I know that you are not good
for me and yet I can't bear to be apart from you. You make me
feel weak and strong, scared and fearless, happy and sad, you
make me what I am.
There are so many reasons why I
should walk away from you as you pull me apart and yet you
also keep me together. You boss me around, shout at me,
telling me to keep in control and then you cruelly take my
control away. Your voice is echoed in the sound of my
footsteps, wherever I go "starve and succeed, to feed is
greed", driving me on in a single pursuit, fuelled with
suspicion and paranoia. Sometimes I can't even enjoy a diet
coke without you suggesting it's in the wrong can and full of
sugar. You even suggest that people are spiking my food with
fat and I shouldn't trust them. "They're trying to make you
fat" you tell me. According to you, the only way to become
acceptable is to lose weight and you send me to the scales
every other hour, just to check if I'm worthy, often I'm not.
You talk to me through the mirror, sometimes I almost think I
look okay, but you show me my fat, tell me I'm huge and make
me walk miles to punish me. I can't even watch a film or relax
in front of the box, without you commenting on what the
characters are eating. I hear you telling me that everybody
has an eating disorder and are thinner than me, when they go
to the toilet they're throwing up, when they say they've
already eaten, they're lying and avoid food. You tell me I
must do the same.
So at night I lie there, empty
but full of you. I feel cold, hunger pangs chew at my stomach
and you tell me my body is just tricking me into eating. I
know I'll dream of feasting and you'll wake me up, angry and
make me panic, feel guilty, so I'll run to the scales just to
check it was a dream or a nightmare. I'll have cramps all over
my body, and in the morning my throat and head will hurt
because you made me throw up my supper, even though I'd
weighed it and used safe food, good food. But no, you tell me
food is never good.
I wonder why I stay with you
and let you dominate my life. I suppose you don't scare me as
much as the world does. If I'm not your friend, then who am I?
That scares me, I can't relax and find out who I really am. To
others I may be a friend, a daughter, a patient but inside I
answer to you, your motivations, limits, boundaries, rules,
control. You give me safety from feeling anything other than
hunger, and sometimes you even take that feeling away and I
feel free, floating, unattached. Without you my life would be
empty, threatening and out of control, you support me through
everything and I can't let you go. So don't give up on me,
don't leave me, as without you I am nothing.
