I woke up. Nothing changed. I’m still as tired as I was the night before. I grab my phone and scroll through the texts with my friends from when I was in a good place. Everything has changed. Nothing will go back the way it was, so why should I stop? I check the time. It's past the time I should be ready, but the motivation is not there. It never is. I get up anyway. The second I rise I lose my vision. My head begins to spin. I'm dizzy, light headed, nothing out of the ordinary. After a few seconds of feeling faint I go to my mirror. I lift up my hoodie enough to see my stomach. It's not enough not yet. I checked my legs to see if they got smaller. Not enough I can't stop yet. Now to clothes. Something that used to be my favorite thing turned into my most dreaded part of the day. If I wear a hoodie no one will see how much my body has changed, but if I wear a t-shirt people may see my arms or my broad shoulders. I’ll go with the hoodie like always. Now to the pants. My legs aren't small enough to look good in leggings so sweatpants. That's the safest bet. I go back to the mirror. I hate this. I hate everything about myself. I get back into bed not caring about the time. I just can’t today. I’m sick and I can't go to school. Though how many times am I gonna be able to say that without people thinking something is actually wrong. I hear waking from the hallway.
“Annelies, are you ready?” It's mom. It's always her.
“I’m sick. I can't go to school.”
“Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine.”
That's it. I’ll be fine. Everything's okay, but it's not. I lay my head back down on the pillow that holds more tears than anyone has ever seen me shed. I start to think. Why can’t I be clay? Able to mold myself however I want. Make my legs look small enough to look good in a skirt but not too small you can’t see them in cargos. My arms proportioned in a way they look good in a tank top. Then my rib cage. I have too many complaints about that. It's never been the way I want it to be. I close my eyes with these thoughts running through my head, the way I want my body to look. The way I wished it to look ever since I was little. Every shooting star I wished for the body of a model. Every birthday party blowing out the candles wishing for the perfect body. Every time the clock hit 11:11 the same wish went through my mind before anything else could appear. The perfect body. That's all I’ve ever wished for. Days come and days pass. My wish stays the same. Wishing to look like the girls that are happy when they look in the mirror. I fell asleep when I should be in school all because my wishes were for nothing. Hundreds of pointless wishes float away with my tears as I rest my head knowing that when I wake up everything will be the same…
Two hours passed. Still as tired as I was before. I stay laying and I won't get anything from standing up. So I stayed there, like a corpse. This isn’t how life is supposed to be. I shouldn't feel dead while I’m living through “the happiest years of my life”. I don't care about it. That fickle thing that we only go through once. I don't care about anything. The world that is used to cherish more than anything else. My friends that used to make me laugh till my stomach hurt. My family, the people that would do anything for me. Most importantly myself. I couldn’t care less about myself. I’m just striving for a goal that would hurt everything and everyone I’ve ever cared for. A goal that will kill me in the pursuit of achieving it. It doesn't scare me anymore. I’ve accepted my new life now. I'm just waiting for it to end. I grab my phone and let it consume my thoughts while I start scrolling through tiktok. I feel numb while I continue scrolling like it's the only thing I really know and want to do anymore. After an hour of scrolling through videos of happy people I’ll most likely forget in the next day or two I go on and start texting my friends. The same old routine.
“I can’t come to school today, I have a lot to
get done medically. Sorry, I’ll see you
tomorrow.”
I get up. For the first and probably last time today. Within the first 3 seconds everything went black and white. Like the static on the old fashion TV’s. I tried walking but I had to take a step back. My head's spinning. Sitting back on my bed I squint my eyes trying to get my head back to normal. But what is normal to me now? Always feeling like you’re about to pass out? Never knowing if you’ll be able to hang out with your friends because you have no clue what your body is gonna look like that day? Spending all your free time over thinking and calculating how many calories you consumed that day? That's not living. It's surviving while your only value is self-deprecating. I can’t stop though, I'm not finished. I walk to the dirty bathroom I said I was gonna clean a week ago. Looking into the dirty mirror all I see is an empty reflection of myself that I’ve grown to hate. My hair is thin and is starting to fall out more than ever. Dark bags consuming the under of my eyes. Marking the hours I've spent stressing and worrying about what went into my body today.
