Sofia Muro-Creative Intervention (poem)
Just Eat
A piece of toast on the plate in front of you
Meant to nourish and fuel you for the day
No, it’s your enemy
It’ll taint your body
All of your hard work and self control will be for nothing
If you eat it, you lose
You can’t just eat
The scale beneath your feet
The same number appears as the one 20 minutes ago
You cannot allow it to get any higher
A lower number than the one two days ago
But it will never be low enough
You can’t just eat
Your phone in your hands
Scrolling through a sea of thigh gaps and tiny rib cages
Why don’t you look like that?
You’ll never be as beautiful as them
You’ll never be enough
You can’t just eat
The girl looking at you in the mirror
She looks different every time you get another glimpse of her
I can only see her flaws
No collarbones, or hip bones showing
Not yet
They won’t matter though
She’ll never be enough in my eyes
You can’t just eat
Your doctor explaining to you that might not be able to have kids anymore
The chunks of your own hair in your hands
The foggy memory
The constant dizziness
Your body can’t take it much longer
You’re slowly shutting down from the inside
I don’t care
You were never in control
It was always me
You can”t just eat
Reflection
The purpose of this poem was to bring attention to the hardships of living with an eating disorder. Eating disorders are not talked about as much as they should be, and when they are talked about, they are often romanticized and glorified. And for those who have never experienced what it is like to have an eating disorder, it can be impossible to understand. I have been struggling with anorexia for years now, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that it has ruined my life. Throughout the years I have repeatedly gotten the questions: “Why are you doing this to yourself?” and “Why can’t you just eat?”. I want to give those with eating disorders a voice to be heard. I want people to understand that it is a serious mental illness, that I wish there was a solution as simple as just eating.
During this quarter, we learned about the importance of multivocality, and how it creates various perspectives to give the reader a more in depth understanding of the text. For example, Amy Tan’s Mother Tongue allows readers to experience a conversation in broken english, and puts them directly in the shoes of someone who cannot speak “proper english”. Tan’s piece was difficult for others to read because it put them out of their comfort zone, and forced them to experience something foreign to them, and it is what strengthen’s Tan’s argument the most. I wanted to use multivocality in my poem to put the readers in the shoes of someone with an eating disorder. People with eating disorders often describe it as a voice in their head telling them awful things as to why they can’t eat. So I chose to write the poem as that voice. In the poem, I’m directly talking to the readers just like how the voice talks to me. I wanted to do this as a way of separating myself from my disorder, emphasizing that it is not my choice to be going through this. By personifying the voice in my head, I’m showcasing the power that it holds. I am showing my readers what goes on in my head on a daily basis, so maybe they can understand why it’s so hard for me to just eat.
The process of writing this poem was difficult at times. Sharing something as personal as this isn’t meant to be something easy. But I also found it very therapeutic. I have never really opened up about my eating disorder before, and I was able to express my feelings in a unique way. Putting myself in such a vulnerable state of sharing my most personal experience gave me the opportunity to spew my raw emotions, that hopefully have some power behind them.
