E.D.- D.E.

Day 1: FINE

Tip (note to self: Tips are only for people who want to end up like me.) : You know, if you wait until you're already late you have an excuse to skip breakfast. And, if you tell your friends that you had a huge breakfast, and that is why you were late to class/homeroom, again, you can skip lunch. No questions Asked.

Hey, reader. I could write a book of different ways not to have to eat. I don’t know what it is, it may be a control thing, like they say, the doctors, but I think, you just feel better when you’re empty inside. It’s like you’re getting somewhere you have been waiting to go. Every time you eat it feels like a huge detour and you spend your time waiting to be empty again, so you can get back on the road. Speeding wildly until you have to detour again….  
        I’m not anorexic you know. I don’t have a disorder.              I’m fine.


Day 2: INVISIBLE

   Tip: Drink 3 glasses of water before each meal. This way you will get full and not eat as much. Eat only until you are full, and cut your food into small pieces, but not super tiny (that says there is a problem) so it appears to be more.

                         No one knows. They don’t see anything wrong. I am healthy, I joke around, I laugh. There is no mystery to me how it happens. I mean who would really guess that the smiley size ten/eight depending blonde track runner would have a problem like this. It’s not even a problem, that was a bad choice of words, but if it were, lets say, it would be invisible.
                   Most  girls count calories, just some do it at different  times, like, in the middle of chemistry, deciding exactly how much dinner is burnable tonight. To think I do badly in math class, but to do well you have to do the homework, but I’m a little bored for that, and a little tired. I’m always tired.


Day 3: RELATIONSHIPS

      Tip: Exercise! As much as possible, especially after meals. Never be inactive unless you are sleeping. 2-3 hours of working out is best. Ezpecialy early in the morning before you eat anything, it eats away your fat stores.

                                I don’t even know why I’m writing this. It’s for me, I guess, trying to solidify what I know, or I think I know what this is. If it doesn’t hurt my body I can do it, and it is not anyone’s business. I can do it. I look fine, people think I’m cute. It doesn’t effect my relationships. Until the dinner table. In fact my relationships hurt it.
                         You know it’s their fault I’m like this. He always told me I was fat and ugly. He tore me down in front of the neighborhood, the family, his friends. He never wanted me, He said He was done having kids. She, She talked to her friends about me. How I was gaining weight, how I would weigh 500 pounds by the time I was 14 if I wasn’t careful. When I dropped weight She said I looked bad, that my cheeks were hollow, that I should  slow down. The nurse said I was healthy. And then, Her, ( note to self: She and Her are not the same) always watching me. Scrutinizing what I eat. It’s Her that puts so much stress on me, because of Her girl. The one with the real problem, who can’t have children anymore. While Her is watching everything is worse, forcing me to eat, even when The Shadow isn’t there.
                           They keep changing, I don’t understand them. He doesn’t say what he used to anymore. He changed roles. Saying the opposite, in his soft voice. Not His normal voice, his soft one. That murmur he attempts with me isn’t soothing or endearing. It gives me chills like nails and chalk boards, like clean hands on moist plates. It chafes against my soul and makes me hate him. It’s a menacing voice, tone, sound, I hate it when He talks with it, He always talks with it. That voice was made for another person, or people, and I know who they are, and I despise them…..
                                      She, she sets me free, now. She eases the stresses. I’m less obsessive with this one these days. I can eat, exercise, sleep, when I want. Almost normally. She trusts, doesn’t macro lens me. She is not a doctor, She doesn’t need to look that hard. She should be with me forever, if it weren’t for the other things she did, and if it wasn’t for Them……                   I can't take it, it's not mine, I can't take any of it anymore, I didn't do anything, these changing people. They take this blame.


Day 4: TRACK

        Tip: Never, ever go to sleep if you are in any way full. You should be hungry when you sleep. That is when your body stores energy for the nights fasting, energy=fat, and you are not a bear. Hibernation is not necessary.

                                  I run. Run                                            Run,
                                                        Run                    Run
                                                                      Run

up and down these hills. I have motives for running.  Everyone has a reason, a motive, an angle, an agenda, an alternate plan for exercise. They want to be known and to feel the fluorescent glory,  they want to attract and hopefully bang their gender of choice, they want to travel, they want to boast their impressive stats (note to self: statistics, or status are both referred to by use of slang term ‘stats’). They want to lose weight. They want freedom.
                           I wanted to lose weight. That is why I joined track. To force me into more exercise. I found, freedom. I am at ease about The Shadow’s existence while my paces pound hard and unyielding pieces of pavement. Though sometimes The Shadow accompanies me, he does not haunt me here. Not when I am this way. The ease comes from the knowledge that I’m burning all the food, all that stuff, away. I’m making it disappear from within me like a dove beneath a handkerchief or gasoline spilled on the ground. I know it will not taint me with it’s presence for long.
                        But you don’t understand, there is more to it. When I run, there is no one watching anymore. I’m alone in my world, and I don’t have to think if I don’t want to. I don’t have to be what is expected, I. Just. Go. This body, this place I’m bottled into comes open, and I, the real person, am free. Like fireworks, or exploded crystal pieces, or blown fairy dust, I float un-constrained by this physical cage, and I roam independent, or sail softly with the wind.
         TheyThem can not touch me here. TheyThem are the everyday people on the street, the talking numbers that ring clothes sizes, and the separate sides of every family. TheyThem are the common denominator, the ever present eye, Big Brother, and the witnesses who claim the Judges’ platforms.

