Prettiest Friend
1/1
I don't eat on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays.
This is not a joke.
My stomach churns. Emptiness mixed with water mixed with shame mixed with pride mixed with a sadness that can't be chased away with a swig of vodka or a day at an amusement park. I know, everyone that came before knows that this is a lethal combination. Broccoli and cheese. Sitting in a pan on the stove, bubbling, left over from dinner, still warm, still stringy, still gooey.
I don't even feel it when my clenched hands dig into the steaming food. It relaxes me, the sigh from the end of a Panic song, the relief of letting out held breath. Almost as good as pizza, as it gets thrown into my mouth, burns my tongue, scalds my tastebuds. I hate my fucking tastebuds. I don't need them. I quickly think about running a bread knife over my tongue, red dots falling in flakes, snow in July, onto my counter. The thought is quickly dismissed. I never wanted to hurt myself. At least not conciously. It wasn't about that.
None of this happened. This was what my therapist calls "mental fufillment". Which sounds like total bullshit. Like she took two stereotypical "therapy" words and threw them together halfhazardly hoping that they'd make sense, that someone would say "Yes, that's what it is!" She needs to pick up a hobby. My mother could reccomend a few to her. Scrapbooking or knitting or making fucking broccoli and cheese or buying self-help-love-yourself books for her "not quite all there" little girl.
The next step in her "plan to recovery" is to help myself. To what she never said. Help myself to another serving on broccoli and cheese? Or maybe help myself to the bathroom where I can then help myself stick my finger down my throat. So I skip her "plan to recovery" all together and sign onto that social networking site where no one is quite cool enough, pretty enough, funny enough. This is my life, she has me repeat on Thursday nights at the center, I can help myself.
This is my life. I can help myself. This is my life. I. Can. Help. Myself.
And if she's feeling especially fruity and "alive"; I will get through this. And I will, I'll pretend to listen to her talk for about 26 more minutes and then I will pretend to hear her homework assignment and then I will walk into the rain and pull open the door of my mother's SUV and tell her that
This is my life. I can help myself. I will [probably won't, defintely can't, sort of don't even want to] get through this.
I'm just proud that I didn't give in. I type this to one of the thin kids. One who knows what I'm going through. We aren't friends. I don't allow myself to have friends, I learned the hard way that friends lead to a sleepover or a movie date or a mall excursion which leads to soft pretzels covered in salt and popcorn smothered in butter and pizza dripping with grease. Basically all that is good in life. All that I can't let myself have. Friends are temptations.
She, Taylor, Tay, tells me that she, too, is proud of me, that I will be happy with myself tomorrow when I don't wake up with a paperweight in the pit of my stomach. I tell her that that is impossible, who could eat a paperweight? She "lol's", then says "Love you && stay skinny, girl. XOXO". Then the number of "friends" online switches from 1 to 0. An even number.
Tomorrow I'll run as far as I have to. I'll run off every single calorie I've ever eaten in my whole 5,823 days of living. I'll run until my legs are on hot coals, it stings to walk, my soles are so hot that they're cold. I'll get chills. And I'll feel so good about myself that I won't want to eat the whole day, and at dinner when my mom scoops another mountain of peas onto my plate, I'll think of an even more clever way to avoid eating them. Of course my new found strength will also lend newfound brain power. A body of water over the cliff, where otherwise there'd just be rocks and sticks and dirt. A tropical paradise instead of a lonely desert.
This is my life. I think about giving my therapist a new phrase to chew on like the caps of her pens. I can do what I want.
This is my life, I can do what I want.
But as quickly as the thought enters my mind, it is shot down. Into my stomach, with the liquidized celery stalks and 90-calorie yogurts my mom picked up at the Weis's after work. I feel sick. My bed is too comfortable to leave. I can still smell the broccoli and cheese. Fuck my parent's laziness. Why can't they put the garbage disposal to use? Instead of practically letting food rot on our costom granite countertops. Why don't we have a maid?
On my nightstand, my messy maidless nightstand, there is a bottle of pills. An orange, plastic container of my antidepressant that usually make me more depressed than I was in the first place. And under that. Under the pill bottle, under a thin layer of paint, and a piece of 2x4 there is another pill bottle. This is a nuts and bolts bottle. Odds and ends Trevor said to me when he pressed it into my stomach, under my shirt, as his other hand got tangled in my hair, and his lips pressed against my ear.
I don't let boys touch my stomach. Another rule that Trevor got me to break, just like not eating on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Although that was minor because it was only half of an apple, and I let myself eat apples. Occasionally. Trevor was the first to touch my stomach. He said it reminded him of a milky night when the stars were out and everything was OK. I assume he was referring to my freckles. Fucking angel kisses or whatever you're force-fed by your relatives until you're 12 and can think on your own. Or for me, 9. I was a fast learner.
