What's life after anorexia like?

This is a messy blogpost I just wrote on an iPhone on a train. But it's one that has been brewing inside me for some time now. It's full of metaphors and weird comparisons and talks a lot about the color blue, but I hope, somehow, it's telling. I hope it gives glimpses of what life with and after and before an eating is like. I want to help people understand. I want people to be known and to feel like they are not alone. But most of all, I want to give hope.

I hope this does that. So, here we go.

Life after anorexia is interesting.
I’ve tried to come up with brilliant, beautiful, or even remarkable ways to put it, but that’s ultimately what I boiled it down to: "interesting." I am the future.
Writing an about it is hard. Finding the words is hard. So I decided to write about it using colors.

I did.
I wrote about my world now compared to my past two worlds: before anorexia, and in the midst of it. I wrote using the colors that engulfed me, that devastated and corrupted me, that stole my breath and life's fire from me, but ultimately set me free.

My world when I was living in my eating disorder had its colors completely flipped. The sky was a harsh, ugly green, brittle like grass thirsty for rain.  The ground was a tired, sad blue. It ached for sleep, for death. It was a blue that filled you, filled the corners of your mind with its weight and heaviness. Its tiredness tightened in your throat, promising an ending. This world wasn’t beautiful or good. It was full of sharp angles and ragged lines. Its wind was blood red and it stabbed your skin, your hands.

It's air was a thick yellow: the color of erratic heart beats and the numbness that pervaded and was always present in your fingers and toes and then your hands and legs. It's trees were fat smudges, ugly to look at, scary if you looked too long, like the hair that came out of your head in clumps.

It wasn’t a pretty world at all. It existed simultaneously beside the one you actually lived in, with its midnight blue skies pricked by soft yellow lights. With its sunsets that were violet and coral and golden all at once, with colors that leaked and bled into each other, pouring over one another to mix into something altogether miraculous and new.

It was like Upside Down. I was the eaten dead thing, always hungry, always roaming, stabbed with an ax with a leg caught in a bear trap. I ignored the other reality, disregarding all of its life, in my own pursuit of what I thought would fulfill me. I destroyed. I took. I tasted blood, and eventually it made the world I was in collapse.

So what now?

Goodness.
My world now still has some streaks of the gray and blue from my last one, but they are the last brushstrokes before the painter dips his brush again. I still feel their presence, and sometimes the tiredness and heaviness press upon me more than I’d ever like to know them again. The wind is still red like blood, but it’s not constant. It is not even often. It is fleeting moments, where I have to breathe through them and refuse to exist within their unkind time.

But this new life is marked by soft, gentle breezes that bring air sweet to taste. It is full of soft, lovely sunrises that are pure colors: violet and pink and baby blue. All the colors we give our newborns.

It's night sky is radiant, making up for all the colors you forgot. It is vast and deep and full, pulsing with brilliant reds and greens and blues. The Northern lights are streams that weave new patterns and occur weekly, because I am still so often amazed and taken aback by this life I forgot for so long.
It's trees are new and little. They bend occasionally. Often, especially when it is windy. But they hold promise. They see older, ancient trees riddled with antiquity and wisdom and life and they know what they’re living for.

The grass is patchy. Sometimes brittle and sharp, but in a lot of places its soft and good. These are the places where Dan and I go to lay our blanket on and look at the stars. It is feeling the earth beneath your palms and smiling thinking what “grounded” means, in all its ways.
It has laughter and joy. It is full of a new energy that makes the air come alive, like lightning is about to strike. It rains a lot, and it’s a warm, kind rain that your brother and sister beg you to come out in to jump in puddles.

And you do, hair plastered to your neck, feet bare, and you think “Goodness, this is all worth it after all: being alive.”

It’s also you crying, and acknowledging the pain. It’s seeing the scars your fire had on the earth and its people. It is seeing the burned places, the dredged ones. It is full of a sad, harsh memory of emptiness: the time you lost yourself.

It is the absence of.
Is is a whispered wonder.
It is a new hope, and an older whisper, saying “Maybe, come back to me,” and a fragile, shaking: “No, thank you. What you have to offer isn’t enough for me anymore.”

It is the tentative prospect of holding your babies, bones of your bones, in your arms and how thinking of that makes you cry. It is a palm that encompasses your own, a hand on your neck pulling you in, blue eyes that light a fire in you. It is sleeping curled against your best friend, feeling her heat beat through her cocoon of blankets and soft pillows that smell like home.

It’s full of taste and wonder and hard things, but most of all, it’s full of second chance. It’s a thirdlife, marked by previous ones, hopefully an evolution, with lots of memorandum and bits of grief.

It is delicate and fragile, lovely and strong. It is mine, held tightly, knowing full well just how miraculous and wonderful it can become, and how very cold and full of blood and bones it sometimes becomes.

It is a new treaty, a new country out of old ones. A new generation with hope and the weight of its ancestors. But most of all it is me learning and stumbling and remembering why I want to be alive. It is me being blinded by color and smiling in wonder, thinking “Surely, there will always be enough.”

It is me learning what it means to truly be full.

It is worth it.

Surely, there will always be enough.

a new perhaps

It's 12:57 in the morning; I can't sleep; I'm writing a blog post.

Something new has been happening in me within the past month or so. And it's odd, but I think it's good.

6 months ago, in January, I weighed under 100 pounds. After years of struggling with starving myself  and engaging in a constant tug-of-war battle with my body to remain "skinny," I was finally able to start the physical part of recovery. Mentally, spiritually, emotionally - I had been engaging in those forms of healing for about two years. I had to do those things before I could start to eat. To feed and nourish my body, instead of starve it.

It was the hardest thing I have ever done. It was brutal.

Suddenly, I was back at the weight I had been before I had and eating disorder, and then some. 20 pounds some. And I was angry. I was angry because I had done it. I had done what I was supposed to. Eaten. Gained weight. I was supposed to be better. I was supposed to be free, not enslaved to a life that was all about losing weight and calories and being starving and skinny.

I hated the way I looked. I hated the way I felt. I was supposed to be healed, but I felt broken and, more so, I felt like I had lost myself.

It was like that for quite a few months. My body felt too big. I was retaining water. I felt awkward and bad but then, it settled. You see, my body was repairing itself. It swelled, holding water, as my cells received nutrients and life they had been deprived of. A body that was so close to dying was suddenly full - and it took time for it to understand what to do again. But it did it.

And I don't feel big anymore. My body feels like mine again. I don't feel huge. I feel like me. I feel comfortable. I like it. Even though it's bigger. Even though it has fat on it.

I won't lie. Sometimes it's still hard. Yesterday I gave my favorite pants to one of my friends. I can't fit into them. I got them when I weighed 103 pounds, and now I can't get them past my knees. I cried after I gave them to her. I told my mom, I'll never be like that again. I'll always be this way. I'll never be skinny. 

And she hugged me and told me she liked me the way I am. Lately, it's just been me realizing that I have a body, and it's the way it is. Numbers (sizes) have just started being numbers. They don't mean anything about me. Oh, the 4 doesn't fit? Try the 6, grab an 8. They are numbers; they are clothes. They are not me. They don't determine how much my friends love me or if Daniel wants to marry me or not. If I make my brother laugh or how someone treats me. They shouldn't. And they definitely should never make me hate myself.

I'm still learning how to do the whole food thing. How to not eat based on emotions or restrict or binge. How do people do this? I don't know, but I'm trying to figure it all out. I'm trying to eat healthier. After years of not letting myself have pizza or chocolate or chips or pie, it's been hard not to have those things every day all the time. I want to have a strong, healthy body. It's not strong yet. But it's alive. It's full. It's ready to take me as long as life will have me. And that's the important thing.

