The beginning of my sentences are always the hardest part. Here we go. Just like everyone, i started as just a person; a small light that will dim without encouragement, a breakable thing that was once born of 46 of another's chromosomes with the possibility of creating me or a million other people similar to me, who relied on two people to exist, one person to survive, and no one but herself to have the will. This fragile being would one day grow, and still be nothing but a person, two eyes, two ears one mouth and nose, one mind and one trillion neurons, creating an abyss of thought that may or may not form words. I get tired, tired of living my life like i do, tired of dying every day, tired of struggling not to want to die, and hating myself every day, tired of fearing my own mind, tired of forcing a chemical reaction within myself in order to feel happy. It weakens me, it makes life not worth living at times. It makes every dark corner that much scarier, and every moment alone so much more Lonely. I'd tell you to save me from this treacherous "it", but it is my own mind. I have a mental illness, an eating disorder, an anorexic's mind, forever trapped in a body who failed to starve itself to death. From this monstrosity sprouted fear, and anxiety, ADHD and could one day make a world in which every schizophrenic lives. A world of confusion, noises and voices, a world in which there is no escape. I was born of two trapped minds, to people who lived in a false reality, and live each day in fear of losing my mind, the worst fear is the fear of never finding it after its lost. I'd like to find my mind again, my real mind, not this anorexic mind, I feel like I'm just fragments of myself, or even a mimic, you know, maybe not even real.
I am always hungry. Hungry for satisfaction, hungry for happiness, from all I know of hunger, it goes away, everything about it, until your numb, until you've reached the room of comfort deep inside of starvation mode, where you eventually feel nothing. But this hunger that I have, it does not go away, it never has. I'm depressed, and my anxiety makes my environment disappear, my limbs shake, and my stomach perform a dance for me, I have searched many times for a cure, medication, deep breathing, calming music, calming smells; I have found but one cure. Endorphins. They are my addiction, my elixir of happiness, how I get through my day, and I'd die before I gave them up. Lets turn this topic around, I've been rude anyways, let me tell you more about myself. I was born on march 7 1998, with front teeth, blue eyes stained with brown in one eye, and with a last name i'll never know who belonged too. I lived with my mother for as little as a year or two, before I was taken away. She was a drug addict, a schizophrenic alcohol abuser, and she could barely take care of herself let alone a child, and she had seven. One by one we were conceived with different fathers, taken away, and put in a foster home. At age three, I was adopted, back up to when my eldest brother was adopted, and that's when the joining of two families began. My guardians adopted each of us as my mother kept conceiving, some of us in groups of two or three, and fought for us in court, so that we may all remain together. They won, and to this day I live in a big hectic slightly dysfunctional family of eleven siblings.
I've been hospitalized roughly 239 days, in and out reapeatedly for a year, to recover from anorexia nervosa, all because I wanted to perfect myself, I wanted control over my life, I wanted a perfect lifestyle, I wanted to be the best I could be to help my father. My father is my idol, he in many ways is what I want to be, strong, independent, confident, smart, funny, kind, merciful. And he's slipping from me. He has a condition called ligamentum flavum ossification, it's where the ligaments aroung his spine turn to bone, and as you may be able to grasp it is very painful for him, on top of this he has wrist problems, leg problems, and he was told that if he was lucky he'd be on crutches the rest of his life, if not paralyzed. His will to live is determined by the correct dose of medication at the correct time. His pain hurts me in the deepest part of my heart, and I prayed to god to take his pain away, give it to someone who had yet to know real pain, give it to me. Sickness in a physical way to me is more tolerable, it's when it starts effecting the mind is when it eats away at you, breaks you down, and because of all the medication my dad takes, it effects his mind greatly, he used to struggle to remember things, read long things on a page, keep his mind on a task, and with the more underweight I became I experienced this to. I tortured my mind by starving it, I broke, then had to rebuild myself. the hardest thing i've ever done was trying to exit the threshold of starvation mode, cope with a flood of emotion after my long sought and achieved numbness to the world, my anxiety just got worse the more I was refed, and I always had the instinct to excercise, and it strenghened me, every day I ran, or did push ups, sit ups, lifted things and played with my neices, chased them, carried them around, in order to spark pleasure in my body, in order to make my life worth living, and to rebuild my mind and body from a 84 pound barely human creature to a 120 pound muscular female, who could for days at a time, combat her anxiety, and fight with her eating disorder. I still hate myself, I hate almost everything about myself, my body, my personality, my fears and weaknesses, my mind. I have the hardest time trusting people, so I ignore them, even if all they try to do is help me, and it makes recovering that much harder, because I dont trust others help. I could barely bring myself to trust my own mind, and my own self, after all the confusion I've felt. I still have the odd day where I want to withdraw deep inside of myself and fade away, but I think most people do, i've just imagined that if i were a sack of sand you'd cut me, and i'd drain until I was nothing, to me this is a lovely thought. Why can't life consist of nothing but dreams, so that I could dream over and over again, until I got it right, and no past or future dreams would ever change my present. I search deep down into myself how this even happened to me, why me, I wish I knew how this even started. One day I decide to learn about nutrition, the next day I start eliminating "unhealthy" foods, I start excercising, I here somewhere eating fat is healthy, but high calorie, I hear access carbs convert to fat, I hear its unhealthy to have fat. I hear my dads in pain, I hear he's getting worse, I think he could be dieing, I start to feel confused, I start to feel afraid, my thoughts start to contradict, I need to help my dad, I need to be with him, I need to know he's safe, I need him to be safe, i'm running, i'm running to him, i'm running for him, i'm running for myself, my feet won't stop, it's instinct, I just keep going, if I stop a may never move again, I may fall, I may fail, I may go completely numb, I may lose my mind, I may cease to exist, my brain feels dim, i'm forgetting things now, I hear my mother yelling at me, I sense her anger, her agitation, it's making me anxious, it's making me want to cry, it won't stop, why won't it stop, please make it stop, my head is spinning, everything is in slow motion, everything is so confusing, everything is hard to grasp, i'm desperately trying to grasp something, I have that feeling, that feeling that it's something very important. You can't cry, don't cry now, just don't cry, it will only weaken you. "You need to eat something" my dad says, my mom says, my brother says, my sister says, my grandpa says, my friends say, "you've lost alot of weight." My fear gets worse, food could make me feel worse, food could only make me anxious, it will only make me need to run more, I don't want to feel like running anymore, I just can't stop, it hurts, my legs hurt, my body is numb, I have bruises, I have cuts, I don't know where they came from, why can't I remember anything, i'm only good with this, I can't change this pattern, I can't eat now, I've gone too long without food, I don't know how my body will handle it, I don't want to feel anxious anymore. I can see my bones, all of them, they stick out, I look so scary, is this really me, is this really what I look like, I don't believe it, this is not me, it can't be.
