One is not their disease

I met my best friend when I was two years old. It all began when my aunt took me to a terrible two tumbling class. We parted after those weeks of rolling around together, and later reconnected at a mommy and me cooking class. We were both late to the class, so we got to be partners, and once the class came to an end we parted once more. Once we reconnected in preschool we were inseparable.  We went to preschool and dance class together for two years, and after our preschool graduation we had to part again. My parents decided to move a town over, and we wouldn't go to the same school together again until high school. The distance did not stop us from growing up together. We did everything together from choir, to dance, to summer camp. She was always the blondest and most well dressed person you would ever meet. Her parents gave her everything and being her best friend I never saw her in the same outfit twice. When we got to high school all of my guy friends were crazy about her. Once sophomore year hit she began thinning out, but she was already skinny as is. She then told me she was a vegan, and I sat with her in lunch and she refused to eat in-front of anyone. I knew before she did. My once beautiful and stunning partner in crime was still beautiful, but only a skeleton of what she had once been. I remember one day shopping at pac-sun and her breaking down and crying that the size double zero was a little tight on her. When she exited the fitting room the pants where practically falling off of her. I felt like the worst best friend in the world, because I didn't know what to do. I could not even begin to image how she felt, when I consumed cheese from the gallon. I am glad to report she is back to her old self, but her disease did and still does consume her life. I learned the best thing you can do for someone with a disease is to never call them by that disease. Say she has anorexia instead of she's anorexic. We don't say someone with cancer is cancer. We say that they have cancer. Describing someone with their disease isn't  doing the person justice. It puts them in a position where they believe that they can't beat their disease.