Ribs hold this body together. They serve as a cage, in some sense-trapping me inside of this physical being that does not define me. What would happen if these ribs were to crack; to splinter at the center and crumble into sand? What if I lived outside of this body, outside of these judgements that come from the size of my waist and the space that I take up? I am fat. I am worthless. I am starving. I am not hungry for the food that I reject-I am craving the feeling of being nothing-of taking up so little space that I almost disappear. I am now the voice inside that continues to tell me that I am not enough; not thin enough, not smart enough, not worthy of living a life without the obsession with food.
2016
I collapse onto my bed and bury my shaking body under blankets, disgusted and filled with hatred. As I tuck my knees into my chest, I feel little rolls of flesh forming on my stomach and pinch them tightly. I imagine taking a knife and slicing off the layer of fat covering my abdomen. Alone in my bedroom, I pull the blankets up over my head and find myself in the darkness. And yet, I am bombarded with a deafening noise. Voices in my head scream at me for giving in, reminding me that food is the enemy, and that I have failed my beloved Eating Disorder. I hear my door creak open and quiet footsteps approach my bed. I feel the mattress dip down as my mother sits beside me. I remain wrapped up tightly in my cocoon of darkness but can feel her sad eyes staring down on me, filling with tears. Her thoughts are loud and through the blankets I can hear her thinking what she could have done better as a mother and how could she save her thirteen year old daughter. I feel her hand rest gently on my back, and with this motion I am filled with an overwhelming guilt and shame for the illness that has become such a burden.
“Please come down and finish your dinner,” she pleads, as she rubs her tired eyes.
I remain silent under the layer protecting me from the outside world.
With a sigh, she says, “Sarah, you have to go. This isn’t what I wanted for you but now it’s too late. You’ve made this decision by not eating, you know that.”
The flashes come back to me-the clementine and the blues and the purples.
“Mom, I can’t go. I’ll never get better if my entire existence revolves around a hospital. You know how much I’m motivated, Mom. You know I’m trying to get better. Please, just trust me.”
She knows that this is bullshit. She recognizes His voice, the voice that tells me to shrink smaller and smaller and grow hungrier and hungrier. She is not talking with me as her daughter, and she knows this. His voice has been present for so long that she barely recognizes the young girl that used to be me, her daughter, Sarah.
2015
I sit in the fluorescently lit office of my doctor on a Saturday afternoon. My tailbone aches as it presses against the hard wood of the chair. My chapped, blue lips are sealed shut, enclosing the hatred and disgust inside of me. Every day I live is spent within the bare walls of a cold doctor’s office, witnessing my parents unravel as they watch their daughter slowly kill herself. The doctor comes in-tells me more things that I don’t care to hear, that I don’t believe, that I hate him for. My lips crack as I smile at him as he takes my blood pressure. He examines the blue tint to my toe and fingernails then continues to touch the hair that grows thick on my arms.
“The lanugo’s getting worse,” He says as he runs his fingers through the layers of baby hair that keep my arms warm.
“Well, I’m eating,” I tell him. “It’s not my fault if my body won’t gain any more weight.”
“Have you been following your meal plan? Meeting with Doctor Suzie?”
He knows the answer to this. He gets an email every few days, updating him on exactly how many green beans I put into my mouth and the exact amount of steps I’ve taken. He knows about the fight last night, the one where I threw my burger at the wall and it stuck there, staring at me. He knows that when I woke up this morning, it was still there-reminding me of the damage I have caused and the disorder that my dinner brought to the family.
“I’ve been doing everything, seriously. Maybe if you just let me maintain this weight my body would get used to it? Like how do you even know that this isn’t my healthy body weight?”
I’ve asked him this before. I’ve asked everyone this before, everyone on my team of doctors and psychologists and psychiatrists and nutritionists. The answer is always the same, and today it is no different.
2016
When I faint, there are blue and purple hues with flashes of clementine orange. I am nothing, I feel nothing. The feeling of feeling nothing is something, the something that I have been searching for. The blues turn into grays and then into blacks. These colors are not throbbing or pulsing or even existing- they are nothing. Just like me.
