Diary of an Anorexic Girl

Eating Disorder

October 19, 2016

"So, we're going to get her EKG done then take her up to the adolescent unit..." 

That blow knocked the wind out of me. I'm not sure what came first, the sobbing screams erupting out of my fragile body or the realization that my father had lied about the doctor appointment we were supposedly going to. Instead, there I was, sitting in an office of the new home I didn't want.

I reached for a grip to keep me from drowing, but there was nothing to hold on to. My knuckles were white but I couldn't feel what I was grasping anymore. I saw the agony relflecting in my mom's hazel eyes, but I could no longer read what they were trying to tell me. Maybe that's why I let go of the little lifeline I had left.

I was alone while every healthy adult in the room sat back and watched me struggle to breathe. Something was scraping out my insides and scattering them about the small, dimly lit room. I was hollow. There was nothing else to steal from me. I wasn't a girl anymore. I was a helpless shell.

I. Was. Nothing.

"Oh, you didn't know you were coming here? Your parents already packed your stuff."

I wrapped myself up in the chair trying to shrink away from the reality I didn't want to live in anymore, trying to fold my body into itself, hoping with all the energy I had left in me to wake up from a nightmare I could no longer control.

A blonde nurse walked in with baby blue scrubs and a soft smile telling me it was time. My legs blindly obeyed and followed her through doors leading me to foreign rooms and icy hallways. I was shocked to see a living room full of adults who looked dead, and the dining room which held six big round tables with girls around my age looking at the food in front of them like it would attack if they blinked. We made our way throught the cold corridors, into a room with the smell of copper and antiseptics floating in the air.

We stepped into a small white room, the nurse was trying to talk to me, but muffled sobs were the only sound I could muster. She told me to undress and step on a scale. I slowly undid my belt and let my pants drop into a pool of cloth at my feet. I forced myself to take my jacet off and let the air bite my ice cold skin. We ran some tests and let theh nurse put a yellow wristband on. My heart was too weak to walk up and down the stairs, now everyone knew that, it was a flashing light hanging from my arm.

The nurse led me back to the lobby, my parents were standing by the front doors leading to a freeedom I could no longer see. I wrapped my bony arms around my mom like she was the only thing left on the planet that provided any sort of comfort, I went over to my dad and started bawling.

"You're going to be ok. You're going to get better" he whispered

I ascended to my new life and arrived in front of halloween decorated double doors leading into the adolescent unit. I sat down in a chair near the nurse's station trying to compose myself while the world seemed to be burning through my eyes.

There were at least ten other girls already occupying this foriegn space. Various old couches stood about the room and a TV hung from the far wall. Multiple doors lined the right wall and I guessed that was the only personal space any of us really had.

Lunchtime rolled arounded and all the girls made their way to the torture chamber. We sat in a circle and I stared at my plate. Chicken wrap. Cookie. Juice. My mind began screaming. The thirty minutes around that table felt like two hours and I couldn't stop the tears rolling down my face, especially when the girls introduced themselves and told me it gets easier. I know they were only trying to distract me from my own mind, but the demon killing me felt like my only source of comfort.