Missing Stacey

I'm about to get on my melodramatic soapbox in a big way, so anyone who doesn't like that kind of thing should bugger off, OK?

This beautiful, intelligent and sensitive person was named Stacey. She was my best friend. If one were able to pick one's siblings, I would have chosen her as my sister. She died last year due to complications arising from her long struggle with anorexia and bulemia. She would have hated that I'm outing her here. (Sorry Stace.) But since her passing, I have inadvertently learnt about several other cases of severe anorexia.

It wasn't so long ago that anorexia seemed like something that you only heard about or saw in a movie of the week. But it seems to be everywhere now. And we have no real understanding of the disease. Even the people who have been studying it for eons are baffled as to how to treat it. I know that in Stace's case, she was taking out all her sadness and anger towards other people, on herself. I know that she felt unloved where she should have felt unconditional love. I also know that no matter how much love and care and tending her friends provided, it wasn't enough to make her pain go away. It wasn't enough to convince her that life was worth living. I know that, for someone who wasn't able to cope with the myriad of abuses in her own life, she was uncommonly wise. Her wisdom led us, her friends, through all the little difficulties in our lives.

The world lost a gem when Stace died.

I lost family.

But People, there are tonnes of other people out there dying from this. Slowly killing themselves by starvation. We NEED to figure what's going on. We need to find out why women... girls ( and, indeed, a growing number of young men) are torturing themselves to death. You can't look away. You can't pretend it's not happening or that it will just heal itself. It doesn't. You have to fight this battle head on. I know too may people who pretend this is just a passing phase or that it's chronic. It's not chronic. You don't live with it, you die of it. Stace died of it.

In my little way, I've been trying to fight this battle. I'm not anorexic or bulemic. But I've recently been encountering many people who are losing friends and family to these diseases. I tell them about Stacey. I offer all the resources I have. SO. To that end, you will find in the Link List on the right hand side a link to Sheena's Place. It's one of many support and therapy groups that's run here in Toronto.

I hope it helps.