Day five

I awoke day five at 3 am, my heart thumping like a rabbit's foot in my chest.  It's hard to differentiate my heartbeat from its echo, as if my hollow chest cavity is designed for resonating acoustics.  My eyes are so tired.  I long for sleep, but for some odd reason I cannot catch my breath.  My emotions are boiling as they sit just below my ribcage, heating up my heart to its rapid pace.  I made some tea to calm my nerves, as if the hot liquid will soothe my insides, a feeling I correlate to you stroking my hair.  I wish you were here to hold me, to wipe away the tears forming in my eyes, to hold my hand and tell me it's okay to breathe on my own.  

I'm so scared.  My hands and mouth gravitate towards food, subconsciously stuffing the pain until the anaesthesia kicks in, completely numbed.  Monitoring my eating patterns proves how little I feel I deserve to eat.  I don't prepare my foods when you are not here.  I eat standing up, never at the table, or lying on the sofa, my mind zapped into the tv.  I graze at the refridgerator. I use plastic cutlery and throwaway containers, the idea of using a plate seems time-consuming and irrelevant.  I pour chili flakes and Sryracha on everything, Tobasco sauce and jalapenos most always staple ingredients,  in order to feel the burn of the food going down, so the pleasure of eating is as vile as when it comes right back up.  I forced myself to hurl the box of pretzels I purchased on Monday down the garbage chute.  My willpower was defeated by the crunchy, salty carbohydrates.  I ate six pretzels Tuesday night, more than my stomach was willing to tolerate.  Bending over, sleeping on my stomach, burping or hiccuping had to be eliminated from my motions, because the ED just wanted to creep up my throat and show me who's power reigned supreme.  You once told me I sometimes chew in my sleep.  My mind distorts this image to a cow smacking curd sexlessly, defiantly.  I am haunted by the thought of you seeing me so raw in my disorder, and yet it saddens me to think that maybe I'm resorting to infancy - a child suckling for nourishment.  Why didn't you stop me, I asked.  Why didn't anyone stop me?  

I was hurting, angry, resentful, and painfully self-conscious when I found my ED years ago.  It was my secret I was entitled to, to cope with the shitty hand I'd been dealt.  I had a family who loved me, sure, a safe household to come home to, absolutely.  My friends were countless, my grades were high, my talents limitless.  Yet I took possession of a voice I'd heard all of my life, sawing my thoughts into nonsense genetic code, reforming into a message of shame, unworthiness and guilt.  I didn't deserve the gifts presented to me as a little girl.  Asking for help would prove the penultimate failure, and if I failed my ED, what else would I have to comfort me?  Who would be there to wipe away my tears at night?  I latched on, stubborn as a burr in a puppy's paw, and held on for fragile life.  I watched as my future faded into a distant past, leaving ashes scattered in the wake of my throat.