A Mad Girl's Definition of the Seven Deadly Sins

A Poem by Hope

trigger warning eating disorders

Pride:

Pride is when she cheers because I refused a bite and throws parties in my head because my weight dropped lower. She is my friend, she tells me the truth. She feeds on my brain and lives in the lining of my lungs. She craves blood and flesh and devours the blackness that clouds my veins. She is me and I am her and I cannot let her go because if she leaves then so do the quiet praises I get when I do five hundred sit ups at three am because the food is corroding my stomach in the middle of the night. She lays dormant in my chest, and does not hurt a fly when I am behaving, but turns vicious when I break down. She is honest, and friends tell the truth, right? She sees the disgusting fat rolling over my stomach and dripping down my legs, she's aware of the sludge that poisons my body and weighs me down, she knows of the maggots they put in food that feed on your intestines and swell up to inflate your body like a balloon. And she always helps me get rid of the ugliness, to keep it from entering my body. She shrieks when I break the rules but it's because she loves me, it's because she wants to see me succeed. It's because she's proud of me.

Lust:

Lust is romance and fun, the way she makes me feel silly and drunk on happiness when I’ve done everything right. It is rich champagne and silky sheets to glide under after she takes me dancing on the stars. It is wrapping myself up in heavenly blankets made from the finest materials from all of the world. It is when she showers me with compliments and makes me feel as if I am the highest being in the universe, as if every substance and organism on the planet was made to please only me. Lust is the relentless and glorious longing that only she can bring out in me. I am her princess and she is my queen.

Greed:

Greed is her voice telling me that 500 calories is not enough of a cut-back, that we need more, we need to pull off 400 and then 250 and then 100. Greed is knowing that no matter if I lived off of nothing but air and the fire in my chest, it would not be enough. Nothing is enough, there is no such thing as satisfaction. We need to run more, fight more, sleep more, restrict more. More more more more more more more, don’t you dare stop trying. You can always be better, you can always keep improving. Don’t stop, we aren’t there yet. Keep losing weight, keep cutting calories, keep drinking to forget, and throwing up to remember. She wants more of everything, more time on the treadmill and more calories down the drain. She wants more control of me.

Gluttony:

Gluttony lives in the deepest and darkest corners of my mind, the areas filled with cobwebs and broken bones, the part I stay away from as much as physically possible. It’s when I see what’s for dinner and she braces as my mouth waters and I begin to break through the skin of my lip and preparation of breaking all my rules. It’s the smell of bacon frying on the stove, dripping with grease and fat. It’s the spaghetti I spent an hour making for my family, with the buttery noodles and bubbling red sauce filled with calories and carbs and the sinfully cheesy garlic bread taunting me from the oven. It’s the sweet vanilla and cinnamon icing I want to lick off of my fingers and then turn to the bowl and at by spoonful, fistful, mouthful. It’s my biggest weakness, and her greatest enemy, the part of me that cannot control itself, like the monster in my closet that only appears when my guardian goes away. She tries her hardest to protect me from it, but when gluttony wins, she ensures I lose.

Sloth:

Sloth is mindless. It is the rush of days and nights and dawns and dusks that blend together into one never ending existence. It is the times I cannot pull myself from bed to eat or shower or bother myself with getting dressed to go to school. It is the simultaneous absence and invasion of the concept of time. It is the depressing gray of March skies and hopelessness of mid-sophomore year that lasts year-round, year after year after year. She strokes my hair and gently urges me to lay back down, crawl back under the covers, and release myself to the relaxing embrace of sleep and dreams of how great I’ll look when this is all over. Sloth is nothing more than a dream state that never ends, when the ghost of me walks through hallways and goes out with friends and laughs with my parents, but the real me is far away, counting nothing but calories and the number of hours/minutes/seconds until I can take off the makeup and smile and effort and let everything go until I am forced into another situation that begs for my presence.

Wrath:

She is wrath. Her screams echo in my skull and crack the inner lining. Her nails dig deep into my flesh and shred the strings of my heart, leaving it as nothing more than a puddle by my feet. She gnaws on my muscles and eats whole chunks of it to the point that opening my eye lids takes all of my energy and lifting my arm is damn near impossible. She corrupted my parents into hating the person I have become since she took up residence in my head, and shows no signs of leaving until I am the person that every hates but she loves. When I think of the taste or smell or feeling of food on my tongue the sirens start, penetrating every cell in my body and unavoidable. It howls louder than anything you’ve ever heard, so loudly it forces all of my emotions to collapse and die, for my blood to boil over and spill out, for my lungs to crumble into dust. She creates a tornado in chest, ripping it apart and tearing it into thousands of pieces of confetti. She paints the walls of my body with blood and acid and carves ornate patterns into my stomach with splinters from the bones she fractured.

Envy:

Envy is the endless hours and hours of scrolling through countless pictures of skinny girls with rock hard abs and no excess fat spilling over the tops of their skin tight spandex pants. It’s when a friend invites me to dinner and she forces me to look at these girls, at how perfect and toned every inch of their bodies are. She makes me go on blogs of people like me, with skin like paper and hair that falls out if you brush it too hard, and she points out their weights and how they’re so much lower than mine. Look, she whispers, look at how little she’s eaten this week, don’t you wish you could be that strong? Isn’t that so amazing, that she could do that? Don’t you wish you could look like those girls? Don’t you wish you had that much self-control? I want it so badly, don’t you want it?

I want it.