Confessions of a Skinny Broken Girl

emotionally derailed, and a little sad

I eat a piece of bread with a teaspoon of peanut butter spread thin on top every day.

 

The piece of bread will provide me with enough carbohydrates to last until my next sweet craving.

The peanut butter will make sure I don't faint while I walk to class.

 

When you are emotionally broken and torn apart inside, you don't dare question what's holding you together, no matter how inexplicably stupid it may seem.

 

You don't ask yourself, Why don't you use a different pen when one is running out and clearly spreading blotches all over your paper? Why don't you just put on that super soothing anti-itch cream that will make your mosquito bite feel thirty times better in an instant? Why don't you just stop trying to uncrease that piece of paper that has now been forever marred and get a new one?

 

You have to persevere.

You can't let your guard down, not even for a moment, because the moment you do, you'll probably feel a tickle in your eyes. You'll start to sniffle without intending to, and the next thing you know your face will look as though you saw something huge and nasty coming out of your bathroom sink and you bit into a rock at the same time. All the wrinkles you never thought you had on your face will reveal themselves and when you look in the mirror, you'll almost be amused at how ugly you look. How unfortunately pathetic and needy you are in that moment.

 

I wondered to myself, Why now?

Then I stopped that train of thought, cut it loose from its tracks and allowed it to crash in isolation, never to be seen again in this lifetime.

 

Dangerous questions won't let you heal. All they will do is make you feel numb, dirty, and kind of sad and teary at the end.

 

However, a not so dangerous thought crosses my mind--my body is aching for nutrition.

 

I had better eat something, quick.

 

Let me state the obvious for a second:

I am skinny.

 

That is a fact. I am not here to complain to you that I see my body as some sort of grotesque slab of meat. I am not here to tell you that my thighs look like the Charles River and the Nile River put together, or that my waist is as straight and thick as a tree trunk in the Sequoia National Park.

 

I would harshly disagree if anyone said that my biceps were as massive as an elephant's legs or that my neck had at least three chins.

 

When I look in a mirror, I see what I am for what I am: a skinny female.

 

I do not identify with being anorexic.

 

I understand if you think I am. I am skinny and I am clearly about to tell you about not eating because I mentioned both topics to you. However, you should note that I don't think that I need to lose weight. I am completely aware of the fact that I am a skinny member of humanity.

 

Many of my guy friends can circle their pinky and thumb around my wrist, and... well, so can I.

So, to me, this feels like something I'm more comfortable with than not. I am talking about it to you, in a candid manner, and I'm not trying to defend myself. If anything, I might be offending you.

 

Ooh, another fun fact: I weighed 108 pounds.

 

That, any health practitioner may tell you, is NOT healthy for a growing 5'5 female. I should have more musculature that grounds me to the Earth. I should have more fat that makes me feel warmer in the winter. A thin layer of flab on my stomach, even. Anything.

 

I agree. I would rather weigh about five more pounds than that and feel less like I'm going to fall down at any moment. I'd rather sleep less and eat more. I want to feel energized by eating, not tired from eager digestion undertaken every time I swallow something.

 

I weighed myself last week.

 

103 pounds.

 

I feel listless and a little torn.

 

I am hungry but food slightly repulses me. It's not that I don't like eating; it's just that food just doesn't seem that appetizing to me anymore. Nothing in life is actually appetizing to me at the moment, and food just happens to be a thing that I used to deal with every day without thinking. Now, I look at it as though it's foreign. I can't register the fact that I consumed a morsel of edible stuffs every morning, afternoon, and night.

 

When you're so emotionally derailed that you can't eat, and at least one half of your brain is still functioning, you understand that you clearly have to take action.

 

That is why, to this day, I eat a piece of bread with a thin slab of peanut butter slapped on top every morning.

 

Every day, I chew each individual bite as harmlessly as possible, and swallow.

Every day, I fight the recurring thought that this thing, this sticky, brown, sweet thing, is going to try to make its way into my body.

Every day, I feel the bread start to turn into a glob in my mouth, and I fight the urge to wonder about it.

Every day, when I fail to ward off the urge, I question why I would choke something down my throat, beat it up into a pulpy mush with my esophagus, and plop into my stomach for further deconstruction.

Every single day, I wake up in the morning and I ready myself for this regimen.

 

I don't care whether or not this will actually help me gain weight. Don't give me crap about how it's not enough protein for a breakfast or that I should add a fruit for fibers. I'll somehow manage food for the rest of the day. I just need to initiate the want for food every morning. Because if I don't, my stomach will be wanting but my mind will float away and I'll never get nourished, no matter how much my digestive system begs.

 

Hell, I want to donate blood. But I am seven pounds away from that goal.

 

So I will eat my peanut butter with bread every morning.

 

Because every morning I motivate myself enough to start to gather more energy,

every morning I rev up enough will power to finish something completely,

Every single damn morning that I know that I will get my three meals in that day--is an accomplishment.

 

Every single day in which I know that I followed something through till completion is an achievement.

 

Every single day I know that I've done something good for myself, given myself even the smallest nugget of happiness, THAT is an accomplishment.

 

I deserve a gold f*****g star.

Thank you.