Closing Pandora's Box

I stepped onto the conceited weighing scale, dreading the outcome. The cursor began to move as fast as my heart was racing. It should have stopped by now. The vacillating cursor found its place at a number. At that meticulous moment, my entire life changed. Countless thoughts circled my mind; they rapidly overcame me until looking at my own reflection became hazardous. I felt repulsive, I hated myself. Nothing was ever the same again.

*****

Every single ounce of my reality was directed towards being thin. It started with only skipping one meal a day in order to avoid suspicion, but it wasn’t working, I looked exactly the same. I decided to skip two meals, and gradually my body became accepting. I stopped getting hungry but I knew that I needed to stop eating altogether to make any sort of difference to my physique. Eventually the headaches became customary. The dizziness became my vision. The aching became habitual. My eyes began to sink into my skin like coins in water. My skin became pasty and lifeless. Tasks became futile. I could not walk up the stairs without getting out of breath. My smile became a façade.

Sometimes it wasn’t about being thin, it was about making myself feel good. The satisfaction of not eating for a whole day was blissful, knowing that I was losing weight, that I was making something happen, that I was in control of something. I began to live for that feeling. Everything around me was moving so fast, I was being dominated. I continued to starve myself, but it was never enough. I was not thin enough. I was not good enough. It became a living nightmare and a dangerous routine, until one day I collapsed in a clothes store beside my mother. Reality should have prevailed, I should have reformed myself, but my only concern was that she would know. My reflection should have notified me that I was beyond unhealthy; instead it screamed ‘FAT.’

I needed to eat, my body was desperate for food but my mind would not allow it. The two debated furiously. Eventually they came to an agreement; I could eat and then make myself sick. It seemed to work, what a genius idea. My bones were already aching from the lack of food. Making myself sick seemed to aggravate them further. The pain intensified, sometimes suffocating me to the point that I wanted to die. I would spend nights watching endless hours of television to distract me from the pain, to try and make myself feel better. The television gradually polluted my mind. The girls on the screen mocked me for my weight; they told me that I needed to look like them to be beautiful. I watched how the pretty girls at school had everybody’s attention and I gradually became a breathing corpse with no soul. What was wrong with me? I wanted people to like me, I wanted to be pretty.

People stopped caring. My best friend was preoccupied with her crush. She knew what I was going through, but she failed to realise that it was about more than wanting to be thin. It was about my perception of myself, my confidence and my self-worth. My parents failed to realise that I seemed to physically be disappearing. My skin became sheer elastic stretched over my bones, ready to subside at any second. I was ugly, the pages of the magazine said so. The girls on the billboards ridiculed me. My mind taunted me. I was drowning in my own clothes but I still did not look like them. I was lonely and afraid. Nobody in my life even cared enough to help me, a voice in my head kept reiterating that people wouldn’t even notice if I was gone. I loathed myself; I should have made it easier for everyone and disappeared. Suicide became a daily thought.

I lived in this malicious world for months and months. I had lost my place, I became insignificant. I watched the boys in my class become fixated with the girls on magazine covers. I wanted to be loved, I wanted to feel good. I would if I was thinner. Eventually it became a way of life; there was no other way to live, until one day I found myself on the floor in the kitchen. How did I get here? I was alone; the dizziness had overpowered what was left of my body. I had fallen and I couldn’t lift myself up.

I was in so much pain, my vision had become blurred and I couldn’t even lift my own limbs. What was I doing to myself? Something needed to change. It had become increasingly difficult to make myself sick, the pain was too powerful, it was as if my body had given up. I wanted to die. I was losing control of my body, it was slowly shutting down. I was trapped in my own delusion and I couldn’t see a way out. When I gathered enough strength to lift myself up, my first task was to keep food in my system. Eating had become a punishment; a horrible chore. I ate as if I was being asked to consume poison, but I furtively knew that it wasn’t going to reside in my system for very long. This time it needed to. It took every ounce of strength not to make myself throw up, I couldn’t do it.

I found myself crying at how weak I had become; I needed help. The next day I tried again but every single time I ate, my body wanted to throw it up. It was routine. Eventually I kept it down, but it took months to eat a whole meal without being sick straight afterwards. I had only participated in two P.E lessons in the entire year. I gave the teacher excuse after excuse until one day I finally revealed the truth. Saying it out aloud made it real.

I stopped talking to my best friend and started spending time with people that taught me how to enjoy life. I looked in the mirror everyday and told myself that I was good enough, that nobody could tell me any different. Gradually my life came together, but my best friend never understood. She stood amongst the people that will never understand, those people that label eating disorders as attention seeking, those that claim that it is for vanity purposes. It is simple for people to say these things about something they have and will hopefully never experience. It is horrifying and it is difficult to find a way out.

I sit here today, 6 years later, still affected by what I went through. Today I weighed myself; I watched the cursor move until it stopped. I sighed at the number and decided that I would skip the snack that I originally came downstairs for. Eating disorders are dangerous; a relapse can occur at any time. Even as a 21 year old, I still cannot cope with being called ‘fat.’ The sizes on clothes still possess the ability to affect my mood. I am a girl, living in a society that dictates the way that we should look. Plastic surgeries are becoming common because people are unhappy with themselves. We are encouraged to undergo procedures that will keep us looking young. New diets are advertised, weight-loss schemes, everything is directed at keeping us thin. The media tells us that we are not good enough, that there is always something more that we should be doing in order to improve our appearance. They dictate what is acceptable; they determine the definition of beauty. New cosmetics are promoted, manipulating us into believing that we should aspire to be perfect, that we are and never will be enough.

Eating disorders are a disease, not a fashion statement. They can kill.

By Special K
http://bringmeacupcake.blogspot.com/
https://twitter.com/likecherrypie