Button Poetry

When the Fat Girl Gets Skinny

Poet : Blythe Baird

The year of skinny pop and sugar free jello cups 
We guzzled vitamin water and vodka
Toasting to high school in survival, complimenting each other's thigh gaps.

Trying diets we found on the internet
Menthol cigarettes,
Eating in front of a mirror,
Donating blood
Replacing meals with other practical hobbies like making flower crowns,
Or fainting 

Wondering why I haven't had my period in months 
Or why breakfast tastes like giving up
Or how many more productive ways I could've spent my time today besides googling the calories of glue in the U.S. envelope
Watching America's Next Top Model like the gospel
Hunching naked over a bathroom scale, crying into an empty bowl of Coco Puffs because I only feel pretty when I'm hungry
If you are not recovering, you are dying

By the time I was 16 I had already experienced being clinically overweight, underweight and obese
As a child, fat was the first word people used to describe me, which didn't offend me
Until I found out it was supposed to

When I lost weight, my dad was so proud, he started carrying my before and after photo in his wallet. 

So relieved to get to stop worrying about me getting diabetes
He saw a program on the news about the epidemic of obesity

Saying he is just so glad to finally see me taking care fo myself.

If you develop an eating disorder when you are already thin to begin with, you go to the hospital
If you develop an eating disorder when you are not thin to begin with, you are a success story
So when I evaporated of course everyone congratulated me on getting healthy 

Girls at school who never spoke to me before stop me in the hallway to ask how I did it
I say, "I am sick", they say, "No you're an inspiration." 
How could I not fall in love with my illness 
With becoming the kind of silhouette people are supposed to fall in love with
Why would I ever want to stop being hungry when anorexia was the most interesting thing about me
So how lucky it is now to be boring. 

The way not going to the hospital is boring
The way looking at an apple and seeing only an apple, not 60, or half an hour of sit ups
My story may not be as exciting as it used to but at least there is nothing left to count
The calculator in my head finally stopped

I used to love the feeling of drinking water on an empty stomach
Waiting for the coolness to slip all the way down and land in the well
Not obsessed with being empty but afraid of being full
I used to feel proud when I was cold in a warm room

Now I am proud I have stopped seeking revenge on this body
This was the year of eating when I was hungry without punishing myself
And I know it sounds ridiculous but that shit is hard

When I was little, someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grow up and I said "small".