{on relapse}

life is strange, eating disorders even more so. 

anorexia makes no sense to me, and at the same times, it is the only thing which makes sense. 

i suppose i am what you would call a functioning anorexic... atypical anorexia... maintaining just freaking fine on apple and orange and raspberries and spinach and cucumbers. 

i get good grades. i joined the track team. i can run and i do not fall over in a dead faint. i can smile and laugh, and you would never know anything is wrong with me. 

i am working on the perfect body...but you would only think i am fit, i am toned, i am skinny and perfect and enviable... 

and i am trapped. 

enslaved to this feeling, the sensation of skinny, while at the same time loathing it so badly that it brings me to tears. 

it is partly that skinny means my parents' approval, means my dad said i looked good today for the first time in my life of his own volition, and i was wearing leggings... 

it is partly this nameless force, this physical inability to bring the damn fork to my mouth, and it is enough to bring me to tears, but i cannot do it. i am mortally terrified. i am bound and gagged and i physically cannot. 

there is a plaque sitting on my desk which reads 'actually, I'm pretty sure chocolate tastes as good as skinny feels', which i bought the day we all went out as a family to eat, and i bought it because it made me laugh and because i wanted so desperately to believe that. 

and i spent that meal picking my way through salad, crouton and dressing-less by request, and drinking black coffee (warning: cracker barrel black coffee is simply awful), as the rest of the family enjoyed bacon and pancakes and warm biscuits dripping with butter and i saw myself in the third person for a brief moment, face pinched with wistful longing, yet forcing a smile at mother's approving comment on my 'health kick'. 

i join the track team, and even then, i am oddly proud of my ability to run, to keep up better than a beginner, on an orange and black coffee for breakfast, yet loathing myself for it. 

my family makes burgers for dinner - i hear them in the living room, laughing at a competitive cooking show which they regularly watch - they have whoopie pies for dinner, and I would love to have one. i long to enjoy food, to be able to eat a burger or a chocolate doughnut without cringing. 

i cannot bring myself to eat even one bite. i sob my way through add-ons to my salad, utterly failing to convince myself that 50 calories worth of shredded smoked salmon will not kill me. 

and i hate this. i hate this so much. i loathe it, yet not enough. my mother approves, and borrows out books from the library on how to lose weight. 

i cry at night when no one can see, no one can hear. 

i am fine in the mornings, running high on caffeine and citrus, and the rest of the day drags by in forced smiles and fruit and lettuce only... and i know i am due for a breakdown tomorrow because we are out of oranges and what the heck do i eat for breakfast, then? 

spotify runs a random add on protein and recovery, and how your body needs certain things to maintain itself and build strength, and i shake my head and close my eyes as my brother walks into the kitchen at 9:45 at night to toast himself a dinner roll with leftover burgers, and i sit here frozen because a friend has been trying to convince me for the past hour to get up and get food, and i literally cannot bring myself to 

and why am i so obsessed with this? and why can't i just eat normally? and will running be yet another anorexia enabler in the same way that exercise and black coffee/tea and clean eating are becoming? 

too many questions, too few answers. 

i will eat normally tomorrow, i say, and crawl into bed, knowing full well that tomorrow will never come, and that i hardly care while at the same time it infuriates me. 

how have i fallen so far so fast...again?