I was 17,
when we discussed workout routines in gym,
thin legs branching from ruby-red shorts,
skin pale and dappled in winter air.
I described my workout of 200's.
200 crunches, 200 sit-ups, etc. etc. etc.
"You make me feel fat,"
my model- built friend complained.

I stared down at my shrinking thighs,
wondering how fat she would feel,
with hollow spaces beneath her skin,
numbed by the gnawing of metabolism on muscle.
If she could feel her labored breaths circulate
through drained limbs,
and saw the stars and sparks in the haze of exhaustion,
that perpetuated around me.
If she shivered
walking home in without a coat in December
simply because
Cold burned more calories than warm.  

At 17, I learned
Electric blankets were invented for asylum patients
so they wouldn't freeze when they were lain outside
to get fresh air.
I shivered under mine in a warm house--
strangled by three layers of hoodies,
a morbidly comical scene-- the skeletal inmate cowering
in masses of cotton
and still cold.

The skeleton in the mirror had no eyes,
Only its bloated stomach stared back at me.
Forget the thigh-gap,
the stomach was the only thing that mattered.
It should be as flat as the unleavened bread
I refused at communion:
I didn't know how many calories it had.

I was 17,
when the word "beauty" fell from my vocabulary.  
Lank, unwashed hair hung limp to hide the
Inflamed scratches on my face: feeble efforts to eradicate
the hatred, guilt, over two extra bites,
and what I had become.
Here I was, in all my gollum-like, two by four perfection:
except the stomach.
That ****** bloated *****
I wished I could tear it from my body,
Throw it aside to rot on the heap
of moulding high-school dreams
I kept in the corner of my room.

But it remained, day after day,
the stubborn thing stayed on,
even when filled with saltwater,
to force it to give up the last bit of its contents.
Three mugs, and several tablespoons later
it finally relinquished,
in the emergency room,
as my mother stood
holding my hair and crying.
I still thought she was over-reacting.

I looked up at the ER doctor,
middle aged and blonde,
her eyes were sympathetic, but annoyed,
As she asked me if I was trying to **** myself.
"No," I said. Not Yet I thought,
I heard my dry throat crack with the words,
"I have an eating disorder."

It must be hard
If you're not depressed
To understand the difficulty
Of just getting dressed
It must be hard
If you don't starve
To imagine winter woollens
Hats, gloves and scarves
In the summer.
It must be hard
If you don't ***** your food
To understand the waste
Once it's been swallowed and chewed
It must be heard
If you don't hear voices
To imagine
Someone else
Dictating your choices
It must be hard
If you don't have compulsions
To understand the urge
The panic and convulsions
Of just saying no.
It must be hard
If you don't have an attachment
To a narcotic or a bottle
To understand how it can
Throttle you, to just one more hit.
It must be hard,
If you don't cut at your wrists
To understand
How someone could do this.
It must be hard
If you don't suffer highs and lows
To understand how quickly
Such a feeling, comes and goes
As it pleases.
It must be hard
If you've never had a chemical imbalance
In your brain
Or a contributing factor, a stressful event
To understand the insane.

It's not like a broken leg,
A sprained wrist, the flu
Where someone can easily
Treat and diagnose you.
It's not something that just goes away
And I'm not trying to say
That everyone doesn't understand
I'm just lending a hand,
To those who struggle
To make sense
Of the dents in our thinking
The depths that we're sinking
The vacant eyes that are blinking
As we're thrown around inside
Our own minds.

2013 ©

I would love to say that I am a happy teenage girl
and that I've never drank
and that I've never done drugs
and that I have impeccable grades
and that I have a great relationship with my parents
and that I love my friends
and that I love to see the sun come up
and that I've never hurt myself
and that I've never smoked a cigarette
and that I've never been with boys much older than me.
But I would really love if someone asked me, really asked me, what was wrong.

i know i'm in deep
when thinking of you
feels like
thinking of me.