I remember so clearly in my head the story Maxine told me about this bulimic girl who brought her meals to her room where she would undress down to her underwear and sit in front of the mirror and eat and somehow, I became that girl only short of food but nothing short of insecurity. I stand before myself, and I remember closing my eyes and feeling the sickening tremor rippling behind my eyelids and I try to fight it, but I know I am slowly slipping into, sadly, myself. I am that girl who stands in front of the mirror looking at herself, scrutinizing every dimple and every sordid fold as she bends and arches and twists trying to pinch and grope at the rolls and pouches and she has no trouble finding them. Afterall she makes herself find them. He tells her to stop, tells her she is fucking beautiful. But what she sees is the furthest cry from perfect. She starts to fall apart and she is crying now, and she looks at herself and swears she is huge, hideous, unsightly, her sight makes her sick. Her mind, no better. She sits on the floor now, curls up into a tight ball and that proves to be the worst decision because she looks down and doesn't like what she sees and she chants in her head, fat, fat, fat and she starts to question the people who told her wonderful things, told her she was beautiful. Beautiful girls don't break down on their cold bathroom floors with hot tears dripping on their cellulite-streaked thighs gasping for air. They don't change out of their outfits thirty over times because they don't have to think about how after they eat their belly will show through their tight camisole. They don't secretly feel like their friends are judging their meal choices at lunch. They don't cry themselves to sleep thinking about how much they've been doing for their bodies but still find themselves unattractive, flawed. They don't have such conversations with themselves because they have nothing to be unhappy about. I feel ashamed to face the person who tells me I am his dream girl, that I am sexy, and beautiful, and amazing. Because I can't be that girl with the sway in her hips because she has the charm only confidence allows. I can't be that girl who effortlessly throws on a tiny dress and you sling your arm around her waist and brush your thumb against her hipbones. I'm not her. I'm the girl texting you to tell you she'll be late because she can't find her jeans, but actually, she's sitting on a heap of discarded clothes, two breaths from bursting into tears because nothing looks good, nothing flatters her, and because she's thinking about that girl she wants to be in her head, and how she is falling completely short of her. How you wish she could be that girl, if only for the night at least. She throws on the same black ensemble because black is forgiving. And she remains as that girl. For that moment as you whisk her away on a night out she is fine, she is happy. But as soon as she gets home then the story is a whole new other. Most nights are like that. I'm the girl who examines herself, and is unable to think of how she is capable of your love, of anyone's love. How could anyone hold her, and think to himself, her body feels amazing. How do you look at her with so much adoration? She is so lucky that you do, yet she throws it away and puts it all at stake because of her mind. This fatal, mental asylum she's institutionalized herself in. But she can't stop. I don't know how to stop. How do I stop?
How?
God help me because I don't know.
God help me because I don't know.
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