When the fat girl says her lunch was a clementine
and her breakfast was black coffee,
no one blinks an eye.
When the fat girl spends three hours at the gym
and comes home to crawl into bed without dinner,
no one leaves a plate for her.
When the fat girl becomes the skinny girl,
her body falling apart like ashes from a cigarette,
everyone calls her pretty.
I have spent the past ten years trying to convince myself
that I can be both the fat girl
and the pretty girl.
I have tried to lessen the weight of these adjectives
by surrounding myself with bright people
who do not care about numbers or sizes.
I’m on a plane coming home from Florida,
and it’s late and raining outside
as I turn on a movie about eating disorders.
Here’s the thing, I never said I had an eating disorder.
When the fat girl skips meals,
people call it power.
When the fat girl never stops running,
people call it strength.
I am on this plane watching this girl
turn into tissue paper.
I can feel the bathroom tiles beneath my knees,
the shame of not being able to make myself sick.
When the fat girl starts to turn to dust,
people compare her to glitter.
When the fat girl self-destructs,
people say she’s like fireworks.
The fat girl is dying, but at least she’s so pretty.
I am watching this girl in this movie
and thinking that I know that feeling,
the feeling of water on an empty stomach,
the taste of saltines for the first time all day,
the shame that you’re eating anything today.
And suddenly I am not watching the movie.
I am thirteen years old, sitting in a doctor’s office,
talking about how I need to stop eating.
I am taking long bike rides to avoid meals
and only eating Fiber One brownies.
I am fifteen years old, tracking calories
for a health project, trying to keep the number
below five hundred.
I am watching myself in the mirror,
turning and sucking and pulling
until I am red all over.
I am seventeen years old,
letting my body auction itself off to an illness
just so I won’t have to be its keeper.
I never said I had an eating disorder.
Now, though, on this plane,
in this seat by the window,
I see my reflection in this girl’s face
in this movie about eating disorders.
And I am crying.
It’s like I am the haunted house,
and anorexia is the ghost that will not go.
No matter who comes to visit
or even who comes to stay,
she is always there, waiting and watching.
I am out at dinner with a nice boy,
but my hands are shaking each time
I pick up my fork.
I have a salad in front of me
while he eats steak bigger than my eyes,
and yet, I still feel too large.
When he tells me that I am beautiful
and stunning and gorgeous,
the words feel like paper,
weightless against me.
I have never been allowed to be the canvas
for such descriptions,
and this ghost will not let them stick.
I never said I had an eating disorder,
and even if I had,
I would have said I was well past it.
But even as I get off this plane,
with the movie long finished and done,
I am counting calories like tally marks,
each one cutting into my skin.
When the fat girl stops eating,
no one ever notices.
When the fat girl relapses,
no one ever notices.
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