Anorexia

The year of skinny cupcakes and sugar-free jello pops, 

We guzzled vitamin water.

Toasting to high school and survival

Complimenting each other's tight gaps

Trying diets we found on the internet:

Menthol cigarettes, eating in front of the mirror,

Donating blood.

Replacing meals with other practical hobbies

Like making flower crowns or fainting.

Wondering why I haven't had my period

In months, or why breakfast tastes like giving up.

Or how many productive ways I could've spent

My time today besides googling the calories 

In the meals.

Watching Miss Universe like the gospel.

Hunching naked over a bathroom scale shrine,

Crying into an empty bowl of cereal

Because I only feel pretty when I'm hungry.

If you're not recovering, you're dying.

By the time I was ten, I had already experienced being clinically overweight, underweight, and obese.

As a child fat was the first-word people

Used to describe me,

Which didn't offend me, until I found out it 

Was supposed to.

When I lost weight, my dad was so proud he started

Carrying my before-and-after photo in his wallet.

So relieved he could stop worrying about me getting diabetes.

He saw a program on the news about the epidemic of obesity, said he is just so glad to see me finally taking care of me.

If you develop an eating disorder when you are already thin, to begin with, you go to the hospital.

If you develop an eating disorder when you are not thin, to begin with, you are a success story.

So when I evaporated, of course, everyone congratulated me on getting healthy.

Girls at school who never spoke to me before, stopped me in the hallway to ask how I did it 

I say "I'm sick," they say no "You're an inspiration".

How could I not fall in love with my illness?

With becoming the kind of silhouette people are supposed to fall in love with?

Why would I ever want to stop being hungry?

When anorexia was the most interesting thing about me.

So how lucky it is now, to be boring.

The way not going to the hospital is boring.

The way looking at an apple and seeing only an apple, not sixty, or half an hour of sit-ups is boring.

My story may not be as exciting as it used to,

But at least there is nothing left to count.

The calculator in my head finally stopped.

I used to be proud when I was in a cold room.

Now I'm proud, I have stopped seeking revenge on this body.

This was the year of eating when I was hungry, 

Without punishing myself and I know it sounds ridiculous, but this is hard.

When I was little, someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I said...Small.