It's been really amazing to experience this. Below, I am posting something I wrote on my phone from last month. I tend to do this: write notes on my phone, on other's, on whatever I have able.

It's not particularly poetic, but it's remarkable. It's my new perhaps. And I wanted to share it with you, because I never knew or believed that this could happen to me, especially when I was in the middle of anorexia.

But it has. It's happening. And it is a possibility of a future full of so many potentials. So many perhaps.

I just had to start; and now - now I have to keep moving.

July 27th, 10:52 AM

I have started to see myself. 

Truly see this body for what it is. I do not see it as something fat. It has fat on it, just like it has skin. It feels a bit uncomfortable, a bit too much - but it is not something I need to shed or hate or fear. 

It is something I can take care of. But more than that, it is something I can live in. To live that has nothing to do with food. 

It is a living that is laughing and growing and learning and speaking and building things with two hands, and holding things tightly, and singing and loving and being alive. It is sunshine and fire and wind and trees. It's peace and joy and sorrow, and beauty. This body is made to be alive, and I have a mind that is made to be concerned with things other than skinny and food and weight and being trapped. 

It's exciting. And it's a gift that I love. And that I am slowly unwrapping, and turning over in my hands - looking at it from all angles. It is something new, and it may be wonderful. 

It certainly makes me think, and it makes me wonder, and it makes me think: more. 

There's so much more. There's a whole complex world. There's wanting and having and growing and trying. And one more thing: for the first time in my life, my existence, I have the opportunity to be strong. To be something strong. Not a little girl trapped in a bird body, that is delicate and robbed and ribbed and fragile. That is dying and starved, with eyes too big and hands shaking. Not a girl in a normal body who is forced to be small. By words and fists. By being told "what you're feeling is wrong. Be silent. You are mine. You are nothing. You aren't yours."

I can be strong. A strong body, and a strong mind. That is my new perhaps. 

anyway

First blog post on here as an engaged lady. What what.

That goes to show you how poor my posting skills are. I have like 27 in my drafts that I need to post. I'm a bad blogger. I'll post more, pinky promise. Probably. Hopefully. Maybe. As I said once before in an interview asking if I would beat my time in a race: "If I do, I will. If I don't, I won't."

I have such a way with words. It's a gift.

Anyway, hi. I hope you all have enjoyed your 4th of July. For my non-American friends out there, I hope you had a lovely summer day. This isn't an Independence/America themed post, unfortunately. This is about what we see in the mirror. What I see, what we are trained to see, what we tell ourselves.

Maybe you've never looked in the mirror and not liked what you see or been perturbed by some part of your reflection. Maybe you love it, or you have outstanding self-esteem and body image. And that's so wonderful, and my soul is overjoyed for you. But that's not the case for me. And for quite a few women I know, and some men as well.

Part of getting married for me is a traditional wedding, in the sense that we're having a ceremony and reception. So last month I made an appointment to try on wedding dresses. I was excited, but then, after hanging up the phone, I caught glance of myself in my bedroom mirror and immediately thought, I can't do this. 

Because of how I looked. I told my friends and mom I wasn't ready, I wanted to save money, etc, but the real truth was that I thought I was too gross looking to try on wedding dresses.

I'm not underweight anymore. Thank God. I'm at a healthy weight, and that means, by extension, I have more weight on me. A significant amount. I reached the weight I was before I had an eating disorder and then some. I have a body that isn't starving for the first time in three years. I've gotten to eat food that I haven't in years, and it has tasted good. I've gotten excited to eat. I have put food into my mouth and instead of thinking what I had to do - how much I had to run, how much I couldn't eat - I just went on with my day. Or I asked for more. Or I laughed and kept having dinner with the people I loved because I was feeding and nourishing a body that was made to do so much more than be skinny.

Even as I gained weight, no one loved me any less. No one treated me any different. People did comment on my body, which was and is always hard, even now, but it was "you look so much better / healthier."

More weight is not synonymous with less attractive or ugly. It does not mean you are less of a person or a failure. It doesn't mean you can't be beautiful anymore. For me, it's meant hair that grows, a brain that can remember, nails and skin that do not crack, and a body that is warm. It's been energy and growth and being able to swim and run and go on walks without feeling like the ground was pulling me down for a long date.

With all these good things, though, it doesn't mean it's easy. It doesn't mean that I can look in the mirror and be happy with what I see because I am finally, thankfully healthy. I am being honest, and I honestly say that I don't like what I see.

My mind tells me
gross fat ugly disgusting you have to fix this you can't eat you don't deserve to eat look at your arms how could anyone love you look what you did 
and it's heartbreaking, in a lot of ways.

I did try on wedding dresses. As I tried them on these thoughts plagued me. And it did make me sad. It was hard.

It's okay that it's still hard. I think it takes time. I think it takes a really long time to be okay with your body, and maybe even find it beautiful.

But I think that it doesn't have to be something that steals joy from you. Or makes you not be able to, say, try on wedding dresses, or wear short sleeves, or leave your house.

While I wait for my mind to realize that I am beautiful, that my body is, regardless of its size and weight and inches, I can focus on what is really happening. For me that day, it was that I was with three humans I loved getting to do a really special life event. It was me watching my mom cry and hearing my best friends talk about which dress they liked. It was eating sweet potato fries and a cupcake later, and looking at furniture and rugs and mugs for my future apartment that I'm going to share with my husband. It was falling asleep while my mom drove us home from Chicago and watching Alli and Pet try on bridesmaid dresses. It was remembering that my life is so much more than a body, and my wedding day will be so much more than a dress or a ceremony or what I look like.

Our lives aren't supposed to be about food. Or being skinny, or pretty, or anything. That's not what we're here for. That is not what living is supposed to be about, sweet friends.

It doesn't have to be.

It's remembering that what I saw in the mirror and how I felt about it doesn't determine my worth, value, or how good my life is. That I am not any less precious or loved or lovely.

I think even if you can't feel good about what you see in the mirror, you can focus on other things to remind yourself of the good. Cling to the health you have. Cling to laughter, to hope, to smiles, to joy, to truth. Try on wedding dresses anyway. Even if your mind is chanting at you awful, not nice and not true things, smile anyway. EAT FOOD ANYWAY. Live a life that's not about weight or numbers or anything like that anyway.

And take pictures. Remember it. Enjoy it. Even though it's hard.

You've fought for this life, this body, health so hard already. Keep fighting, keep working, and keep growing. Push forward and live.

You've waited long enough.









Much love always,
Gabbie

mended

Tonight I couldn’t sleep. So I ate popcorn and watched Grey’s Anatomy at 1:30 in the morning. I finished all that’s on Netflix and I didn’t know what to do with myself after.

On Macs, at the top of the screen, there are saved bookmarks. Maybe they tell a lot about a person. Mine probably reveal that I’m super boring. One of them I haven’t clicked on in about 6 months, and it was tumblr.

So I went and looked at my tumblr from so long ago and I found a blog full of beautiful pictures. Of dogs. Of nature. Of little stone homes in foreign countries. Of food, lots of it. Of flowers and skyscapes and all these beautiful images. And it made me cry.

Because I can’t remember posting a single one of those images. Those beautiful pictures - the things I saw and connected with, that I defined as beautiful and lovely and wanted to remember them - to associate them with who I am. I can’t remember looking at any of them though. I had no idea what to expect as I scrolled through my blog, but what I found was me.

