I was born 6 lbs. 9 oz. with blond hair and blue eyes.
I was also born gay
Soon after my uneventful birth
I was given the name Ember Hines,
but this wasn't the only name I would be called.
As I got older,
and came to terms with my sexuality ,
people started replacing Ember with ****** or *****.
Constantly ridiculing me for something I had no control over.
I am anorexic.
And you would think people would ridicule me for this instead of me being gay.
Surely they would see how unhealthy it was
and see that in comparison liking girls was no big deal.
No, they applauded me complementing my toothpick wrists
and porcelain bones peeking through my too thin skin.
How could I not fall in love with my illness?
Every calorie I counted
and every pound I dropped made me feel prettier.
Every meal I skipped,
every sip I didn't take,
got me closer to perfect.
Every day that I felt fainter
was a day that I could celebrate being thin,
And forget that I was gay.
Halfway through my freshman year
I had come out, recovered, and collected my being once more,
but
By that same summer I relapsed.
Riddled with anxiety and pain, realizing I may not be the gender I was born as, being home alone for days on end,
I sought after an old friend who brought me comfort even in my own bruised skin,
anorexia.
Everyday I felt dizzier,
was a day my mind couldn't register the gay thoughts.
Instead of spending time with my "boyfriend" or friends, I spent hours googling how many calories are in a stick of gum and how many calories you burn chewing that gum for an hour. It burns 11 calories while the gum is only 10.
-1
I became so obsessed with that negative number, because something in my mind had changed.
Positive became negative.
Being gay stayed in the back of my mind And as the number on the scale took its place in my focus
Anything I gained soon became guilty cries
Anything I lost became a celebratory glass of water.
And I got lost in the victory, because who doesn't like to win?
In between my nonexistent meals I watched anorexia documentaries like church sermons.
I wasn't supposed to go to church anyways, I liked girls
I watched them over and over
Not deterred by how unhealthy these people were,
but entranced by how their bodies were so sharp and how they seemed so frail.
How each of their pale figures were slim enough to wrap an arm around
In my time at private school I knew what loneliness felt like.
I was the poorest and
Weirdest.
I was the only one without a dad.
So I got bullied, by middle school I had thought about killing myself
In 8th grade things looked up
But when I looked down,
I saw a chubby body destined to be with another girl.
I never forgot how alone I felt
Now I feel that feeling in my stomach
Stomach acid accompanied by small morsels of low calorie foods.
Small body shaking from the cold of emptiness.
A lot of times anorexia has a nasty side effect of depression.
In most cases one causes the other
You feel depressed and not good enough so you starve yourself to feel better
Then comes the brief happiness of accomplishment
Then tumbling fall of
"What have I done to myself?"
So now I ask you, would you spend your days counting your calories just to see your bones?
Would you starve yourself to forget you were gay?
Would you lose yourself to be perfect?
This poem means a lot to me. I wrote it to show that people who are struggling are not alone, we all have our issues. I wrote it in prose-poetry form to help tell the story. Hope y'all like it:)