Extraordinary

Extraordinary.

What does it really mean?

I'm always reminded of the Mena Suvari character in "American Beauty", whose most fervent wish is to be thought extraordinary and whose most crippling fear is fear of the ordinary. In an ironic twist of fate, however, it is her very self-destructive impulses to act out and impress others with her "extraordinariness" that ultimately reduce her to being flat, dull, prosaic -- shrinking her soul to something small and mean and ordinary.

Those of us who have suffered from eating disorders have known, intimately and oppressively, the fear of the ordinary. It was never enough, growing up, to be merely yourself, precious and unique, loved and lovable, unique, unrepeatable, irreducible. Nobody ever told you any of that. 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 halls of academia with self-engorged 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 encapsulated 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. Embracing imperfection is still a near-impossible task for most of us. But it's time we recognized that chasing the extraordinary is what almost killed us in the first place.

What is all this "extraordinary" bullsh*t, anyway? Cosmically speaking, what kind of achievement is it to be the thinnest woman in the room? Does that really make you extraordinary? Or, like Mena Suvari in American Beauty, does it only serve to make you pathetic? If your greatest achievement in life is a weight in the two digits or the ability to shimmy into a pair of size zero jeans, if the only impact you have made on the world that will be emblazoned across your tombstone when you die prematurely of cardiac arrest at twenty-five is "She Was Thin", if the world remembers you not for the size of your heart but for the size of your waistline, then I would venture so far as to say your entire life has been in vain, has been -- dare I say it -- ordinary.

It's time we reevaluated and redefined what it means to be extraordinary, because clearly, what we've been doing all these years isn't it. In her Pulitzer Prize-nominated memoir, "Wasted", Marya Hornbacher writes, "My entire identity-being was wrapped up in (1) my ability to starve and (2) my intellect. I had a complete identity crisis when I realized neither of these was impressing anyone." I think many of us have undergone a similar crisis in the long, slow, painful process of recovery, but it's about time we understood, like Marya Hornbacher eventually came to realize in treatment, that we are "actually good at something other than starving and puking," that, in her words:

"It was entirely unoriginal to be starving to death. Everyone was doing it. It was, as a friend would later put it, totally passe. Totally 1980's. I decided to something slightly less Vogue."

So be a real rugged individualist.

Do something really innovative and cutting-edge.

Try something really extraordinary.

Stop hating yourself.

Love God.

Love yourself.

Love other people.

Be happy.

I'm not extraordinary, and I've nearly killed myself trying to be -- but what I am is perfectly imperfect. That's what I have to offer this world -- and that's fine by me.