Grades 11/12 1st Dylan Clement, “Relapse”

Relapse

At the beginning of senior year, I thought I had gotten rid of my distorted eating Felt like my body finally deserved food Told myself I could drink something other than sparkling water Didn’t feel the need to suppress my appetite with the taste of menthol cigarettes That the number of calories in a stick of gum didn’t matter anymore

I call it distorted eating because it didn’t hurt the way you are supposed to when you have an eating disorder. There was never any lurching over toilet seats, Measuring wrists with my fingers, No sunken in cheeks, My teeth did not yellow and my knuckles never callused From the food I couldn’t afford to digest.

But every day I feel the black cloud that is guilt climb into my stomach and make a home in my digestive tract Playing god in whether or not I will feed myself something other than water. Tell me that vegetables are good and pasta is the bad

I miss the feeling of drinking cold water on an empty stomach Feeling the icy cold liquid drain into my belly Finding its home in the satisfaction of making me feel full.

I did not miss the voice in my head that screams at me To be beautiful, be pretty, skinny be perfect I dont feel perfect in this body

This body that calculates calories like a math test This body that feels like it will break with a strong gust of wind This body I do not like This body that I starve into submission

I wonder if I am the only one who is starving Wonder if The voices of girls just like me

Who dont eat cake on their birthdays, Live off of coffee and sugar-free red bull Go to sleep with hunger as their bedtime story I wonder if they know they’re dying

Training our bodies to photosynthesis, teaching them to live off of celery and sunlight we are broken a generation of girls on our hands and knees begging to be (Invisible) starting to like black coffee out of necessity Because cream is whole 35 calories and I have to fit into a bathing suit in 4 months

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it really even fall? In the same way, If a 16-year old stops eating and no one sees it, does anyone even notice she is evaporating? Notice she is disintegrating Ceasing to exist in front of our own eyes

Perhaps we should just be happy that we have managed to keep something alive But you can’t sing with your fingers in your throat You can cant breathe when all of your time is devoted To counting and mirrors and the inability to fit into our favourite jeans

I tell myself am I healing That my daily trips to the gym mean that I’m all back together That because I know that I need to eat even though I dont feel like I deserve it I am making progress.

Starving myself to the point where I’m intoxicated with my own pride Staring at the scale and feeling humiliated If any of my friends told me that these things have become the patterns of their lives I would scream. I wonder if they would do the same