i am not a psychopath.

i don't think so,  anyways.

i just feel this sadness all the time, and i hear these voices,

and they get angry and i feel my blood grow thick with every

bite i take and i'm tired. i'm just tired, i think.

i hope that all of this is normal,

and it seems that the more i search for normalcy,

the more i lend myself to some other kind of psychotic

breakdown that i have never seen in myself before.

it started with the sad times.

i would feel sad, then angry, then sad,

and i didn't know why or when it would end.

mostly, all of it ended, for a while.

then came the food.

every bite i looked at seemed like calorie-filled poison,

waiting to kill me from the inside out.

so i ate it, then i vomited it all out,

because thats how girls get skinny while seeming normal.

and by normal, i mean smiling and the accepted brand of happy,

but covered with bruises on her stomach,

omnipresent abrasions on the fingers and hands,

a raspy voice that never went away,

and the fattest damn cheeks you have ever seen.

all of this to be normal.

then, when your throat gives in and bleeds all the time,

you find yourself searching for some other way,

so i found starvation worked.

i was surprised at how easy it was to hide the food and continue to seem normal.

it was in buying lunches that you gave away,

it was in bringing food that you never ate,

it was in cutting your food into bits and bits and bits

until it no longer looked like food,

it looked like a plate full of remains.

it was in "i'm just not that hungry" or "i have a headache",

because somehow these qualified days of not eating as normal.

and there were the late night exercises.

the days of staying awake all night so that i could

count the calories count the calories count the calories

and then work them all off, on my carpeted bedroom floor

that wasn't fully attached to my house, so that nobody would hear

the sound of my deteriorating body burning away everything i had ingested.

it was in hiding my bones under layers and layers and layers,

under baggy t-shirts and sweaters and flannels,

just hoping to look normal.

but then i was losing all this weight, these friends, my sanity, to hide it?

no.

so i did the normal thing.

i showed it off.

and it wasn't so normal when i was at the

therapists office 3 days a week.

so then the weight came back. and i felt healthy. normal, even.

and then followed the voices.

cuts after cuts after cuts

couldn't expel the demons in my brain.

i tried and tried to punch them out burn them out bleed them out anything

to get rid of the voice.

she followed me everywhere. and for a while, this seemed normal.

i heard a voice in my head. that's normal.

but then she got dangerous. she handed out

threats like they were candy. she  knew

how to kill me. it was the bones, or it was

a slice a little too deep next time. i had to

take my pick.

i lost weight. she told me that now i was normal. i was normal scared. i lost everything.

then the depression came.

i gained back all of the weight and then some.

i didn't feel normal.

i felt sad angry scared alone nothing.

i was numb to every feeling that once imprisoned me.

i kept on slicing my skin, to see if maybe i could feel something,

but the deeper i went, the less i cared,

the more i knew that i was completely incapable of emotion.

too much feeling led to feeling nothing at all.

what's left for somebody who doesn't feel,

doesn't give a fuck?

treatment?

everyone thinks you're lazy and just looking for attention or an excuse for not being normal.

religion?

where everybody is taught that normalness is godliness.

fuck it. lock me up. sign me away.

if you need me to tell you that i want to kill myself, i'll tell you.

every part of my being is hardwired to die.

your's, too.

but i want it.

and that's not really normal.