Clandestine Confessions

“You look really different. You lost a lot of weight. Are you okay?”
She asked me in the cafeteria when I was going to put my tray away on the first day of sixth grade.
The one full of barely touched food – but strategically and creatively packaged and organized to appear otherwise.
I had noticed her staring at me all through lunch.
And then whispering to her friends.
“I am okay,” I replied.
Nothing more.
I quickly walked away.
I did not like the attention on me.
Especially not for this….
–
The conversation plagued me the rest of the school day.
Back and forth internal banter over whether or not this recognition meant I could allow myself a snack when I got home.
“Her words showed I earned it, right…?”
“No, that is silly. Her words showed it is working. You have to keep going.”
“But what if I have taken this too far?”
“Not possible.”
“One small snack will not do anything.”
“It most definitely will. It won’t stop there.”
“But I am tired of keeping up with this.”
“That feeling is temporary. You cannot risk gaining weight over being tired.”
On and on and on it went.
The mental torment obliterating the joy of the morning – the giddiness of sitting next to my crush now a far distant memory.
The power of my mind once again overshadowing the desires of my heart.
A war I have only recently trained the underdog to win.
–
Upon arriving home, I opted for truth (or so they called it) to win.
Making myself three saltine crackers with a thin, basically translucent, smear of peanut butter on each.
Peter Pan creamy peanut butter – always had to be that exact kind – a jar was even brought to me at the psych ward in the hopes it would help me to eat.
The nurses would help themselves to it instead…
I have yet to buy the brand for myself post 2011.
–
Although this was the most thought-out decision, hours worth of contemplation, it felt impulsive.
Reckless.
Out of control.
Seconds after the consumption of the third cracker, I panicked.
Went straight to my room and sobbed – unable to catch my breath under the pressure of the shame and fear.
“What did I just do?!”
“I am going to gain too much weight now.”
“I am so stupid.”
“How can I now avoid dinner?”
I compulsively started doing jumping jacks. And then sit ups. And then ran in place.
Knowing of another means to rid the food from my body but not yet willing to try it – a path that would take a few more years to walk.
–
The codependent relationship of the bathroom scale and me intensified that evening.
Praying with each time I stepped on that the number was not different than the morning.
Seeing the number, not trusting the number, and then weighing myself again.
This body could not change – simply could not.
Because finally, the words of others were not daggers.
This is what I wanted…
But why did it feel so horrible?
And could I afford to keep paying the cost to achieve it?
–
A couple weeks later my sister would come into the bathroom where I was getting ready for bed after her first dance class of the season.
“K— asked me about you tonight. People are wondering if you are sick. She said you told her you are fine, but she is worried.”
Immediately to my thoughts I retreated:
Why is she so concerned now?
Where was her concern when bullying me last year?
Is this what it took for me to matter to people?
Just another reinforcement of the belief that my ability to be loved, to be seen was dependent on my body.
The longest lingering lie of them all.
One that actively participated in the trauma of relationships in my latter 20s.
–
“Sissy, you are becoming a ghost of yourself. I cannot keep sitting back and watch this happen. You have to change before I lose you. I cannot lose you Sissy.”
She was sitting on the toilet seat now in tears.
I had moved to the edge of the tub – no longer able to keep my gaze on her.
Needing to break eye contact to not break my loyalty to the disorder.
–
I wasn’t sure how much my parents had told my siblings.
It was only a couple months prior, on July 25, that I received the official diagnosis.
When a new word was thrusted into my daily vocabulary – and made itself quite comfortable.
It was, and always has been, hard to tell what they knew.
Because although it screamed loudly (hard to ignore the disappearing daughter/sister), the topic received not even a whisper within family conversations.
Perhaps a bit denial.
Perhaps a bit protection.
But whatever the reason, it did not lessen the pain of a deafening silence.
It only fed the disorder.
It grew, I shrank – at a shockingly alarming rate…