6 months ago I was starving. I had an eating disorder. It first started the summer before my senior year of high school and it clung to me for my first two years of college. But 6 months ago, somehow, I started to eat. It was the hardest thing I have ever done. It’s still hard. But it’s also the most worthwhile, the most best thing that I could have done.

For the first time in a long time, I am not starving. I am not underweight. I am not terrified of food, controlled by it. I am not dying from it. But for so long I was. It stole so much from me. So much time, so many memories.

I think the fact that I couldn’t remember any of those posts from my tumblr was a reminder to me of what I was. I can’t remember much of high school or the past two years. Sometimes people will say something to me -- when they first met me or what I was like when I first started counseling and I can only listen and wonder where I was and how I became okay with the fact that I was starving - that that was what I wanted and I wanted most desperately for me.

In October I started writing poems for the first time since I started struggling with anorexia. And I kept writing. I still am writing.

I ended up writing my story on paper. It’s a hard story to read, but it’s a story of freedom. It’s mine, all of it. How I found freedom -- freedom that I never believed would be possible. Freedom that others told me for years I could find, and now I know what it can look like.

Heartbeat Sound is the name of my book of poetry. It’s 500 pages of my story from the past year. It’s hard. A lot of it is hard to read. But I think some of it is good. It’s my struggle, my healing, my eating disorder, my fighting to find God and truth in my life.

It’s got some hard themes. Within those pages, I struggle with the desire to live, to be free, and to unwind truth from the lies I came to know and be known by. There are a few curse words. There are some poems that are so dark I can’t really read them anymore most of the time. There are hard things. But I decided that I will not delete, change, or rewrite any of my poems.

This is the story I have been given. I’m tired of lying, pretending, letting it rule over me. I want to share it with you. I want to give it to with the hope that you find something, anything within its lines. I’m scared, terrified. But I also believe that I need to share, to show what God has done for me in my life. The people he’s put in it. The journey I waded through to see what he wanted for me. So I shall share it with you soon.

I have been thinking of submitting it to some publishers, but I’m not sure. I may just go ahead and self publish again like I did with Riley Girl. Either way, any way, some way I am going to put it out there.

I am excited, nervous, terrified, happy, crying, wise, naive. I am loved, brave, scared, and growing. Healing, breaking, being grown into something. Saved, redeemed, given a second chance at life. I am lucky. I am alive. I was still me, in some magical way, 6 and 8 and 24 months ago, but now I get the freedom to be more me than I have in years. And that me can’t wait to do this adventure called life with you.

“What is broke can be mended. What's hurt can be healed. No matter how dark it gets the sun is gonna rise again." - Meredith Grey

I mean, I couldn’t not end with a Grey’s quote, because I am still me, and I am still cheesy.

Much love always,

Gabbie

My Writing Tools

(lol at my post I wrote last easter in 2015 and never published. I am hilariously terrible at this whole blogging thing) 

Hi, guys! Happy Easter! 

Unfortunately, I was not able to go home for Easter, because we only got Monday off for school. I had some free time on my hands this weekend and decided to create a post featuring some tools I use while writing. 

I thought it might be interesting for those of you who don't write, maybe, to see how I do it. I also thought it would be helpful for those of you who enjoy creative writing, because these are some cool resources I've found over the years! (I would love to know yours, as well). Also, I did this for myself, so I don't have to have 9 tabs open all the time when I write. 

Just to be clear, I don't always use these resources when I write, but they really are helpful. 

The first section we have here is the list I always have open when I write. It's a mixture of adverbs and facial expressions that I've compiled from one website and from my FAVORITE thesaurus. 

Facial Expressions 

Okay, this is where you get an even better understanding of how big a nerd I am. This is one of my most favorite lists ever, and I use it all the time. 

200 Glorious Words to Use Instead of "Said"

The next section is what I liked to call "Build a Character," which is everything from names and facial structures to idiosyncrasies and handwriting. 

Names: I usually use a baby name book my best friend got for me as a birthday present, but it's currently in Illinois. This is my favorite website, Nameberry, because it offers the definition of the names, which is something I like. I like a lot of my character's name meanings to be reflective of who I want them to be. Sometimes I just want a cool name, so both purposes are served. 

Character Building 

Facial Attributes

Here's a list that I like as a reminder, plus I always try to do the things on it with my own eyebrows, so that's fun. 

Things Eyebrows Do 

• Furrow: gather, pinch, tighten, draw together, join, press, meld; knit
• Raise: lift, rise, arch, jump, boost, hike
• Lower: crouch, slump, slant, sink, collapse

Create their handwriting 

The Color List 

Blacks

Blues

Browns

Greens

Browns (light)

Whites (pales)

Oranges

Pinks

Purples

fs

Yellows

you might need a piece of cake after reading

In high school I took a short stories class for one glorious semester. There were eight of us in there and, while we learned a lot, we also very much succeeded in messing around and probably annoying our teacher to no end. But she kept pushing us to write, and we did. By the end of the semester, I can firmly say that all of us were better writers than before, thanks to that woman putting up with us and our ridiculous antics.

If you've read some of the things I've written you may have noticed that I tend to write on more serious topics. I used to turn in my short stories to my teacher and she would tell me after reading them she just needed a big piece of cake to cheer her up, because a lot of the times my stories weren't the most upbeat.

I never gave her a cake; I gave her my stories. And on my last one I drew a picture of a cake for her. I am so thankful for her - for everything she taught me and that she read work that tended to fall on the somber side.

The title of this blog post echoes back to that, because below I am posting some of my writing that would have made my teacher very much want cake after reading. These are the other three entries I submitted to the Arrowhead that did not get in, but I thought I would share them, too.
The first is a short story. One is a non-fiction essay. And one is a poem. They include serious topics, but I hope, as is my goal with everything I write, that they leave traces of hope in their wake. And truth. So here we go.

____________

As Sure as Day Follows Night

         I'm gangly like a deer. Elbows and knees, with not much in between.

Like most of the females in my generation, my hair is scraped up onto the tip-top of my head, knotted in a messy, haphazard bun. It hasn’t been brushed in three days, minimum.

I'm also reading War and Peace, a hard copy with pages that smell old, like when writers used typewriters instead of Macbooks. It's heavy, especially after five miles. My arms complain about it. I’m not quite sure when I stopped reading, but it happened. The book’s still open, my fingers pressing against the soft pages, but I’m not reading it.  

         So when the car honks at me, and I hear a male's voice catcall at me in what I am almost positive is Spanish, I stop walking. All he knows about me is that I unkempt hair, the body of a12 year old, and that I can read and walk at the same time. The first two aren't exactly the definition of allure, so I’m banking on the fact that he noticed me because of the book. At least, I hope so, because that, at least, is a bit redemptive. He respects and recognizes me for the only reason left I have left to recognize myself.

Worn tires crunch over the red, dirt-like gravel as the car creeps up beside me. The car itself has been ravaged by time and its front bumper looks like it was attacked by a group of toddlers equipped with tiny hammers.  It hovers next to me like a hummingbird, ready to dart off at the first sign of trouble. The red dust I've been kicking up since I first stepped outside floats back down to the ground, settling. 

         The window has been rolled down halfway. Through the space, I meet a pair of brown eyes. They’re dark, the color my mother likes her coffee to be: black, no cream, three sugars. They meet mine and for a moment we stare at each other like an animal and a person at a zoo, separated by a plane of thin, clear glass.

