A poem about the frantic mental musings of the things in life an eating disorder prevents you experiencing, and what there is to be gained by recovery.
E.D. – or so they call it,
Abbreviating the words, like having one abbreviates your life.
Capital letters that forced my head to scream as the inevitable came and went on plain white plates three times a day.
“Ride it out, just ride it out…”
So literally – I wrote it out.
Every word of confused, distraught, ecstatic, ashamed, proud, twisted and exhausted emotion that formed the ingredients to my failed adaptation of the recipe.
Mostly, I just omitted ingredients.
A breakfast here, a dinner there – sure, who’s counting?
Only the stifled, pleading voice in my head who’s actually getting quieter and quieter now that you mention it, thanks!
…Or was it weaker and weaker?
A cup of black coffee the terrified calorific sacrifice that fueled sleepless chicken legs shivering up the same bustling, blustery streets day after day to a job that killed time between ‘meals’, in an office that curiously, nobody else seemed to find so cold?
Reminiscing on Friday group-lunches spent in the gym, running off the handful of porridge that was hastily consumed after 4am night terrors rattled the ever shrinking and paling body I picked fights with on an hourly basis.
Too fat, too flat, too wide.
Too tired.
Occupying my space a hindrance, a chore, as the colour drained slowly not just from my cheeks, but from the life I liked to pretend I was ‘living’.
In a centre where no doors are allowed to lock, scissors and razors removed from toilet bags, knives in the kitchen too blunt to cut through a block of full-fat butter – I nearly died in a bathtub.
My breath the only thing keeping me afloat, I gasped as my heart shivered inside me.
It shook. I shook. I gasped.
Splashing and flailing like a home-birthed newborn and weak enough to be one too, I emerged from that overheated room – coz, y’know, sweating makes you lose weight – like a colourblind child seeing a rainbow for the first time.
Seeing purple, blue, green, orange, red, yellow….seeing all the colours I’d been missing out on. The colours I lacked. The colours which energise, give love, life, warmth.
The white paleness of bones there to be coloured upon, a potential-filled base just waiting to be given a splash of something, anything worth feeling.
How can you live a colourful life, when there’s no space to colour it in?
A stick figure, rigidly stubborn in mind
Pointed one way, and that way was THIN.
I’ve coloured. I’ve erased. I’ve started again.
I’ve coloured in pencil, and I’ve coloured in pen.
Trying everything, anything, mixing and matching
Having not one, but many colours shining and clashing.
The plates now filled up with an energised palette
that brings joy and tastes like the places I’ve travelled.
From nothing rebuilt, yet with everything gained, a sense of fulfillment, a purpose, a change.
A life and a body, sense of humour too,
A favourite recipe, favourite food.
A colour, an energy, glowing and bright, and a wish to continue, a dream to take flight.
Support information:
- BodyWhys Ireland
- The Samaritans – Tel: 116 123 or email: jo@samaritans.org
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