Insanity

It's 12:30 in the morning, and you can't sleep yet. You know you have to get up early tomorrow, there are things to do. You have to make coffee, clean your room, do your hair, walk to the bus stop. Take the bus to school and see your friends and your boyfriend. You have a day of 300 calories to look forward too. Hopefully with no throwing up, unlike today and yesterday.

Your head aches from all the trips to the bathroom, the panicked minutes spent heaving into the glassy toilet bowl. Your eyes ache from the pressure, from the constant watering and wiping away smeared makeup. Your stomach complains from the sudden urge to eat, then to expel its contents. Your legs are shaky, your knee still sore from where you scraped it falling the other night on a walk.

You go out for a cigarette, hoping it will calm your headache and uneasy insides, taking a worn out copy of Wasted  by Marya Hornbacher with you. You sit and read and smoke. You say some words aloud. "A little too thin...and you cannot hide your smile."

You look up to see a house across the way with the lights on. There's a couple moving around in the kitchen. Opening the refrigerator, having a discussion. For some reason, you feel the need to move closer. You get up on legs sore from the thousands of leg lifts you have forced upon yourself over the weekend. Silently, you move between your parents' cars and into the street. You notice empty alcohol bottles on the ground. You kick one lightly, for no reason. It rolls away, gleaming in the dim orange glow of street lamps.

You stand twenty feet from the house, watching. The woman in the kitchen is fat. You smirk at her, thinking yourself a better person for being thinner. You watch as the man, tall and muscular, as he leans in for a kiss. He rubs her arm, almost reassuringly, or lovingly. He gestures to the room behind him, where a TV light flickers. The woman wanders into the other room. The man reaches for a light switch beside the window. For a moment, it looks as though he sees you, and you back up hastily, nearly tripping over the bottle you just kicked. The lights go out, and you feel alone again.

Cigarette down to the filter, you flick it away from you. It lands on the sidewalk, smoldering and dying. You walk back to the door, pick up your book, and quietly slip back inside.

For some reason, you can't stop thinking about the happy couple, the beloved fat girl. It seems such a strange idea to you. How can anyone be fat and happy at the same time? It begins to dawn on you, how strange your behavior really is. Standing in the street, watching people in their houses. You worry about your sanity, but only slightly. Your main concern is getting through tomorrow on only 300 calories. Your boyfriend mentioned going to dinner. How will you be able to eat so little without offending? Or worse, how will you be able to throw up without him suspecting? He knows your past, it's only a matter of time before he catches on. However, even that doesn't worry you as much as the food you ate today. What you didn't throw up. Are those wayward calories finding their way to your hips, your stomach, your thighs? Better do some more leg lifts, perhaps some sit ups. No, you should really sleep.

The diet pill you forgot you took starts to make your stomach churn uneasily. You really want to sleep now, but you really want to exercise more. More than likely, when you finish this post on your silly little blog, you're going to go upstairs and push your body just a bit further before you lie down.

Such is the life you lead.