Per­haps I should have explained why I was and am, for lack of a bet­ter descrip­tion, food illit­er­ate­last nite. But then again, I'm not known for my punctuality.

I moved to Fort Collins dur­ing the begin­ning of my sec­ond grade year…elementary school was the worst for me. As if it weren't bad enough to be cop­ing with new peo­ple, a new home, etc., I also had the dis­tin­guished title of being 'the fat kid' in the class.

In ret­ro­spect, I don't think that I was ter­ri­bly big, but try telling a ten year-old that. So I sat and took the looks, the insults. I did my best not to take it per­son­ally, know­ing even then that the only rea­son it was any kind of con­cen­tra­tion for any­one else was that it made me an easy target.

When you don't know any­thing about a per­son, as a kid, you attack what you can find.…and since you have no insight into their dreams, their fears, their soul, you have no choice but to look for what's on the out­side. Like I said, an easy tar­get. In their eyes, a big target.

Even­tu­ally, I, like most in that sit­u­a­tion, made friends, accli­mated, and put those feel­ings in the back of my mind. And there they stayed. For a while.

Years passed by, I exer­cised a bit, and boom! I was in high school. And even though I didn't real­ize it, the feel­ings of self-consciousness regard­ing my body came back and began to insert them­selves into my daily life. Luck­ily, it was high school, and every­one else felt the same way about them­selves, so nobody seemed to notice.

In high school, I worked my ass offnot at study­ing, mind you. Instead, I deeply involved myself in music and the­atre. Almost every day, I was at school an hour early and usu­ally didn't leave before 5 or 6pm, some­times later. There was always a con­cert to set up for, a play to rehearse, or gos­sip to spread with my friends. It was great.

Drain­ing, too.

I tried to eat nor­mally and healthy, but things never really worked out that way. In my mind, my time was always bet­ter spent get­ting some­thing done. Per­sonal health and well-being were gen­er­ally sec­ondary con­sid­er­a­tions for me.

Like many peo­ple, I absolutely hate going to the doc­tor, and unless I'm bleed­ing inter­nally, make a point not to. At some point, my par­ents noticed that I was begin­ning to lose weight, so I reluc­tantly went to the doctor.

I was diag­nosed with anorexia dur­ing my senior year…and appar­ently, every­one saw it but me. My par­ents, my girl­friend, that guy on the bus whose name I couldn't remem­ber. I had blind­ers on to the prob­lem, and it was only when I began to get seri­ous stom­ach pains on an almost daily basis that I really accepted it and tried to deal.

Noth­ing like a rag­ing, ongo­ing dis­com­fort to get your atten­tion. And keep it.

In the few years since then, I've got­ten a lot bet­ter, thanks to the sup­port of friends. Although I still don't have the health­i­est of diets, I no longer starve myself, either.

Last nite, I was engaged in a con­ver­sa­tion with a cou­ple of friends. Among many things, cook­ing of var­i­ous things was discussed.…and I sud­denly dropped out of the ban­ter. Not only because I'm cook­ing clue­less (a totally sep­a­rate issue), but also because food still makes me, to an extent, uncomfortable.

Not many peo­ple know this about me, so I blame no one but myself. How­ever, it no longer hurts like it once did. I'm sure that oth­ers can relate to this, but it's hard to have any­one relate to you when they don't know some­thing is wrong. So there. It's been said.

I'm get­ting bet­ter, and I know that soon, it will be okay.

(OK, folks, dragon*con-related smat­ter­ing to con­tinue soon. Promise!)