The year of skinny pop and sugar-free jello cups
we guzzled vitamin water and vodka
toasting to high school and survival
complimenting each other’s thigh gaps
trying diets we found on the internet:
menthol cigarettes
eating in front of a mirror
donating blood
replacing meals with other practical hobbies
like making flower crowns
or fainting
wondering why I haven’t had my period
in months or why breakfast tastes like giving
up or how many more productive ways
I could have spent my time today
besides googling the calories in the glue
of a US envelope
watching America’s Next Top Model
like the gospel
hunching naked over a bathroom scale shrine
crying into an empty bowl of cocoa puffs
because I only feel pretty
when I’m hungry
If you are not recovering
you are dying.
By the time I was sixteen, I had already experienced
being clinically overweight, underweight, and obese.
As a child, Fat was the first word people used to describe me
which didn’t offend me until I found out it was supposed to.
When I lost weight, my dad was so proud
he started carrying my before-and-after photo in his wallet.
So relieved he could stop worrying about me
getting diabetes. He saw a program on the news
about the epidemic with obesity.
Says he is just so glad
to finally see me taking care of myself.
If you develop an eating disorder
when you are already thin to begin with,
you go to the hospital.
If you develop an eating disorder
when you are not thin to begin with,
you are a success story.
So when I evaporated, of course
everyone congratulated me on getting healthy.
Girls at school who never spoke to me before
stopped me in the hallway to ask how I did it.
I say, I am sick. They say
No, you’re an inspiration.
How could I not fall in love with my illness?
With becoming the kind of silhouette people are supposed to
fall in love with?
Why would I ever want to stop being hungry
when anorexia was the most interesting thing about me?
So how lucky is it now
to be boring.
The way not going to the hospital is boring.
The way looking at an apple and seeing only
an apple, not sixty or half an hour of sit-ups
is boring.
My story may not be as exciting as it used to,
but at least there is nothing left to count.
The calculator in my head finally stopped.
I used to love the feeling of drinking
water on an empty stomach
waiting for the coolness to slip
all the way down and land in the well,
not obsessed with being empty
but afraid of being full.
I used to take pride in being able to feel cold
in a warm room. Now, I am proud
I have stopped seeking revenge on this body.
This was the year of eating when I was hungry
without punishing myself
and I know it sounds ridiculous,
but that shit is hard.
When I was little, someone asked me
what I wanted to be when I grew up
and I said “small