         Am I the person or the animal behind the glass? Certainty, I’m not human. Not anymore. Probably a normal human girl would be afraid right now. They would not get in a car with a strange boy. Don’t get in the car with strangers. I repeat: do not, because, generally, it doesn’t end well. It’s one of the first lessons I learned in kindergarten, before I learned my ABCs or how to count past twenty. Other girls would probably, most likely, be angry, or ignore the catcall, or maybe be scared. While I am probably all of those things, really, at this moment I feel absolutely nothing.

         Well, I feel cold. But I am perpetually that way, no matter how much heat radiates off the California pavement baking beneath my catcaller’s car.

         I open the back door, which meows pitifully from age, and climb into the car. The temperature drops twenty degrees and I'm hit by the smell of tobacco, sunflower seeds, and chlorine. 

         Smoothly, I boost myself over the center console and slide into the passenger seat. The fabric’s worn and soft against my legs, which sigh in relief. The seats are tattered. The, apparently broken, radio has numerous red and blue wires protruding from it like tentacles, and there’s what I’m almost positive is a Ziploc bag full of cat food on the floor. And then, of course, him. He’s Hispanic with eyes that I now see, up close, are light brown, almost hazel, messy dark hair, and skin the color of caramel. A tiny white scar squiggles its way from the top of his lip to the bottom of his nose. 

         “What’s your name?” I ask.

         These are the first words I have spoken in 119 days.

         “Alex,” he tells me in a soft voice, one that doesn’t fit the voice that probably just yelled something vulgar at me. “And you?” he asks, the Spanish falling from his lips like snow out of a December sky. At least, from my old December sky. He’s probably never seen snow before.

          “You can call me Fee,” I tell him, adjusting the vents in front of me so the cold air blowing from flows at him instead of me. Goosebumps rise on my bare legs. He glances at them with me and, wordlessly, flips on the heat. I find my voice, and it sounds foreign to me. “Thank you.”

            He nods, once, and wordlessly presses the accelerator. The car lurches forward, but putters along, somewhat confirming my suspicion that it runs on hope and cheap gasoline. Through the passenger window, I watch ramshackle terra cotta homes flash by. The streets are empty and dusty, with heat waves wafting up from the pavement. Trash and weeds cling to the curbs, and a stray dog rifles in what I tell myself is a pile of feathers from pillow that met an unfortunate end. This is California, but not the part you come to see.

        Besides the cacophony of sounds coming from the engine, which are both alarming and impressive, the car is silent. I watch Alex as he drives. He is a careful driver, with eyes that flicker to the rearview mirror every three seconds or so and hands that stay at ten and two, just like my father taught me two years ago. I’m not sure what he expects of me or where we are going. He most defiantly expected something from me when he called at me. His words, while foreign to me, clearly showed his intention for me to join him in a car that’s older than our ages combined and probably doubled. He can’t be more than eighteen, which is a year older than me, so maybe tripled.

I should probably ask where we are going, or care, but I can’t. It seems like my words, for now, have dried up again in me. As for the caring part, that should probably scare me. I shiver, flicking up the heat.  

Alex ever-so-gently turns the wheel of his car, which growls, threatening to stall. His brown eyes meet mine over the console, which is littered with split sunflower seeds. “We are going to my Abuela’s. My Grandmother’s,” he translates.

I nod and learn back into my seat. “Okay.”

Less than fifteen minutes later, we are standing in front of what could potentially be the most dilapidated home I’ve seen since I came to California. Granted, I’ve only been here 37 days, but still - it wins.

It probably used to be yellow, or maybe brown, but now it’s color is a mixture of dirty browns, with stone sides riddled with cracks, white lines that shoot up to the terra cotta roof that is more tarp than stone. Boards cover two of the windows. One is tagged with red spray paint that didn’t dry properly, making the smeary lines look like blood.

The air is so dry and brittle I feel like I could snap the air with my bare hands. I can hear the air humming with heat, the buzz of angry insects, and a faraway dog barking. Somewhere music plays, but its in Spanish and keeps breaking off into static like code talk. I look at the house, with its peeling walls and unmowed lawn, and turn to Alex.

I say nothing. It’s a trick I learned in therapy. When someone starts talking, especially someone who doesn’t talk much, or at all, as was my case, you wait them out, because, hopefully, they might speak. That was the only thing therapy taught me. Maybe it would have taught me more if I had spoken. I didn’t though, not for days, then weeks, then months. That is, until today, until I got into Alex’s car and asked him his name. And now I talk more than he does. “You’re a good driver,” I tell him, because I really don’t know what else to say. I want to ask him about the house, about so much, but this is all I can manage. I am rewarded by his smile, which seems brighter than the hot sunshine.

He cocks an eyebrow at me, slightly amused.

Before I can say anything, the house’s front screen door creeks open. The confusion slips off Alex’s face and, for the first time, I see him smile. It’s delicate and gentle, like the way he drove his crappy car, and it seems impossible that the rough, Spanish voice that catcalled me could come from such a person.  

I turn and, following his gaze, see a woman who can only be his Abuela. She’s old, but I can’t really tell how old exactly, with literally a mountain of white and gray streaked hair piled perilously atop her head. She’s wearing a thin, almost translucent nightgown that is white, and yellow flowers on it. Daisies, maybe. Her hand rests on the rotting wood of her porch. But what I really notice, honestly, are her eyes. They are milky white. She’s blind. They roam across the yard, unable to see the weeds that make it look like a dead jungle and the empty beer cans lining her curb. But, somehow, they land on us, and I hear her voice, strong despite her age, call out, “Eres tu, mi vida?”

         I may not know Spanish, but I know enough to hear what she calls the boy standing next to me.

         Mi vida. My life.

         “Sí, Abuela,” Alex answers her respectfully, taking a few familiar steps away from me, navigating the glass and trash in the dead jungle yard. I stay rooted in place, staring at her falling down house that if I had driven by I would have thought was condemned, feeling, strangely, like I’ve intruded on something I can’t possibly understand.

         He really did bring me to his grandmother’s house. There’s a plot twist for you, Parents. Not kidnapped. She actually lives here. Maybe Alex does too. I don’t know, but I do know that we drove through an entire neighborhood of homes like this one, some even worse, with holes where windows should have been, or roofs patched with black trash bags. A whole neighborhood. Like I said: I’ve only been here 37 days. But not once, in that time, have I heard anyone mention this neighborhood or the condition of it – not my aunt or my uncle or any of my cousins, who pretend that everything is fine and normal and that Fee is just visiting California for pleasure. Pleasure. The word, and the idea that people like Alex and his grandmother live in homes with tarps for ceilings and patchwork wood walls, makes me sick to my stomach.

         Alex waits patiently for me, telling me calmly, “Come.” So I do, following at his heels as he leads the way through the weeds. He pads without looking; avoiding glass and what I pray to God are chicken bones expertly.

         We get to the porch steps and Alex takes his grandmother’s hand. She bats him away, smiling, and starts to say something to him, but stops. I don’t know how, but she suddenly becomes aware of me. Up close I see her eyes aren’t actually white, but merely covered in a thick layer of scar tissue. Underneath it, I can see the outlines of eyes the same color as her grandson’s. She tilts her head at me, and I, nervously, say hi. In Spanish. Even to me, the “hola” sounds very pitiful.

         Regardless of my accent or the fact that her grandson has brought a girl home, she smiles beautifully, not looking the least bit perturbed that he has invited me to her home. Does he, I wonder, do this often? Pick up strange white girls and bring them to his grandmothers? I get the feeling probably not, mainly because not many even remotely intelligent girls would get in cars with strange boys. Unless, of course, California is the place to send all girls like me. All the broken ones, with mute voices and hands that shake.

