Full Quotes

“It’s that I’m always nervous I’m going to let them down in person. That I’m going to be a disappointing departure from the person they’ve gotten to know online.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“What a wild idea, I realize, that it might have been possible for me to go through life simply appreciating what my body could do, not just how it looked.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“Until then, I’d only viewed myself as me, not me compared to someone else. But after that, my self-image became forever connected to how I looked in respect to someone else, or some standard, some ideal, some goal.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“She’s helped me to realize that my bulimia was never really about food. It was about my mom, about connecting with her, holding on to her through it. It was about my sense of self. It was realizing that in order to feel like I was in control of my own life, I had to relinquish control of many other things. Food was just how all those things manifested themselves. Once I was able to realize that, I could appreciate food in a new way.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“I know that I should feel overwhelmed with stress, but I’m suddenly overcome with gratitude. Hitting rock bottom might be the best thing to have happened to me in a while, I realize. There’s nothing to do from here but change, start over, redirect myself. And what a gift, in a way, I think, to get to start over.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“There’s only one person I’d want to talk to right now, only one person who could help me. Only one person who could comfort me. And she’s gone.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“Honestly, I kind of can,” Stephanie says. “Which is what scares me. I mean, I think it’s totally possible to live your life just sort of . . . coasting. Telling yourself what you need to tell yourself to get by. I think I could live like that forever. But I don’t want to. And I don’t intend to.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“Their compassion makes me want to curl into a ball. All the stuff I preach about women supporting other women—this is it. This is real. This is what it looks like when it actually happens”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“stuff my phone into my back pocket and decide that it’s time I took accountability for myself, for once. It’s not really that I owe him an explanation. It’s that I actually want to give him one.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“How could something that makes me feel like my truest self be bad for me? All you have to do is be you, Ava. If only it were that simple.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“The craziest part of it all, though, is that even though social media has completely pitted all these women against one another, it’s actually all rooted in the patriarchy, I think. Fucking men are the ones who have created these impossible standards for women to uphold.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“And you’re right. The self-care culture has gotten out of control. Now people are told they need to buy certain things or look a certain way, live a certain way, to be happy, to be healthy.” I pause. “And it’s totally backfired, spiraled into something totally antithetical to self-care, actually. Now women are just competing with other women on social media. We present this bullshit, fake image of perfection to the world, but it’s totally unattainable. And it’s dangerous”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“guess it just feels so indulgent to admit that I need time just for myself. That’s just such a greedy thing to say. My mother didn’t think about self-care. It’s a bullshit thing that our society has just made up so people buy stuff or have something to talk about on social media.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“As a woman, our whole lives are about taking care of others. That’s just the truth. We’re always thinking about other people but rarely ourselves.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“though the truth is that no collagen powder will make their skin look ten years younger.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“But sometimes I wondered, when I got older, if she had lost some of who she was in her role as a mother.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“I’m just telling them what I do. Or what I want them to think I do.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“I realize, as I say it, how foreign it is to me to feel actual support from other women without the veil of competition, or without the instinct to distrust it. But it feels nice.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“realize, as I say it, how foreign it is to me to feel actual support from other women without the veil of competition, or without the instinct to distrust it. But it feels nice.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“I feel hollow, sad, and alone, but too empty to cry.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“The person in the profile is a good person, a loving person, a truthful person. But that person isn’t me. Even the part about my mom isn’t true. I miss her, and I’m grateful for her in so many ways, but I’m not grateful for her every day. I’m mad at her on many days. And if she was really watching over me, why would she be making things so hard?”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“perfect my messy bun,”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“I still hate it so much, and yet the only comfort I can find—when my longing for her is so profound and painful that my entire body feels like one big bruise—is on the cold tile of the bathroom floor.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“Even though my entire livelihood pretty much depends on my ability to be plugged in, connected, and accessible at all times, I hate that technology has made it impossible to ever take a break from that, even for a moment. It’s impossible to hide.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“I have to use my finsta, my fake Instagram account, to see their stories and go unnoticed. I created the extra account for this exact purpose: when I want to thoroughly stalk someone but don’t want to be found out.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“So, I live two lives: that of TheGratefulAvocado, whose motto is to “live life to the fullest,” and that of Ava Maloney, whose favorite pastimes are lying, bingeing, and purging. Repeat.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“TheGratefulAvocado has somehow become a facade, a version of me that I know doesn’t exist,”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“My followers gave me a sense of validation and pride. They made me feel less lonely.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“Quickly, I grew numb to the content of these “real” posts, and they became weekly tasks I checked off my list. My anxiety, depression, body dysmorphia—these issues morphed into talking points that I used to fill my social media feed and make myself more relatable. Somewhere along the way, I stopped acknowledging to myself that these issues were still real to me, that they still chipped away at my happiness and sense of self.”
― Julia Spiro, Full

“wanted to show people—even if it was only a few—what it was like to be ED recovered and how I’d gotten there. I wanted to counteract the poisonous and dangerous diet culture that had dragged me down for so long. I genuinely wanted to help people, to be a positive influence in their lives.”
― Julia Spiro, Full