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Prison

By: Sarah

I'm 15 with an obsession for food, or lack of food. I impose it on myself. I've only been alive for 15 years, I can't imagine the rest of my life like this, so I'm breaking out.

Imagine life with an obsession for food. To not go a single day, a single hour, a single minute without thinking of it, or craving for it. And then think of how you shouldn't, how you couldn't, how you mustn't think of food, touch food and worst of all consume it.

You can't explain it, you can't rationalise it, you won't force yourself to think about how you're destroying yourself, piece by piece, bit by bit. It was standing on the scales, slowing removing piece by piece of your clothing, unable to stand the revulsion if I had gained, or even stayed the same.

You can't acknowledge whats in your mind, it takes on a separate entity with you. You can feel it filling this void, this emptiness inside you, and it hurts beyond belief to know that no one else can. I have never felt so alone, so worthless as when I was listening to it's voice. I'd watch everyone else, urge them to eat, feel triumphant when they ate 'fat' and when I ate nothing.

I got lucky though, I realised I was sick after I collapsed, and collapsed and collapsed. My body could no longer take the pitiful amount I was offering it. I was no longer hungry, in a sense by then I no longer existed. Nothing worked on me, I could and would resist everything. I became a captive, the bars being my willpower, how much I could forgoe, how much I could contain myself.

I fought it. I fought what consumed me and possessed me as hard as I could. I'd cry at the dinner table because I couldn't bring myself to eat what was in front of me. Even when I think I'm winning, when I think I'm in control, it's then that I ceased to realise that you need food to live. I thought of it in terms of restriction, a game with myself that if I ate less I was a winner. Now though, I'm a winner if I can hear the voice that tells me that and ignore it. A normal day is when I eat and then feel physically sick at what I've just done, and I'm losing the battle when I hear that voice and listen to it.

I'm not better yet, I won't be better until I no longer hear the voice inside urging me not to eat, better still when I acknowledge that the voice is me, and best when I no longer think about it. But I'm getting there, on the days when I feel my old self threatening to overwhelm me I plow on. I have to escape my prison, but how do you fight it when the prison is yourself? To all those who have been there, and to those who will travel down my road, I wish you luck.

©2001 Sarah. Reprinted with Permission.

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