I completely get this. When I was in college and my anorexia was bad (later they diagnosed me with depression & social anxiety), people just didn't get how hard life was for me, exercising 4 hours daily, restricting food and only eating a decent meal and maybe a dessert when I met up with my friend from college. She was the only real friend I ever made, and now she lives in Connecticut, so I never see her or hear from her, except the occasional email. Even she thought I didn't have an eating disorder because I ate normally around her, and she had no clue I'd spent the week burning off calories for that one normal meal. I did all kind of weird stuff, and my brain was all the time on food and calories.

People on pro-"ana" (pro-anorexia) or pro-ED forums wanted to get thin. Nearly everyone wanted the official anorexia diagnosis which back then was a certain BMI and loss of your period for at least 3 monthsr. People who lost their periods would post, and I'd be jealous (mine took a very low weight to go away). A lot of people there, myself included, wanted to be bad enough for IP (ironically I was but never thought so) and have the feeding tubes the whole 9 yards. Just crazy.