I think that’s all I can put it down to.
Bending over the toilet, eyes streaming, an ache in the muscles behind my knees, hurry hurry hurry before the parents come home.
Oh, but it felt better then. Like I wasn’t just vomiting up my morning tea but the whole past two years. Every time I’ve looked in the mirror. The fear about being too fat. The binging. The starvation. The diets. The hate, shame, panic, anxiety. It was like everything that refused to leave me for the past two years had finally gone, disappearing down the toilet.
I didn’t know you could get rid of anything that easily.
Clean. I feel so clean. I could get addicted to feeling this way.
That’s it, I said afterwards. Starvation, now. No more throwing up. Just starvation. Because that is so much healthier.
Is it? I’ve either gotten a little better, or a whole lot worse.
All the time. Well, that’s an exaggeration. But when it hits, it’s a feeling of returning. Like it’s the only thing that I’ve ever felt and I haven’t realised.
Maybe it’s not my divine right to be happy with myself. To be in giddy-in-love with the way my belly folds.
Today I was thinking maybe I should just settle, accept that this is what I’ve got and who I am, go on with my life and pretend that I don’t mind that this is what I’m stuck with.
Is that what other people do?
Or do I really have a divine right to like what I am so sick of?
Me.
