You may think you hate your body now but you have no idea what is to come. When you’re fourteen your self-hatred will be so unbearable that you’ll begin starving yourself in an attempt to gain some control. That same year self-harm will become your best friend and partner in crime to your restricting behavior.
You’ll try to make yourself sick and hit yourself in anger when you fail. Because you can’t do anything right. You lack the willpower and the determination to be thin. At least, that’s what you’ll tell yourself.
For the next three years you’ll never weigh yourself. Terrified of what the scale could read and when you finally do you’ll be horrified of the number. You’ll push yourself until you break and can hardly breath and yet you manage because you are finally doing it. You’re finally losing weight.
Thirty pounds less and you feel a false sense of relief. You are doing it and people are noticing. The positive responses you receive will make everything worth it. A fat girl losing a decent amount of weight cannot go without notice very easily.
And then the crash. You will gain the weight back and then some. The harder you try to lose the more you will gain. Until you give up completely to food and it becomes your life.
It will no longer be that you run away from food but instead towards it. It gives you comfort in the moment and self-injury saves you from the guilt that follows once the crumbs are brushed away and the wrappers hidden in the bottom of the trash can. The dishes washed so no one in your house will know. You think your family doesn’t notice your binge habit but they do.
As your grandmother falls ill and nears the end of her life you give up. Devouring loaf after loaf of bread in one night. You do not care who sees or knows anymore. You just want the pain to stop.
A treatment stay later and your back to your old ways. With the delusions in your mind telling you that you are going to be successful this time because you’re doing it the “healthy” way. That’s what you tell people anyway.
But the healthy way is eating the same pre-approved meal everyday when you restricting and eating everything else when you binge and purge. (You’re finally strong enough to make yourself puke.)
Then the night will come where everything stops and for a moment you can truly breathe but not just that. You will also cry, and scream, and for the first time feel as if you actually have your voice back and the ability to ask for help.
Peace&Love,
Rai
