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 15th birthday, and a shade away being 5’11 tall, I weigh in at 125 pounds. I haven’t eaten in almost two weeks. I’m dying.

I was willing to do anything to be beautiful.

Years have passed since the time of the eating disorder that once consumed my body and life. Almost 19 years old now, I gained that last hairs breadth of height and can now proudly proclaim myself to be 5’11, and lean muscle lines the entirety of my body. I’d like to think that I’ve grown in other ways as well.

One thing stayed the same throughout the periods of recovery, relapse, and introspection that followed in the years after the worst periods of the anorexia nervosa. My fixation on beauty never left, instead it began to grow in a different direction, to be nourished by the light of a different sun.

I don’t exactly remember just when it was that I decided to try to become a beautiful human being rather than beautiful in the classic sense. Was it when my boyfriend at the time threw a cigarette down onto the ground in spite of the trashcan a few steps away from him, or was it when I found out that one of my closest friends was cheating on his significant other?

Whatever the case, what I do know for certain is that it was disgust more so than any spiritual awakening that forced me to examine myself more closely, to make me decide just what type of person it was that I wanted to be.

Looking back, I find myself almost glad for the eating disorder and overemphasis on aesthetics that marked my early teenage years. Without that experience, I’m not sure that I would have gained the willpower necessary to embark on my quest to become a better person. One would think that if I had the willpower necessary to starve myself to a size zero, which I did, that being a good person would be a relatively easy task. How difficult can it be, right?

To put it bluntly, it’s pretty fucking hard, and there are still days when I’m still an asshole.

It goes beyond fidelity and properly throwing away cigarettes. Far beyond. To continually put ones own needs second to those of others, to make oneself into an ear ready to listen or a shoulder to cry on... for me at least, those things are harder than forced starvation. Maybe not at first, but the constant emotional wear is a hard burden to carry.

An old cohort once confided in me that nothing tastes as good as skinny feels. Once, not so long ago, I would have believed him.

“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness.” -Leo Tolstoy

64

Rough doesn’t begin to describe the past couple of weeks.

To put it bluntly, I fell back into the dark hole that I thought had been banished with loads of therapy, friendship, and love. The result: body dysmorphia, anxiety, sadness... I lost the happy-go-lucky attitude that came so naturally to me, and alongside that the love of my life.

We broke up. Twice. Sad to say it was me who did the breaking. Whomever thought that it was better to break up than be broken up with was a fool- at least when you’re broken up with you have a reason to resent them, a clean wound that is more aft to heal rather than a blunt one that festers and becomes infected and leaves a scar.

I cried for seven hours in the misty cold of a november night in the Harbor courtyard, and then some. Dawn came, a dreary miserable one at that, and with it some kind words of advice from a run-down looking elderly lady with a cigarette, come to clean Chesapeake hall, to scrub the floors of the dorms that the college kids abused.

“You’ve gotta look at the good threads, darling,” she consoled, holding her cigarette behind her and reaching down to give me a squeeze. “They might end, but that doesn’t mean that they weren’t glorious and won’t always be there for you to appreciate. It doesn’t mean they won’t make your life more complete and worth living.”

She took an enormous drag on her cigarette and blew out an enormous cloud of smoke that was anything but laced with menthol, from the smell of it, and threw it behind her. “Cheer up baby,” she muttered, reaching down to give me a full hug even as sobs wracked me once more, “anyone would be lucky to have someone like you. Okay?”

Not even five minutes spent with her and I felt better. I still do, and I always will.

The thread has been cut, but it’ll always be there. It’s the brightest one so far. I just hope that one day it starts up again- it would be a shame to lose such a wonderful thing.

Regardless of what happens... I love you 64.

Poison (and Antidote)

So... I was feeling randomly awful and wrote to get my feelings out. Jared found what I wrote and wrote a reply to me. It's at the bottom of this post. Oh man, do I love him.

************************************


Love hurts.