         “Fee no habla Español,” Alex tells his grandmother. My name, pronounced by Alex, sounds like Feah. Leah, with an F.

         His grandmother’s delicate, wrinkled hands search and find mine. She squeezes my cold ones. For a moment, my hands are warm.

         “Sea bienvenido, mi niña.”

         Alex, at my side, whisper-translates, saying, “Welcome, my girl.”

         My heart tightens in my chest, but I wordlessly step through the doorway. It takes a moment for my eyes to adjust, but slowly her home comes into focus.
         Pictures, pictures everywhere. In frames, in scrapbooks piled precariously high on the table, wedged under the layer of glass on the TV display, literally covering the face of her refrigerator. Hundreds of photographs, some in color, some in black and white, polaroid and ones clipped from newspapers or invitations.

         Alex says something to her in their language and disappears back out the front door, which shuts behind him with a gentle sigh. Before he goes, I feel his fingers brush my elbow. I’m coming back, it tells me, and I shiver. I hate being touched, even if it’s by accident. Regardless, even if I know the person isn’t going to hurt me. I know that, but my body and my mind apparently don’t. So I look at a picture close to me, in a frame made of seashells, which happens to be a younger version of Abeula, with hair the color of dark chocolate, holding a little boy that looks a bit like Alex, but isn’t. He’s got the same skin and eyes, but a wild look in his eyes.

         “You have a beautiful home,” I tell Abeula, who is at my side, and am rewarded with a lovely, white-toothed smile. Alex comes through the screen door, which creeks with age. He holds the baggie of cat food in his right hand, looking at me and his grandmother with an unmistakable softness in his brown eyes. He loves her a lot.

         “Gracias, mi hija,” she tells me, and squeeze my arm. Her words jog my memory, and Alex and I make eye contact. Mi hija. Those were two of the words, I realize now, that Alex catcalled at me. Abuela says something more in Spanish waddles away from us, disappearing down a hallway, nightgown swaying behind her. Apparently, whatever we are going to do, she’s not going to do it with us.

         We are alone. His home around us is still and hot. The sunlight breaking through the thin layer of plastic tarp above us casts golden light on the pictures of his people around us. Alex holds the bag of cat food patiently, an expectant look in his eye.

         “What does that mean?” I ask him, and he frowns slightly, looking down at the cat food. I mean, I would like to know why he has that, but, right now, I am asking about something else. Something more. “Mi hija,” I clarify in my poor Spanish.

         The light above us brings out the gold in his dark eyes. “It means ‘my daughter,’” he tells me quietly, and I hear the clocks ticking on the walls.

         I don’t know what to say, or think of this, so I just ask: “What did you call at me?”

         “La tierra llora por ti, my hija,” he says fluidly, in a voice that, while much softer, almost at a whisper, echoes the memory I have from only minutes ago of the same voice calling out at me through a half-down car window. Before I can ask him what that means, Alex tells me, fingering the Ziploc baggy with his gentle, calloused fingertips. “The earths weeps for you, my daughter.”

         I say nothing. Alex surveys me, brown eyes watching. I knew. All this time, I knew that something was desperately wrong inside me. People began to see it too, and hear it, eventually. They heard the silence, potent and choking, coming from me. They saw it as the weight practically fell off me, because I stopped eating normally. They saw, but they didn’t tell me about it. They tried to help me in their own small ways. Parents sending daughters away to uncles with doctorates in mental health, and aunts who love to make food and talk and throw parties and clean.

         I haven’t cried since it happened. My mom did, my aunt did, friends did. But, according to Alex, the whole world also did. After what feels like a lifetime, but is probably only a few of my stuttering heart beats, Alex speaks again, raising the bag of cat food into the shaft of sunlight between us. He shakes it, once. “We,” he tells me, “are going to clean some pools.”

         Of course, we are.

        

         Pools, it turns out, means 11. Eleven pools, Alex informs me from his spot behind the wheel of a truck that’s potentially older than Alex’s car, me, and his grandmother combined. It used to be red, maybe, or brown, but now it’s literally rusted away to dented, warped metal. There are ropes instead of seat belts, a trunk full of what I can only describe as pool-cleaning instruments, and empty baggies of what I’m almost certain used to be full of cat food littering the floor.  Alex sits behind the wheel, and I watch as the houses transform from lean-to shanties to, well, my aunt and uncle’s neighborhood. They, thankfully, don’t have a pool. Eleven houses.

         Luckily, they’re all in a line. On the same block. As Alex wordlessly cleans the first pool, I watch, perched on the edge of the concrete. He is using a net to scoop out dead bugs and leaves. “How long have you done this for?” I ask him as he expertly hits the net against the concrete. A glop of leaves falls onto the pavement, dead and brown.

         His brown eyes flicker to me. “Nine years.”  

         I take him in, calculating. “How old were you when you started?”

         “Eight.”

         I look at the pool, which can only be described as Olympic. It’s huge and probably needs to be cleaned numerous times a week. I picture a little boy version of Alex before me doing it, and I just can’t. I open my mouth to say what I’m not sure, but Alex beats me to it. “It wasn’t always me.”

         “Who else did it with you?” I take a lone palm leaf out of the cool water and set it on my goospebumps. A wet blanket for them.

         Alex frowns at the water, and the net breaks up the smooth water making up his shadow, sending ripples across the entire surface of the pool. “My brother,” he tells me, and I can hear it in his voice. Something he doesn’t want to be, but is.

         The truth claws at your heart, always, but when you try to use words it becomes impossible. It chokes you. It’s been choking me. 

         Before either of us have a chance to say anything else, there’s this soft jingle-jangling sound. A bell. Alex’s eyes focus on something behind me and soften. Turning, I find myself face to face with a skinny Persian cat. It’s fur is as pure and white as freshly fallen snow, and it’s huge black are inches from mine, watchful. It’s tail, puffy, flickers at me, almost as a greeting. It’s a beautiful cat. An expensive cat, that’s obviously well groomed. But the collar on its neck, bell and all, hangs loosely, and I can count its ribs. It’s starving.

          The cat watches Alex expectantly, tail folded over its front paws.

         From out of nowhere, Alex appears beside me with his Ziploc baggie, dumping it onto the polished concrete. The cat food hits the pavement like chunks of hail, peppering across the stone. Almost at once, the cat begins to scarf it down like it hasn’t seen food in weeks. My eyes find Alex’s, where he squats with his elbows on his knees, watching the white cat eat. “It’s theirs,” he explains, nodding at the house behind us, “but they never feed it.”

         The cat apparently, like me, is starving. But unlike me, when given the opportunity, it eats. It wants to live, I guess. Alex glances down at my wrists, which sometimes look so thin I think they are transparent. The skin is brittle and always cold, sometimes blue. Not eating does that to you. Alex crouches next to me, brown eyes meeting mine, and he knows better than to touch me this time.

            I don’t know what he’s thinking. I don't know what he thinks or dreams about or if he even has anything to say. I don’t know Alex at all, but then, maybe I do. Because I've seen a glimpse of his actions. Some, like catcalling me, I still don't quite understand, but I've seen the quiet way he exists, the gentle way he spoke to Abuela, and the back breaking work he's done in the hot, inhaling chlorine, for the past 9 years. How he has befriend a rich family’s cat, that they don’t even care enough to feed but have a pool the size of a school bus.

