truthful and loyal. In the past, when the insecurity has quietly gnawed away at our minds, and we’d blocked them out and isolated ourselves to the point of quarantine, they’d unwillingly given up hope that we would ever be the same again. You made us believe that you speak the truth. You made us believe that our parents only love us out of obligation, when really they feared for our lives – that of their daughters, who were slowly killing themselves because of you.

But we were able to change all of that. We stopped counting calories and we balanced out our exercise. You can no longer push us to the limit. We are undoing all of the knots that you tied into our heads with lies, because we know that they are wrong. You were with us when we woke up in the morning and rushed to the scale. Now, instead we rush with joy to the kitchen. We look in the mirror and smile because we know that we are beautiful, inside and out. We smile at our curves. Our thoughts don’t linger on the image that we see in the mirror; we move on to more important things, like love and happiness.

You will no longer tell us what to do with our lives. We will smile because we are happy, not because we are trying to fool the world. We present ourselves well because we want to. When mealtimes come around, we enjoy them like we are meant to. For when we eat, we restore our energy and our love for life.

We no longer need you Ana. We don’t want to stop thinking of emotions that cause us stress, for we are no longer afraid to suffer. All the world is full of suffering... but it is also full of overcoming. We know this because we overcame you. You are no longer a friend. We have banished you once and for all. Without you, we are everything. So don’t fight back. You are not welcome in our lives. For we are our greatest asset.

And we intend to keep it that way.

Megan and Alex