"Ellei ole tunnetta fyysisestä eheydestä -- tapahtuu hyvin yksinkertainen, aivan liian tavanomainen ja todella pelottava asia: ihminen siirtyy epämääräisestä toiveestaan hoikistua hyökkäykseen omaa lihaansa vastaan. Hän ei enää näe kehoaan omanaan, arvokkaana, sellaisena joka kuljettaa häntä ympäriinsä, hoitaa ajattelun ja tuntemisen hänen puolestaan ja vaatii energialatauksen tehtyään tämän palvelksen. Sen sijaan hän alkaa nähdä ruumiinsa epämielyttävänä lisukkeena, syylänä joka pitää poistaa."

From 'Wasted - A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia' by Marya Hornbacher

I have a friend staying at my place for a couple of nights. Last time I saw her was some time during January. Then I didn't see her. Today I think I began to see her better. She ate ice cream for lunch and she ate ice cream for evening snack. She said she ate ice cream for breakfast, too. I thought of a quotation by Mikael Fogelholm asking why go through a diet eating nothing but cabbage for a month when you gain the same results (i.e. lose weight) by eating nothing but ice cream for a month. At this point I didn't yet think of the possibility of an eating disorder, at least not seriously. I went to the loo and paid attention to the lifted toilet seat since I obsessive-compulsively keep it closed and came to notice something pink floating at the edges of the water. It was strawberry ice cream she ate. But maybe she's feeling sick and I'm just going nuts over nothing.

This evening, after we had returned from our lecture she's here for, she stepped up to me after showering, said that she, too, has a secret (I am yet to figure out the meaning of the 'too') and showed me her arm she had burned when she was a kid. But I didn't see the scars. I saw the fragility of her arm, its sunken muscles and pale skin. I gazed at her arm but not at the scars but for the thought, the certainty, that I could wrap my one hand's fingers around her arm. She has always been skinny since I met her but not until tonight did I notice (or has something changed?) that her head seems quite out of proportion when compared to the rest of her.

We talked shortly about a book in my bookshelf, the one quoted above. She has mentioned it before, years ago when she told me the writer had died of a cardiac arrest caused by her eating disorder. I doubt that book is read by any other than someone who has experienced an eating disorder themselves, or know someone who has, or who deals with eating disorders in their profession, or -rarely- is conscious of the surrounding world.

Am I seeing not seeing the forest from the trees? Am I drawing conclusions from details and missing the bigger picture? What if she just likes ice cream like she says and this isn't her usual eating habit? What if she has anorexia, or bulimia, or both? What the hell am I supposed to do? What if I go saying something about my suspicions and offend her when nothing's really wrong? What if she lies to my face that everything's alright; I know people hide their eating disorders well? What if she *does* have an eating disorder? How the hell can her boyfriend NOT see it? What if he even encourages this behaviour?

What if???