         Finally, Alex speaks softly, as the cat continues to eat hurriedly beside us. His hand reaches out and rests gently on the top of its head, but he looks right at me. “You deserve to eat too, Fee,” he tells me simply. “That’s why I called out to you.”

         “Because I’m skinny?” I ask flatly, in a voice that sounds meaner than I thought could come from me.

         Alex’s eyes refuse to go away from me. He nods, once, slightly, and acknowledges, “You look like you’re starving. Almost dizzy, too. Like a drunk person,” he muses, but we both know it’s not funny. I say nothing, and, for a while, neither does he. Finally, finally, he speaks quietly, “I know what it means to be sad, Fee. I could see it, starving you,” he nods at my bones, which feel too heavy for me, “but I also see, in your eyes, in that book, that you’re hungry.”

         Wordlessly, I get up and start cleaning up the mess his net leaves behind.

        

         We are on our 11^th pool, when I tell Alex, “You don't really say much.”

         He glances at me, his brown hair falling into his eyes. Behind him, the sky is the color of a mandarin orange. We’re both covered in sweat, and he lasted about 26 seconds in his shirt before stripping it and tying it around his waist. I, unfortunately, do not have that luxury. I mean, maybe I do, but it’s slightly frowned upon. Plus, I’m me, so I wouldn’t. Couldn’t take my shirt off. It stays firmly on me, drenched in sweat. I am actually warm, finally.

         Alex pauses what he’s currently doing, which he described to me as “sucking up the gunk from the hatch” with what I think is the pool version of a vacuum cleaner, and leans against the metal pole. He squints at me in the bright sunlight.  “I used to do this work with my brother.” He shades his eyes with one hand, surveying the Caribbean-colored water. “It was Abeula’s business, but once she lost her eyes, we took over.”

         We meaning him and his brother. “We would clean the pools after school. Sometimes until dark. This pool - it's nothing. 11 pools: easy.”

            My throat is dry, but I make myself ask. “Why did he stop helping?”

            Alex looks at me. “He got shot.”

            Inside my chest, my heart seems to stutter. Dear God. I say nothing. Nothing. You cannot say anything.  

Alex nods, and goes on for me, “I was 11, he was 14.”

“What . . . what happened?” My voice sounds tight, too tight.

“The Tardes,” he tells me simply, and I feel like I’m not in my body anymore, even though I very much am. I have heard my aunt and uncle mention them. The Tardes. It's a gang. Mostly Hispanic, originating from the streets of LA. Most known for bloody violence.

"They just killed him?" I can’t breathe.

Alex slowly shakes his head. "No. He was a member.” His voice is matter-of-fact, and sad.

The pool filter gurgles, choking on blood.

Alex continues, staring down at the pool vacuum, brown eyes far away from me. “He died in a street fight over a strip of land between two warehouses."

14 years old, dead before life began. He should have been in Biology class, or learning how to fail in Algebra, but instead he was bleeding out in a gutter. When I was 14, I got grounded for getting a Facebook account without my parent’s permission.

Slowly, Alex sets down the vacuum and makes his way over to me, where I stand at the edge of the pool, clutching my net.  I watch his shadow move over the skin colored pavement: padding up to me, gently prying the stupid net from my hands, which are shaking. He pulls me down onto the pavement, which burns my bare legs. I welcome the pain. The sun is hot yellow, burning a hole in the center of the pool, ready to slip under the cusp of the sky.

 “What did you do, after?” My voice sounds millions of light-years away.

 “They asked me to join them,” Alex says. He sees my confused look and elaborates, “The Tardes.” I stare at him, unable to speak of fathom it. His brother died.

“Threatened, actually,” Alex admits, shaking his head at the memory. “But I said no.”

“Weren’t you afraid? That they would kill you?”

He stares at the sky for a moment. I see the sunset reflected in the irises of his eyes, clouds laid over and on and against each other, smeared and seeping into the sky. Becoming night. “There’s a saying, a Spanish proverb,” he says finally, glancing sideways at me. “Prefiero morir de pie que vivir siempre arrodillado.”

“Translation?” I whisper, barely audible.

He translates for me quietly, “I’d rather die standing than live forever on my knees.”

“How?” I manage to get out. My heart is twisting inside my chest and my hands shaking. Desperately, I search his eyes, needing an answer. How? “How could you even stand?”

Alex’s eyes flicker to me, and I know that he sees me. Truly sees. His eyes are full of pain, but firm. Strong even as he tells me in the softest, most gentle voice I have heard, “That kind of sorrow, it does not fade. It stabs you and you always bleed. But you survive through it, sometimes bitterly, sometimes numbly, because it’s all you can do to stand. And you hope.”

I can’t speak. My lips are locked together and my throat has closed. Tears, thick and hot, fall down my face. How do you endure something like that? I want to scream at him, but not because I want an answer. Because I don’t understand. How are children, anyone, supposed to be able to endure things like this? How am I supposed to endure this? Tell me how, I want to beg, but I can’t. I need to know.

 “How?” I demand, but my voice is weak. I’m so weak and tired and broken. It matches me, my voice. “How can you have hope after something like that? How can life ever be hopeful again?”

“La esperanza le pertenece a la vida, es la vida misma defeiéndose.”

“What does that mean?” I practically snarl.

A ghost of a smile, “Hope is essential to life, it is life itself defending itself. Life is full of things we cannot control, bad things, but life itself – it is not bad. It is living and it is good, regardless of the things that come our way. It was no one’s fault, not even Pedro’s – my brother. It happened, it cannot ever unhappen. But life moves forward. It can be a curse, but it’s also a blessing. Because you can learn how to live with what happened. You can be bitter, and then grow. To forgive, to hope, to find strength, to promise yourself you’ll never let yourself be in that way.”

 I say nothing.

He wipes a tear off my cheek, and his brown eyes are clear. He waits for me to speak and, finally, I do. He knows my trick, too.

“I was walking. It was late.” I don’t let myself think. I don’t need to think. I will never forget. How could I? I relive it every day, every moment.

Except for the past few hours, I note. The past few hours I talked. I cleaned pools. I met a woman with white eyes and a boy who is kind where life wasn’t, even to cats.

But I will tell Alex. I stick to the facts, which is what the police told my parents, after, when I had stopped talking. “It happened quickly. He, a man – I didn’t know him -  jumped from bushes and pulled me down, or maybe hit me, but, either way, I was on the ground. There was a struggle, but he won. A neighbor heard me scream, though. She was pregnant, so she stayed inside and called the police. It took 17 minutes for a patrol car to get there, to get to me. To us. To stop him doing what he did to me.”

I am quiet. Everything is still: the pool, the boy next to me, my mind. Me.

I look at Alex. “A lot can happen in 17 minutes.”

Alex says nothing, eyes locked on mine.

“I feel like I’ll never be okay again,” I tell him honestly. I’m honest. For the first time in 119 days, I am going to actually say what I am thinking and feeling instead of not. Because what I’ve been doing, or trying to do, hasn’t been working. The not speaking. The not eating. The recklessness, almost like I want to get hurt again. For example: getting in strange boy’s cars.

But I tell Alex the truth.  “I feel like there’s no hope for me, or for life. I just – I just want it to be over. That’s why I got in your car, I think. That’s why I stopped eating, after. I stopped talking, too, but I don’t really remember doing that. My parents sent me out here. They thought it would help. But I don’t think anything can help me, Alex. That’s why, when you tell me about your brother, I just don’t understand how you are able to do this.” I motion behind him at the pool, at the stupid cat, at the warmth in his eyes when he sees his grandmother. At Alex talking and breathing and living and working and hoping. I cannot understand it or fathom it or even hope in it.

