The Low[est] Blow

I convulse: my entire body shakes as yet another cough takes ahold of it.

Spots dance before my eyes, and when they clear I look down to see flecks of blood on my palm.

A week has passed since my 15^th birthday: a shade away from 5’11, I weigh in at 130 lbs. I haven’t eaten in almost a week.

I’m dying.

***

Christmas vacation: I’m 16 ½ and I’m no longer dying. After almost a year of therapy, I’m finally back to an ideal weight.

Muscle lines my body: If I look down I’ll see six-pack abs. My legs have changed too: in spite of skiing for six hours I still feel as though I could go for more.

In spite of that, I’m still self conscious, though not nearly self conscious enough to abstain from downing the entire plate of B.B.Q. wings sitting in front of me. As I polish off the last of them, my brother, sitting across from me in the Irish pub we’ve been frequenting for the last two days, mimes Jabba the Hutt.

I feel as though I’ve been hit over the head by a trash can lid: my ears ring and I have the awful sense that I’m falling.

A harmless joke, it has me crying alone in my hotel room minutes later.

The vacation, which had been perfect up until that point, has been marred.

I don’t relapse, though.

I guess therapy is good for something.

***

I’m almost 18, and I’m playing Pokemon on the couch to pass the time. I’ve just caught an Abra.

Footsteps sound from the direction of the washing machine, and a second later there comes the telltale click and rush of water that signals my brother has turned the wash on.

“My jeans!” I all but scream- I’m growing again, and I only have one pair of jeans that fit me, and those are all but falling off of me, even with a belt.

I haven’t washed them in a week, and I have a date in two hours.

I fly upstairs, grab them, and run down to throw them atop of Nate’s load.

“No.” he tells me as I go to toss them in.

Baffled, I explain my situation, certain that he’ll let me put them in.

“No.” he says again. He refuses to budge. I try to shove them in anyway, and he pushes me.

Seconds later and we’re having our first real fight- we’re evenly matched, for the most part, it would seem: we both spend equal time pressed up against the hard wood floors.

I manage to throw my jeans in, in the end, and the washing machine ( which I refer to as the dishwasher in my anxt ) locks itself.

The fact that he called me fat for not fitting into my jeans (which makes no sense at all) during our fight sinks in an instant later.

His words mean nothing to the rational part of me: I’m positive that I'm anything but fat. The emotional part of me ends up pressed against the wall, tears running down my face as all the bad feelings from the past flood throughout me.

How could my brother, who knows the living hell I went through two and a half years ago, say that to me? I wonder.

***

I’m no saint: I’ve thrown my fair share of low blows when in the heat of an argument as well.

Gross, ugly, short, sallow, chrons afflicted failure: I’ve been just as bad as him, if not more so, and so I can understand why he could say such a thing.

I also understand that, in spite of the occasional cat (and not so catty) fights, that he loves me just as much as I love him.