Trevor is a nice boy. The only boy that I let touch me in places that shouldn't be touched until one's wedding night.
I don't love him. I love how he makes me feel. Skinny. Beautiful. Like my prettiest friend.
I think I could be with him for the rest of my life. I'm not going to. But I like having the comfort of knowing that he's here and that he doesn't want anyone else and I could come back to him whenever I want. I also like that he gives me "da goods". My own personal mix of sleeping pills. I like to experiment. A new combo every day. But I can only remember them by color, description since I have no idea the name of the toxins that I am putting into my body with only a gulp of water.
Blue circle. And a half-white-half-red tube-ish one.
I throw them into my mouth and take a sip of the stale water in the Disney princesses cup that has been sitting on the table for far too long. I realize that I don't have long until "da goods" go into effect, so I stumblr over to my mirror to do my nightly check-up. I lift up my shirt, press my fingers into my skin. Turn to the side. Pull down the top of my shorts so I can see my hip. Is it protruding more? Or less? Oh my God, I am so fat.
My mirror is how I see myself. Others say that the mirror isn't a true reflection of you. But for me it is. And I fucking hate it. I pull at the flap of skin near my belly button. It stretches about three centimeters. Shit. I tried to warn myself about that.
When I start to feel drowsy I turn on the celing fan and turn out the light. My door is locked, so no one can come in. I sleep naked. The last thing that I need is one of my brother's friends to walk in because they were "looking for the bathroom". I turn on my stereo. Some band that Trevor likes. They're singing about globes and maps. And how they're charting some chick's way home. Deep stuff. I lay on my back, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars that my brother helped my put up back when I was OK. I still like them. They remind me of Trevor. He's a nice boy.
When my thoughts run in circles I know it's time to close my eyes. I press my fingers into the stomach one more time. I feel progress. I feel failure. I silently promise myself that tomorrow I will do better. Instead of just refusing food, I won;t even think about it.
This is my life. I can help myself. And for good measure. I can get through this. I laugh, drowsily. My therapist would be proud. In the other room I can faintly hear the sound of my brother's video game mixing in with my father's snoring. Background noise to a boy's voice who's now singing about some park where he used to get high.
Fuck. I'm going to be skinny.
Another day in the life of my prettiest friend.
This is not a joke.
My stomach churns. Emptiness mixed with water mixed with shame mixed with pride mixed with a sadness that can't be chased away with a swig of vodka or a day at an amusement park. I know, everyone that came before knows that this is a lethal combination. Broccoli and cheese. Sitting in a pan on the stove, bubbling, left over from dinner, still warm, still stringy, still gooey.
I don't even feel it when my clenched hands dig into the steaming food. It relaxes me, the sigh from the end of a Panic song, the relief of letting out held breath. Almost as good as pizza, as it gets thrown into my mouth, burns my tongue, scalds my tastebuds. I hate my fucking tastebuds. I don't need them. I quickly think about running a bread knife over my tongue, red dots falling in flakes, snow in July, onto my counter. The thought is quickly dismissed. I never wanted to hurt myself. At least not conciously. It wasn't about that.
None of this happened. This was what my therapist calls "mental fufillment". Which sounds like total bullshit. Like she took two stereotypical "therapy" words and threw them together halfhazardly hoping that they'd make sense, that someone would say "Yes, that's what it is!" She needs to pick up a hobby. My mother could reccomend a few to her. Scrapbooking or knitting or making fucking broccoli and cheese or buying self-help-love-yourself books for her "not quite all there" little girl.
The next step in her "plan to recovery" is to help myself. To what she never said. Help myself to another serving on broccoli and cheese? Or maybe help myself to the bathroom where I can then help myself stick my finger down my throat. So I skip her "plan to recovery" all together and sign onto that social networking site where no one is quite cool enough, pretty enough, funny enough. This is my life, she has me repeat on Thursday nights at the center, I can help myself.
This is my life. I can help myself. This is my life. I. Can. Help. Myself.
And if she's feeling especially fruity and "alive"; I will get through this. And I will, I'll pretend to listen to her talk for about 26 more minutes and then I will pretend to hear her homework assignment and then I will walk into the rain and pull open the door of my mother's SUV and tell her that
This is my life. I can help myself. I will [probably won't, defintely can't, sort of don't even want to] get through this.
I'm just proud that I didn't give in. I type this to one of the thin kids. One who knows what I'm going through. We aren't friends. I don't allow myself to have friends, I learned the hard way that friends lead to a sleepover or a movie date or a mall excursion which leads to soft pretzels covered in salt and popcorn smothered in butter and pizza dripping with grease. Basically all that is good in life. All that I can't let myself have. Friends are temptations.
