Maybe one day...

Anna 1

Anna knew that she was too thin for her body,

but she could not believe that people could see a figure other than what she saw in the mirror.

She saw herself as huge, she controlled every inch of her body.

She compulsively touched her clavicle bones, circled her wrist between her index finger and thumb.

She measured her waist, meticulously counted her ribs to see if she could still feel them.

She was terrified of gaining weight.

She would look at himself in the mirror and check, check, it was exhausting work.

In the morning he would wake up and love to spend a good half hour in front of the mirror staring at her empty stomach.

The taut lines on her muscles were disappearing.

She would grab her waist hoping it would disappear, that all that skin could be swallowed up with a sour look.

She then moved very slowly to breakfast, dragged herself down the icy corridor.

She always dressed, wearing up to three jumpers and then strictly wearing gloves, although it was early June, the cold was a constant companion for her.

She looked at the milk, looked at the biscuits and then looked up into her father's.

She smiled, happy.

Anna was always smiling, happy that she had managed to build a crystal world around herself.

That she was able to fool everyone, not because she hated them, just the opposite, because she loved them.

She would never have tolerated seeing her parents sad, she would never have given them anything not to be proud of.

She calmly ate her half-muffin and then quietly began her day, which was based on the consumption of strictly sugar-free energy drinks, chewing gum and litres of water to compensate for the sense of hunger.

Her stomach often growled but she could not listen to it, so she watered it down hoping it would stop complaining.

From time to time she found herself conversing with her belly: 'I'm hungry too, but I'm not complaining so much. I won't give you a momentary satisfaction that will make me cry later,' she would whisper when no one could hear her.

When noon struck, Anna just wanted to eat.

She spent hours thinking about food, even while studying she had a part of her brain constantly mulling over what she could eat, how many calories she was consuming, what she was going to do that night to hide the food.

She thought, she pondered.

Lunch was alone, it was her favourite time of day.

She would retrieve all the food she would never eat, a cream brioche, the pasta she had made the day before, the biscuits that had a good 80kcal a piece, crazy, she said.

She would place them carefully on the table and then take a paper towel.

Her secret ritual.

She would turn on the computer to her favourite TV series and imagine herself eating guilt-free.

She would open the packet, take a bite, and then after it had formed a lump in her mouth she would spit it out, drink to rinse her mouth, and the process would begin again.

She wouldn't swallow anything.

She didn't want all those calories to end up in her stomach. She couldn't absorb them.