Dear, here are some things I'd never say to you.

You think that your strong features are bad; but they're good. You are so very beautiful, and you always have been, fat or thin. Your face will age so well, your cheekbones are beautiful, your eyes are lovely and I wish that I could look like you, just those offhand glances you throw in lectures. I might tell you this.

You look loveliest to me without makeup in your glasses, when you have just been running, in your old tracksuit that's baggy, sweating, with your wispy hair standing out looking through a book and trying to make me drink your bizarre tea. You're so beautifully comfortable in those dusky moments, and I think you look your best in glasses. So clever; authoritative. I like that you run; that you are passionate about it, that it makes you feel on top of everything, that it clears your mind, that you are very good at it. I cannot fathom running; but you can. It's magic.

I worry about your binge/purging. You say you binge but I worry it extends to the other. I worry, from the easy way that your fingers slid down your throat when you were drunk, that you'll do it more. That you're doing it now because you ate ice cream tonight. I might ask you if you do, but I would never say I worried because that seems stupid coming from calorie obsessed me, and because I'm in no position to- I'm not your parent. I do wish to cradle you up into my arms and sing to you off-key like your mother did, though. Both of these feelings are strange and bizarre. I feel like I want to care for you, and to boost you back up, even though you're doing wonderfully well on your own. You're the only one of my friends (save for him) that I can readily touch, and I would listen to you weep.

You do attention seek. It can be irritating. I like you nontheless. I might tell you that, one day. If it is right.

Your jewellery is garish and overstated. It is part of you, it's part of the way you are, and it's fantastic. Again, this is something that I could tell you.

I like your soft rounded belly. You don't; it's a weakness for you, isn't it. A thing to cauterize and eliminate, but I adore it. It's beautiful. I want to kiss it. I don't care if it's like white crepe velvet, or scarred, or anything. It is yours, and it is wonderful.

I would never say that to you because you don't see it as part of yourself, and for me to acknowledge it as such would be for me to be combining it with you. You want yourself to be slim skinny thin; and that is not anything you need or want. I don't want to make you more aware of anything that you think is a flaw more than you are. I would spring to the defence of that image of yourself; when E. said she thought you'd gained weight, I was the first to say I didn't think so, or I didn't know. I didn't, but I would still say so now that I know; I do not want to divert from your image of yourself. But that cannot stop me thinking that your stomach is soft, and valiant, and vulnerable all at once.