She, Taylor, Tay, tells me that she, too, is proud of me, that I will be happy with myself tomorrow when I don't wake up with a paperweight in the pit of my stomach. I tell her that that is impossible, who could eat a paperweight? She "lol's", then says "Love you && stay skinny, girl. XOXO". Then the number of "friends" online switches from 1 to 0. An even number.
Tomorrow I'll run as far as I have to. I'll run off every single calorie I've ever eaten in my whole 5,823 days of living. I'll run until my legs are on hot coals, it stings to walk, my soles are so hot that they're cold. I'll get chills. And I'll feel so good about myself that I won't want to eat the whole day, and at dinner when my mom scoops another mountain of peas onto my plate, I'll think of an even more clever way to avoid eating them. Of course my new found strength will also lend newfound brain power. A body of water over the cliff, where otherwise there'd just be rocks and sticks and dirt. A tropical paradise instead of a lonely desert.
This is my life. I think about giving my therapist a new phrase to chew on like the caps of her pens. I can do what I want.
This is my life, I can do what I want.
But as quickly as the thought enters my mind, it is shot down. Into my stomach, with the liquidized celery stalks and 90-calorie yogurts my mom picked up at the Weis's after work. I feel sick. My bed is too comfortable to leave. I can still smell the broccoli and cheese. Fuck my parent's laziness. Why can't they put the garbage disposal to use? Instead of practically letting food rot on our costom granite countertops. Why don't we have a maid?
On my nightstand, my messy maidless nightstand, there is a bottle of pills. An orange, plastic container of my antidepressant that usually make me more depressed than I was in the first place. And under that. Under the pill bottle, under a thin layer of paint, and a piece of 2x4 there is another pill bottle. This is a nuts and bolts bottle. Odds and ends Trevor said to me when he pressed it into my stomach, under my shirt, as his other hand got tangled in my hair, and his lips pressed against my ear.
I don't let boys touch my stomach. Another rule that Trevor got me to break, just like not eating on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. Although that was minor because it was only half of an apple, and I let myself eat apples. Occasionally. Trevor was the first to touch my stomach. He said it reminded him of a milky night when the stars were out and everything was OK. I assume he was referring to my freckles. Fucking angel kisses or whatever you're force-fed by your relatives until you're 12 and can think on your own. Or for me, 9. I was a fast learner.
Trevor is a nice boy. The only boy that I let touch me in places that shouldn't be touched until one's wedding night.
I don't love him. I love how he makes me feel. Skinny. Beautiful. Like my prettiest friend.
I think I could be with him for the rest of my life. I'm not going to. But I like having the comfort of knowing that he's here and that he doesn't want anyone else and I could come back to him whenever I want. I also like that he gives me "da goods". My own personal mix of sleeping pills. I like to experiment. A new combo every day. But I can only remember them by color, description since I have no idea the name of the toxins that I am putting into my body with only a gulp of water.
Blue circle. And a half-white-half-red tube-ish one.
I throw them into my mouth and take a sip of the stale water in the Disney princesses cup that has been sitting on the table for far too long. I realize that I don't have long until "da goods" go into effect, so I stumblr over to my mirror to do my nightly check-up. I lift up my shirt, press my fingers into my skin. Turn to the side. Pull down the top of my shorts so I can see my hip. Is it protruding more? Or less? Oh my God, I am so fat.
My mirror is how I see myself. Others say that the mirror isn't a true reflection of you. But for me it is. And I fucking hate it. I pull at the flap of skin near my belly button. It stretches about three centimeters. Shit. I tried to warn myself about that.
When I start to feel drowsy I turn on the celing fan and turn out the light. My door is locked, so no one can come in. I sleep naked. The last thing that I need is one of my brother's friends to walk in because they were "looking for the bathroom". I turn on my stereo. Some band that Trevor likes. They're singing about globes and maps. And how they're charting some chick's way home. Deep stuff. I lay on my back, staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars that my brother helped my put up back when I was OK. I still like them. They remind me of Trevor. He's a nice boy.
When my thoughts run in circles I know it's time to close my eyes. I press my fingers into the stomach one more time. I feel progress. I feel failure. I silently promise myself that tomorrow I will do better. Instead of just refusing food, I won;t even think about it.
This is my life. I can help myself. And for good measure. I can get through this. I laugh, drowsily. My therapist would be proud. In the other room I can faintly hear the sound of my brother's video game mixing in with my father's snoring. Background noise to a boy's voice who's now singing about some park where he used to get high.
Fuck. I'm going to be skinny.
Another day in the life of my prettiest friend.