I see the apprehension on her kind face.
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, she says with a reluctant smile and caring eyes.
Ironically enough,
I was certain she was about to tell me that I am gaining much more quickly than I should be.
Instead she wants to increase.
Increase calories.
Increase weight gain.
The words sound like a sick joke,
She can NOT be serious.
I immediately look at her in shock.
I was finally mildly accepting the small amount of muscle on my calves.
I was finally mildly accepting the softer outline of my clavicles.
Now everything feels unbearable.
I'm paralyzed in fear and utter frustration.
None of this feels okay right now.
I begin to beg her, like a child,
Please not yet.
Pleeeeeease.
At least for a few more days...
I picture each fat cell in my body,
Soaking up the calories like a sponge.
I immediately feel heavy.
My entire being feels like this ugly, yellow, heavy wet sponge.
I dramatically press my face into the soft fabric
Of the pillow sitting on my bed.
I try to muffle the sound,
But ugly sobs still escape.
I feel like I'm watching myself from above,
The sad, little anorexic girl,
Crying over calories.
I'm so FULL, always SO FULL.
My stomach ACHES.
It's used to being empty.
I'm used to being empty.
I consider this now at 3 am,
What is so alluring about the emptiness?
Emptiness comes with a huge price tag.
We must purge after too much has been consumed.
We must pick at our food.
We don't eat meals, we eat as little as tolerable,
Or we scavenge food like vultures in the wild.
We plan the escape route to the bathroom at restaurants before we even open the menu.
Eating is chaos,
But emptiness brings order.
To be empty,
Seems to be worth the lies we tell.
I'm just not hungry today.
I can't figure out why I'm nauseous all the time.
I ate before I came.
I have NO IDEA why I'm fainting everyday.
The price tag is set high for emptiness,
Yet it seems worth it,
To escape the torture,
The wrath,
Of anorexia's voice.
Ugly.
Fat.
Useless.
Waste of space.
The dietician apologizes.
She is sorry this is so hard.
They call it weight restoration here.
No matter how you word it,
It means you will feel more pain,
A different kind of pain than before.
A different kind of torture.
You escape your self imposed concentration camp,
Only to enter a now foreign place
With a language we have nearly forgotten.
(source: http://bonfire--heart3.tumblr.com/)
We all agree to come to this place,
Because we can no longer manage our lives
with anorexia,
or bulimia,
or some combination of both.
Illness has become our normal,
And we are very weak and very very ill.
We know that we will be expected to weight restore here.
We are well aware that we will be expected to eat, but we just can't prepare enough for this.
Our brain is trained to shun calories.
It is programmed to decrease.
Our neural pathways are deeply set,
From years and years of training,
Even before we realized we were in training for anything at all.
To come to terms with recovery,
We must stray determinedly from the well worn path we set that very first day,
That day we threw our lunch in the trash.
The recovery path has not been taken for many many years.
It is overgrown with weeds and branches that leave us bloody and bruised.
These are our battle wounds.
It takes courage to turn left instead of right,
To cross the bridge,
So old and fragile.
I long for someone to pick me up,
and carry me across to the other side.
I long for someone to catch me
When my knees begin to buckle.
But I am a child no longer.
No one can ease this burden for me.
Stand up straight.
Shoulders back.
Step by step.
I won't look back at the well worn path
I used to take.
I blow a kiss,
Let a single tear fall,
And leave anorexia behind,
Lost and alone on the other side where illness resides.
(source: 
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