May I never be thin again
Thin is hungry, aching, tired. The feeling of your insides collapsing inwards, contorting themselves in silent wails of desperate protest. It hurts. Everything hurts. Breathing hurts, existing hurts.
Thin is cold, vacant eyes that stare into your own reflection, never quite being able to understand what is looking back at you. You, me, I. Who am I? What am I? The answer is “too much” and “never enough” both at the same time.
Thin is cracked lips and bruised hips, and hands that tremble as they reach out to grasp onto the endless cups of coffee that scald your tongue, yet never take the chill out of your bones.
Thin is crippling emptiness that sends shock-waves through every cell of your every fiber of your being. An emptiness that runs so deep you wonder if you could ever be whole again.
Thin is terror, pain, loneliness, despair. Waking yourself up in the night with your own screams, moments of inexplicable blinding panic, needing so badly to just be heard, but having lost your voice long before you lost anything else.
Thin is the urgent need to disappear, but being acutely aware of how very exposed you are; that clash between what you need and what you are sounding like fingernails on a blackboard.
Thin is a prison, with walls made of glass; a wall forever just stopping you from being part of anything. Look, but don’t touch. Close, but not close enough; not close enough to feel anything but gut-wrenching loneliness.
Thin is hours of time lost to endless calculations, routines executed with military-style precision, desperate (but futile) attempts to block out the pain, the memories, the feelings.
Thin is boring. Endless rules that never quite make sense, and a game that was never intended to be any fun; it becomes stark, a matter of survival. Life/death, fat/thin, eat/starve. It’s black and white, all or nothing, good or bad; as if it’s possible to divide the entire world into two diametrically opposed categories. It’s exhausting and time-consuming, and it’s really f*cking boring.
Thin is a hollow, empty vessel, echoing all of the things that cannot be; the music, the laughter, the hugs, the shared dinners with friends, the lazy Sunday afternoons in coffee shops, spontaneous road trips, walks in the sand, daydreams. Enthusiasm, excitement, anticipation, passion, love, hope.
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(I recognise that people are naturally of all different body sizes and I respect that; this is not intended to body-shame or vilify thin people. Merely to describe what my experience of “being thin” was. Whilst also trying to not perpetuate the stereotype that eating disorders are visible, or come in a particular size because this is not true).
