on getting better

i think im thirteen days clean? i don’t know. might be fourteen. whatever. i’ll just call it a two week checkin anyway. im not gonna lie. this shits hard. ive been out of province and in an unfamiliar environment doing everything under the sun so maybe that’s not helping my situation either but oh how i long to watch the blood pool and slide down my body. i miss the way that the sting receded as i did it more. i miss the raised scabs and the tender skin. i lied to myself, saying ill get better at eating too. i havent been restricting as much but that’s because i cant—im in a situation where itd be nigh impossible. i still try though, and i think that i will not be giving that aspect of myself up just yet. an eating disorder was never, for me, just about myself. it was to appease my mother—i thought if i got rid of the slight curve of my stomach and let it go concave instead i would avoid her judgement. i do not know if this is true yet, for the concavity has yet to begin.

i find myself yearning for the taste of stomach acid on my tongue and in my throat—a bad habit, a horrible want, something that will ruin my body for the rest of my life, but a part of me that i have control over, that i can ruin or build with time and patience. i want to choke on my own fingers, i want to heave and gasp and cry until there’s nothing left in my stomach. again, a bad habit, one that will scar my heart and my throat but one that, done secretly enough, will make me and my mother feel better about my body. it’s never just been about me. it’s always been about her. making sure i’m washing off the pen on my hand so she doesn’t see it, avoiding eyeliner so she doesn’t get mad at it, never asking for piercings or any sort of sport that would change my body from what it was trying to grow into when i was pulled out of her womb. not even my entry into this world left me unscarred—triplet lesions on my scalp from where they dragged me from her. i suppose that was the beginning of my undoing, an entry into the world that was involuntary, and gave everyone involved only pain and discomfort. i was not a peaceful birth. i sapped my mother of strength, of blood, of everything you can imagine, and i have spent the last fifteen years making up for it by being a silent toddler (never crying, never screaming) and by, as a teenager, trying to appease her and stay as small as possible. 

i am my mother’s perfect child. i am her picture of gender neutrality, i am her little girl in the clutches of the enemy. 

i am the setting sun and i have my father’s eyes. i am more him than i am my mother. for this i am glad—my father’s side of the family may be strange and disconjointed but they are whole, as whole as they can be with so many pieces missing, and they are where i find peace, not in my mother’s family.

nothing in my life ever seems to go my way. i am lying to myself and to others—moreso others than myself. i am not going to university in the hole that is saskatchewan. i am packing my bags and leaving the moment i can—i do not know where i am going but if i stay i will die. home sweet hole indeed. i am going to stretch my ears. not because i want to, but because it will bring my mother the most discomfort. i am going to get a job in an office, or in a bookstore or in a coffee shop, and i am going to have a tiny apartment and have sex with people just for the fun of it. i am not built for love. i am, as you might put it, wired in a way that lets me make attachments too strong, and then when the bond is broken it remains with me for too long. i am built with the incorrect parts, my programming was done wrong, and the way i love is something that nobody wants to witness, whether or not they are on the recieving end notwithstanding. 

i tear the skin off my lips and bite them until they bleed. i tear my fingernails so far down that scabs form whether they bled or not. i neglect my own body—my hair greasy and stringy, my skin grimy and uncomfortable to live in. 

i am not someone who you are capable of loving.