Kilos, centimeters, freckles and scars, height, sunspots, and mistakes. They were the only things I could, or would, use to measure away my days. The time would pass and the calories consumed and burned was the only thing that my no longer eager and open mind could fathom. As the size of my waist-as if that was an accurate portrayal of my infinite value and virtue-rose and shrunk, so did my sense of self worth, Up with the small numbers and down with the large.I sensed that nobody would love me, or even give a damn about me, as long as I took up the space I felt was much more deserved by the beautiful soul next to me on the San Diego trolley last Spring. The smaller I got, the more I felt that I was worthy of their love and her time. The more I delicately wasted away, the more I felt that everything was falling into place. There was something comforting about the false sense of security that the worlds of Ana and Mia so appealingly offered; that maybe if I got rid of the food after it went down, or skipped all of the meals and got rid of the fat and never welcomed it back then maybe, JUST MAYBE, all my pain and faults and unhappiness would just dissipates // dissolve // vanish. I relinquished all my autonomy in the presence of my disorders in the hopes they'd bring me to the person I was meant to be.
I lost my mind. But in getting it back I gained my freedom and let the shackles loose. I slipped into an uncomfortable chaos of getting rid of calorie counts and the daily love affair with my scale, and I let go. I let go of all the false hope and invulnerability. I let go of any dependence of the traps set up by anything and everything toxic. I am now constellations. I am the stars and moons and skies and I am the infinite depth of the plentiful black holes that fill up the darkest spaces in the esteemed mind of the solar system. I am free. I no longer take my coffee black. I am an independent woman that no longer takes taxing, impossible orders from the disesteemed inside of her mind, and I no longer take my coffee black.
