"Fear leads to control which leads to manipulation."

You hit the nail right on the head when you said that to me, and you knew it, with one sentence you summed up my entire existence. Fear is the real f-word here. Fear of not being in control, so I take control by manipulation.

Manipulating my situation, manipulating food, manipulating you* so I can feel safe, so I don’t fear.

But it all circles back around, and I’m afraid again.

Two and a half years clean
and I still miss it every day,

it used to be hard for me
even to know there was a
bottle in my cupboards,

now, it’s just a lingering
thought, an ever present
"this is an option"
kind of like suicide

but suicide I’m much
more grateful for,

not that I want to die,
but that I want that control,
I’ve been saying so since I
was thirteen years old

that I’m not afraid of death,

I’m just afraid of not
being in control of it.

- S.G.

I pick at my skin,
pull at my fat, measure my
thighs, arms, shoulders, hips
and say things like,

"I wish I could just be normal."

but you don’t realize what that means,
you don’t realize that fat is not just a physical
feeling, fat is everything I hate about the world,
everything I hate about waking up, everything
that I am deathly afraid of,

fat is everything I wish I could say to you
to make you understand all the insignificant
things throughout the day that make me go crazy

"I wish I could make this all go away."

I wish I could make myself go away

I wish the
400 calories,
500 calories,
600 calories less

could make me disappear

I wish being empty
was as fulfilling as my
head tells me it is.

- S.G.

This isn’t something you just live with. You don’t wake up every morning and think, ‘I won’t eat for the day, and that’s okay.’ And when you plunge your fingers down your throat after every meal the scars that form on your knuckles remind you that you can’t even think for yourself anymore.

It is total loss of control.

Your heart is in the wrong place, the inside of your head a minefield.

but at least you’re empty, the voice says.


But the truth is, you’re just afraid. You’re so ******* afraid of what will become of you if you let that meal sit in your stomach.

Get rid of the weight so you won’t sink, you’ve got to be a featherweight to float on these tides.

The other girls don’t matter, the magazines and billboards, the unkind words written on the bathroom stall; fat. pig. ugly. ****. They don’t matter either, what’s in your head has nothing to do with the outside world, it’s all a matter of what you want, what you can’t see in yourself.

But let me tell you this;
if happiness was a number on the scale,
if joy came in a diet pill, if collarbones and rib cages
could fix the constant ache inside your chest,
if you could purge away your sins, if you could
just lose five more pounds and be happy,
you wouldn’t be here in the first place.

Things would be so simple again.
But things are not.

And I’m sorry, I’m sorry. I’m so ******* sorry that you hurt. I’m sorry that you’re insides twist and your head shouts those angry words at you when you’re sad.

Always sad.

But you are beautiful, my dear,
and I can’t help you **** yourself,
I don’t want you to feel this torment that I know all too well.

The last thing I want
in the whole entire world,
is to see you, be like me.

- S.G.

I was promised that it is worth forgiving you, and that reassurance couldn’t have come at a better time.

Last night was spent in anger and frustration, because I love you, and the numbness has gone; so my heart is flooded. I’m drowning. There are times that I still want to hurt you like you did to me. There are also times that I want to hold you and never let you go because I’m afraid if I don’t hold tight enough, you might slip from my grasp.

Tasting another person after 18 months of me, and only me, what does that feel like? Are you afraid? Are you satisfied? Are you disgusted with yourself?

I don’t want to know her name anymore. I don’t want to know that she comforted you when I couldn’t, because that’s my job and I know you know that no one will ever love you the way that I do. No one will ever hold that place in your heart but me.

How can I say that I know that, when you did something so vile and out of character? Because that’s exactly what it was, out of character, and It must have felt empty. It had to or you wouldn’t have stopped yourself, you wouldn’t have told me. That’s how I know.

No one has ever loved me or hurt me the way that you have, the way that you do, and I really, sincerely believe that I’ve found what I need in you. I’ve found the love that everyone searches for, and I cannot give up on that.

I can’t ***** out my only source of light when I know there’s so much darkness to face ahead of me.

- S.G.

I have some of
the deepest hatred
for people who use other people’s
names in poetry,
and music,
and anything that’s art.

I believe that
you are supposed to
be able to relate to art.

And when I read
someone else’s name
All I can think is,
that I really am
completely and utterly
on my own with my feelings.

****, I really am alone.

-S.G.

We laid in perfect silence
only broken by the occasional
"I can hear your heartbeat."

Just laying
breathing
listening

Getting a glimpse of our future
"I wish we could just stay here."
we whisper in the darkness
as our time runs out

When our time’s up
there are too many words
that I should say to fill you up
before I leave
to keep you full
until next time

But I will settle for “I love you and I promise I will see you soon.”

-S.G.