Starving Secrets

Dead Silence

*I hope you are enjoying the story so far! Massive trigger warning for this chapter!!!*

In my fourth grade class, when I was 9, there was an incredibly malicious little boy named Rory. Just when I thought I had escaped the abuse of my brother by being away from him at school I met Rory. He was beyond mean. I have no clue how someone so young could be so bitter. He sat beside me in class and whenever I said something he didn't like he would push all my stuff from my desk onto the floor. Sometimes he would even storm into the classroom before me in the morning and dump all my books and papers out of my desk, creating a mess that would take me 30 minutes to clean up. One day towards the end of winter, the class spent the day taking down snowflake decorations. I asked to go to the bathroom and half way there Rory came sprinting out the classroom behind me. I tried to hurry to the bathroom entrance, but he caught up to me a smacked me as hard as he could on my butt. I fell onto the floor writhing in pain and he stood over me looking really proud. He demanded that I stand up, rearing his leg back, threatening to kick me. When I scrambled to my feet he lurched forward with his arms extended and roughly squeezed the small buds on my chest that weren't quite "breasts" yet. "Ouch! You're hurting m-", I began to whine, but was interrupted when his lips violently crashed into mine. "Shut up, you're an idiot.", he hissed, releasing his grip and slinking away like nothing happened. I stood in that spot and let tears float over my cheeks until my teacher poked her head out of our classroom and asked me to hurry back. Rory continued hurting me and I continued with my silence. He would hit me in the head with his rolling book bag when we were alone and I just forced myself to stop being present in the moments of my attacks. I went somewhere else in my mind. Somewhere that wasn't as painful. It wasn't happy either. It was just blank. That year taught me that I wasn't deserving of respect.

I went to camp the summer after I turned 10 and it was the first time in my life that I felt overwhelmingly self conscious. Of course I had discomfort with myself when I was very young, but I could push it away. However, when I turned ten my body started changing at record speed. I also noticed the faint lines of stretch marks developing on my thighs and that took the biggest toll on my confidence. I went through the rest of elementary school feeling, but concealing, the deep self hatred that I had developed.

When I started middle school I felt like I had been pushed into a shark tank. The first month I was so filled with anxiety that I didn't even look at anyone and I hated it when I was forced to ask someone a question. I wanted nothing to do with the boys and the girls looked too perfect to want to be friends with me. Eventually I did make a few friends and middle school wasn't too bad for the first year. Things at home weren't great but they weren't as bad as they had been either.

My seventh grade year I met a friend named McKenna. She was constantly talking about diets and weight loss and how little she ate. I didn't really think much of it. I was surprisingly understanding. Her words weren't shocking to me. I would just take it all in. A few weeks later in our gym class we started the health unit and we learned about eating disorders. Bulimia was the one that stuck itself onto the lining of my brain and held on for dear life. "I already binge eat", I thought while my teacher talked about all the health implications, "all I'm missing is the purging part." We were shown pictures of eating disorder sufferers and when I saw the skeletal bodies all the health problems fell away. "I want to look like that." McKenna would tell me about how she and her friend Katie would throw up in the bathroom after lunch. I pretended to be confused by her.
The next day when I came home from school I gathered all the food I wanted to eat from the kitchen and carried the load to my room. I watched TV as I shoved all the food into my body until I felt sick. I carefully walked to the bathroom trying not the disturb my painfully full belly. I got onto my knees and used the back of my tooth brush to trigger my gag reflex. I got nothing for a while, but I persisted until I got what I wanted. My entire body tensed up and the load of food that I had just consumed came spewing from my mouth. When I felt that I had done enough I flushed my toilet and sat back on my heels in a daze. My body was tingling and this was the first time in a long time that I felt a strong sense of accomplishment and pride. I told no one. This would be my very own dirty little secret.