Because if you try to tell me about the starving Ethiopian child while I am wallowing in self pity over the so-called imaginary fat growing, bubbling, spritzing across my thighs, I just might snap (like a slice of willow bark, like crappy Asian pencil lead, like the deadened tension between us). It is not to be more beautiful, ethereal and delicate. It is not for a pair of 00 jeans and it is not for the boy at the bus stop. I do not choose to starve- it was a wave I didn’t notice I entered until I was too far in. I didn’t realize I was anorexic until my finger nails were blue and I was passing out. I never saw it. Today, that boy, that one- the one I opened up to and told my history- he told me I wasn’t “that skinny”. And you tell me congratulations: you’re alive, and logically, I should be happy (because sun rises are so pretty, I can see, I can breathe) but there is a sort of self loathing you don’t understand. It grows, not in my appearance or sort of self vanity everyone associates, but as a part of me. I wake up, feeling the heavy thighs binding me to this bed. I never sleep on my stomach because I don’t want to feel my soft stomach against the duvets. I want to be hollow. I want to disappear. I want to fade between the folds of your mind.
And everyone is trying to save me. THEY KEEP TRYING.
I can’t leave without guilt. Because here is everyone, with lives (good ones, ones with potential), trying to convince me to live with stories of starving children, stomachs protruding from stick thin limbs, shoving brownies in my face, telling me that one day I will love it I will love to eat I will love myself. Can I tell you that it has been 4 birthdays? 2 in the hospital (which no one remembered), 1 spent running away from home, and the last crying because I felt disgusted with everything I had become. I am struggling to convince my parents to let me attend university because they fear I won’t come back alive. I have lost so many friendships because I am incessant, temporal, replaceable.
I am trying, believe me. I ate three brownies, a sizable breakfast, lunch and dinner. I didn’t run halfway across the city in the freezing cold. When you told me I was beautiful, I rehearsed a thank you with a frozen smile. I bit my fingernails, blood crawling up the edges instead of telling you I had a phobia of being late.
But I keep on screwing up. Because I don’t know how. I don’t know how to be loved by others; I don’t even know how to love myself. You tell me you think I am genuine. I send five texts in a row about why I am the most superficial, sarcastic individual you will ever encounter. How I am ungrateful and pathetic. My screwed up mind. My tears. And I wonder why it never worked out.
I keep on telling people I want to be loved. I keep on pushing them away. I am ashamed of my existence.
Cracked Chestnuts 