They find it disturbing, my parents. I am drawn to the books about stick thin girls and the steps they take to get there.
And where they end up.
Maybe its because I know it. After awhile, you aren’t hungry. That half slice of pizza you ingested to quiet your fretting “friends” forces a knot into the rest of your day. It pains you, physically, to feel the food inside. Pushing out the walls of your stomach, rounding skin. This is not how food was meant to be
But it how I see it, finally the second time around.
And I can’t help but feel better. It’s gone.
But I read those books. To remind me where I can’t go. Where my limit is.
But what limit? I have already blurred the black and white line.
My mother tells me not to read those books. You know them. Safe, and Go Ask Alice. Even Speak was cautioned against.
I see those girls, read what the went through.
Remind myself, that they know where my scars came from, even if no one else even knows the scars exist.
I find my space, my amount of solitude in their recount of my breaking.
I think it bothers her that her little girl knows what happens in the real world.
I try not to inform her that she’s the one living the fairytale.
And now, my new obsession is the book laced with details about the scars.
We so often find them racing up and down teenage arms nowadays. I never thought id understand a blades pull until now.
Its not the pain or the deep red that you watch appear.
It’s the shock of what you’ve done. And the adrenaline that forces you to think as you carefully bandage and hide your self inflicted cuts.
I guess we all find it somehow. That cry for help. I cant help wonder how long it will be before they recognize this disconcerting interest for what it is.
I can’t seem to speak for myself. So I read my own life’s stories.
What do you do, when they don’t want you to even read what you live?