It’s like I’m sitting, watching a love scene in a movie where teens are driving and swimming and laughing and I'm immersed and enjoying it, but then the harsh, violently fluorescent lights behind me turn on and the director yells “Cut!” and my brain is hijacked by a new reality of fake, lonely, nothingness.

eat-ing dis-or-der
/ēdiNG diˈsôrdər/
noun
1. Waking up every single morning with the same thoughts you’ve had for the past 9 months. How flat will I look today? Are my ribs poking out any further? Does my spine look any more sickly than before?
2. Weighing yourself before you go to the bathroom. Then after you go to the bathroom. Proceeding on and on throughout the day, as followed.
3. Being so hungry, you’re simply not hungry anymore. More so, just exhausted. (Being exhausted is a good thing, because that’s when you can finally fall asleep. That way your mind doesn’t have to keep nagging you about the hunger pains you feel in your stomach.)
4. Wearing 2 sweatshirts & 2 pairs of socks under 3 blankets, yet still feeling the icy pain running through your veins. You try anything to stay warm. Coffee helps, but only for a few minutes. Steaming hot showers are nice for the time being, but stepping out into the cold air, feeling your already brittle hair turn into shards...it’s hell. (Ironic, right?)
5. Not being able to walk past a mirror without pulling up your shirt to check your stomach for the 20th time today. I’m not vain, trust me. Far, far from it. One of the last things I’m capable of feeling right now is love towards myself.
6. Longing for a way out. Laying on your bed in the darkness, staring at the ceiling, just wishing that there was a ******* off switch to all of this. Every ******* morning to every ******* night. You know what you’re doing is wrong, but at this point you don’t know who you’d be without it. That voice, I mean. That voice that never goes silent, even when you politely beg with tears brimming at the eyes. You try so hard to push it away, and to remember a time in your life when you were “normal”. When you could wake up and actually enjoy breakfast. It was your favorite meal of the day.

Now, you can’t even fathom a “favorite meal”. The empty plate, the clean spoon, the untouched napkin. Everything except the food- which is now harrowingly the perfect vision of your “favorite meal”.

she's inside me.
sitting in the back of my throat.
i can feel her presence there,
feel her beckoning me.
i reach my hand out to take hers but
she's always just out of reach.

all she brings is pain.
i don't even know her name.
but i love her anyway.

Voices in my head constantly tell me I'm not enough, gorgeous enough, thin enough.
They tell me I should change who I am because I won't be loved looking rough.
They tell me I should have a smaller nose, smaller thighs, smaller everything.
They say "you're prettiest friends are your thinner ones. If you wanna be like them then stop eating every single little thing."
I'm disgusting, they say. I'm unworthy of love and I'll never find it.
"GET YOURSELF THIN." they scream. "AND YOU'LL FIND TRUE LOVE IN A BIT."
The voices are cruel. They never let up. They tell me "All of your thin friends get the guys attention, you don't because you're ugly and fat."
"They never give you a second thought because you're too big." They spat.
I know I'm ugly and fat. I'm not thin. My mind is a toxic place so I'm giving up and giving in.

black empty expanse
my eyes meet the mirror
I consider shaving my head
removing my eyebrows
match outside to in
ugly and empty
I wish I could rip off petals
set myself on fire like a monk
reach nirvana by golden chariot
starve myself until I disappear
drink until I collapse forever
but I put my hair up
make a cat wing eyeliner
smile with bleached teeth
fix my dyed hair
use metallic red lipstick
consider plastic surgery
I don't want to be here, I mouth
the mirror knows already
but there's only one way out
instead, I put on my nicest dress
hoping that someday I find
a way to match inside to out

“You will never regret recovery.”
I am regretting every minute of it.

distorted view,
piece of glass,
i am society’s lower class.

To eat or not to eat?
To disappear into nothingness or to grow and blossom?
To live or to die?
To diet to live?
To live to diet?
To fail or to succeed?
To be strong or to be weak?
To drown or to float?
To be who I am or to be who I wish I were?
To accept imperfection or to strive for perfection?
To be happy and content or to be sad and eternally unsatisfied?
To eat or not to eat?