I guess I should clarify: love in and of itself doesn’t hurt.

Remembering a love that you once had that’s no longer there- that hurts.

Some say love never dies, but I’ve found that this is not the case. If love didn’t die, there wouldn’t be a hole in my heart where he used to be.

Watching helplessly as poison creeps into a relationship... that hurts, too.

***

The one with hair darker than night: he ended up being one hell of a messed up kid, but for what it’s worth the good parts of the relationship; the feeling of his arms around me, the way we would cuddle and watch T.V. together... those parts were lovely.

Looking back, I know that I didn’t love him, but I still miss his friendship.

We haven’t talked in a year.

***

The one with glacial eyes and flaxen hair: he was the one, I used to think. Time spent with him was magical... at first.

Then things went south: I began to worry, doubts began to plague me, and I began to change as my self-esteem wilted and uncertainty ate away at me from the inside out. I changed as a result of it.

Cigarettes, weed, alcohol: all of them entered my life in an attempt to feel good, to feel secure, but in the end they ended up chasing him away from me faster than anything else.

I know without a doubt that I did love him.

We used to call ourselves the musketeers, we were a dynamic duo: friends forever.

We haven’t seen one another since we broke up in June.

***

The one with sea-green eyes and brunette hair: still reeling from the doubts and insecurities that came upon me in my earlier relationship, this one saved me from myself. He brought me back into the light and taught me to love again; not just him, but myself as well.

He’s a healing balm, and I’m so thankful I have him.

Except... once again there’s something new that’s starting gnawing away at me: I don’t know exactly what to call it; the closest I can come to naming it is that it’s a mixture of jealousy and despair.

Poison. That’s what it is.

He’s the most beautiful person I’ve ever seen. I’ll never be like him. I could starve myself and dye my hair a thousand times and I’ll never come close to scratching the surface of what it means to be the boy with sea-green eyes.

It’s eating away at me.

***
By Jared:

The boy with the amber eyes and the perfect smile lies in my bed almost every day. I look at him with scanning eyes, my gaze wiping across him in the same way I love wiping my hands across him. His body is so smooth, so thin and athletic. He flexes in the mirror all the time and while at the same time it makes me feel tiny, the gleam in his eyes makes me smile. He looks so proud, but I know he’s judging himself.

Every day I look in the mirror and find imperfections, everyone does. But nobody does more than the boy with the perfect smile. He says it eats away at him, this poison of self-loathing that he has conjured up inside of him, just as his favorite WoW character can conjure up a nifty little red health potion. So why doesn’t he make himself a potion, but this time, to give him confidence.

The boy with the perfect smile is always there for me, through the good times and the bad. When I’m cranky or depressed, he’s always there with a smile and a hug, an encouraging word, or a pat on the back. Nobody could ask for a better boyfriend; I’m sure that I couldn’t. And yet, the mirror that this boy uses seems to be tainted, for he doesn’t quite see what I see. His beautiful smile, his kickin’ muscles, and his cute black hair. Somehow, some way, the boy misses these things and dwells on his insecurities. It makes me sick to see him suffer, I just wish I could give him a cloudless mirror so he could see how special he truly is.

When you're feeling down...

It wasn't until I didn't get a chance to write in the communal journal in the Umbc rock garden that I realized how much I've needed to write, how much stuff I have on my mind.

I just brushed my teeth before settling down with my laptop to write this: after having kicked the habit of smoking for a month during the summer, I've somehow fallen back into having one or two a day: It's horribly unhealthy, but it helps with my stress on tons of levels. I wish I didn't have to hide the fact that I'm doing it again.

As I write this I'm wearing my ex-boyfriend Ted's hoodie. We were in love, and we used to promise each other that we would last forever; that it would never end. It ended, but we told each other that we would always be friends. That ended too, and I haven't talked to him since August. I think about him more than most people; I miss him, but I think he hates me.

