origins

No earth-shattering event set it into motion.

It came in softly,

Quietly,

Innocently.

What is that T.S. Eliot quote?

"This is how the world ends: not with a bang, but with a whimper"?

There weren't fashion magazines or celebrity tabloids scattered around my messy bedroom floor. There were piles of books and doodles and crumpled notes from math class and a letter from my English teacher encouraging me to join the school newspaper.

It wasn't supposed to happen to me.

I was much too smart for this.

She has a good head on her shoulders, they always told my parents. She'll go far.

I was Logic and Intelligence.

I was the one upholding my teacher's/parent's/friend's sanity.

I was a solid.

Responsible, reliable, trustworthy:

That's me.

Was me.

january.

It was the first day of 2007 when the winter wind blew in.

I had never made a New Year's Resolution before,

but I did that year.

(I have not made one since.)

My plan was simple: I would spend this fresh new year getting healthier. It was the most common resolution in America: less chocolate and more treadmill.

I started to jog after school each day, grabbing my headphones and heading outside as soon as I dropped my backpack on the floor.

 My parents were impressed by willpower, they said, as I traded in ice cream for rice cakes.

When I stepped on a scale for the first time, the number meant nothing to me. Was it too high? A hundred and something-or-other seemed an okay place to be. But the next time I saw it, three pounds lower, it seemed like an even more okay place to be. The equation began in my head: me - pounds = happier.

And that is how it began,
not a boil

but a low simmer just below the surface
that is how it began, 

a slow
 unassuming descent into madness.

Weeks passed, days blurred together, and I became more salads and less burgers. More How Many Calories Are In That and less That Sounds Good For Dinner. I researched and memorized carbs and fat grams and strategies to cut your intake.

I watched the disappearing numbers on the scale
Going down

And down.

And down.

I felt powerful and strong.

april.

I felt weak and tired.

My body was struggling to keep up with my mind; I could feel it in the unsteady palpitations in my chest as I collapsed onto my bed post-workout and the blackouts that had become more frequent. I could see it in the way the world had begun to look a dull, meaningless grey.

And I knew, even as I denied it to everyone else, that something was wrong. This wasn't how it was supposed to go.

I didn't feel quite as powerful as before. The high that initially sustained me wasn't quite as satisfying.

A small voice nagging in the back of my mind: what have you done?

I don't remember the exact moment when I realized I had lost control, but I knew.

And with that knowledge came an onset of pure, cold terror as I was suddenly aware of how completely and utterly unable to get myself out. 

My life had become centered on one thing: weight loss
and I would do anything to achieve it.

I was a girl on a mission, obsession having taken full effect.

I threw out my lunches and learned to lie:

No thank you, I ate before I came.

I'm just not hungry.

I can't, I'm gluten-free.

I'm just not feeling well.

I slipped off to a bathroom at a friend's Sweet Sixteen

and caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror: 

It was the first time I saw, really, truly saw, how far I had gone.

The stranger looking back at me was hauntingly thin,

her collar bones a little too prominent,

her wrists a little too bony.

I searched for any hint of myself in her face,

but all I saw was The Monster.

And I was afraid.