eating disorder, noun,

“any of a range of psychological disorders characterized by abnormal or disturbed eating habits”

this definition is something i’ve lived, breathed,

a hell on wheels inside my own brain, my own body.

i’ve considered myself mentally recovered for nine months now,

because physically you can still play their songs on my ribs like a xylophone

and maybe there’s a part of me that doesn’t want to physically recover

a part of me that doesn’t want to lose

the bottlecap wrists, the instrumental ribs

a part of me that lives for the thrill

of diet soda in my bloodstream

because you have no idea how good it feels

to wear a double zero anything and have it fit perfectly

to be rich off of unused lunch money

and to be that girl in the hall that people want to look like

however i don’t want to go all the way back

back to when nothing fight right

and my mother cried late at night

and i lost pieces of hair like children lose their baby teeth

back to the darker corners of the internet,

the tumblr blogs and the instagram feeds i knew as my agnostic gospel,

to the things disguised so well you wouldn’t think they were our weapons,

the nutrition tables on google and the health tracking apps

were to us like the swords and shields of war. our war against ourselves.

cerebellums against bony shells of humans

not humans

i would explain more but i don’t want you to mistake this for an instruction manual

because no matter how good those double zero jeans look

or how good cold water feels in an empty stomach

It’s better to have battle wounds and be alive

than it is to have battle wounds in a box

they say it takes up to eight years to fully recover,

and eight years feels as long as one week with an eating disorder.

so maybe this is just me overreacting to nothing at 5am

or maybe it’s the demons left inside me crying to come out and play again

well kids, this playground is closed and locked and don’t even to try and climb over the gate

because even though it’s only been nine months

seven more years will be worth the wait.