Skinny Does Not Define Me

Skinny; This has been a word that’s ruled my life from the moment my mother first put me on a scale. I can remember her vividly — clicking her tongue, and shaking her head at me. My mother would always make me regret eating one too many oreos, or eating oreos at all for that matter. The day she told me I’d become too big for her to recognize from a distance, that’s the day it all spun into a downward spiral. She didn’t realize all the damage she’d done to my fragile mind; opening the doors to a whole world of self-destruction. Soon enough, something was possessing me. She’d woken up my demons, and they were looking for anything to do. It wanted to consume me, define me. I succumbed to that voice, that told me I wasn’t good enough. Eventually, I didn’t realize that that voice had become my own. I used to fear the people that were unhinging, the one’s that could hold cigarettes to their shaking lips, and use knives to cut their hips. I became the spitting imagine of all that I feared. Birthday after birthday, I’d spend it with my head hunched over a toilet; my knuckles were bloodied. My obsession with perfection, to be what my mother wanted was slowly killing me. I tried anything to lose the weight in the least amount of time. I couldn’t shake the voice that told me all the awful things that made me clutch onto my disorder. I had lost the energy to fight back, so I let it stay. I let it curl up with me in bed and I let it isolate me to the point I could no longer handle social interaction. I couldn’t stand seeing my reflection in the mirror, the sight of my body and I’d be sobbing uncontrollably. The numb moments spent in the kitchen, where I'd stuff anything I could find in the pantry into my mouth, those were the ones I despised myself the most. I’d purged myself to a point of ulcers in my mouth, and even with the pain it caused I could not stop myself. And it was wicked, that I smiled from ear to ear the first time I successfully purged. I was terrified of that person, but I clutched onto her cause she knew what to do. She knew how to make me skinny, and although years have passed since those dark times. They still threaten to resurface — every single day.