When I wake up my face is stuck to my arm by dried blood. I don't even remember doing this to myself. How is it possible? Why does this always happen to me? I wish I could remember it, maybe if I could I'd stop.
I shower so I don't have to fo to school with dried blood all over my face. My face is getting paler. Soon I'll have to start using make up again so no one gets concerned. I love my pale skin in the winter. I feel like a china doll. Pale skin, red lips.
On the bus ride to school I'm almost blinded by the morning sun in my face. It's too early for sunshine. It's always for brighness in a world where everything is usually so dark. Sunshine is my enemy until I'm skinny.
Almost instantly after I stand up I'm crippled by pain in my stomach. Walking is nearly impossible right now and I have to get to the second floor for my class. Spanish is my least favorite class of the day because I didn't choose it, my mom did. I could honestly give a fuck about it. My strategy is that if I learn about 6-% of the material I can pass with at least a D. Mostly I just sleep.
Sleep comes too easily these days. I'm exhausted all the time. Each movement of my body is forced & slow. A lot of the time my anxiety is what makes me seem awake. I didn't know it was possible to be this tired, not only physically either. My mind is tired. I spend too much time arguing with Ana and counting calories. I'm just broken. That's why I rely on Ana to fix me. She will make me skinny. She will make me beautiful.
The only thing that ever makes me pay attention in this stupid class is my teacher. She's so skinny. Her face is thin and brought to life by the blonde curls that surround her face. Her stomach is flat and if she wore a tank top I'm pretty sure you'd be able to see her ribs and hipbones. Her legs are the thinnest I've ever seen in real life and I could probably fit my thumb and pointer finger around the thickest part of her arms. Every day I resist the urge to cry during class and every minute I'm in the room I die a little more inside. Ana loves her.
It just sucks hating every part of your body. If someone else hates you then you can just walk away with your head high and your middle finger higher, but if you hate yourself you're stuck with that 24 hours a day. When I see a person who's confident in themself I feel jealous. One day I'll be happy with myself.
I have the last lunch of the day 6B. It doesn't matter what lunch I have, I wouldn't eat in any lunch period. I remember my freshman year how I would use lunchtime as my binge time. I could tell everyone was staring at me. You know the look people give obese people at a fast food resturaunt? That's what I felt like. After lunch I would sneak off and purge in the farthest bathroom that I could find. Some days I couldn't, and that drove me insane so I just stopped eating lunch all together.
After lunch I have gym class. I hate that class so much. I always half-sprint from the cafeteria to the locker rooms, which are only down the hall. I hate changing. Luckily, lunch periods are released from the cafeteria two minutes early. Usually there are one or two people in my changing row that are already there or are from the last class. No one really pays attention to me as I change before class, which is good. The less people that notice me, the better.
It takes me exactly 23 seconds to change from my clothes to my uniform. Most people don't really pay attention, but i've gotten this down to an art. Over the summer I must've spent hours in different outfits perfecting how to change in to my gym uniform the fastest way possible. Changing my shirt is never hard, so I do that first. Plus my shirt can cover my body while I change into my pants. It takes me 7 seconds to change my shirt and 16 to change my pants. It would've took me less, but I was wearing skinny jeans again.
I'm either the first or second person out to line up. Always. The bell for passing period to be over hasn't even rung yet. I hate that I'm so self conscious that I cant even change in the locker room. About 12 minutes later the whole class is lined up and talking to their friends. Me? I sit back and dread the moment this class starts.
Eventually the teacher comes out to start warmups. Jumping jacks and arm circles are easy, stretches are a breeze, but running is always a challenge as a smoker. Well I guess ex-smoker.
I never saw a point to running in gym class. It got worse when high school started. Every day we have to run three minutes, which we had to do freshman year. The only difference is that eventually we add another minute until we get to seven, which we should be at by now, but our class is good so we don't have to run that much. Running around the track usually takes about a minute in the field house, where we meet. Ten laps around the track is a mile and some kids from the track team usually run about a half a mile to warm up. Like how do they do that? I struggle hard to make it around three times.
Running around that stupid track is torture. I don't mind running, but that's when I have a place to go. The most interesting spot to stop on the track is the water fountain and we're not even allowed to stop there until the three minutes is up. At least when I run with Ana I can go in the stores along 75th street and stop to get water whenever I feel like it. Just the feeling of going in a circle for three minutes, running with no energy is horrible.
Today we bump the run up to four minutes and by the end of it I almost collapse. The room spins while I do the rest of my stretches. As if that wasn't torture enough, we have the pleasure of doing the pushup test this fine afternoon.
With other schools they play the tape and kids do as many half-ass pushups as they can. Not with my school. They take gym class way too seriously. For our test we have to find a partner and grab a sponge ball. I'm partnered up with some girl I don't even know, but we're always the last two to finish the run at the beginning of class so I feel like we're sorta friends in that way. We understand the struggle. The objective is to have a flat body while you drop down so that your chest touches the sponge ball, that your partner holds, and push yourself back up. It seems simple but the sponge balls are pretty tiny and I have no upperbody strength whatsoever.
My partner is shorter than me, round, but pulls it off. Her hair is straight, parted slightly to the left and her bangs swing down across her face. The only makeup I can tell she's wearing is eyeliner that is applied perfectly around the inside of her eye lids, but she doesn't really need it. She's beautiful. She goes first and only gets two. We laugh together and talk about how much of a joke this test is.
"I can't believe I only got two!" She laughs out.
"Oh believe me, I'll probably do worse." I laugh back. When I do pushups in my room I go at my own pace. This tape goes way faster than my pace and sounds like this:
An old man that sounds like he's in his mid fifties comes on the speaker, gives us stupid instructions on how to do a push up, then starts counting.
"Down." One second pause. "Up. One." And so on. The company that makes the push up and sit up tapes can suck it. Whoever this man is, has a very monotone voice that almost makes me fall asleep while I do the tests.
I do a push up and give up after I remember what I did to my arm last night.
My arm.
My partner doesn't notice and we just make conversation for the rest of the period. When we're dismissed I sprint up to the third floor where my geometry class is. I should pay attention to where I'm walking, but I don't and run right in to the one person I've been trying to avoid.
Him.
YOU ARE READING
Ana
Teen FictionBrittany's life is taken over by anorexia, but maybe her new identity as Liz and some new friends can help her better her life.