“Please,” I ask him simply, “tell me how you do it.”

Alex speaks quietly, “Time helps.”

I wish I was capable of being angry, but I’m just tired. I’m so tired. Alex goes on. “Life helps, in small ways. Abuela helped me, after. That stupid cat. The way the sunset looks on the surface of the pool. It won’t even be fixed, but there’s always hope, mi niña. As sure as day follows night.”

I look at the sky, which is now the color of a bruise. Mine have faded, but sometimes I think I still see them. I think of what Alex is saying to me. These words about hope and time and finding ways to survive, instead of dying on your knees. I think of his brother, dying in a street. I know what it’s like to be lying on a street, bleeding and terrified and not quite sure how you got there. But I lived.

It’s not a luxury everyone gets. I’m still sad. I’m still broken and tired and scared and weary. My skin still crawls and I can’t breathe, most of the time. But cleaning pools with a boy who feeds rich people’s cats and drives cars that run on prayers has helped me, for a few moments, remember what life has the potential to be.

I wipe the tears off my cheeks. “Can I come with you, next time you have to clean pools?”

Alex grins widely. In the fading twilight, his skin is a deep, rich brown, the polar opposite of mine. Inches from mine, his eyes are clear. I see myself reflected in them, small and red-eyed, but alive. With a heart that beats, albeit stutteringly, and a little, growing hope based on a boy perpetually smelling of chlorine and sunflower seeds, of cats making friends, and warmth from a woman wearing daisies. Those things may seem random, but they are little bits of life, and, right now, I need reminders, hope of what it can be.

“Tan seguro como que el día sigue a la noche,” Alex tells me, taking his keys from his pockets, like it was a silly question. He offers me his hand, which I take, and he pulls me up.

            “English,” I say, getting the feeling that eventually I’ll know his language just as good as my own. 

            He lets go of my hand, but his eyes are light. Smiling, he translates: “As sure as day follows night.” And we walk out the gate we came, just as the first stars begin to reflect on the smooth, blue surface of the pool.

 _____________

The Realities of an Eating Disorder

Late in the summer of my seventeenth year of living, I came to the conclusion that I was fat.

            I was not.

            The second conclusion that I almost immediately came to, after I came to believe this fact, was that I had to change that.

I’ve grown up hearing the statistic that it takes 28 days to form a habit. That number changes depending on who is reciting the fact to you, but I’ve seen that happen. I’ve seen it when I started reading my bible every day. I saw it as an athlete growing up: how by the end of your first month of practice, the drill that left you breathless didn’t feel like you had just dragged yourself through the nine circles of hell. I haven’t, though, heard how many days it takes to break a habit. I know that once I skipped a day reading my bible I was more likely to skip again, to let that time slip away until it became a string of lights that were days of not reading God’s word. I know that the five glorious days for Christmas when we didn’t have practice during basketball season felt the opposite of glorious the first day back, when your muscles screamed at you, the muscle built over weeks and months of practice seeming to have slipped away easier than smoke through your fingers.

But I do know this: for me, 28 days after I decided that I was fat my mind was changed in such a way that it would never be the same. Unlike the muscle that wasted away seemingly effortlessly in my years as a high school athlete, the thought process that came to have dominion in my mind was not something that would slip away unbeknownst to me. Let me assure you of that. Even now, over 900 days later, with a good bit of them admitting and trying to fight what has been defined as an eating disorder – even after strings of 28 days, of wanting to change, of weight lost and weight gained, the fight for my mind isn’t one that’s easily lost or gained. It will be won one day. If not in this life, by me, it’ll be won the day I exist in a place where sin and death and the brokenness found in humanity can’t because Jesus does – heaven, the only place where our souls will finally be met and overwhelmed with everything we are yearning for and run after in our lives here on earth.

Assuming I’ve got some time to kill before then, I want to write honestly about the realities of eating disorders. Some. Some of the realities as I’ve battle an eating disorder the past three years, because, really, I’ve only met the tip of the iceberg that is called by most people, including myself, a monster.

That leads us to reality number 1: eating disorders consume you.

They steal from you in so many more ways than anything to do with weight. Food becomes your life. Every single thought in your mind all the time has to do with food. Before I had an eating disorder, I never would have been able to understand this reality. How can every thought be about food? How can every single moment be consumed by an obsession with food? But that’s the truth. When food became the single most important part of my life, when my weight became the definition and foundation of my life, every single thing, no matter what I was saying or doing on the outside, was no match for the thing that had precedence and dominance in my mind.

It’s one of the saddest things about my eating disorder for me, personally. How much has been stolen from me. I’ll give you a few examples. There are many, more than space (or time) will allow me to write. But it stole me.

It stole me from my family and the people I loved, it stole me from doing what I love. It stole joy. The ability to eat or exist normally around food. The ability to enjoy exercise without it being used as an unhealthy tool. It stole from me mentally. I cannot remember most of my senior year of high school. It stole my concentration, my ability to remember and perform well, thoughts, hours. It stole me feeling emotions. I stopped feeling anything at all. It stole my hopes and dreams from me.

Because when you’re not eating healthily the reality is that your brain and your body are starving. But more so, you, however or whatever you define as you – maybe it’s the idea of a soul, or a heart, or a mind – that you are being stolen from.  

Reality number two: there is no winning with an eating disorder. You will never be “enough” of what you want.

In the beginning, I really thought that there would come a time when I would be thin enough. When I would be “skinny” or love what I saw in the mirror. Let me tell you what I’ve found with my journey: I will never be thin enough. With an eating disorder, every weight goal you set isn’t a goal you can just meet and be satisfied with. You will never be skinny enough, no matter how many inches you lose off your waist. No matter how far the numbers on a scale go down. No matter what ridiculous calculations or measurements you come up with to use as your judgment scales.

With an eating disorder, enough is never enough, so the reality is that the only enough you’ll ever get is this: if you are successful at being anorexic you die. Because you’ll keep going and working, working toward zero, working toward weightlessness, to becoming nonexistence, less than nothing.

The reality is that when you don’t feed your body, it still feeds. If you’re not putting food into it, it consumes fat, first, which is stored energy your body has to keep you alive. And then? It feeds on muscle. You lose muscle mass. The muscle in your legs, arms, stomach, and thighs. You have muscles in your eyes.

Your heart. Your heart is a muscle.

Your body needs sustenance to survive. It cannibalizes itself to survive. Until, of course, there’s not enough left. That’s when anorexia wins and you die, because your body fought its hardest to keep you alive.

The reality is that your body wants you to live. It fights against you as you starve it.

That leads me to another reality, similar to a previous one, but still: the costs of an eating disorder are higher than you have the ability to pay for. As I wrote a few sentences ago: your body is going to fight to keep you alive. You need nutrients to stay alive; they have to come from somewhere. So as you lose the muscle around your heart, other things start to happen to the body you’re starving to try to obtain a certain weight through unhealthy, unsafe means.

Your hair falls out. It falls out softly, like snow on Christmas. Like pine needles off the Christmas tree, revealing bare spots underneath.

You lose the ability to be warm. You are always cold, even in the summertime, even in the sunshine. Even as you wear layers of underarm and layers of clothes.

Due to muscle loss, your muscles become weak, but I’ll add a bit more onto that for you. Your bladder is a muscle. That’s not fun, is it? Not being able to control that, or your hands, isn’t fun. Feeling your heart hesitate in your chest isn’t fun. It’s terrifying.

