Hemorrhage.

I left two days after graduation. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. I packed three suitcases, kissed my mother on the cheek, and bought a plane ticket.

LA just kind of happened. It was the cheapest plane ticket, and it was the first one I could get on. I turned off my phone and I ignored the world. I was escaping.

When I turned my phone on the next day, I get 62 text messages, 37 missed calls, and my voicemail box was full. I didn’t listen to any of them. I didn’t read the text messages. I didn’t return the calls. I was trying to reinvent myself. I wanted to be a different person.

I wanted to become this pretty, skinny girl, who got to wear amazing clothes and hang out with amazing people. I did, I guess, for a while. Charlotte knew everyone I wanted to know. For the first few months, everything was okay.

But then I started to go down hill.

I couldn’t go a day without stepping on the scale. I couldn’t go out to eat without having a small panic attack. I wasn’t the same person.

I was different.

I was sick.

I knew it; Charlotte knew it; people that passed me on the streets knew it.

Denial was so sweet though. I couldn’t start believing the truth then. I ignored it, and I got worse.

I just kept getting thinner, I guess, even though I thought I was getting fatter. People didn’t tell me that I looked good anymore. Instead, they all looked at me with sympathetic eyes.

I hated sympathetic eyes. I still hate that look to this day.

Face soft, eyes downcast and half-lidded. They look so fucking pathetic, staring at you like you’re a kicked puppy. I wanted to hurt every single person that gave me sympathetic eyes. What the fuck did they know? Maybe they were worse than I was. Maybe they were wrong about me.

Even though I knew that they weren’t.

“Celery or carrots?”

My head snapped up, staring at my mother as she held each vegetable in her hand, moving them up and down to get my opinion.

Carrots had a lot of sugar in them and were higher in calories.

Celery was a negative calorie, because you spent more energy eating and digesting it then it gave you.

“Celery.” I said, leaning my hands against the cart as I pushed it forward. We were in Safeway, grocery shopping.

Grocery shopping was my worst enemy, because it held every thing that I was trying to get away from. Trans fat, carbohydrates, simple sugars…they were all my own personal devils.

“Bananas or apples?” She weighed my opinion again, standing in front of the fruit.

Bananas were high in calories and harder to digest.

Apples had high calories too, but I could cut them up and chew on them slowly, so I didn’t have to eat as much.

“Apples.”

My mother looked satisfied at my participation, and beamed at me. I think she thought that I was truly getting better, because I had gained a few pounds since I got here three days ago. She was weighing me daily, writing it all down in this little blue composition book that she kept in her purse at all times.

She never let me see the numbers; she just smiled and told me that I was doing better, getting better.

She didn’t know about the quarters in my pockets or the two bras I had on.

I had tricks up my sleeve that she had no idea about.

My mother knew how to keep track of my weight; we had gone through this game before I left. She had gotten worried, so she started talking to one of her therapist friends and then she started monitoring me at all times.

I had “gotten better” before I left.

I had lied before I left.

My mother put the bag of apples in the cart, before heading towards the back of the store, where all the meat was held. I ignored her then, knowing that she wouldn’t ask me any questions concerning my meal choices here.

I was staring down at my hands. My fat, chubby hands that clutched the cart like it was my life support.

My fingers were too big. I must have been a size ten in rings. The fat was accumulating around my hands, making my fingers look like stubby little sausages. I felt the sinking of my stomach as I looked at my hands, and tried my hardest to blink back tears.

My hands were almost as bad as my stomach, which protruded out. The rolls hung over the tops of my jeans when I wore them, and any underwear I wore made me look like I was a muffin. I was a disgrace.

I looked up quickly, wanting desperately to ignore the fat rolls that clutched onto my body.

I wanted to be thin. I wanted to be skin and bones.

Please, please make me skin and bones.

A woman was staring back at me, her eyes wide as she stared at my face. She was looking at me like she was looking straight through me, like I was transparent.

Her knuckles were white as she held the cart in front of her. She looked shocked.

I knew her. How could I forget such a woman? She was the person that caused my life hell, that put all of those thoughts in my mother’s head.

Dr. Meyers stood in front of me, her eyes looking fierce.

She was a middle aged woman, in about her forties. She wasn’t thin; her hips were large and her thighs were big too. She had a stomach and breasts. There didn’t seem to be a difference between her neck and her chin.

I despised that woman.

I hated that woman.

She walked closer towards us, and my mother perked up when Dr. Meyers said hello.

“Dr. Meyers!” My mother sounded happy as she placed a package of hamburger in the basket. “How good it is to see you!”

Dr. Meyers smiled. “It is. How have you been doing, Marie?”

I tuned them out as they talked. Dr. Meyers had this ability to prattle on about absolutely nothing important.

My phone was in my purse, but I could hear it vibrate as I stood still, waiting for my mother’s conversation to be over.

I searched for it, finding it quickly. I flipped it open, my eyebrows furrowing as I looked at the foreign number.

I opened the message warily, wondering who could have gotten my number.

You look fucking disgusting.

Four words. Four ugly, hurtful, but true, words.

From someone I didn’t even know.

Four words were all it took.

What was it with these life changing sentences?

I stared at the message for what seemed like five minutes, before I deleted it and threw my phone back in my purse.

I didn’t have the energy to respond.

Dr. Meyers and my mother parted ways after about ten minutes of talking. Dr. Meyers didn’t acknowledge my presence, just simply gave me another look as she walked passed us.

My mother seemed unusually quiet. We checked out in silence, and walked to the car with tension between us.

I wished that I had paid closer attention to her conversation, so I could understand why she was acting the way she was.

She waited until we were in the car, both safely buckled, before she turned to me, her eyes downcast.

“Emelie,” she said, her voice thick with emotion. “I’ve arranged for you to see Dr. Meyers every Tuesday and Thursday, from two to four in the afternoon.”

“What?” I couldn’t stop the word from coming down. “Why?”

“Emelie, Dr. Meyers told me that she thought you might need some counseling. I mean, look at how unhealthy you are! We’re just taking precautions. I know that you’ve gained some weight, but we’re just doing this for safety measures. We think it’ll help you feel better.”

It was always “we.”

Never “I.”

Just “we”.

Could you understand why I hated Dr. Meyers?