The Fallen Queen (Winner of the Write Way Award 2013) #Wattys2015 #MyWattysChoice #Featured

Chapter 19: Hunger Point

Let me know if you can read this chapter. There seems to be a problem with Wattpad and people can't see the chapters after Chapter 10.

______________________________________

I did not feel like eating. I had eaten enough. Food to me did not mean the same thing as it did for ordinary people. I was not like them. I was different. Why eat? To stay alive? And life, what was that? It was pure nonsense. So, I did not want to eat.

My head was spinning, even my thoughts turned like a whirlwind. I only thought about losing weight, about eating less, about what I should eat, and about what I should not eat. Fruits and vegetables were okay. A little of them. Nothing fried. No butter. No fat. Just fruits and vegetables, the ones that contained mostly water.

It served no purpose to continue living. I was worthless. I could not win against my mother. I could not even protect Jeremy and Audrey against her.

For example, she had another "religious phase" after leaving the cult. She was still looking for the true word of God. She tried several religions, until finally going back to her original Catholicism. It was after all the one she was more comfortable with, since it was the religion in which she grew up.

Her religious craze was not at all shared by Audrey and I. Yet she wanted to force Jeremy and Audrey to take their first communion and when I intervened, saying she could not force them, she told me to shut up.

I did not want her to play with their brains or make them feel guilty. They were pure. They were well intentioned. They had no evil in them. They did not need it.

My mother told me to stay away and told them great biblical stories. She told them to put their faith in God.

I put my faith in hunger. Hunger was so great that it filled my mind with its superficiality. I did not want to think about pain anymore, I was totally absorbed by the food I refused. It had become a sort of obsession, and brought me a sense of control over my feelings and my life.

It is difficult to explain why I was doing it. I did not want to hurt anyone, of course, but I was hoping to show my mother I was suffering, if she ever saw it. If she did not see it, then I thought it was not worth to live. I found the world hopelessly nihilistic. I never was able to connect to anyone, and I thought perhaps it was a mistake that I was ever born.

The more weight I lost, the more I felt I was escaping from the pain. My soul was being freed of what was tying it down to earth. If it was painful, if sometimes I felt devoured by guilt after being unable to stay away from a certain food, it was only because my body was a lump of sinful flesh, something that separated me from the spiritual bliss. My body was something I felt disgust for.

Several family members were present for their first communion. Since my mother liked to have people's attention and pity, she started telling the family about the problems she was having with me.

"That dummy doesn't want to eat anymore!" said my mother.

"Oh, do you think she is anorexic?"

"Anorexic? At her age?"

"How old is she anyway?"

"She is twelve."

"Oh, well I think that's the age. It's a teenager thing."

"I am not sure if she could be considered a teenager yet."

"I think this is what they call 'pre-adolescence.'"

"Maybe she is in that crisis. You know, they say you go through a crisis in your teenage years."

I decided to go to my room and let them talk about me behind my back. They were shameless. They were not even shy to talk about me when I was right there and could hear everything. I felt like a circus animal and they would soon throw peanuts at me just to see if I would eat them.