I have never suffered writer's block. Give me a blank page and a pen and I will be off and away, filling it as quickly as my writing will allow. When I read about it I am fascinated. I just want to keep reading. I have trouble understanding that someone who is willing to write, moreover someone who already has something to write about (apparently many authors get it in the middle of writing a novel) will suddenly find themselves unable to produce any writing. It is incomprehensible to me. I may not be able to write a short story every time I sit down, and I sure as hell cannot continue writing something exactly where I left off, but I can always sit down and write something. There is always some little inspiration, in my head, in the paper, something that someone mentions, someone on the tube... I am fascinated by those who suffer it, but more than that, I am fascinated by the condition. I want to suffer it. Not forever, not acutely, but I wish I could choose to experience it for just a couple of days, wonder what it's like to sit in front of my computer, or my notebook and be not unwilling but unable to write. And sometimes I wish I could have writer's block just because it sounds more interesting than not having writer's block. It's something to write about.
My obsession with what it must be like having a mental disorder started many years ago, when I did a small school project about anorexia nervosa and bulimia. I've never suffered either disorder but I do have issues with food. I count calories obsessively, generally know roughly (or quite accurately) the number of calories that go into my meals, check menus of places I'm going to eat at and occasionally I binge, though clearly more often than I should. I also hide what I eat sometimes. Most of the time however my relationship with food falls within the realms of normal, I like food, I like cooking, and I like eating. Learning about anorexia nervosa and bulimia was fascinating to the 15 year old me. I wanted to know more. I wanted to know what it felt like, and I have to admit, partly it was because I felt slightly fat, and it was very attractive to know that a disease could cause people to lose so much weight so fast. A purely theoretical curiosity about the diseases mingled with my own slight obsessions with food, provoking me to wonder what it would be like to be anorexic or bulimic. Soon I found out about forums in the internet where girls (mostly) with anorexia and/or bulimia would give each other tips about how to avoid eating, how to fill full, what foods had less calories... They also encouraged each other and gave each other the security they needed: you are striving for perfection, don't believe the people who tell you you are ill, you are not sick, you are making yourself better. To me, these girls sounded crazy (amongst other things because I can't see the meaning of life without three or four full meals a day), but they were also fascinating. I wanted, to an extent to be like them. Their strength of will, their dedication to a goal, was inspiring. I became addicted to reading what they wrote. If a doctor had looked at my internet historial when I was fifteen he might have worried that I had an eating disorder. I could spend hours reading accounts and tips. I can still remember the most popular tips and suggestions. I might have agreed that the forums were dangerous, but in a way I also saw them as a form of therapy. The forums form a community of people who understand each other and love each other. I have rarely seen abuse in these forums. They are, above all, supportive. If a girl posts that she's feeling like crap because she ate two cookies for dinner the rest of the community will tell her it's alright, give her suggestions as to how to get rid of the two cookies (or their calories) and tell her that tomorrow it will be better. As I grew a bit older, I stopped visiting the forums, partly because I lost interest, and partly because the morbid fascination they held for me started to worry me. As much as I sometimes wished I could develop an ED, I knew that it was wrong, that it was not healthy, that it was potentially dangerous.
Recently, I returned to the forums. I thought I would have outgrown the fascination, that today they would just seem strange and dangerous, and that I would just want to write to tell these girls to get better. I was wrong. I still find, amongst the obvious issues of the people who participate in them, a certain beauty, a certain unique willpower and a support amongst members that I rarely see anywhere else. And yes, I become a little bit obsessed again, and yes, after a couple of hours I start wondering what it would be like, to not eat for days, to lose my period, to have body dysmorphic disorder. As with writer's block, I don't want to really have it. But I'm curious. I wonder what it would be like.
I guess what I'm saying here is that illness and obsession are intimately linked. That they are made of the same thing. That being driven can easily turn into being ill. That the limits between health and disease are lines in the sand, that pushing our limits is exhilarating but also dangerous. That when it comes to our behaviours, especially to every day things, we are mostly unable to recognize when we are pushing our limits and putting ourselves at real risk.
I am fairly sure that if I had kept visiting Ana and Mia forums at the age of fifteen I would have sooner or later developed a full blown eating disorder. I didn't, and I'm glad, but I have to admit that it's attractive knowing that I could have. Most of the time I'm happy to be normal, but sometimes, very rarely, I envy people with issues, for one simple reason: they are more interesting.
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