It’s probably wrong to regard anorexia as simply wrong. It is a response to something. It serves a purpose and it constructs itself out of good things, a healthy diet, a philosophical attitude, for example.
Taken too far, my (Buddhist) monkishness counts against me. I believe that these great, apparently edifying experiences are just the icing on the cake. They’re only details: perhaps the architecture and the flora are different, but the fundamental joy of being alive and conscious of it is the same. Why, then, fly on holiday? I ask, rhetorically. Why take even the 1:10 million risk, if the benefits are so negligible?
For the children, Jo snaps back at me, for the bond the enduring memories will provide.
Perhaps this whole train of thought is just anorexia’s numbing psychological alienation, the way beauty abandons you, leaves you unmoved, the way the moon, the constellations, just become points of light.
Middle-aged Male Anorexic 