My hands turn into fists as I clench them open and closed.  They are not longer hands, as they pulse like my racing heart and are nearly as nervous.  As I walk to the bathroom, as I have so many times before with a specific detrimental purpose in mind, I am overcome with anxiety and fear because I want to engage in older behaviors.  I want to stick a finger down my throat as if it is a snake that wants to swiftly swoop in and grab my unguarded uvula.  I want to convulse as I used to before the ***** would flood my mouth and body like a storm, shaking me violently from the wind and the rain.  I want to experience that far too familiar paradox of guilty grief and soothing relief after purging because it gives me a false sense of control.  But wanting is selfish.  My desire for pain must be curbed by some miracle, some ambiguity that is out of my control.  Plenty of people know about this monstrous eating disorder that has overtaken my body at various periods of time for nearly a decade.  Sure, I am clean and have been cured of all harmful organisms with which old habits had riddled my body, but they leave their dirt and dead skin behind.  And the remains of their bodies can still strangle anyone who is not careful. They try to pile up all over the thoughts that give me hope and life and allow me to breathe, and sometimes they nearly win.  When I can see nothing but these shells of things that once were alive and well inside of me, I must squeeze them out of my body.  I ball fists once again as my anxiety heightens and want to drain any life they may have left in the cells of their being.  I realize they are not completely dead, just dormant; waiting for the next host to come along and slither their way into these coats.  Again, I squeeze.  Draining the life from these beasts is the only way to avoid relapse and relapse is not in the question, as that would mean abandoning everything I have ever worked for and loved so dearly is gone.  It would mean I was gone.  I continue to press on this invisible stress ball.  As I go to the bathroom to do things any normal, fully functioning human being needs to do, I do this over and over again.  Tears stream down my face because the skins are all I can see.  They blot out the sunlight of hope but I do not give up.  I simply close my eyes because there is darkness there too, but it is the darkness that I can control.  I walk out into the world, slightly defeated, but also overjoyed that I was winning this vindictive war.  When an addiction takes over your life, there is no weapon except for hope that can compensate for the loss in such a battle.  Therefore, hope is a flower, and it thrives in me, every time I choose to make those nonviolent fists.