I have reached it-the epitome of freedom. This hollowness that allows my being to escape the cage that is my body. Fainting brings me this new sense of living that is exterior to the physical self, that is untouched by the shame that the mirror brings. I remember the girls in my last treatment program talking about fainting; about the terror that comes with being unconscious. But I feel no fear. I feel safe in the embrace of a world outside this one that I am living in. No meal plans, no scales, no weight. Food cannot kiss my stomach in this state of being that is outside of the realm of the living. It is this high, this ultimate feeling of freedom, that chains me in the most severe of forms. It is this fainting episode that brings my mom to fall on her knees in desperation, that causes my doctor to put an end to outpatient treatment. It is this freedom of the body that lands me in a hospital, in a life of the weak and sickly, in a life that is not a life at all.
2010
Hair scratches against my forehead, crispy from the ocean’s salt and sharp like the pointy end of a blade of hay. The windows are halfway down and the dry air mingles with the scent coming from my McDonald’s bag. My mom’s raspy voice starts up, drowning the voice of Kelly Clarkson and spilling out onto the roaring freeway. My friend Sasha throws her head back and laughs, so entertained by the energy and passion that echoes in my mom’s singing. I look over at her, at my mom that is now rustling her short blond hair and pointing her finger at the dirty windshield as she drives. She is so in love with this life that she lives, and I can’t wait to be just like her when I grow up.
“We’re here, girls!” Mom says as she whips her Suburban into a parking space in the nearly empty lot. She shuts off the music and flings her door open, Sasha and I following her lead. It’s late June, which means Barnes & Nobles time. Sasha has her list crumpled in her sweaty palm and I can see the names of required reading books bleeding black on the white of the page. Mom has mine tucked away in a pocket of her purse, and I feel free by not having the burden of holding such an important document. We’re going into sixth grade, stuck in the awkward stages of being a kid and a teenager at the same time. Some of my friends have boyfriends, but the thought of a boy touching my skin makes me feel nauseous. Sasha always comes over to my house to hang out. She tells me that her mom has a stick up her ass and isn’t funny like my mom.
The front doors of the bookstore slide open and the frigid air of the AC grazes my naked shoulders. As my mom wanders towards the narrow aisles holding various editions of Southern Home, Sasha and I head towards the young adult section of the store. Sasha nudges my shoulder and points at the provocative cover of a book called How To Have Better Sex. We blush at the the image of a man licking the toned stomach of a naked woman. I finger the backings of cooking books, admiring the smooth touche against my rough skin and jagged hangnail. I rest on the fushia backing of a book labeled Girl’s Diet Book. Sasha’s in the next aisle, browsing the dimly lit hallway housing the horror stories and mysteries. I pull the book from its stance and hold it in my palms. The cover shows a young girl around my age, back towards me and looking into a full body mirror. I flip through the pages, because why not flip through the harmless content of a random dieting book for the sake of killing time. Upon finding the BMI chart tucked neatly between workout tips and foods to avoid, I take it. Because at this time, I am not yet an empty body housing the never resting calculator in my head. I am not yet the shadowed eyes, matte from pools of too many sleepless tears.
2014
The Kardashians. Perfect. I sit on the ottoman, spine aching from hunching over my full breakfast resting on the stool before me. I feel her presence, the anxious presence of my mother peeking from behind the door frame waiting to see the soggy granola pressing down my dry throat. This morning was the typical fight. My mother was in the kitchen before I could hussle down the stairs, attempting to make my breakfast as fatty and dense as possible. I picture her pouring mounds of sugar into my flavorless oatmeal, packing in calories that are outside of my meal plan. I envision her slicing a chunk of butter and melting it on the frying pan instead of using the calorie-free canola oil spray. He tells me that my mom wants me to be fat, wants to sabotage all that He’s done for me, for us.
My limbs ache and I can feel the flesh of my thighs rubbing together, chafing, as I try to get through this meal. The glob of vanilla yogurt repulses me, its silkiness I picture running down my throat and sticking to the pouch of my lower stomach. Mom unwrapped the end of the granola bar, to ensure that I wouldn’t be able to sneak it back into the pantry when she’s not looking. Then there’s the milk, its whiteness staring into my eyes reminding me that it soon will be a part of me. He reminds me not to drink my calories as I stare into the fatty waste that swirls in this glass. The numbers start pounding in my ear and soon I am lost in a world of calculations. Yogurt is around 180, so I’ll round that up to 200. Then there’s the granola bar, also 180. Add another 200. Then the fucking milk, so much better things to be eaten for 100. More numbers come to me, numbers of the future. Numbers that will come from sitting absent minded in the cafeteria with the people I pretend to enjoy the company of. Numbers that will come from the steak and mashed potatoes that will be forced down my throat later that night. The most from the two scoops of Chunky Monkey that I will attempt to detest but will feel the guilt of genuinely enjoying the taste of it in my mouth.
