Anxiety
A ball of prickling fire tearing beneath my sternum.
Fear
A bolt of electric ripping through my veins.
Depression
A cloud so thick is suffocates my soul.
Anorexia
Starving the outside from within.
Bulimia
Inhaling the world and purging it back.
Failure
Being crushed by society for all of the above .....

And still wondering why oh why is it me???

Why?

Don’t stand for too long
Or even wiggle
Because that's exercise
And exercising is a behavior
Unless it’s time for the daily walk;
Then you must go
Even if it hurts and you feel like a dog
On an invisible leash.
Never spend too much time alone
In a room away from the people you barely know
With whom you are stuck all day and night and
Forced to share toilets and
Puked-in shower drains and
Cramped kitchen counters and
Painful secrets you wouldn’t even tell your mother.
Precious heartbeats spent alone
Are called isolating and they are bad.

A smear of avocado hastily forgotten on a butter knife
Raises suspicion and a quarter teaspoon more must be replaced.
But heaven help you
If you pour a milliliter too much orange juice.
This is disordered behavior
And the few offending drops must be poured out.
Time will teach you
That wholesome rosy-faced girls much younger than you are
Holding clipboards with your life on them
Will treat you like a child
And disregard your hard-earned quarter-century
As a fish disregards an airplane.
Black tea past three o’clock is criminal;
It must be eschewed
Lest the minuscule amount of caffeine
Affect your sleep eight hours before bedtime
And override the Seroquel and the Ambien and the lithium.

And don’t you ever shut the door or flush the toilet
‘Til they’ve come in
To ogle your **** and ****
And when you’ve finally proven yourself trustworthy enough
To shut the door and flush
Never stay in for more than three minutes,
Even when taking a dump.
You will be suspected of purging
And you will be grilled like that eggplant you didn’t taste
Until you beg them to take your blood and say
Please please check the electrolytes and the pH
And I will even *** in a cup!
I don’t care! I just need you to know
I’m telling the truth.
And never say you feel sick to your stomach
Especially when it’s true.
That’s just an excuse people like us use
When we want to yodel to God
On the big white telephone.

Thirty seconds stolen in your room
To brush unruly hair is forbidden
Unless your waist-length hair
Is nearing dreadlock status
Because you might be Up To Something in there.
You can say **** but not fat
Unless you are justifying a tablespoon
Of Catalina dressing
To the Food Police.
You can’t have a hand mirror because
You might smash it and hurt yourself
But you will be surrounded
With lovely, breakable little picture frames
Full of inspirational quotes.

If you’re upset at dinner
It’s called anxiety.
If your heart hurts and skips beats
From years of puking your guts up every day,
It’s called anxiety.
If you need your space
It’s called anxiety.
If you can’t meditate
And you get so bored that
You let a juicy pregnant wolf spider crawl
Over your hand and arm seventeen times
And instead of OM SHANTI OM your inward chant
Is I Am The Walrus
It’s anxiety.
If you tell them you’re not anxious
It’s anxiety.

You can’t have your wallet
And your phone at the same time
So you’re less likely to run away
But they never check to see
Where your debit card and ID went off to
When you trade in your wallet for your phone.
They never notice the triumphant curve on your lips
Nor the slight stiff rectangle
In the breast pocket of the flannel shirt
That is perpetually around your waist.
You will keep these with you
All day and all night
In case someone drives the final corkscrew
Into your ear and you must vamoose
Before you find yourself
Floating white-knuckled in a deluge of blood
Grasping a cheese grater
Surrounded by seeping lumps of people meat.

But this house models the real world.
You are sick and you have no idea
What’s best for you.
After three weeks they know
Exactly how you work
And if you don’t agree with that
You are wrong.
You will relapse one day.
If you don’t agree with that,
You’re wrong and you will die
Because you can never quit cold turkey with food.

You must learn to enjoy the food
That you fight and claw and scramble to make,
To enjoy each perfectly metered tablespoon
Of peanut butter,
To delight in hastily and stressfully prepared dishes
Upon which you are terrified to put condiments
For fear of being told the selection is inappropriate,
To relish weak iced tea with no ice because
Someone took it all and never filled the tray,
Sparingly seasoned with two Splendas,
Carefully handed out and locked away by the keyholders,
Never sweet enough,
Never ever sweet enough,
The real sugar of real life replaced by
Bitter ******* brandied with the saccharine syrup of so-called safety.

You say, "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”
but I say surely something

must taste nicer than the burning acid
being forced back up your throat.

Why not hug people instead of
toilet bowls? At least they’ll hug back.

Except Mia is your only friend now.
And her cousin, Ana, of course.

