Disorderly Eating With Ana (mid-draft, still being revised)

Disorderly Eating With Ana

I’ll tell you what happened.

It was actually quite simple.

There were no voices in my head or warps in the mirror.

I knew what was there and it was a huge pile of fat sitting in front of me.

So, I used every bit of determination I had inside of me

And I kicked through that pile until there was nothing left.

If it were like the television shows and health classes portray,

I’m sure that fat would have been taunting and saying cruel things to me;

But that fat did what fat always does. It just sat there.

The scale failed to speak as well, and tears failed to fall from my eyes.

My hair failed to fall out and my nails failed to become brittle.

The color failed to leave my face and the growls failed to become too angry to silence.

The only thing that proved to meet expectations was the weight loss,

And the fat surely didn’t fail to shed from my body.

When all these things fail to happen, however, people fail to notice;

And when people fail to notice, nothing ever changes.

Everyone acts like Anorexia is such a loud, heinous disorder.

Like it’s a bitch in Christian Louboutin stilettos coming to stomp on your entire life.

Like it tortures and harasses its helpless victims to the point of insanity.

But I don’t think that people realize,

Sometimes Anorexia is as quiet as a night in the West Virginia mountains.

Sometimes, Anorexia becomes your friend.

She became mine, anyway.

If she came parading in with Christian Louboutin stilettos,

She would have given them to me.

She gave me a lot, and she didn’t take anything.

So, where everyone sees parasitism, there is truly commensalism.

Everyone acts like Anorexia is such a loud, heinous disorder;

But sometimes, when I’m lonely, I wonder where my friend is.