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<\/a>\n\t\t\t<\/div><\/figure>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\nDear Reader,<\/span><\/p>\nI never intended for this story to be told. I always planned to bury my feelings, squash my fears, and not cause any worry for the people I love. But I knew, deep down, that this would always be a part of me and I couldn\u2019t ignore that forever. My goal with this memoir was to finally allow myself to realize my truth.<\/span><\/p>\nThroughout my sister\u2019s battle with anorexia, I watched from the shadows. I knew exactly what I was seeing happen; I\u2019d watched all the YouTube videos of people\u2019s eating disorder timeline photos. I noticed how skinny she was getting, how little she was eating, and how unbelievably thin she looked in her ballet leotards as she would fill her water bottle before leaving for class.<\/span><\/p>\nI knew what was happening, and I was jealous. How could I not compare myself to her? Through my dysmorphic eyes, she looked so much skinnier, so much better than me. I could never escape her.<\/span><\/p>\nDuring quarantine, I could never get a break. From anywhere in the house, I could hear her chopping vegetables for her salads or blasting classic rock from the spin bike in the garage. I didn\u2019t have any space to myself. She took over our shared room as a space to do her remote schoolwork. When the door to our room was shut, I knew she was following workout videos. Walking into my own room was really just intruding on her. When she was in therapy, I could hear her conversations through the walls of the house to the extent that my mom had to play music to cover it up.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nEven though I didn\u2019t really recognize it happening, she was influencing me to restrict my eating and start exercising more. Every time I walked by a mirror I would examine my stomach. But even if I had fully acknowledged what was going on, how could I possibly compete with her?<\/span><\/p>\nI was such an awful sister that year that my 2021 New Year\u2019s resolution was to be better. We had fights about the dumbest stuff, and she would always cry and use her mental health as an indisputable weapon. We all had to tiptoe around her because it was tragically simple to trigger her. And being so careful about how we talked about food made my obsessions and scrutiny secretly grow.<\/span><\/p>\nWhen I sat down to write my story, I realized that while my sister\u2019s eating disorder may have caused a lot of my issues to come to light, I have always had body image issues and paid special attention to comments about my body. I quit ballet in middle school partly because of the way the tights cut into my stomach. I hated how I looked in the ballet uniform and would cover up as much as possible with a skirt and wrap sweater. I was also a lot taller than the other girls and that compounded how I compared myself to them. I never told my mom why I really quit ballet. She had grown up dancing and it pained me to quit because I knew how much it meant to her. But I just couldn\u2019t do it.<\/span><\/p>\nI had to choose between endless examples like this to include in my memoir. Reader, if I listed them all here you would probably stop reading out of boredom because the list would be so long. And I remember them all so vividly, I could easily write them all down. Maybe I will someday, but I will spare you here. But writing this allowed me to make connections between all these scattered memories and helped me convince myself it was a complete story worth telling.<\/span><\/p>\nI never wanted to call attention to myself by making my issues public knowledge, something I had to come to terms with in this process. But telling my mom and sister what I\u2019ve really been struggling with all this time was strangely freeing. Don\u2019t get me wrong: I was slightly annoyed at their concern and tried to downplay everything. But I understand how important it is that I address these issues.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\nI also understand how important it is to be kind to myself as I share such a vulnerable thing, especially in a format where I am forced to draw my body over and over again. But that is kind of therapeutic. I could\u2019ve chosen a more abstract art style or to not draw anyone\u2019s bodies realistically, but I believe that learning to be comfortable with how I portray myself is an important challenge.<\/span><\/p>\nReader, I wish you luck in realizing your own truth. Please be brave; it\u2019s worth it. Thank you for reading.<\/span><\/p>\nLove, Rae Ruane<\/span><\/p>\n
\nRae Ruane<\/strong> is a first year student studying Film and Television in the College of Communications at Boston University. This project gave her the chance to expand her love of writing and visual storytelling in a new medium. She would like to thank her WR120 professor, Jessica Kent, and her sister, Elsey. <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rae Ruane Instructor’s Introduction Graphic memoirs–personal stories in the form of comics–create powerful narratives through the juxtaposition of text and image. In WR120: The Graphic Memoir, we study examples of this form that explore challenging subjects including American racism, childhood neglect, medical trauma, homophobia, and suicide. After the class has formed a community through courageous […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17256,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[18,6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17256"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=657"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":857,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/657\/revisions\/857"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=657"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=657"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/deerfield\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=657"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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