I flutter nervously around the kitchen while it's served on chipped blue and white porcelain, straining my neck to see.
There are two pieces on my plate. I only wanted one. One.
Dad hands me my plate, and red cup full of Coke. I hate regular coke. It makes my teeth feel weird.
I'm slow, eating it. I turn out the light so no one can see me peel the cheese off my pieces and tuck it into the palm of my hand.
Every bite is no bigger than my two front teeth.
Every bite is
chew chew chew
chew chew
chew
chew chew chew
chew chew
chew
chew chew chew
chew chew
chew
24 times.
We're watching a movie and I feel like Mom is watching the way I ate the pizza.
I panic. I shove the cheese I'd taken off of the pieces into my mouth, and wolf down the pieces. No small bites. I barely chew it, barely taste it. Repeat.
The body has an amazing ability to override your mind when you're hungry. You reach for another piece and another. You move in slow motion, like in a nightmare. You sit at the edge of your seat the way you do watching a horror movie, mentally screaming "Don't do it, don't do it!"
She does it anyways. The monster feeds.
By the end of the night, I've eaten an entire pizza, save for one slice. I drank glasses and glasses of coke, even though I hate it.
Panicing because I can't puke, I go to my room.
I keep my little blue seed sized pills in a nesting doll I've had since I was six. There are long golden pills (Dexatrim), wide flat pink pills (Fiber Weight Management) and laxatives. I look for the laxatives.
They're gone.
With horror, I remember that I used them all two months ago before a party. I spent most of that party upstairs on the shitter, missing out on music and movies and going to the park to play tag like kids.
"Shit. Shit. Shit."
I think about swallowing some Epsom salts. But they're in my mom's bathroom, and to get there I have to go past my sleeping dad.
We don't have table salt, and Epsom salts aren't an option.
There's no syrup of Ipecac. If we had it, I would use it.
I could exercise it away, but last time I exercised I had to take Motrin just to keep from crying. Only four hours and I almost cried. stupidstupidstupid.
I feel like I'm being ripped apart at the joints.
My mom calls me. I walk down the hall. I can feel dripping down my leg. I worry that my blood will seep through my white pants. Lately, I'm convinced that a lot of cutters wear black not because we're all weird goth kids, but because we're all worried our blood will show. Red doesn't show through black, but it dries slowly and makes a hard sheet on the fabric. You can feel it, no one else can see it.
We stand on the porch. There is a fire just over the wall at the end of our neighborhood. Flames leap high and orange, smoke billows. It eats up the sagebrush and dead grass and weeds.
I hurt myself more lately. A slash across my shoulder turns into seven slashes, deep enough to see white tissue.
The Friend hugs me; I flinch and gasp. She pressed against them. "Whats wrong?!" she asks, stepping away. "Nothing," I say quickly. "I...My back. It hurts. Muscles. My muscles hurt."
I'm not lying completely. The weeping lines are about 1/16 inch suspended above muscle. A movement too sharp or a stretch too long will rip them the rest of the way.
I cut my legs. I cut my stomach and my back. The worst are always on the left side. I hate my left side more than my right. I've scarred it 949 times. The right is only 79.
I don't think I fit my body any more.
Actually, I don't think I ever did.
I've never settled in it, and by the time I'm getting using to it, some new thing snatches it away from me. Puberty, eating disorders, cutting. Every time a new wave of problems hits, my body looks less and less like mine. Those scars, surely they're not mine. But they are. Those stretch marks from the year my body suddenly exploded into development, they can't be on my chest, my thighs...but they are. The Brain In My Skull Cannot Be Mine.
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