And I Am Pure Now.

I am hollow imperfection. Your apparently serene words of protest are ignorant and apathetic. They only prove that you have failed to apprehend that what I do does not wound me; it instead cures me. Perfects these imperfections.

****

I am seated in your office once again, confined in your supposedly soothing prison. I refuse to lay atop your lunatic's couch, choosing instead a much stiffer chair that seems be a reflection of your hardened gaze. I don't belong here. In this office or this nuthouse. I'm not psychotic like the rest of these abnormalities; the only crime that has led me to this cage is my fatness.

Shameful, indubitable, disgusting fatness. Pinpointed in my pillowy thighs and rotundly, vomitous mess of a stomach. I haven't lost enough weight: I'm as revolting as ever, and am sure to have my nauseating weight increase even more with the ways in which they shove it down my throat. Food. Can't they see I'm repulsive enough? Have they somehow overlooked my incontestable flab?

You're talking now, and goggling at me with your bulging grey eyes. I can as good as see your mind formulating insults that properly describe me, know you hate me just as much as everyone does. As if as a confirmation to my thoughts, you pull out a tray of cookies and offer them to me; you're probably eager to see the fat girl scramble to devour them all. I refuse to give you the satisfaction and instead shake my head no.

I can vaguely remember a time when upon seeing a chocolate-chip cookie I thought not of jiggling thighs and the foul three hundred and eighty nine calories within, but instead of it's mouth-watering relish. Oh, how dreadful I was! So sickeningly fat!

Tuning out your monotonous questions and theories has been rather easy so far, but one statement hits me hard and sends a violent shudder from my brain to my toes.

"You've gained weight, the doctors tell me. You're up to eighty pounds." You declare with gross pleasure, smiling a wide, yellowed grin. There's a piece of lettuce lodged between your front two teeth and seeing this sends a wave of inexplicably intense revulsion and hatred throughout my entire body. I want to wrench your vulture-like head from her lumpy body and snap each of those flawless manicured crimson nails in half. Excruciatingly vicious thoughts began to taint my mind and it was evident at that moment that every fat-ridden fiber of my being despised you with a passionate wrath.

Perhaps you interpreted the choleric blackness twisting my face, for your previously thrilled beaming has turned grim.

"Can I ask you something?" You query somberly, casting me a somewhat perplexed sideways glance.

I want to stand up and screech and strike you across the face. I want to experience the intoxicating gratification of seeing your face become the same bloodied color as your nails, just like the overwhelming satisfaction of losing another pound. But something or someone silently tells me not to. So I nod my head, scowling.

"Why do you think you do this? Why are you starving yourself?" You're nearly tearful.

At first I don't know what to say. Then immediately the answer seems quite clear, as if it had been there the whole time.

"I'm not starving myself... I'm perfecting my emptiness." Somehow I choke this out, and the feebleness of my voice petrifies me. And suddenly, everything is terrifying.

Your pensive face, the looming gray walls that confine me, the inky, approaching shadows: all frighten me into an unbearable state of mind. My breathing rapid and uneven and my feet wobbling beneath me, I shove myself off that straight-backed chair and burst from your trap. My feet carry me to my empty room of their own accord and I somehow find myself collapsing on my knees onto the frigid hospital floor and lifting my mattress up, searching desperately for the stolen bottle of pain-killers lurking beneath it. My hand closes around the bottle and I have never felt such a passionate relief, a reassurance that brings chilling goosebumps to my arms and a smirk to my chattering lips. Briskly and with feverish delight I pour a glass of water from the pitcher placed upon my bed-side table. If only takes me a minute of anxious struggle to unscrew the top off the pain-killers, and only another minute to down the entire content of the bottle with the aid of my water.

Instantly, I feel exhausted and keel over onto my bumpy mattress. Upon this crumpling, a series of memories begins to reel inside my thoughts.

Was this my life flashing before me eyes? How cliche.

I see mother, and she's not dead at all, but alternatively she's alive and just as enchanting as ever, offering me her hand. I am ecstatic.

I see my father and my baby brother chuckling and grinning, father wiping his glasses on his black polo shirt. I grow happier.

I see a skeletal body and I feel guilty when this is the image that makes me most euphoric.

I died confused.