When I get back to my bed I grab the remote. Turning on the same show I've seen one-hundred times over. All I want is something in the background of me returning to scrolling. Something to hide my thoughts till I’m ready to let them control my life once more. The only thing I want to stop thinking about is the thing that wont leave me alone. No matter what I do. No matter how many different noises I have going, how many projects I'm working on, it's always there. The worst part about it is that it silences every other thing that tries to befriend me. I live day to day without a comforting thought and whenever they try to appear the darkness that is my mind pushes them further down. Infecting them and turning them into the most horrendous painful things I’ve heard. They’ve always been there in some way, but one day everything else went silent. There was nothing leveling the playing field between the love and hatred I show myself. I wish it hurt. Realizing that the line between love and hate was gone, but it didn’t. I didn’t feel anything. Nothing…
I wake you to the sound of the dogs barking. The room is dark with a light glow from the TV. I grab my phone and turn it off Do Not Disturb. Just to see if anyone cared that I didn't go to school today. No, no texts. Only three missed calls from my mom. It’s around 7:00 pm now. Finally the day’s over. Like everything else there's no reason I’m happy it's over. Or more specifically no healthy reason. All it means is that I finished another day without anything going into my body. Another day of overthinking every second I’m awake. Another day of sleeping so I don't have to worry about letting myself walk to the kitchen and have a piece of food out of the fridge. Another day of being able to fall asleep feeling empty as though there's nothing left in me. Happiness, love, truth, values, friendship, motivation. Everything is gone. I’m gone. This isn't me. I’m a happy person with love for the world and myself. Annelies Lorraine Currier is always there for her friends no matter what was in her way. She's a person that loves her family more than anything else in the world. She cares about school, animals, and her sisters. She's funny, energetic, and caring. Who didn't care about what people thought about her as long as she was happy with who she is, nothing else mattered. She was a beautiful person but this world had the worst effect on her. She let it affect her. She’s changed and not for the better.
I miss the person I used to be, but the darkness that I let take control of me isn't done. It never will be. I can hide it, get help for it, and pretend like it was never even there. When the day is done my mind will always go back to thinking I’m not enough. Thinking that the voice is controllable so I should let it stay. But it doesn't stop, it will never stop. It's a monster that pulls out the darkest and most toxic parts of you. Then highlight the things that it makes you believe are positive. It hurts, it really does. Knowing that you grew that monster. You put so much time and energy into creating it. For what…
It’s been three years since I started hating myself more than I loved life. I got help. I spoke up. Something that I was scared to do for a long time because I couldn’t (didn’t want it to be true). I was living in fear, which I’m finally able to admit after getting help. I went to the hospital when my mom started worrying more about my appearance and behaviors. We waited for about 2 hours trying to get a hospital bed, but they didn’t know how to treat it. I met with 7 doctors and 4 nurses, none of them knew what to do. I was scared. To be honest looking back on it now, that was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. They told me I needed to go to inpatient care. When I tell you I cried more than I ever had, it's the truth. I was there for about three months and I don’t regret one second of it. I met amazing people that were going through the same thing I was. Even though it hurts letting people know and realizing that I have a problem, it hurts more not being able to live while being alive. Let yourself get help. Even if you don't feel as though you deserve it or that you need it, you do. Sometimes it’s hard. Your eating disorder never goes away completely, but I have a team to help me when things get hard or bad thoughts flooding back into my mind. Thinking about it now I wouldn't have done things differently because if I did I wouldn’t know the things about myself or others I do now. I'm so ungodly thankful that my eating disorder isn't controlling me anymore. But I’m grateful for the memories and experiences I got working through it.
Comments
Log in or register to post comments.