Bodies don’t really understand societal boundaries.

Or social norms. Or the way I am supposed to feel.

I have not seen him in two years. He’s dating another girl, someone much cuter than me. He doesn’t want to see me and anything I feel at this point is really beside the point.

My mind has no trouble with any of it. He’s dating exactly who I wanted for him, a blonde willowy Ivy League grad who is not brutally traumatized and is not sick.

I’m not saying I hand-picked her. But when I pushed him away, it was in hopes that he would find her. Someone just like me, only privileged and pretty. Someone who would make all his dreams come true. Who would not notice the cracks-not in his performance, not in our society.

I wrote myself out of his story. I wrote myself into the margins, where everything I have ever known has taught me I belong. I wrote myself into obscurity. I wrote myself sick and invisible and fading away.

I was very comfortable with the idea of just fading away.

If you are fat, you are hyper-visible. If you are sick, your body is everyone’s problem. If you are traumatized and a woman, you are a mystery that everyone around you wants to solve. If you are a woman, everyone wants proof all the time that you are not crazy.

There are benefits to being invisible. And I am a former anorexic. I am not afraid of disappearing.

It’s not my heart I feel sorry for. Not him either, he’s fine without me. It’s my body.