Anorexia - My Bluebeard

I STOOD at the edge with you, my hands shoved in my pockets.

The first droplets of rain splashed on my coat. I looked up at the sky, lips opened in a wordless prayer. The clouds were an angry grey, the black-but-not-quite-shade that foretold a heavier, wind-riled rainfall, each pellet falling with the ferocity of a bullet. It seemed, sometimes, that the rain meant to wash me away - that each storm, darker and more furious than the last, intended to blur me out of existence.

I suppose you were no different to that rain.

You’d crawled out of the woodworks and eased into my life like the first innocent droplet of a downpour. Softly, quietly, you became as close to me as a lover - you curled up beside me at night, whispered empty promises into my ear, and wrapped your spindly arms around me as I looked at myself in the mirror. You were Bluebeard dressed as Prince Charming, coaxing me into your castle of rust-lined silver. I fell for you, of course. Hard. Who wouldn’t? You were beautiful, and you promised me that same beauty. You promised me that if I stepped off of that cliff with you, I would find a happiness in the howling wind, a peacefulness in the eye of a storm so big, so monumental, that it ripped through the world around me and made it groan with unease.

So I did. I stepped into thin air and, like a child who could not swim, began to flail, desperate for someone to wrench me back onto solid ground. But there was no one there, no person to save me from you, my Bluebeard.

My stomach emptied. My mind shattered. My body broke.

My skin was no longer a pale, muted pink - it had turned a soured yellow, as if I was rotting from the inside out, already six feet underground. My collarbones were chits of bone, my ribs like the rungs of a ladder, and my hip bones seemed to jut out of my skin, as if desperate to tear out of it and leave my body entirely. You whispered yes. You screamed more. And I complied, because I needed you. I needed you in a way that I had never needed anything or anyone. You had taught me discipline. You had taught me control.

My family screamed until their throats were raw that you weren’t right for me, cried until their voices shook that you were hurting me. But what did they know? How could they understand a person they’d never met?

I knew you. You knew me. We were entangled together, your limbs as thin and brittle as mine. We shared everything, and it seemed to me that we were forever. I was a princess who needed redemption, a maiden who needed to be saved. And you were my saviour, for a while.

And then I opened my eyes.

It took me a while. You’d sewn them shut, gradually pulling the stitches tighter and tighter until the world shrunk from this great, wide expanse to a pinpoint. I’d stumbled my way through life, my hands fisted by my sides as if that would somehow stop me from falling. I’d stumbled, and stumbled, and stumbled, until I fearfully stretched my hands out in front of me.

And felt someone right there, waiting for me.

I turned around, hands still out. Another person. And another, and another. I was not alone. You were not the only person I had. There were so many people just waiting to catch me if I fell, yearning for me to recognise them.

You screamed stop. They whispered to keep going. You said close. They said open.

I lifted my hands to my eyes and slowly undid the stitches.

I looked at the first person waiting for me. I expected to see my mum or my dad or my brother. They were all there, of course, but they were not directly in front of me.

It was me who stood there, arms open.

I did not look like myself. This girl was different. Her body was not fragile and small - her jeans did not hang loosely at her hips, and her arms did not look as if they would snap under the slightest bit of pressure. Her hips were rounder, her face was softer, and her skin was not the colour of old paper.

But what shocked me the most was that she was smiling.

Not falsely, and not for anyone else. She was just smiling, sincerely and widely, as if the corners of her lips were reaching for her ears. Her eyes were bright, and she emanated vitality and happiness.

She touched my wrist, gently.

You screamed no.

But she whispered yes.

I realised, with my sight now repaired, that you were no Prince Charming. You had locked me away, holding me in an iron grip. You lied, you deceived, and you murdered.

You were no saviour. I did not need you.

I needed to save myself...and I would.