I try to explain to my dear “loved ones” that my anorexia isn’t a problem I can simply fix.

It’s a monster that lives within and wraps its arms around me with claws sinking into my flesh.

I can’t make you understand the thoughts I get. My mind is a mess but organized within the limits of insanity.

It drives me crazy. But you still try to force food down my throat. Why won’t you listen?

Have you ever noticed how good I am at math? That I calculate the pounds I need to lose and the years, maybe months before I die. Look me in the eyes.

The scale is my enemy. The mirror is its best friend that always laughs in my face when it sees me.

Do you know how hard it is to wake up every morning knowing you can never escape the body you’ve been placed in?

To feel ashamed every fuckin minute but still forcing yourself to smile.

Sometimes, I lay in the darkness of my bedroom at night, wishing, hoping, praying that I will die and I know I’ll go to Heaven because I’ve been living in Hell my entire life.

This isn’t something that goes away. It crawls up my backbone each chance it gets until one day you spiral into depression. Do you know how it feels to watch yourself bleed?

Like time has stopped and you can finally feel some sort of release. It’s like you can finally breathe.

One cut for every beautiful person I see. My life is a tangled mess of insecurities. Help me.

I want to feel nothing. I’m tired. Tired of being nowhere close to even second best.

Tired of not feeling good enough, not even for the parasites that will eat my flesh when I am six feet under.

Listen to me. This is no longer a cry for help. This is my apology. This is my eulogy.

I apologize to my girlfriend who has always seen the beauty in me.

Beauty is subjective because that’s not what the mirror tells me.

I see someone too young for dying but too old for crying.

Someone, whose body has more stories to tell than your great grandmother.

A body that makes me cringe and I wonder, how far I could go before I lose myself.

But anorexia’s got me in its web, coming in for the kill. To pierce me with fangs that will never be as sharp as my knife.

Never be as sharp as my tongue when I sit, staring at myself, breathing nothing but profanities, because my body, my mind, has completely forgotten what happiness is supposed to be.