But the terrifying thing is that all of it is worth it when you have an eating disorder. Even as you are dizzy and sick and cold. Even when you are tired and numb and starving: emotionally, mentally, physically, relationally, spiritually, actually – the you you know and love is sick, and sometimes its so sick that it can’t ever be fixed enough. Even after recovery, many people with eating disorders face the consequences of what they’ve undergone for the rest of their life. Osteoporosis. Deficiencies galore. Bad teeth, skin, hair and nails. A ravaged, damaged reproductive system. Unbalanced hormones.

But also how much damage you’ve done not only to your life but to the ones of all the people you love. Because you can’t love people enough, the way they deserve to be loved, when you’re a slave to an eating disorder. As you starve, you starve all the people in your life. And that sucks.

You starve yourself of life. You starve yourself of love. Of serving others, of being what you like to be: whether that’s a writer, or a lover, or a runner. Whether that’s a mother or a father or a brother. A daughter. A granddaughter, a friend, a boyfriend. You can’t be what you need to be when you’re consumed with destroying yourself.

  Before I close, I have to give you some of the realities that have been the hardest for me to find. The ones above were always real, regardless of how long it took me to acknowledge them. Regardless of how many years it took me to admit to myself or another human being that I had a problem.

Here are some of the realities I know now that have always been true, but that I fight to believe every single day. That I still tell myself after numerous multiples of 28 days and I’m still struggling to believe and use as I teeter-totter haltingly down a thing called recovery.

If you’re struggling with an eating disorder know that there is hope. I know. I know. Life without an eating disorder seems like an impossible dream. I couldn’t imagine it. Most days I still don’t, but I see glimpses of it more and more, sometimes infrequently, sometimes hope lasts for days at a time.

There is hope for you.

Because the reality is that you are not your eating disorder.

I defined myself by it. I thought it was all of me. That I had been consumed by it. I mourned over the person I used to be, who used to be able to eat normally. I thought that I would never see her again. And in most ways, I won’t. Because I can’t go back to her. I started down a road that was rough and dark and full of twists and turns, designed in such a way that I could never turn and go back to the girl I used to be.

The reality I base this on is one, because I’m a Christian, is lovely for me. Being a Christian who not only developed an eating disorder but still very much has to battle one has been probably the hardest thing for me. It’s still hard. But the reality is that my identity is not me. I am not anorexic. I’m not even me. When I asked Christ into my life, he stepped into my place and took from my sin from me. He became my identity. And he won. He beats sin every single time. He loves me even as I struggle with sin and sickness and living in a world full of brokenness. Because really, we are all broken sinners, but the beautiful reality is that we have a God who sent his son to rescue and redeem us.

I think that’s beautiful.

Here’s another reality: you have to fight. For me, as a Christian, that’s part of the whole thing. I can call myself whatever I want, have tons of ideology in my back pocket, go to church, but faith without action is dead. I can’t continue in this. I can’t be content with living with an eating disorder. Living in sin and saying it’s okay, that I’m forgiven, doesn’t cut it. Not for me. So for me, that means that I do the hard work of recovery every day.

It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But it has to be. It has to be done. Regardless of your faith. Whatever religious affiliation or not that you define yourself as or of: don’t live in an eating disorder. Fight for freedom. Fight to live. To do more than exist. To be more than a shell, a ghost with a heartbeat. Fight to be more than a number on a scale or calories or an unattainable idea of “skinny.” Because you’re more than that. You’re a daughter, you’re your favorite ice cream flavor, you are your hopes and dreams, you’re what makes you laugh and the person you love most in this world. You are so much more than a disorder.

My reality is that I have an eating disorder. But that’s not all of me. It doesn’t define me anymore. Because my reality, I know, is bigger than all of that. And, for me, my reality is hinged on Jesus. Really, I think everyone’s is. Because what he’s done for me he did for all mankind. You either accept it or you don’t, but either way: it’s done. My reality is that I was created to glorify the God of the universe and to enjoy Him forever. Both at the same time. To become more like Christ every day, and to one day, be with Him, free from sin and pain, sadness and shame.

My reality is that I am pursuing recovering from my eating disorder because I believe that I am meant to be free. I believe that by taking back and recovering from what anorexia nervosa has stolen from me, I believe that by fighting back, that by trying to get better, I am taking back the freedom that is waiting for me, given through Christ on a cross. That freedom is there for me. And it’s free because the cost has been paid by the only One who can.

Whether it takes 28 days or years, whether it’s the time between heartbeats or a journey millions of miles long and wide, every day I fight to be free from something that entangles me. Whether that is my sin, whether it’s depression or a mental disorder, or my personal eating disorder, every day I fight against myself, against lies, to see the beauty of what I have been given, and to enjoy the freedom that waits patiently for me, that’s with me with every footfall I take on this journey.

______________

Cold

Fire crackled in its place

smoke rose up the chimney effortlessly

more transparent than a ghost

Uno cards splayed in my hands

the colorful stack scattered on our worn, wooden floor

Best friend beside me, laughter halved in two

when you told me to shuffle and I said “I can’t”

Immediately silenced by your hand

As I failed, once again, to meet your demand

In the heartbeats after you hit me

the fire crackled

snapping on

I got up shakily

trying to reign in all the parts of me

I rose fluidly

just as you’d trained me

Turning quickly, hiding the tears that ran

hot and fast out of me

The bathroom shower was the only place for me

Five steps away

Shutting, not locking, the door right behind me

it’s one of the first lessons you taught me

when I was five and you wanted to be the one to pull my first tooth

because somehow it was your right

it wasn’t loose

I remember standing with my back

pressed against the far tiled wall

the flashing of the sliver of your knife

between the door and the wall

sliding the lock up and free

our house was so silent

you heard each of my frantic heart beats

I took the tooth home to my mom

in an old report card package

a gap in my smile

one less of my baby teeth

I never locked the door again

our very first lesson:

locks are for doors that can’t be opened

So I showered, too hot, door unlocked

choking on steam

water loud enough so I could sob brokenly

Embarrassment shame anger pain

Gather yourself quickly together

because, as always, time stutters out

and the door opened slowly

telling myself quietly not to freak out

Watching my best friend move through the frosted glass

snow dumped from overhead

hit me a bit too hard, too fast,

hissing as it melted instantly with the steam

My best friend’s pearls of laughter were not as forced as mine

But the message was clear: I was out of time

Getting dressed quickly, before the laughter faded

Rejoining, folding my legs

onto the wooden floor criss cross apple sauce

to have my dad wordlessly hand me the deck of cards

apparently I knew how to shuffle

he watched and he laughed

my hair dried slowly

dripping down my back

the heat from the wood burning

smoke up the stack

after this memory

I have passionately hated snow

I moved to the south, running from

the cold, but ultimately

running from my reality

and a father who adored to hurt me

but what if now

after he hit me

instead of sitting there obediently

hurting, pretending, letting

I got up and walked out and never let him hit me again

what if the snow that slipped over the shower

and hit me a little too hard

the peals of laughter that followed

the rules, unspoken, that came with it

what if the snow when I walked out our front door

was something altogether more

I imagine me stepping into that snow

it breaking, softly crunching under first one foot

followed closely by another

childhood raw hands snowmen

sledding Christmastime snow days

ice skating on ponds

cold that steals your breath away

white stretching out unbroken

as far as the eye can see

nature’s purest form of beauty

untainted by fathers and cruel memories

I know with certainty

after what I had just stepped out of

for me stepping into that snow would be

the definition of freedom