I haven’t weighed myself in weeks. I have this incessant itch inside of me longing to know what numbers I ring up to be. But everyday I hear another gnawing voice say,
“You are not a number, you are a person. A number does not define you. What defines you is your kindness, your efforts, the way you live your life.”

But what happens when the way I’ve been living my life for the past year and a half has been nothing BUT numbers and scales and nutrition labels and dysmorphia. What happens when my efforts have only been reduced to reducing myself? What happens when kindness overflows towards others, but I cannot even look in the mirror and say “I love you.” What happens when you are completely consumed by something that refuses to let you consume?
-Does the tunnel end soon?

The soles of my feet,
raw.
Mile after mile, i run
To clear my mind, but deep down it’s to see how far away I’m able to get from this version of myself

My spine,
bruised.
Sticking out like thorns in a garden, piercing the skin
Every sit up brings me closer to pain.

Fingers and toes,
cold and brittle.
The blood does not flow fast enough anymore to keep me warm.
Once iron filled, now ghostly pale.

But
don’t you dare try to write me off 
as if I am completely broken
when all I am is cracked.

I will learn how to fill the missing pieces,
the parts that slowly dissipated behind closed doors.

Trust me,
I am worth salvaging.

Pieces of myself that I gave away
came back to me shattered
in every which way.

Something is changing and
I don’t know what,
but I don’t feel the same.

So many thoughts I’ve never said,
I’m beyond tired of holding my breath.
The things I’ve been feeling deep within,
I don’t ever want to feel again.

The water is rising in my lungs,
and I am drowning from the inside out.
I can’t ever seem to find solid ground
but I always make sure to keep kicking,

constantly searching for the coast.
So pour a glass, make a toast.
Because here’s to recovery,
the thing I’ve searched for the most.

eat-ing dis-or-der
/ēdiNG diˈsôrdər/
noun
1. Waking up every single morning with the same thoughts you’ve had for the past 9 months. How flat will I look today? Are my ribs poking out any further? Does my spine look any more sickly than before?
2. Weighing yourself before you go to the bathroom. Then after you go to the bathroom. Proceeding on and on throughout the day, as followed.
3. Being so hungry, you’re simply not hungry anymore. More so, just exhausted. (Being exhausted is a good thing, because that’s when you can finally fall asleep. That way your mind doesn’t have to keep nagging you about the hunger pains you feel in your stomach.)
4. Wearing 2 sweatshirts & 2 pairs of socks under 3 blankets, yet still feeling the icy pain running through your veins. You try anything to stay warm. Coffee helps, but only for a few minutes. Steaming hot showers are nice for the time being, but stepping out into the cold air, feeling your already brittle hair turn into shards...it’s hell. (Ironic, right?)
5. Not being able to walk past a mirror without pulling up your shirt to check your stomach for the 20th time today. I’m not vain, trust me. Far, far from it. One of the last things I’m capable of feeling right now is love towards myself.
6. Longing for a way out. Laying on your bed in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, just wishing that there was a ******* off switch to all of this. Every ******* morning to every ******* night. You know what you’re doing is wrong, but at this point you don’t know who you’d be without it. That voice, I mean. That voice that never goes silent, even when you politely beg with tears brimming at the eyes. You try so hard to push it away, and to remember a time in your life when you were “normal”. When you could wake up and actually enjoy breakfast. It was your favorite meal of the day.

Now, you can’t even fathom a “favorite meal”. The empty plate, the clean spoon, the untouched napkin. Everything except the food- which is now harrowingly the perfect vision of your “favorite meal”.

she's inside me.
sitting in the back of my throat.
i can feel her presence there,
feel her beckoning me.
i reach my hand out to take hers but
she's always just out of reach.

all she brings is pain.
i don't even know her name.
but i love her anyway.

hate to *****.
can’t stand the protest
of an upset stomach, the heave
of bile and undigested food,
the carve of acid in the esophagus.
okay, i don’t like that part much myself.
but i do like the cool porcelain on
my face, the solid of tile beneath
my ****. most of all, i like my belly
emptied, even temporarily,
of food.
of fat.
of pain.

I am a faceless creature
Turned into a sexualized doll
Little girls soon will grow into a toy
Watch your back little girl
Be beautiful
Be the someone the beast wants you to be
Evil is real
Love is rare
They want you for that moment in time
Not because of your worth
But because of those pretty little legs they can spread
Lie their turning the sound of your crying into a sexualized moan
They won’t even know their pleasure
Is the same scars you cut into your body
Trying to get them out of you