The year of skinny pop and sugar-free jello cups
We guzzled vitamin water and vodka
Toasting to high school and survival
Complimenting each others thigh gaps
Trying diets we found on the internet
Menthol cigarettes, eating in front of a mirror, donating blood
Replacing meals with other practical hobbies
Like making flower crowns, or fainting
Wondering why I hadn′t had my period in
Months, or why breakfast tastes like giving up
Or how many more productive ways I could've spent my time
Today besides googling the calories in the glue of a U.S envelope
Watching Americas Next Topmodel like the gospel
Hunching naked over a bathroom scale shrine
Crying into an empty bowl of Cocoa Puffs
Because I only feel pretty when I′m hungry
If you are not recovering, you are dying
By the time I was sixteen
I had already experienced being
Clinically overweight, underweight and obese
As a child fat was the first word people used to describe me
Which didn't offend me, until I found out it was supposed to
When I lost weight, my dad was so proud
He started carrying my before-and-after photo in his wallet
So relieved he could stop worrying about me getting diabetes
He saw a program on the news about the epidemic with obesity
Said he's just so glad to finally see me taking care of myself If you develop an eating disorder when you are
Already thin to begin with, you go to the hospital
If you develop an eating disorder when you are
Not thin to begin with, you are a success story
So when I evaporated
Of course everyone congratulated me on getting healthy
Girls at school who never spoke to me before
Stopped me in the hallway to ask how I did it
I say "I am sick". They say "No, you′re an inspiration!"
How could I not fall in love with my illness?
With becoming the kind of silhouette
People are supposed to fall in love with?
Why would I ever want to stop being hungry
When anorexia was the most interesting thing about me?
So how lucky it is now, to be boring
The way not going to the hospital is boring
The way looking at an apple and seeing only an
Apple, not sixty, or half an hour sit-ups is boring
My story may not be as exciting as it used to
But at least there is nothing left to count
The calculator in my head finally stopped
I used to love the feeling of drinking water on an empty stomach
Waiting for the coolness to slip
All the way down and land in the well
Not obsessed with being empty but afraid of being full
I used to be proud when I was cold in a warm room
Now, I am proud. I have stopped seeking revenge on this body
This was the year of eating when I was hungry without
Punishing myself and I know it
Sound ridiculous, but that shit is hard
When I was little
Someone asked me what I wanted to be
When I grew up and I said. "small"
Poem "When the fat girl gets skinny" by Blythe Baird
