<p>Part of a Whole, but Still Me</p>
<p>By ALEXANDRA FRANKLIN</p>
<p><a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/fashion/modern-love-revelations-of-a-feminist.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=modernlove[/url][/I]”>http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/11/fashion/modern-love-revelations-of-a-feminist.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1&ref=modernlove</a></p>
<p>~snipped~</p>
<p>Dan and I had been dating for two years when I got sick. I was not physically sick; that would come later. In the years we had been dating, I had gone through several quiet crises. I was still the same — driven, intellectual, feminist — but by being with Dan I felt as if I had sold out. </p>
<p>I made it clear to him that my work was the only thing I really loved. I told him I was a feminist and had my own personal ethic and I wanted to join the Peace Corps and not marry until I was old and I did not want children and on and on. No matter how many times he told me he understood, I repeated it to him often just so I could hear myself saying it. It became a mantra that gave me less and less strength every time. </p>
<p>I rediscovered that strength, or what I thought was strength, in anorexia and bulimia. I focused on the space I occupied, the negative space around me. At first it was fine. I began fielding compliments: from my mother about the new angles in my face, from my ballet instructors for the birdlike vertebrae in my back, the notches in my spine. </p>
<p>I began to see the world through the filmy screen of calorie counting and the desperate press of fingers inside my throat. I enclosed myself in this claustrophobic existence and reveled in the new smallness of my world. It’s so simple to manage only one facet of a life. It was something I did to myself and for myself, with tangible results — an impact I had never before felt, and it was intoxicating. </p>
<p>And then, quickly, it was not fine, but I still insisted it was. That period of time is vague to me now, and it was vague then, when I was wading through it. I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know what to feel, and without a name to put on the emotion I felt for Dan (because I was afraid to say “I love you” out loud), the emotion changed every day. I felt it rushing past me, shoving in, like a tedious waltz. He was there for me when I reached out to him, and when I needed him to leave me alone, he did. </p>
<p>~snipped~</p>
<p><a href=“Modern Love: Revelations of a Feminist - The New York Times”>Modern Love: Revelations of a Feminist - The New York Times;