Stick Figure

The Past:

Draw a picture of my stick-figure and give it a name.

Take your pick because for the life of me, I don‘t know who I am today.

I use to go by Ana but you can't live life denying your nature.

Things have a way of catching up on you.

I thought I would emerge, unmarred after my Ana years wore thin but I didn’t.

The strain permanently chipped away at my psyche, my sunken cheeks never really filled out, and the edges still bend and fade as I swear, “I’m ok.”

They don’t believe me anymore as I look up at them from the floor.

During recovery, the imposed need to create and forget awaken a feeling of resentment; towards those trying to help me and towards myself because Ana had a firm grip.

Everything became amplified with her thoughts and actions.

Until one day, my mothers words, in Spanish, “Eres Mia” (you’re mine) gave way to my new identity.
“Eres Mia.” (you’re mine) I was hers, under her watchful eye, until I could be trusted with my health.

I laughed wildly, at the double meaning, that was lost on the differences between our language.

She gave me the most eeriest of looks, as I laughed and cried hysterically because it was at that point that I realized that I wasn't anorexic but bulimic as well.

Present tense:

I have become every cliché that one associates with being eating disordered.

She never made a fuss. She is a people pleaser. She is withdrawn. She wants to be small. She like to have everything just “so.” She’s watches the Food Network non-stop and has memorized the calorie content of everything in the house.

Did I forget something?

The problem is that I can’t please them without giving up my control.

I can’t be of average or above intelligence if I think that this cookie is going to make me fat.

Everything about this disease is a contradiction.

The reality is that I don’t have anything under control.

I’ve just been using different means to deal with the anxiety of eating.

The turning point:

I locked the door, turned on the radio, faucet, shower, exhaust fan and tied up my hair in a pony-tail as I held my toothbrush in my hand.

My eyes got teary-eyed and my four fingers ached after being jammed into the tiny crevice.

I splashed water on my face and looked at myself in the mirror.

A huge smile formed on the corners of my mouth because the tears streaming down my face weren’t of regret.

Wow! my eyeliner really is water-proof.

******

There was a time when I felt a pang of regret.

When it took days to recover from a setback. Then I remind myself, “You can’t have a setback when you’ve never said that you were ready to let go.”

*******

So this is it. After almost 10 years of living with this disease, I am ready to say farewell to it. I haven’t hit bottom, or am being rushed to the hospital.

The past, present and future (prospects) collide and I have simply realized; If nothing changes, nothing changes.

This is my official goodbye letter to anorexia and bulimia.

I know they do not exist, in the flesh, or occupy a physical space in me but it doesn’t make them any less real.

I do not intend to wait around for an apology or explanation from them.

Therefore, this is not written in the way one would fashion a letter. Instead, I deliver it to you, the almost 2,000 people who have visited my page in the past couple of months.

"There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.” -Wasted, Marya Hornbacher