We swim only in shallow waters
Breakable limbs scrapping the surface
Of the thousand mile deep oceans
The bottom layers are wordless
You never cared enough to explore

Sunlight shines so scarely
Only illuminating what we want to see
Somehow we keep up it's illusion
It's all we've ever tried to believe
You never dared enough to explore

Waves roll over the turquoise surface
Their familiar motion puts a mind at ease
Big ones crash down, calm is disturbed
This is when we choose to leave
You never loved enough to endure.

Maybe it was the very first time
But it haunts me as though
It has happened a million before
From when we are young it sews
Itself into the very fabric of who we are told to be

I took a hit.
Laughter trickled round my ears
Jeers and shouts stalking me
As I walked away, fear building
As I held myself back from retreat.

Behind my eyes flashed up
A drunken stranger making me feel small
I was only 10 years old
But after me they yelled out catcalls
I rushed away, trying anything to forget

Now I am older,
Nothing has changed
Except now I know not to walk alone
And keep off evening trains
If I want to remain innocent and unbothered

I am not alone in this
We exchange these familiar tales
Softly speaking out what we hide
We fast learn it comes with being female
We stay silent to keep our pride.

It's going to take a miracle for me to feel again.

I don't get these people. These funny, funny beings.

Oh, I'm seeing things again.

Psychosis. Crazy. Eyes staring down from treetops.

Alien hands reaching out for you, for me, through the stark darkness of my childhood room.

Lights blind me: florescent and scorching hot-white.

He's always in my dreams. Watching me, somewhere. I search for him but he doesn't exist.

I know that.

I know that the trees don't have eyes and nothing wants to touch me.

Nobody ever wants to touch me.

Maybe it's better this way.

It's better to not be touched, or looked at.

Only imagined glances, passes, fancies.

He's right there, in my dreams again. I'm searching for him again. Imaginary love is as good as it gets.

It'll take a miracle for me to get used to the fact that I'm here to work, eat, sleep and die. Sacrifice.

At 25 I've grown old and fixed on an idea of perfection.

A perception that I can't feel breathing beneath my fingertips.

He isn't real.

This world is real.

I sure as hell wish I wasn't real, too.

We're anything and everything but atypical.

Anorexia. Bulimia. OSFED, binge or orthorexia.

Hell, there's even hybrids now: diabulimia.

There's a name for every demon I've eaten. For the thing that lives inside of me; feeding off of starvation.

There's power in it. You know, the kind of sick courage that comes from skipping meals and counting calories.

Lower numbers, lower anxieties.

When you're thin it's an eating disorder, they say.

When you're fat it's called a diet, they say.

We're surviving on pills and Coke Zero. This isn't the 80's, honey, SlimFast doesn't work as well as ******* do.

I was taught that pain is beauty, but laxatives on an empty stomach are far from pretty.

I don't want to be beautiful, I want to be nothing. Not a thing in this world. What do I want?

To be like an Angel: perfection on the inside and out.

To be both powerful and protected. In control and out of it.

Is this Schrodinger's eating disorder?

It goes deeper than food. Farther than the veins; blue and translucent underneath my skin.

I'm cold and gone, honey. This thing has got a hold on me.

I'm water, tea, early mornings and late nights. Scales, chewing gum and breath mints.

I'm crushed by the weight hanging off of my bones, and I don't know how to get better.