Last night I ate too much for dinner, and it transported me back to when I had an eating disorder freshman summer. Four years have gone bye, and I'm still struggling not to relapse and to find the beauty in myself. It's nice when others tell me that it's there, but in the end it all comes down to me staring in a mirror and not seeing it.

A few days ago, my boyfriend went over to my house to get some stuff he had left in my room. I wasn't with him, and when he came back he innocently enough told me that my Dad and Brother, who I've always wanted to be close to but never have been, were sh*t talking me. I immediately felt like I was going to cry, and it's still on my mind.

On the bright side...

Umbc is a beautiful campus, if you know where to go: my favorite spots are the courtyard at Harbor, where there's always a lingering summer breeze and people are always hanging out at the tables, followed by the benches down by the library where the trees are large and there's a tiny lake full of koi fish.

My boyfriend is beautiful too, inside and out, and if I believed in God I think that I would thank him every day for bringing Jared into my life. As it is, I just count myself extremely lucky. <3

The schoolwork is easy enough, and I have no doubts that I'll keep my scholarship and go on in life to be successful.

I just hope that I go on to be happy.

I quit

We walk through the mall towards the exit, taking our time even though the mall's about to close and almost everyone is gone, leaving the mall empty and awkward. His hand's in mine, though, and so I take my time.

Finally, I think to myself. Finally, I'm the with the boy that I love.

There's a security guard somewhere behind us and a pair of girls walking along the railing on the floor above us, but that doesn't stop me from pulling him down onto one of the mall sofas and kissing him. The scandalized look on the security guards face makes me want to laugh out loud- I'm practically bursting with happiness.

"Mmmh," I mumble sometime later as I push against the double doors leading out to the parking garage as Ted pulls his hand from mine to reach into his pockets for…

Cigarettes.

"God, I need a cigarette." he mutters, fumbling to get the pack open.

I blanch, and it's all I can do to keep myself from snatching the cigarettes from his hands. I beg him not to smoke- at least not around me.

It's not a fear of secondhand smoke that has me begging, though. No, it's that I can't stand to watch the boy that I love kill himself.

11 minutes for every cigarette.

***

I stick my my head out my bedroom window and reach in my pockets for the cigarettes. I don't stop to appreciate the chirping of the crickets or pause to bask in the balmy summer's breeze; even the semi-magical glow of the fireflies in the willow tree hold no wonder for me.

All that matters is that I smoke a cigarette.

I light up, and within seconds the nicotine hits my bloodstream and is carried to my brain. Within seconds it's all that I can do to keep from laughing and betraying the fact that I'm sneaking a smoke to my parents.

That doesn't stop me from grinning as every anxiety, every little worry, fades away. Closing my eyes, I bask in the wave of pleasure spreading throughout my body.

11 minutes: gone.

***

"I don't understand!" Jared exclaims, looking down at me. His eyes, which shift between silver, green, and gray depending on the light, hold an uncharacteristic edge and flash with all the warmth of a gemstone.

I wince.

"You say that you're going to quit, and I believe you, and then a day later you're smoking again." he pauses, and then continues in a softer tone of voice. "All I can think of when you smoke is you, coughing up blood and dying."

I try to explain to him that I did mean to quit, but he pulls away from me.

"I'll be downstairs," he mutters, and then he's gone and I'm alone in the room. Overhead, the ceiling fan clicks rhythmically, and I bury my face in the pillows.

***

11 minutes per cigarette, stained teeth, aged skin… cancer. I've always known that all of these things are caused by smoking, but I've always chosen to brush those reasons aside, to rationalize that I'll quit when I'm older.

It took Jared, who I've come to love in the time that we've spent together, to give me the wakeup call that I needed.

I remember how I used to feel when my last boyfriend would smoke, how I wanted to cry and snatch the cigarettes away from him. I remembering fearing that he'd die of cancer and leave me alone and heartbroken.

