The ED Diaries

Pretty pills make pretty people even prettier. Pretty, pretty, pretty, with pretty skin, nails, and hair. Pretty pills make pretty people skinny. Tiny, tiny, tiny. Gone.

Alexandra Celandine Wolfenstein opened the secret stash in the back of her medicine cabinet – the cracked hole in the wall, hidden behind the numerous bottles of hairspray, Sebastian, Bed Head. She cracked open the fresh bottle of diet pills – the box was green; skinny woman smiling like she’d won the lottery - shook out two and popped them into her mouth. They tasted so gross, like metal, but she needed them. She swallowed them with a swig of her St. Croix water. This was revenge.

Pretty water only pretty people can drink. Don’t drink it, you fat cow. You’re not allowed. Lose it, lose it all. Then you’ll drink from the Fountain of Youth. Forever pretty. Do you want to be forever pretty?

“I do,” she whispered. “Oh, God, I do.”

“Good,” her reflection – her beautiful, true self – said, a half-smirk, half-smile on her pretty, malnourished face. Her sea-blue eyes darted up and down at the girl in front of the mirror, examining. Her plush-lipped smile remained. “Pretty Wolfey. You want to be pretty forever, don’t you?”

Wolf nodded again, chasing away the thought of crawling into the mirror, where she’d be beautiful and gorgeous and hot and lovely forever and ever and ever.

But in reality, Wolf was glancing at herself in the mirror. A distorted image looked back at her: Fat arms, fat legs, fat fingers, fat knees. Must go. Must be gone. But this distorted image was never there. Her reflection wasn’t talking to her and she wasn’t nodding in agreement.

In reality, a sick blonde girl was looking back at her. Thin arms, thin legs. Seventy pounds of bones, skin. Seventy pounds of lanugo, dead fibers, broken veins, rusty esophagus, the Russell’s signs on her bony fingers, fat bones. This was revenge.

Not happy. Not skinny enough. Be skinny, you fat cow. Lose it all, lose it until you lose your life. Do it, do it, do it! Do it, you fat fucking cow! You wanted revenge, right?!

She always needed to be thinner. Thinner, thinner, thinner. She wanted her stomach to be nothing more than a stretch of fibers against her bones. If she could, she’s break open her own bones and dig the marrow out with a fancy, long-handled Vera Wang spoon, show it to her mother, screaming, “Are you happy now?!” Her mother might be horrified – or maybe proud. Her daughter was thinner than her – her daughter was more gorgeous, more skinnier, more prettier, better than anything she ever was or will be. She won the race, the battle of the bulge, dodging death at every corner. She did good. This was revenge.

Not happy. Must be pretty like Mom. Not happy, not happy, not happy. Eat. Vomit. Binge. Starve. Do it.

She could not do that. She was so close, yet so fucking far away. She couldn’t stray from this dangerous path now. She wouldn’t eat. Maybe once, twice per week. Once, once, just once--

No, no, no! Not even once, you fat whore! No! Look at all the work you’ve done – you’re going to send yourself back into that hellhole of being fat. You don’t want to fat like everyone else, right!?

She’d be perfect, just like her mom, the Mrs. Andrea Wolfenstein, wife of Blake Wolfenstein, a model and mother. She always popped the “pretty pills”, as she called them. The woman was never beyond one hundred and fifty pounds. She would stand in front of the mirror, calling herself “fat” and “ugly” until the bathroom floor was so heavily coated with the words that anyone who walked in would slip and fall on a pile of “fat” and “ugly”.

Then Mommy Dearest would jam a pretty manicured, French tipped finger down her throat and heave everything out until her stomach would be baby mousy pink again. Wolf would always watch, fascinated, and experiment too until the addiction became obsession. She wanted to be less. Always less. This was revenge.

Always less, always less. Must be less. More weight, less pretty. More pretty, less weight. Always less, always less. Be tiny. Tiny, tiny, tiny. Must be tiny, must be perfect, must be pretty. Not pretty equals no perfect. Perfection equals happiness. Happiness equals skinny. Skinny equals happy.

Wolf blinked and the malnourished girl in the mirror blinked in sync with her. They were one in the same, but the girl in the mirror was prettier, skinner. Wolf grinned her sadistic pre-exercise grin – thinking of all the lost calories and bones - and walked off toward the penthouse gym, angry music in her ear, artificial chemicals and hope rushing violently through her tired and rusty veins, ready to burst but not quite. Her legs and arms burned like fire, nucleic acid burning through the delicate fibers of her veins, sweat beading from her perfectly done hairline. This was revenge.

Revenge, Wolfey. You wanna be thinner than her. Always thinner. Always gorgeous. Teeny, tiny Wolfey. You’ll be prettier than Mom, skinner than Mom, envied by Mom. You deserve it.

Then, as quickly as Wolf began, the world went blank, cold, listless. The music in her ears ceased, the beating of her heart faded, and there was barely a thump as she hit the ground. Everything returned with a bang; the music that shattered her ear drums, the blood that rushed to her ears, her heart erratically beating, legs burning. She couldn’t feel anything; she just heard everything: the elderly couple in the penthouse below, talking quietly about tonight’s charity dinner and how lovely and grand it will be; the cars rushing by, wanting to be quicker, faster; the television screaming.

Wolfey, don’t you love this? To feel weightless. Weightless, Wolfey.

She stayed on the carpeted floor, feeling her bones grind against the itchy carpet, mumbling the words to the song, trying to stay conscious, letting herself drift off into oblivion a few times to play with the ghosts that hid behind her ribs, in her heart. If this is how revenge against her mother feels like, it’s both a fire – pretty, but deadly. Deathly pretty.

At that moment, her parents found her on the floor, heart barely there, barely breathing, barely anything at all, just bones and blood and dead blood and dead hairs and dead everything. And that same day, she found herself on Daddy Dearest’s pretty G6, clawing away from New York, crying and sobbing because she wanted to be at home, where everything was safe and away from food.

They dragged her into that fucking place until her rusty throat burst from screaming. They left without a word. Mommy crying fake crocodile tears, Dad talking on the phone. Fucking hypocrites. This was revenge.

Drown. Fuck you, Mom. Fuck you, Dad. Hope you die and so do I.