Losing to Win
I win if I lose the soft belly. Concave feel the hollow space.
I win if everyone is pleased with me. Do you see me as good? Are you happy with me?
I win if I get perfect scores. It’s not about beating you; it’s about beating me.
I win if I eat all the food then get rid of it. 
Empty cupboards, empty fridge. Emptied into the toilet bowl and flushed away. 
The brain satiated. The body exhausted. Numb.
Progress measured in numbers. 
108 pounds. Lower is good.  Higher is hell.
Lose control lose the fight.
       

I need to be perfect to be good. Being good is easy – follow the rules. Track everything. I was perfect with anorexia – it was clean, it made sense. Anorexia was even, steady, incremental progress. My brain and body and thoughts had a clear direction. But people were worried about me, wanted me to stop. By stop I mean to start eating.

You want me to eat, okay, I will eat. Now you leave me alone. I hide how much I don’t like what is happening by not telling you. You see me eating. You seem to be happy with me. You think everything is okay.

My brain is worried because it’s losing control. I control my brain’s worry. It is a lot of work. With anorexia I didn’t think about food, but now it’s constant. I have to think about the next meal and all of the conditions around it. Who will be there? How much will I have to eat? When will the next meal happen? How many hours do I have before the next meal? How much exercise do I have to do? My daily regular activities now happen in the leftover spaces between the food monitoring.

You remember don’t you the first time? My first boyfriend, my first kiss, my first love, my first heartbreak. But that’s for another chapter. This first you recall is the first time making myself throw up. The first boyfriend just happened to be the catalyst. I’d been pacing and ruminating: I was restless and confused wherever emotions exist and in my brain. I was waiting for my boyfriend as thought he was coming by that afternoon but couldn’t remember if we’d had firm plans: this was before the internet or smart phones, perhaps even before answering machines on the landline so I fretted and waited. I’d had my regular afternoon snack – a bowl of cereal. And it started to sit funny in my stomach. That on top of the restless brain and body and emotions – it felt like something was going to explode, needed to explode. So I went into the bathroom and made myself throw up. It was so easy. And the pressure release on my brain instant. And the emotional gnawing pacified. I flushed the toilet, rinsed my mouth, washed my hands, and left the bathroom. I was tired but able to be still and feel nothing. It was good.