I am envious, sometimes – most times – of those who get recognition. Evanna Lynch, who “beat anorexia” to become Luna Lovegood. She is praised and lauded, called determined and strong.
What of all of us still out here, who know that you don’t just “beat anorexia,” that you fight every fucking day just you can hope for a life where maybe you won’t have to think about this fucking disease, day in and day out, in fear that if you ever drop your vigilance, it will get past the years and years you had covered over it, and in the end it will kill you, by making you destroy yourself. What of all of us who are still fighting, who know that your own mind is not something that can ever truly be “beaten?” What of those of us who still fight? Why for us is there no acclaim, because we did not become the lucky one, the movie star?
Or there’s the friend I drove to my tattoo parlor, helped her pay so she could get her first tattoo. One simple word, “strong,” inked over the scar where months ago she’d carved “weak.” The tattoo artists called her brave. They congratulated her on having overcome. Her struggle was obvious, and so was her cure.
They didn’t say anything, the two times I’d been there before to get my own tattoos. Just images – one to remind who is really me, one to remind me that I have flown from those chains that I once let define me.
But to everybody else, they just look like a dolphin fluke and a butterfly.
The artist who’d tattooed my arm had said nothing about my scars.
Where, then, was my recognition?
I know I should not care. But I think that’s what this has really been about, all along. The need to know that on some fundamental level, I am important. I have spent a life trying every fucking day to prove to everyone – and after that, the trickier part, to prove to myself – that I am good enough. That yes, I am strong. That yes, I am capable. That yes, I am beautiful and so because I am beautiful I can be looked at and loved, instead of ignored or cast off. I wanted to be worth noticing. I had to know that I was worth noticing. And so I tried to become extraordinary enough that people would be able to just look at me, and know I had proved it.
And then there was the pain. I was clawing for a way out of myself, out of the web of distrust and lies and abuse that I was caught in, because I had to call it my family. I talked and I talked and I talked, but no one listened. I told people I was hurting, and it changed nothing. I was not heard. I was told, actually, to shut up.
And so I shut up. But that didn’t change the fact that I still needed a way to keep screaming.
Because the pain wasn’t over yet.
And so the scars came.
“Can’t you see that’s something’s fucking wrong?” they asked.
Or – “What’s wrong with you?” they would scream, at me.
“Somebody, anybody,” they said, “can’t you see I’m hurting.”
They’re all scars, now. Old and white, some smooth and some still raised above my skin. They are ghosts, now. Sure, all ghosts show a story – but I think I’m the only one who can see it.
Can’t you see that I have hurt? Can’t you see that I have fought? Can’t you see that I have fallen apart and sewn myself back together so many times you can’t even know where the stitch marks are anymore? Can’t you see all the fucking hard work I’ve done, all the tears I’ve cried, all the sacrifices I’ve made and injustices I’ve put up with, just so that I can finally get to a place where I, at least, can look in the mirror and think that I am beautiful, and that I am important, without killing myself for that in the process?
Can’t you see any of that?
I envy those, whose struggle and triumph have donned them heroes. I envy those, who get the recognition.
Quill Aquiver 
I don’t know if it helps.. but I see you. I see you struggle just by reading this post. Take care
“Someday someone will see how much I care” < i personally love that sentene, because I can relate to it so well.