                             …I hate  TheyThem.


Day 5: THE SHADOW

         Tip: Visit Eating Disorder Websites. The  success stories will give you tips on losing weight fast, hiding your problem(s), and…well knowing how screwed up you are in comparison.

                   The Shadow has a name in the real world. A name so common it’s a noun, a noun used by babies and other small people. They call him, hunger. But I don’t live in the real world if I can help it. In the place I am, hunger is not nearly as sinister a name for something so troubling. I have renamed him, The Shadow, an ever present force on my consciousness. Personification at it’s best The Shadow  is feared, in more than one way. I fear when he is there, because he hurts me. He gnaws my insides, burns the back of my throat, makes me tired,….so very tired. Makes me angry, so easily, incredibly irritated. I wish him                                                                                                   Gone
                                                                                           Gone
                                                                                           Gone .

         I fear his departure too. I fear the heavy feeling of nourishment. I fear the guilt, the guilt trips, the stress,  the panic, the failure, my failure………and , the questions, all the ‘Y?’s!
              
           Sometimes when he visits I am happy. I’m light and successful, my future self in view. Then again, after I’ve skipped too many meals I binge, and it hurts. My torso screams and breathes with the cramps of unused workings shocked into motion. The junk, the denied food, the trash, from old leftovers, to ice cream and potato chips, to whatever I could find, beats back from the inside. Then comes the worry, and soon after the panic, from being alone, without him. So I visit my bathroom. I sit at the toiletand push my fingers down my throat. My mouth waters, and my body shakes, but  my gag reflex is broken. So I get a toothbrush, but that doesn’t work either, so I sit and I shake and sometimes I cry, and tomorrow I have to explain my hoarse throat, marvelous. I can’t make myself sick, and Her is home, so now I mus do one of two things to bring The Shadow back to me: I stay curled on the floor and wait, for the pain to subside, in the middle of my room, and maybe the carpet will grow long and wild as jungle ferns do and eat me whole, I’ll be Venus Floor Trap food, or, I go running, until I can’t breath, I collapse, and The Shadow returns. Which ever of the three comes first. If you think that’s bad, sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night to crunch him back to life, I can’t sleep without him.
                   
             Talk about your safety blankets.

        Other times when my frenemy stays too long and my body aches with thoughts of the banned food, and I feel my willpower slipping from my grasp, I shut the door to my room and I lay quietly on my bed in the dark. I imagine I’m someone else, and soon I am asleep, I sleep him away like I sleep Her away, and He and They, Them, and their lies and judgments. I sleep my unhappiness (note to self: when I have things to be glad for) away, and I pray though I lack faith I have conviction at these times, that I don’t wake up…….for a long time.


Day 6: HEALTH

         Tip: Laxatives, and things to make a person throw up are not sold to people under 18. To by-pass this obstacle either buy prune juice and act like it is an errand for someone else, or, so to places where the registers are old and do not alert cashiers of age limitations. To minimize the condition currently called cashier curiosity  buy other everyday things so that they are too busy to notice any one item.

                 I didn’t know whatto call it, that it had a name, if it had a name, until health class. I figured I was just strange, or maybe in the danger zone, but  I didn’t have anything real. If it isn’t classified, if it doesn’t have a name it’s not real. We were beginning our eating disorders unit, first day, and I was sure I had it done, down pat. Tip 5 people, I knew what I was talking about, I had researched. Then this dumpling lady with a turtle head, neck, and eyes, begins to write on the board:
                                                           Eating Disorders-
                                                                      a. Anorexia
                                                                      b. Bulimia
                                                                    -type 1.
                                                                    -type 2.
                                                                      c. Disordered Eating

I had never heard of Disordered Eating.  I didn't know bulimia had two types. I had seen it on the sites but over looked it, as is my fashion. Tell me more. I thought. But she handed out a survey-says instead. It was about us, and our eating habits, no names please. I knew all the right answers, but I put in the true answers, because somewhere inside I knew normal people didn’t feel this way. I was scared, I remember, as though my circles were written in my blood that would animate it’s self later and cry out my name, that I would be followed by more fluorescent spotlights than my paranoia already had in store. Anonymous meant nothing but we'll find you later rather than sooner.
                   Then she talked about the board….finally. Explained the symptoms, and handed out a worksheet. My paranoia was a symptom, soon joined by; They, Them - The Shadow and his merry band of affects and effects - Track -The Tips - The Constant Stress. I was a walking symptom. No, I am a walking symptom,… no, syndrome, hear me roar.
       The heading~ E.D. --> Eating Disorder
           Sub heading~ D.E. --> Disordered Eating
                Subject~ yourself.


Day 7: PRETTY…PATHETIC

     Tip: Do not do anything I say, I’m pretty messed up. (note to self: proof lies in that  I do not think models and holocaust victims are too thin while they are wearing clothes sometimes, and thinking it once say you’re strange, thinking it more than once says you need help.)

            I hate it when they tell me I’m pretty. I hate it when they ask me why I don’t smile more. It’s because my cheeks make my face look fat when I smile, I know you are lying because those who came before you spoke the truth. I know you believe you, and they believe themselves, but that doesn’t make it any less of a lie. But He, Her, TheyThem , The Shadow, and Myself, we bunch of twisted travelers, we know the truth.


D.E. I eat disorderdly.

                  Classified E.D. - D.E. sometimes I just feel it should be
                                                                 backwards,   sound it out, D.E. - E.D. that's me, ...dead.  

       The End.