Casey Conan
What is a Wapsi Girl?
A Wapsi Girl fights her demons. A Wapsi Girl embraces her flaws. A Wapsi Girl enjoys a good time. A Wapsi Girl follows her heart. A Wapsi Girl makes mistakes. A Wapsi Girl doesn’t buy into what she “should” be. A Wapsi Girl is who she IS. For better or worse.
I have a degree in rocket science. I don’t use it, but I have it. I have half a degree in psychology. I have 25% of a degree in dance. I design graphics during the week and drive a horse drawn carriage on the weekend. I promote my friends’ band and draw a somewhat crummy webcomic. I have lived in Philadelphia, DC, NYC, London, Austin, Allentown, Daytona Beach and Virginia (not in that order). I once slept in my car in the Churchill Downs’ parking lot in Kentucky after I had been driving all night when my ex fiancé dumped me at 3am. The next day, I won $16 at the track. I am missing a piece of my left thumb because I got it caught in a table saw.
In my life I have been a professional actress, a stage manager, a photographer, a bookseller, a web designer, an activities coordinator and a riding instructor. I am a daughter, a granddaughter, a cousin and a sister. I am ALL these things, but once upon a time I almost wasn’t.
I had an eating disorder for 15 years because (among other reasons) I got incredibly caught up in what I thought I “should” be. I “should” be thin. I “should” be in control. I “should” have died. I didn’t. I didn’t want to. I wanted to live. I wanted to run and taste strawberries and drink beer and wear clothes and pet puppies and feed horses and swim in pools. But I had to choose: all that great stuff, all that life stuff, or being thin. I chose life. I make that sound really simple. It wasn’t. It was years of sweat and tears and screaming and crying and hospitals and tubes and doctors. It was fighting and fighting only to slip back again. It was getting up and doing it all over again because I had to. But it was also laugher. And friends. Some of which are no longer here because their demons got the best of them. And it was eventually getting better, for myself, and because some of my friends no longer could.
Wapsi Girls come in all shapes and sizes, all professions and locations. They fight until they can’t fight anymore and then they get up and do it again. Then they laugh about it. And they’re damn good dancers. I am a Wapsi Girl. And I want others to be Wapsi Girls. To know they don’t have to look one way or act one way. They are great and beautiful and wonderful just as they ARE. And no number on a scale or in a pair of pants is worth all that good life stuff.
–Casey Conan
Website: http://bargeekblog.com
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