He scolds me, reminds me that none of this is worth what I am so close to having. The feeling of an empty stomach comes to me, the feeling of hollowness that is untouched by any outside force. The final release of this person inside of this body, this body that restricts and reprimands and repents. I crave this sensation of being nothing, of having nothing to weigh down this body that is mine. If this body is mine, then how come it doesn’t feel like it’s mine? I am living in the body of my grieving mother, of my vulnerable sister, of my manipulative doctors. These thoughts clump together in my temples, then roll down my nose into my sinuses. There is so much pressure in my cheeks, my fat bloated cheeks that will never be loved. He convinces me, promises me unknown words in my ear. With this, I turn and find that my mother has gone to help my brother get ready for school. In one fluid motion, the glass of milk is emptied. The plants have been fed, the window has been shut once again, and my body is freed from the thick liquid taunting me.
2015
Who is this girl, flashing crooked teeth and squinting into the August sun? She dangles her legs off of the edges of a tube shaped like a hot dog, her toes dipping into the lake. There are rings dancing around the tube, her weight creating tides in the tranquil surface. Her stomach hangs over her bikini bottoms and her chest is lifted towards the sky. She’s pudgy and content, grateful for her belly that has been filled with so many meatloaves cooked by Grandma and chocolate cakes made by Mom. She wears an adult’s life jacket with the buckles clipped loosely over her broad back. Her smile spreads across a freckled face, a face unblemished by the noise of sleepless nights. I admire this photograph, the way it captures a moment outside of the realm of hatred. The girl in this photograph is young, so fresh in this world that she lets the waves graze her body without shivering with embarrassment. She reminds me of a younger version of my mother, infatuated by this life that leaves her so full.
I rest this photograph in my lap, delicate with the life that I once knew. Her eyes have this depth to them, holding an immense presence that is now faded. Her light can be felt even through the dimension of a photograph, and I have destroyed this. As my chapped fingers press into the sharp corners of the photo, I resent the purple tint and fragility to them. These fingers were once itching for adventure, tingling with the hopes of creating something important. What have they created instead? They have created a mound of vomit swirling in the stomach of porcelain. They have created bruises on emaciated thighs that could never be thin enough. I envy the girl in the photograph, the Sarah that looks at her reflection and sees a human instead of an illness. That freedom of an empty mind, silent and welcoming of thoughts besides the tag on jeans. As she beams at the camera, she mocks me. She flaunts the possibility of a normal life, yet to be introduced to the seductive grasp of numbers slipping until reaching nonexistence.
2017
Trail mix or Fig Newtons? Today I opt for the trail mix. Jenny snuck into the snack room after hours last night and checked the labels on the back of all of the snacks and surprisingly, the Fig Newtons have more calories than the trail mix. I turn the corners of my lips up at Susan, the clinician monitoring snack today. She rests her hand on my shoulder awkwardly before I pass by her to meet the group at the long conference table. She joins us at the head of the table and reminds the six of us to roll up our sleeves and leave our hands where she can see them. Sheets of printing paper are then passed around, passing between different shades of blue fingers. Jenny is sitting next to me and I feel her pinch the fat on my upper arm. We smile at each other, already knowing what today’s pointless activity will be.
“So today we’ll be drawing what our eating disorders look like,” Susan says as she pushes the box of broken crayons into the middle of the table.
Recently, we’ve been talking about how our eating disorders, referred to by Susan as Ed, are separate voices inside of our heads. They’ve been teaching us about how Ed is just the mental illness talking and is not actually our own selves thinking.
“As you’re eating snack, just think about what kind of voices you’re hearing inside of your head and really challenge who is speaking. And if you’re feeling inspired, draw out what this voice looks like.”
We all take turns digging through the crayon box, no one too inspired to pour themselves out on this sheet of paper. As I touch the different crayons, I land on the red. This feels good enough so I bring the rounded tip to my paper. What does my eating disorder look like? I have no name for Him, He is nameless as I still believe that He is a part of me, Sarah. My immediate thought is to draw a demon, breathing flames and flaunting sharp daggers as nails. I imagine this is what Susan expects, looking out condescendingly on this group of teenagers starving themselves to death. But this is not what He looks like, not what he feels like to me. His touch is soft and gentle on my translucent skin. He is my savior, the only one on my side in a world where even my own mother wants me fat. As I sort through the different components of the trail mix, I start to draw a picture of myself.
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