It was never enough, growing up, to be merely yourself, precious and unique, loved and lovable, unique, unrepeatable, irreducible. Nobody ever told you you were any of those things. The pressure was always on, and the external and internal compulsions to be Something, to be Great, to be Extraordinary, were both ubiquitous and unbearable. In our unceasing efforts to impress our parents, our friends, our enemies, to prove ourselves worthy of love, we got straight A’s, were valedictorians and salutatorians, graduated summa cum laude, danced through the hallways of academia with self-promoting narcissism masking the self-loathing lurking just beneath. We became great students, writers, actresses, singers, dancers, athletes. We lusted after elusive perfection, seeking with an insatiable and hellish desire to be the best, the brightest, the prettiest, the wittiest, the smartest, the sexiest — all embodied in being the Thinnest — whatever the cost. Eventually, we lost ourselves in the process, turning violently upon our own person, destroying our very selves in our desire to obliterate the imperfect bits.
