It starts with black coffee. You realize how much of your daily calorie intake is just sugar and so you learn to say goodbye to vanilla coffee creamer, to maple and brown sugar flavored oatmeal for breakfast. Actually, you say goodbye to breakfast altogether. And then lunch. People limit themselves to one meal a day, like, all the time, you tell yourself. So many religions practice fasting, you say. Except you aren’t religious. Not in that way, at least. You could never stay that dedicated to anything but starving yourself.
When did it begin? Better yet, where does it even start? Beyond the black coffee and everything that happened after. Maybe it starts when you think you could stand to lose a couple pounds. Which is so far from the truth because you’re thirteen and rail thin, the knobby knees of childhood still clinging to your body. But you try anyway, under the pretense of just “wanting to eat healthier, cleaner.” And it eventually becomes an obsession like anything else, something to be perfect at, a way to practice your devotion. You compete with random strangers on Tumblr; who has it the worst? They ask questions like who is thinner, who weighed the least this morning, who can make themselves throw up the most in one day? Oh, you ate four saltine crackers today? Well, I had half a baby carrot and some coffee. People post photos of their emaciated bodies––skin stretched taut over a skeleton, the kind of shit that would make anyone who isn’t a seasoned veteran sick––but you and everyone else in this community become numb to it. You worship these girls; they become your bible, the epitome of commitment. When Netflix releases the film To the Bone, you take it as gospel. Never mind that the actual message of the movie is about getting better. You never said you were above cherry picking.
Hey, remember the things you’ve looked up to see how many calories it had?
One stick of celery, a sleeve of saltine crackers, a dozen peas, half a mini cucumber (diced, if it matters), a singular Altoids mint, an entire head of lettuce (with salt, for flavor), mouthwash, licking an envelope, Prozac, toothpaste, Ibuprofen.
Maybe this was all just a cry for help, your own incredibly messed up way of begging for attention, for someone to notice that there was going to be less and less of you until you disappeared. But maybe not, because wasn’t the whole point to go slowly? Quietly, so no one would notice? You wanted to be good at something, to be able to stick with at least one thing. You hunch your fourteen-year-old body over the toilet more times than you can count, trying to make yourself throw up the latest binge but you can’t. It’s not as easy as everyone else makes it seem. And anyways, you just end up with scratches on the back of your throat and a pulled muscle somewhere under your tongue from gagging so hard.
Sorry if this is graphic, but you needed to hear this. You need to remember how sick you were.
Want to remember something else? All your notes, all the photos of people you wanted to look like? They’re still in the shoebox under the bed. Here’s something you wrote:
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A REAL NOTES APP ENTRY, CIRCA 2018-9
It feels like something I didn’t even know I was missing has suddenly plopped into my lap. How can I be beautiful? I want to be the pretty, skinny girl. The pretty, skinny girls seem like everything amazing about living. They are like Diet Coke and sharp collarbones at the pool. This gift––no, not gift––can make me pretty, too. At school, I’ve learned to joke about why I’ve brought three diced kiwis for lunch, lifting each small chunk with nimble fingers from a perfectly folded white napkin to a hesitant mouth. When the jokes at the table taste too much like getting better, I learn to put an end to lunch. Forget what it is. I’ve learned all the spots in the building where none of the teachers will ask why I look so tired. The gift––not gift––has shared its secrets with me. I’ve learned that stick-thin bones, when pulverized into a powder and mixed into the fifteen bottles of water I drink in a day, tastes like sweet tea. And I can have a sip, for the small cost of the rest of my life spent worshipping the feeling of empty. I look up number after number after thinspo after number. I memorize menus and calories and avoid celebrating holidays because that means dinner. I hide in my room at Easter, dream about sinking my teeth into a slab of raw meat. I’m so hungry it feels like an entire field of sunflowers is erupting from my stomach, climbing out of my mouth and choking me. But I’m happy because at least I’m not eating. I feel like I am made out of glass. This is the opposite of a car wreck, it does not go from 0 to 100, it does not travel at a thousand miles an hour. When you are this hungry, the days are so long they stretch into months. With all this time, I realize there’s so much that needs perfecting.
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That was fucked up, wasn’t it?
After some years, when you realize your dad’s hands are shaking just like yours after you haven’t eaten all day, you start to get your shit together. You realize that having two daughters to take care of him when the Parkinson’s eventually destroys his ability to function on his own is better than one. On the day he tells you that you’re getting too thin, a part of your soul soars with pride. The other part lets him hand you the tiny bowl of assorted chocolate chips he put together himself: the mini ones, the semi-sweet ones, the dark chocolate ones, the square-looking chunky ones. The trembling bowl in his hands makes them rattle like coins you forgot in your pocket. You eat them and cry after.
You sit at his dining room table while he cooks in the kitchen. He makes greasy cheeseburgers and you tell him you’re not eating that, you stopped eating meat last year. That’s just not right, he says, God put animals on this earth for us to eat. Plus, you need some protein to put some meat on your bones. You refuse and he doesn’t force you. He stares at you with a sadness you had never seen before, like he doesn’t know who you are. Like there’s a stranger at the dinner table. You know now that it’s because he truly couldn’t recognize you: your face wasn’t your face, your hands weren’t your hands, your shoulders weren’t your shoulders. You were hollow and barely there and he didn’t know how to tell you. He reaches out a shaky arm to hold your hand and when the two of you make contact, when the tremors are right in your palm, you can feel––just for a second you can feel––what it’s like to be him.
Things you’re stuck with after years of back-and-forth disordered eating habits: thin hair that will never grow back the same way again, permanently weak nails, fragile joints, the absolute worst case of TMJ from chewing countless wads of sugar free gum for hours on end, forever irregular periods.
Let’s talk about your dad again. Remember that you can get better and remember that he cannot. The two of you are so similar, especially in your stubbornness, so don’t try to pretend like you don’t understand why he quit taking the trial medicine. Don’t pretend to be angry at him when, deep down, you get him. He’s your father, you know the type of man he is, you knew he’d give up, embarrassed and defeated, if something doesn’t work immediately. Do you think you got that from him? In the same way that you get your chin, your eyelids, and your smile from him, do you also get your self-destructive tendencies? Did he get it from his dad, too? Someone asks you why you hardly drink. You don’t tell them it’s out of fear that you’ll wind up like your father or your mother or both their fathers before them. You’ve seen what it’s done to relationships, to children. But did you come full circle instead? Did you try so hard to be different that you just wound up on the same path anyway?
The thought of having babies is terrifying. A part of you is always scared that some sort of self-hatred would bloom back up inside you in tandem with the new life in your womb. Or maybe it’s because you’ve spent your entire life working for a concave stomach and a bump would send you spiraling. The biggest reason, though? You’re exactly like your parents. You carry impatience and anger like your mother, like her father before her, like the family before him. Will you carry the same disease as your father, as his mother before him, as the family before her? Would you pass these traits onto children? Create a family tree riddled with anorexia, anger, anxiety, and alcoholism? Would your children inherit your hunger? Would they have to take care of you the way you know you will one day have to take care of your father? What happens if you relapse? What happens if he has no one to take care of him then? What happens if you have no one to take care of you?
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