I had forgotten how it felt to watch someone I love kill themselves, bit by bit, and how much it sucked.

It might sound lame, but that more than anything else has given me a reason to quit. I can't bring myself to do that to someone else, knowing how it feels.

***

Monday, July 26, 2010. It's 12:26 in the morning and I quit.

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.

The Vibrant... (Hooray for my attempt at fantasy)

Chapter One:

We laugh in glee as the midnight waves we ride crash upon the black sands of the approaching shoreline. The numerous scents of the land are calling to us, and the promises of sweet flesh and power hang thick in the misty air.

It is almost enough to make some of us abandon the boy, whom we have followed throughout the night. We are drawn to him.

During the day, we oft imagine, the sparkling waters must be charming to look upon, but we cannot abide the harsh light of reality on our own, and so we flee, fading back to the abysmally dull realm of mist and shadow from which we escaped; the spirit realm, they call it.

Now, however, as is the case every night, the once noble waters have filled with the essence of Night herself. We dance upon the waves; we can abide the mortal world at times like these, when the iron fist of reality weakens and mortal minds dream, unconsciously calling us forth.

The boy, consumed with the concerns of one who has just began to cross the threshold into adulthood, stares broodingly over the railing of the slaver ship that he is bound to; the only place he has ever known as home, and his thoughts are akin to the turbulent waters beneath him as he asks himself a single question, over and over.

He does not know that we are here; that we listen and watch his every move, drawn to the sweet nectar of power that stirs within him…

He is deaf to our cries… for now.

***********************

“Why must we end their lives?”

The boy pounded his fist upon the worn railing of the ship, unable to come to grips with murder.

“What could anyone do to merit death?” he asked, as though the waves themselves would answer him.

His only reply was the soft hiss of sea-spray, and a splash of cool, salty water that made it over the railing, stinging his eyes. He could almost imagine that the sea was hissing his name, trying to speak to him.

“Jasper,” it seemed to say.

“They help people.” He whispered back fiercely, gripping the railing so hard that his knuckles shone white, despite the golden tan born of a lifetime on the sea.

The ship crested a wave with a creaking moan of protest, growing closer to land with every moment, and Jasper couldn’t help but think of what awaited him when they reached land.

Death, blood, and violence.

“And this time, I’m expected to be more than just an unwilling observer.”

He spat over the edge of the boat, wishing that it were him and not the phlegm that was sinking beneath the waters, never to be seen again. That, he felt certain, was where he truly belonged.

If ever he had a reason for killing one of the Temple’s sorcerer-priests, it would be because members of their order could find a home beneath the waves, not because someone had ordered him to. Even then, jealousy wasn’t nearly enough to bring him to killing.

He pressed his forehead into the damp railing, feeling sick with dread at the thought of what lay before him, as well as what he had almost been forced into doing in the past. Already, he imagined, he could see their blood on his hands, as he betrayed their charity and murdered them.

“Damn you, Sebastian.” He cursed.

As though speaking the name aloud had conjured him, phantom hands roamed painfully across Jasper’s body, and he shuddered, gingerly reaching under his shirt and pants to feel the fresh bruises that marred his long, lean body.

The waves hissed again, and Jasper laughed bitterly.

Much as he might talk to the element that he loved most, he knew that there would be no answer from it. He spat into the waves once more and then turned, heading back into the bowels of the ship, back to where he was sure his cot still swung, out of rhythm with the motion of the rocking of boat.

He had just made it back to his private cabin when it happened.

Something blasted into him, through him, knocking him to the ground and impaling him with what felt like knives of fire. He tried to stand, to scream, to do anything, but he was paralyzed.

Please, he begged silently, praying to the sea-spirits that all sailors worshipped. Make it stop.

As suddenly as it had come over him, the agony vanished. In it’s place was a bone weary exhaustion, though only the memory of the pain remained.

“Thank you…” he whispered, just in case his prayer had been heard. A moment later he was gone, swallowed by the void.