That sentence is probably one of the more common thoughts going through any number of our minds at any given point during the day (or night), as what we're experiencing is more painful than words can convey...
But I've done this to myself.
All of it.
More immediately, I've chosen to sit down today near the cafeteria on campus, pull out my laptop after finishing my salad, and Google "complications of anorexia."
It's not like I've never done it before. It's not like I'm not acutely aware of what this is doing to my body. You just shut it out, you ignore it, you pretend those consequences don't exist, or that it won't ever happen to you, or that it won't matter when it does because at least you'll be thin...
110. That's my UGW? That's just underweight for some at 5'7. 118, I believe, is the lowest "they" say I should go. Whatever.
Twenty more pounds? From where, everyone asks? Everyone being anyone I decide to tell about my goals...Which is fewer and fewer these days. Twenty more pounds of fat from ass and thighs and love handles...Not much from anywhere else. My upper body is doing an excellent job at showing my bones, and I'm grateful. I just wish I wasn't so disproportionate.
Heart failure. I read the words and I KNOW that it's the leading cause of death in women with ANY psychological disorder... God. I don't need this right now!!
Or fuck...do I? God damn it, I can't sit here and start crying right in the middle of the goddamned cafeteria!! Heart failure. My daughter, left without me, alone in the world. She doesn't fucking have ANYONE ELSE!!! I'm so fucking stupid. I don't know why I'm even writing all of this...mostly because I feel so alone and I just want someone who completely understands me to hug me and let me hide my face in their neck and cry so that no one can see me.
There's no one like that here. The lump in the back of my throat is pushing up, joining the hot flush of my cheeks, my eyes are watery and I'm sitting here scared to death of myself.
Am I this out of control? Aren't I destined for more than this? Is this obsession, the control I crave and love and NEED, is it going to be the end of me? I want to grow old with K and my little girl and the children we're supposed to have together... When's the last time you saw a 70 year-old anorexic sitting in her rocking chair with her husband and grandchildren, loving life and memories and baking Christmas cookies and FUCK!! There's nowhere on this godforsaken campus I can go right now to cry this out, and I need to. I can't choke it back.
ALL I DO IS STARVE. Count calories and obsess about food and how I don't want it, and even on the occasions now where I DO want it, Ana steps forward from the shadows and reminds me of everything toward which I am working, and I am suddenly satisfied with water, or I go exercise instead, until I am weak and faltering and doing my best just to make it to my car before passing out in the gym... What did I think about all day, before? What sorts of thoughts and inspirations and contemplations occupied my mind, before it was always always always about my body? Even now, these tiny girls walk past me, beside me, and I compare, constantly compare, and the depression I hide behind a weak smile isn't allowed to come out here, and I'm freezing and my nails are blue and I feel like breaking down, all out of nowhere...
My daughter. She's so perfect and precious and the thought of her innocent little smile and that laugh that's so free, so wonderful; nothing in this WORLD can make me forget about EVERYthing in an instant the way that laugh can.
What will she do without me? When I whittle myself down to nothing and I lie motionless, a skeleton, in a hospital bed at 30... She'll be in highschool, hating me because I've killed myself, and she's alone...
FUCKING SHIT.
I have to go. I don't even know why I do this. Will it even matter? Later today, tonight, tomorrow, when I've regained my strength and remembered my cause and Ana has reassured me that none of these horrible things will happen to me, where will I be then?
No one can help me.
God, this hurts.
