I Used To Be

Chapter 9 Part 11

I woke up in the middle of the night so hot that my skin felt like it was one of those heat rocks in a sauna. I didn't feel like I was actually in the sauna because I wasn't sweating; I knew I was way too dehydrated to sweat. My skin felt like the surface of the actual rocks. It felt red, papery, completely desiccated. I wanted a gallon of water. A gallon of cold cold water. But I didn't want to risk gaining water weight. I had this belief that my body hung onto water more than usual after a b/p session. But fuck, I was thirsty. And my heart was racing. I decided the thing to do was get up and weigh myself.

102. Fuck yeah. Sooooo close to my under-100 goal. Just then everything around me started to do that thing it did right before I passed out that day in the Monroes' office. It started to condense into a pinprick of kaleidoscope lights and blurry shapes. I sat down hard on the bathroom floor. I don't know where the moisture came from, but suddenly I was sweating. And freezing. Like shivering hard freezing. I pulled my knees into my chest and put my head between my legs. I had read that somewhere or seen on TV that this was the thing to do to prevent passing out. And suddenly I felt very, very scared. I could die here. And as much as I often thought that was exactly what I wanted, right now, faced with the very real possibility, I was terrified. I wanted Isabelle. I looked in the direction of my phone, but even if I had the strength to get to it, I couldn't call her. Should I write her a letter in case I died? No, that was too dramatic. Plus my mom would be the one to find it, so the chances of Isabelle ever seeing it were very small. Then my mom would know . . .

Before I knew it, I was on my knees in front of the toilet again, dry heaving involuntarily. There was absolutely nothing in me to come up. Bile bit the back of my already swollen and sore throat, but it didn't even have the strength to come all the way out, just like the rest of me. I felt like such a cliché. Bulimic girl on the bathroom floor draped over the toilet seat, afraid she was going to die. Someone should make a fucking after school special about me.

I was so so so tired. I had absolutely no energy anywhere, in any part of my mind or body. I pulled the bath mat down from the side of the tub and let it flop onto the floor. I curled up on it and fell asleep.

When I woke up, I had no idea what time it was. I almost didn't know where I was or how I got there, but figured it out as soon as the black-and-white tile on my bathroom floor came into focus. Fuck, please don't let Mom find me like this.

I crawled back onto my room and looked at the clock. 6:03 a.m. I also remembered it was Sunday. Thank God. No pun intended.