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"This is how I’m going to die”
The thought echo’s through my mind,
As her silhouette slowly moves in front of me.
I knew her shape well enough.
I knew she preferred sun-dresses on days like this,
And I knew she would be reading today’s paper,
Liking the way the coarse paper felt in her hands.
I knew that this was her favorite coffee shop
Because it was directly across
From a flower stand which filled the air
With a light and sweet perfume.
So as she sat in the seat across from me,
and waited for my welcome before she could resume
reading the paper, which she read
with passing interest,
I was left with only this thought,
This is how I’m going to die,
Or perhaps this is how I wish to die,
Wishing and wanting more than anything in my life.
To pass into whatever is beyond knowing as much of this woman,
my love,
To hold as much of her as I could.
I wish that joy etched it's name into my bones, the way despair does.
Happiness is flighty and wisp-like,
While sorrow sinks and clings to hope until it erodes it all away.
Exuberance doesn't follow one around for more than a day, a season, a minute, yet depression can stalk it's prey for a lifetime.
My main thought is that, if joy is so good, why does it leave so quickly, and if despair is so bad why do I cling to it so tightly.
If I only had today
It would be enough
To remember the pain
Of my family.
Those born from the same earth as me.
To feel the sorrow of those weeping.
To mourn with those who are mourning.
I would paint myself black
With the soot made mud
With the tears of the oppressed
Of those slaughtered in cold blood
I pray that if I only had today
I would spend it not focused on me
But, rather, those who are on their knees.
If I could only take their pain
And lay it in my grave,
That would be enough.
I ate too much for breakfast today
And lunch was spent wondering if I should slip away
Wondering if I should go back for seconds
**** it, why not?
My feet jiggled nervously under the table
Trying to think of an excuse to leave
Trying to figure out how much the barbeque chicken pizza would hurt on the way back up
Trying to figure out how much I’d regret it
Trying to figure out if my body was okay
My self esteem balloons up and down
Somedays I look in the mirror and like what I see,
Think I look cute and quirky in my glasses and skirt,
Think my body is almost okay
And then like black crossing over to white, like a light switch flipped on
No inbetween
All of the sudden I am ugly
My body takes up too much space
Loving myself, loving this body seem like an impossible feat
The little critic in my head is back
And he wants to move back in,
I’m not cured
Recovery is not about loving your body
Recovery is accepting it
I’m still working on that
The calculator in my head wakes up,
Regenerates every time I’m around  food
My hands still hover over the diet soda before forcing myself to pick something that scares me more
I still have to bargain in my brain
Eat a salad so I can eat ice cream and cookies
Skip lunch so I can have a big dinner
Strip naked in front of a full mirror,
Watch my body standing up, bending over, sitting
Grabbing, pinching, prodding, poking
Surveying this piece of meat
This thing
This body
That I know I need to be kind to
I weighed myself for the first time in almost a year
My toe lingered over the cold surface of a scale
Like a child about to dip his feet into water
I knew standing on that scale could drag me under
And I did it anyway
Loving myself is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done
When self hatred has been tamped into my soul
When my eating disorder was the only thing I good at
This secret lover, the most attentive one you could have
Took my hand and showed me how an empty stomach could feel like love
My eating disorder was my best friend,
The abusive relationship I kept going back to,
The most interesting thing about me,
The thing that was killing me
Having an eating disorder is easy;
Allowing yourself to slip into a disease out of your control
Having someone else make all your decisions
Your life reduces itself to the numbers on the scale
The slipping numbers on the scale assure me that everything is alright
But I can’t live like that
Having an eating disorder is easy;
Recovery is hard
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