POV I: The Girl

"She looks like a mannequin. / As if by law of nature, a stripped woman's body / looks like a mannequin..."

-Aural Heather

I count calories blown and calories spurned.
I run each day and count calories burned.
Each calorie lost is a calorie earned.
To enjoy the hunger- this I have learned.
I keep notes and journals, tallies and logs
about losses and gains, crunches and jogs.
My ass and my arms, my stomach, my thighs:
A few of the parts of me that I despise.
I may eat Mom's cooking, but I purge it away
even if it's all I've tasted today.
Every hour I check to see how much I weigh-
I restrict for a week for each ounce that I gain.
My hip bones are showing, but the fat still hangs on;
it sags from my sides where it doesn't belong.
My obsession is measuring how much is gone.
I starve and I struggle, but always stay strong.

The Break-Up

Little Jack Horner sat in a corner eyeing the pumpkin pie.
He swallowed his thumb and spit up a plum and said, "What a good boy am I."

An eating disorder is not some horrible beast which flings itself upon innocent little girls and boys, although many people would have you think that. An eating disorder is a recital, a publication, a diploma. It is Ithaca and it is the odyssey. It is a lover. You dote upon it, you dedicate yourself to it, and (oh yes) you love it.
I saw a movie on Lifetime about a good little country girl who moved to the city when she graduated from senior high. Within six months she was working a street in the upscale part of town. Boy, she made good money, too. All the rich, horney pricks drove to that street to pick up some wild fare between banging their secretaries and their wives. She confided to her best friend that it made her feel powerful, beautiful to have all those powerful, handsome men coming to her, paying to use her body. She had never had high self-esteem, that girl.
Eating disorders are like that. They make you feel powerful, in control, and sometimes they make you feel very, very beautiful. You are beautiful when you weigh as much today with your clothes on as you did yesterday with them off. You are powerful when you toss your lunch on the way to school (even though your mom's cookies are fresh and delicious.)
Why, then, is your mom sitting, crying, saying over and over, "It's all my fault, it's all my fault, it's all my fault," until you feel uglier than you've ever felt. Uglier than a dozen of her cookies. Uglier than a missed step, a misspelled work, a bad grade. Where is your lover now? Where is your power, your beauty? You bite down on your tongue, hard, but all you can feel is an emptiness in the pit of your stomach that you know has nothing to do with hunger.