The world needs Sofia. Sofia needs you.

Eating disorders piss me off.

Eating disorders prey on some of the most marginalized members of society: girls, women, gay men, as well as people who suffer from depression, OCD, or illnesses that make eating a pain in the ass to begin with. They prey on people of all skin colours and ethnicities. They prey on people who’ve been tormented into believing that fat is a fate worse than death. And they kill people who don’t have the money to get better.

I get riled up because I have a fifth-grader’s unreasonable expectation that the world should be fair. I understand that nature, in all her untamed glory, is the opposite of fair. But I persist in believing that the reason we went to all the trouble to build a civilization and a social contract and ethical systems and legal protections and declarations of human rights, and the reason we entered a grueling scientific cage-match against death and disease, is because we like the idea of fairness. And we will organize as a collective to fight for it, tooth and nail.

So it pisses me off when the bastard diseases that prey on people who are already experiencing a lot of unfairness are pretty much given free reign: they’re not covered by insurance. They’re not researched as rigorously as other bastard diseases. They’re considered a figment of one’s imagination, an unfortunate sign of stubbornness.

I’m here to say that eating disorders are real, and that they kill people. In many cases, they kill people who are already at a disadvantage. Eating disorders are the deadliest of all mental illnesses.

This is our fight, and we’re being picked off like flies.

But we, by and large, treat eating disorders like they don’t matter. Like they don’t kill important, valued, and deeply loved human beings.

Well, here’s what I think: Fuck. That. Shit.

Meet Sofia:

Sofia is important. She is valued. She is deeply loved. The world will be a poorer place without her.

She is engaged in a war whose outcome will determine whether she lives or dies. She’s been in heavy combat for the last four years, and she needs supplies, weapons, armour, relief forces.

Last year, she won a strategic battle at a treatment facility called Monte Nido, and the end of the long war seemed to be in sight…

It was as though all of these years I have been in a room with no doors or windows, and suddenly doors began to appear – and not only did they become visible, but I began to walk through them.

…until her crap insurance company fucked it all up.

After 3 weeks at Monte Nido, UBH stopped paying for my treatment and I had to leave. Since then I have tried, genuinely tried, to get well – and I have been unable to.

Monte Nido’s program director and all of my treating professionals were shocked…my medical state has declined significantly recently and it is clear that without appropriate treatment for my illness I will die…

So we’re gonna have to do this the old-fashioned way.

Sofia’s raising her own army, and she wants you.

Sofia’s battle is our battle. In the fight for equality, don’t let them starve us out.

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