Please help me, words are slipping from my mind, i've lost my ability to create knew thoughts, everythings a loop, everythings the same, why are all my memories about food, food, god, and my dad. Nothing else exists. I remember praying, telling god, "what have I done, what have I done to myself, i've lost control" sitting on a rooftop, looking at the sun set, thinking, I wish I could feel the warmth of the sun, I wish my body would produce more seratonin, a spark, a kindle inside of me, anything, but I couldn't, I was totally and completely, numb.
You know that saying, curiosity killed the cat, well it fits nicely into this next paragraph. I was curious of nutrition, after all, it is a huge part of human existence. And this curiosity made me know just enough to starve myself, to want an apathetic sweet release from human emotion, realize to late how bad I was, then no longer have the capacity to care. If starvation didn't finish eating away at me my anxiety would, because I'm just done. I don't know if I can do this anymore, don't know how long I'll care enough to recover, I don't know
if I'll ever have the strength again. Anorexia is winning the battle inside of me, because I hate every minute of my pathetic life. I wake up every morning hating myself, I look at myself in the mirror, and think how worthless I am, I see my body and wish I was anorexic again, at least then I wasn't fat and ugly, I disgust myself.
Do you know exactly how it felt to be starved? Empty. It's what I Waited for, to stop feeling, because I couldn't cope with feeling how I did, because every time I told myself to get over things, I never really did. I couldn't change things that would happen, I'd just have to let it go, somehow get over it. I tried so hard. I tried so hard to keep feeling happy, I tried so hard to satisfy that want to feel like everything would always be alright. Eventually I realized I'd never find this satisfaction, and I'd never get over my feelings. So I waited, for starvation mode, until I could no longer care, until I became an alienated creature, a broken mess, unresponsive to environmental stimuli. That was how I defined "letting go."
Who am I anymore, I've lost myself, I've lost my mind, please find me, help me, cure me. I feel so sick, I feel broken. Teach me how to love life, teach me how to love myself, I have nothing left to love, I am no one, I am nothing. Help me find my words again, because they keep slipping from me, I'm desperate. Starvation has changed me in a way I never thought possible, I think like a different person, and I can't for the love of me decide who I am anymore, it's like I've forgotten how to be me. Sometimes I ask myself, who am I, and what have I become. What makes me even me anymore. I wish I remembered myself a little better. But starvation, it takes over your mind, your personality, your thoughts. It drives a wedge between you and all other people, it kills your soul, eats away at that little kindle inside of you, I think they call it peace. I lost that, and I'd like to retrieve it. It's all I want, to go a day without tightness in my chest or distaste in my mouth, it's a lot of effort, to hate yourself so much. Hate is what got me where I am, hate and anger. I wouldn't explode the way I do, I wouldn't push people away, if I didn't contain so much emotion.
I did something scary today, but in the moment it just felt so right, it surprised me, the rush it gave me, I enjoyed it, every drop of blood I watched drip down my arm, while my salty mercury- filled tears mixed sickly sweet on the bathroom floor. I stopped running as much, stopped skipping, stopped jumping, stopped playing, people just wouldn't understand how it gave me such release, how it freed me from the moment, how it calmed my soul. So I cut, because I was shamed for such an inconvenient form of release, it became easier for me to cut, because it calmed me, and no one saw me do it. When I draw my own blood, I'm marking myself as nothing more than an object to be destroyed, I'm a waste of flesh and bone, so I might as well destroy what starvation didn't, it can't hurt anymore than
what it felt like to break my heart, deteriorate every memory that ever made me smile, relive every bad dream until anxiety choked me down.
I'm the girl who will never be enough, my expectations rapidly developed Into something no one can ever achieve, perfection. I notice every human on earth taller than me, smarter than me, prettier than me, thinner than me, and compare myself to everyone. This, you see, is why I'll never be enough, because there will always be someone out there better than me.
