Wednesday

Spoken word about my troubles with eating disorders

My dad used to tell me “you don’t want to get fat like me,” before I was old enough to even choose my own food

Like being skinny was what we prayed for as we ‘blessed this food to our bodies’ and my mother only ate half of her meal.

At my gymnastics club we used to do weekly weigh ins

Because ‘small girls jump higher,’ it’s physics, science

And who could argue with that

I hug my mother when she picks me up from practice and the shards of her elbows cut me like they did the first girl that weighed 50 kilos.

 

Two months after I left the gym and my father left our home

My mother tells me I should start ‘watching what I eat’ because once you stop growing up you start growing out.

Like there wasn’t enough space between us now that he was gone.

 

In grade eight, I walk past my brothers friend and he laughs and says

“Jason’s sisters fat’ when he thinks I’m out of earshot
When I got home I weighed myself, fifty three.

And I started cutting things from my program.

Chocolate, lollies, fat, carbs, wheat, milk, breakfast, lunch, dinner.

 

By grade nine, my friends at school make jokes about how I never eat

They speak about me in third person as if I was so small they couldn’t even see me.

At home I make dinner for my brother and pretend I ate before I called him.

Some of my friends start to copy me like some fucked up mean girls where the skinniest girl got to be ‘queen.’ 

We share excuses for skipping meals like they’re Cosmo sex tips and pool our money to buy laxatives.

We don’t eat Wednesday through Friday.

Our teachers say nothing as we talk about it in class, as though it is just a phase we’ll grow out of, a right of passage.

When I have dinners at my dads place he wont let me leave until I finish my plate.
He tells me ‘It will make me big and strong,’

But don’t you know small girls jump higher dad.

We don’t bless the food into our bodies anymore because we can all hear me tearing it out of myself in the bathroom 10 minutes later.

With my fingers shoved so far down my throat hoping I could claw my way out of this game.
Don’t eat you’ll get fat, eat you’re too skinny, don’t eat so much, why are you skipping meals, why don’t you ever have seconds, why wont you eat ice cream, why do you run so much, what are those pills for, don’t you know starving will just make you fatter.

 

 

The doctor asked me why it took me so long to come to hospital.

I told him ‘I didn’t think it was that much of a big deal’

He said ‘you insides are ripped open, how is that not a big deal’

I shrugged and rolled my eyes back into the pain and pretended not to know the answer.
When I came out of hospital I weighed forty-two kilos.

I was sixteen.

 

When I went back to school my uniform sagged over my bones like black flags on a pirate ship, warning everyone who could see, danger.

There was so much space between my shirt and my stomach, between my elbow and my waist between my left thigh and my right.

It created space between me and everything else.

No one said anything.

My brothers friend carried my bag up the stairs to class for me, like my arms were so small they would snap. Like my back couldn’t possibly hold the weight of myself and my backpack at the same time but small girls jump higher don’t they?

 

My physics teacher uses me in examples.

Because I look like I weigh half of the boys in my class, because I look like I weigh 50 kilos and that’s an easy number to do math with in your head.

Math I failed because I was too busy counting calories and finding a way out of eating lunch because I already threw up blood today and my friends are watching me.

The same friends that encouraged me not to eat and shoves pills and fingers down my throat look at me with sorry eyes.

And they eat on Wednesdays.

Now my dad congratulates me when I finish a meal

When I come for the holidays he tells me ‘that I’m not looking too skinny, that I’m finally getting some meat on my bones’

He means well.

My mother calls me and asks me how to long to put things in the microwave for as an excuse to ask me if I ate today.

I’m eighteen.

I try to bless food into my body and make it stay there because I finally got a night free from study and I wanted to do something nice, and I don’t even care if it’s Wednesday. 

Reviews

[Laura Harrison]

I think you might just have become on of my favourite writers. You tackled writing about a touchy subject very well. I don't think you're amateur at all!

[generic twat]

I absolutely adore this. "And I started cutting things from my program.
Chocolate, lollies, fat, carbs, wheat, milk, breakfast, lunch, dinner." one of my favourite lines in it. Very emotional.

[Germany Rose]

Not bad for a writer newer to the scene, hope to see more from you; and if your ever going through writers block like we all do--don't hesitate to send me a message.