Wrists

My mother called me down for dinner that evening. I opened my bedroom door and shouted downstairs that I “felt sick.” When I sat back down on my bed to resume reading Stephen King, she suddenly appeared in my room, seeming annoyed.

“Don’t tell me you’re trying to lose more weight,” said she.

I shook my head. “I really feel sick,” I assured her. Because it really was true; my stomach wasn’t taking too kindly to the whole three eggs I had an hour earlier. My stomach never liked it when I tried to eat like a normal person anymore; it always made me feel like throwing up when I did so.

“Not eating isn’t going to make you lose weight efficiently,” my mother warned me. “It’s only going to make you gain back fast.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Now come eat,” my mother absentmindedly fixed some of the book stacks by her pale, bare feet. “I can’t read you lately. You’re always either in your room, reading, or at your college. You never talk to your mother anymore, you know.” She picked up a random novel and studied the front cover. “You’re like a stranger in your own home, Graham.”

I am a stranger in my own home, mother. I always have been; I’m just there, sitting in my locked cage, waiting for someone to unlock the door and pull me out. But no one ever has. So I’m still here, patiently awaiting for that one day, if it’ll ever come.

Tears began to come up again—I hated feeling so weak. The demons in my head were making me weak, foolish, stupid. “I’m sorry,” was all I could say.

She stood in there silently for a little longer.
And then left the room.

So much guilt. I wanted to tell her; I wanted to tell them all. But I couldn’t. I never could.