And I understand that you never
wanted to die, but this is a thousand ton truck

hurtling towards the edge of a cliff and
Ana took the wheel a long time ago.

There is no strength in this: in you, in a
fear of calories. Even your bones creak

as your muscles sigh with exhaustion -
for this, is not a war you're winning.

This is a battle with only one contender
and I will not be the one to disarm you.

That's your job and it always has been. I know
you only wanted to be beautiful

like all those stars in the magazines
you saved under a file titled ‘thinspo’

but the only stars you ever saw were in
your eyes from the dizziness

and to tell you the truth, you are not pretty.
For there is nothing “pretty”

about the layer of fuzz your body grew
to protect itself from the big bad wolf

when really, the only growl was coming
from inside your stomach.

Or how your little sister is afraid to touch,
let alone hug you, in fear of snapping you in two.

For there is no glamour in having to
remove clumps of hair out of the plughole

at least six times whilst having a shower,
just to let the water run down.

Or that one time you "accidentally”
took too many laxatives. Messy.

There is nothing admirable about the way
you sat shivering on your bed

at night instead of kissing boys,
or dancing, or eating ice cream.

There is nothing to be marvelled at
in dying.

This, is not a life to be lived.
God, this isn't even a life.

This is being a slave to your own body,

a walking zombie, a ghost stuck
between two sides.

You are not alive.

But it was all still worth it, right?
Slowly killing yourself from the inside out.

A small price to pay for perfection,
a bargain for a broken mirror;

for a half-written book
with 97 blank pages,

a camera
that only captures in black and white,

a clock
with frozen hands.

And most importantly, for a peace of mind
you never received.

No refunds.

You say fat girls can’t have eating disorders.

When I longingly look at size 0, double zero jeans,
Doll clothes, for dainty ******* princesses,
And shopping becomes the newest form
of cruel and unusual punishment,
It’s okay.
Girls like me are like that,
and
Fat girls can’t have eating disorders.

When I skip a meal,
or two, or three,
Or live for a week on nothing but diet soda and apples,
I think nothing of it,
because
You say fat girls can’t have eating disorders.

When my fingers go down my throat,
shredding skin with ragged nails,
And I obsessively rid myself
of every
single
particle
I am not sick.
There is nothing wrong.
Because
You say fat girls can’t have eating disorders.

You look at me, at my ******* and thunder thighs,
and stretch marks from head to toe,
in all my imperfection
and tell me
Fat girls can’t have eating disorders.

You say fat girls can’t have eating disorders.
Maybe.
But really,
This is just my polite way of suicide.

Stuck in a room built by terrifying numbers – big numbers. The front door marked 130, 125, 120, 115… Mom’s hand reaches and pulls the door open. Twenty seven bones shut it tight.

2. Blueish glow from a sticker encrusted Dell. 500 sit ups documented on screen. Twenty four ribs transferred into megapixels. Hundreds, thousands, millions of skeleton sisters silently screaming. Intertwined by sharp edges.

3. One pile of 206 bones fast asleep under a magenta comforter. Three sets of arms pulling the bones back to Earth. Too many tears to keep track of.

4. Zero smiles at the breakfast table. There is a 92% chance of precipitation by the looks of moms quivering lip.

5. One fiery ball of hot gas. 206 bones soaking in the ultraviolet rays. Nineteen ribs poke through a white Hanes t-shirt. One wrist full of red shadows. Only one scar remains and I can’t even remember it.

6. 52 bones- three steps forward, two steps back. Forward, forward, keep moving forward.

7. 1 New York style cheesecake. 707 calories. 117 per slice.

Dancers can't have eating disorders.
We are meant to be thin.
We are made this way
We are made to hide food
to starve
to throw it up
As long as no one sees us
As long as we can fake it
Cause as dancers
We have to fake it till we make it
And we aren't going to make
it if we are as fat as pigs.
People don't like watching hogs dance.
Don't worry the mirrors will tell us if we are the size of a stick or a stump.
So no I don't have an eating disorder
Dancers can't have those.
We are created this way.

{SM}

I see a lot of glamorising of eating disorders
everywhere

what is so glamorous about sticking your fingers down your throat
using laxatives because you cant cope
starving yourself

there is nothing glamorous about eating disorders
they're mental illnesses which need to be addressed

I have an eating disorder
and I can tell you this
there's nothing glamorous about this
not one little bit

Depression is sad
Awful
Horrible

But if you are attempting
To be positive
I guess you could say
That it has it's pluses

For instance:
I no longer fear death

I can climb to the sky
Walk as close to the end
As I like
I can jump from higher
And do more

For it has been quite awhile
Since I last feared death