She looks at me and says, “I tried an eating disorder once. It didn’t work; it left me hungry and bored.”

I try not to laugh in her face, to let my mouth open like it does on the nights I spend peering over the toilet; hoping something better will come out than what I forced in. Trying to forget the roll of hunger in my stomach the the thunder during a storm. I did not eat enough but at the same time, I ate too much.

She skipped one meal, told herself it was enough while I drank water and punished myself for it because even though water has no calories, what if it does? What if, like every other industry, the producers are lying for profit? I can hear their laughs in my ears - smothering, suffocating, screaming as I drink another gulp and the lump in my throat won’t go away but neither will the lump on my stomach.

She keeps her nails manicured for the boys, while I keep mine trimmed because the scratches on my throat, my torso, and thighs are trying to dig out the demons inside me; the extra pound I gained after saying ‘yes, please’ to another helping instead of ‘no, thank you, I am full’ with hunger in my eyes like the predator stalking a prey. Except who is the predator and who is the prey? I still don’t know.

She asks my why I waste my time counting my calories, while I wonder why she wastes her time watching me die. I apologise with films and popcorn filled with butter instead of air, with empty laughs and filled eyes — filled with tears as I sit in my friend’s bathroom; poised over her toilet, trying to wonder if she can hear the retching over the faucet that runs.

It runs like I wish I could; runs without a worry and I dream in class about being skinny, having curves like a river for men to ride on because men like meat, not bones but when it comes to the amount of meat I have, it is too much. I think about my grandfather telling me, if I lost more weight, the boys would come chasing and even though that isn’t my preference all the time, it makes me guilty.