Weight gain.

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Triggered. 

The doctor is pleased with my progress. 

He smiles and I almost expect a high five. 

The nurses are being far too nice. 

I've restored weight. 

They almost trust me now. 

It feels too fast. 

I feel completely out of control. 

I'm consuming a ridiculous amount of calories, 

And my body is now soaking it all up,

In the form of fat cells on my legs, my stomach, my thighs. 

I don't feel like these limbs belong to me. 

I feel the heaviness,

Like sinking... slowly...torturously...

Into some deep, ugly pit. 

I'm reaching out for someone to save me,

But no one is willing. 

They tell me that I'm meant to be sinking.

That this is a good thing. 

It makes no sense to me. 

This place make no sense. 

So I cry and I panic. 

I feel I am again outside myself as I watch a girl mechanically bring food to her mouth. 

I can not be present. 

I am someone else,

Some random girl on a psych ward,

Obeying orders and eating all the food off her tray. 

My mind keeps fighting to silence the voice,

But anorexia is with me now, 

Sighing in disgust at my full stomach. 

Anorexia has been harassing me since I met with the Doctor.

I feel trapped between two realities that are both painfully unbearable. 

I'm just so tired and exhausted. 

I wish I could burn calories with the overthinking. 

If I wasn't in a hospital,

Listening to the monotonous sound of a tubefeed in the bed beside me,

If I was not an inpatient on 4f4,

I would be empty right now. 

The good kind of empty. 

There is absolutely no way that I would have eaten that supper. 

There is no way I would have allowed this food to remain in my stomach. 

I am terrified of being discharged too soon,

And at the same time I am terrified of this place. 

I feel safe here, and yet so frighteningly alone. 

I feel like no matter the path I take,

I have no control. 

Anorexia versus this unbearable reality. 

Nothing makes sense today. 

I burst into tears when nurses reassure me

With a pat on the back,

And I ask for an extra yellow pill to sedate me. 

I hate the accolades we get for gaining weight. 

Yay. You can't see my bones now. 

Yay. I'm beating anorexia. 

Or am I? 

Why then do I miss the emaciated girl I was when I first arrived here? 

I'm feeling triggered by the memory of me, the fragile girl that arrived here one month ago. 

How bizarre to miss the girl who sobbed and called her mother every two minutes wanting to die? 

This is a different kind of pain. 

It is the pain of a mind that is healing slowly, but still wants to be lost to anorexia. 

I've had to fight all day to defy her.

It feels like I'm losing everything. 

Control. 

Thinness. 

My constant companion. 

My security blanket has been torn from my hands. 

If you've never had an encounter with anorexia,

You may judge progress by the number on the scale.  

We are weighed everyday here. 

We stand with our backs to the numbers, 

The nurses know we can't cope with daily reminders. 

The scale is synonymous with mental torture. 

Yet, someday, at some point, like today,

A doctor or a nurse will congratulate us for our "restoration". 

We won't be prepared for this. 

I'm not sure we ever will be.

Anorexia is cruel and abusive. 

My stomach is distended with food and fluid. 

My body is covered in a layer of fat i haven't seen for a very long time. 

And there truly is nothing you can say to ease my pain or calm my panicked mind. 

How desperately I long to leave this place. 

More accurately, I long to leave this body. 

It does not feel like it belongs to me. 

I eat because I am expected to.

I do not purge because I don't want to face the consequences of not following the rules. 

I've always been a model student.

But to anorexia,

I am a failure.