We Write for Fear of Silence

A Response to "Shouldn't you be better by now?"

I'm sorry that sometimes I see girls with their hipbones jutting out and elbows wider than their arms
and light shining through the space between their thighs
and I still think that is beautiful.

I'm sorry that sometimes I still punish myself for being soft in all the places they are angular.

I'm sorry that there are still days when I stand in front of the refrigerator and count the calories that sit before me.
All of the things I cannot allow inside, because hunger is love.

There are still nights when I can't fall asleep until I have planned out every bite for the next morning, when I will rise and pray that there is just a little more space between my fingers when I slip them around my wrists.

I am trying to forget the feeling of floating down a hospital hallway, chanting to myself that I am strong, and then falling towards zero anyway.

The only place that is enough.

That will only ever be enough.

I am sorry that there are still whispers in my head of the days I lived on brittle fingernails and the smell of bleach.

I don't know if I will ever be rid of them.

But I am trying, because I hate the smell of bleach.

Because I want so goddamn much to shake the batteries out of the calculator that ticks in my head when someone mentions the calories in a slice of bread. 

Because pizza tastes so much better than saltine crackers and ice.

I am sick of being sick, and starvation is not strength.

And there are still days when I confuse the two but

I am trying.

And that has to be enough.

That will only ever be enough.