"You're so thin, what's your secret?"
It isn't cutting out carbs,
My secret isn't a diet in a magazine,
My secret is hidden under baggy sweaters,
My secret is the scale hidden under clothes in my closet,
My secret is exercising until I pass out,
My secret comes from feeling fat every second even when I'm being begged to gain weight by doctors,
My secret is placing my entire self worth on a number and the belief that others judge me by the same numbers,
My secret is a voice that is always yelling at me, telling me I take up too much space and need to be sick to be acceptable,
My secret is looking in the mirror at all the weight I think I've gained since the last time I looked, an hour before,
My secret is the desire to slice my fat right off,
My secret is the hidden food in my dresser that I told my mom I was taking for lunch,
My secret is hidden at the bottom of toilet bowls,
It's an empty laxative package,
It's fainting every time I stand up too fast,
It's numbers. It's all numbers. Calories. Pounds. Kilograms. Clothing sizes. Calories. Inches. BMI. Calories. It's counting, recounting, then deciding I don't desire it anyway.
It's striving for the lowest number, to have the lowest number, to be the lowest number,
My secret is comparing myself to everyone I see and always thinking I'm worse,
My secret is turned down coffee dates, parties, and sleepovers because there will be food there,
My secret is the word "fat" carved into my inner thigh with a blade from a pencil sharpener,
My secret hides behind every "no thanks I'm allergic" "I'm vegan" "I can't have gluten" and "I already ate",
It's being told curves are beautiful and nobody wants to date a skeleton but still not being able to believe it,
My secret is paranoia that everyone is trying to make me fat,
My secret is having nightmares of eating an almond then waking up with a racing heart and panicking,
You want to know my secret?
My secret is in the tenth grade my bmi was lower than my age,
My secret was tears shed in hospital beds,
My secret is being begged by everyone I love to just have a bite,
My secret is being afraid of eating fruits or drinking water because I think it'll make me fat,
My secret is getting on scales then off of them then on them then back off and still not trusting it,
My secret is a constant demand to be thinner with no point that will ever be enough,
My secret is that the only curves I want are the curves my ribs would make poking through my skin,
My secret is squeezing my fat until my nails pierce my skin,
My secret is feeling like I'm being suffocated by my own body,
My secret is dizzy days and cold skin,
My secret is that even through years of therapy I can't get the same amount of satisfaction from any person or accomplishment as I can from losing weight,
My secret comes from every hit from my mom, from every nasty word spoken by the girls who thought I wasn't good enough, from every guy's touch I didn't ask for,
I didn't get thin due to having willpower,
I got thin from becoming powerless
to a mirror that will never tell me I'm good enough until I'm dead.

The pretty girl with the wide smile,
that doesn't quite reach her eyes.
The happy girl with the loud laugh,
that doesn't want to socialize.

The quite girl with the long sleeves,
is starting to feel like a fraud.
The perfect girl with the straight hair,
is getting tired of the façade.

The pretty girl has a fake smile,
and is filling her body with cuts.
While, the perfect girl with the straight hair,
is puking out her guts.

The happy girl with the pretend laugh,
spends her nights crying to the stars.
While, the quiet girl with the long sleeves,
has a body full of bruises and scars.

So, not everything is as it seems.
Because, while everything seems fine,
these girls are full of silent screams.

Is it really possible for me,
to be what they want to see?
Though I've never done it before its there, the urge
it sit still as stone until violently it screams, "just purge".
The smell off food cooking is like poison yet i eat
and eat
and eat
until all I've done for an hour and a half is eat.
my skin quivers and crawls,
no escape from these four walls.
This house is like a prison cell,
all you can hear is the ringing of a bell,
though logically you no its silent,
but silence is most definitely violent.
And so the struggle begins again
to avoid that horrid gain.

Mother you should watch your girl tonight,
She's beautiful,  and it's misleading
I Saw her on the sidewalk bleeding,
Sickened by the thought of eating,
This pressure on perfection has got to end,
Before she ends up dead.

It's funny that something that could **** you
Something that probably will **** you
Can be so comforting

It's the one reliable thing you have
It's easy to fall into the patterns again
It's easy to hide it (to a point, but by that time you're too far gone)

Because it feels so good
To have your body disintegrate
To have your head swim and hands shake
It's better then the alternative, at least

I don't want to feel like I'm losing myself
But that may be the only way to go
Until my bones, my veins, they show
Because the alternative is **too dangerous

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

i think my body is
falling apart and i
know it doesn't have
to but it's so hard to
help yourself when
everyone else needs
your help more

I thought the world was big enough for me;
palms that hold the ocean together so
it doesn’t escape between locked fingers,
loveless wrists that drown in the abyss where
I occupy this space that isn’t mine.

I need to be less than I am to fit in between
bars,
so I can escape the prisons of this gruesome insanity
darling, stitch my bones together before
I collapse into scattered pieces
take away from the numbers and make them smaller
like my throbbing heart
and hide those starless veins where there’s no breath
and don’t forget to make a fortress out of my dying skin
for the birds no longer sing on delicate silk sheets

My demons don't like
the food that I eat.
They taunt me, sending me
running to the bathroom in defeat.

You are not worthy, they say
as I bow at their request.
That food was no good.
now the toilet bowl is my only rest.

My heart breaks, slowly
and pained tears begin to fall.
I have nothing left to give, I say,
I've already given you my all.

I stand and try without success
to wipe my steady tears away.
Looking in the mirror at my swollen eyes
I remind myself tomorrow is a new day.