Click. Scroll. Click.

Images of shoulder blades jutting out of backs, spines chugging like rail road tracks down pale and fragile bodies.

Stomachs recognized only by the conspicuous ribs void of enough meat for even a starving wolf to snack off of.

Click click. Scroll.

I sit at the computer alone with the withering memories of my older sister and the year old scars on my arm fading to a worn reminder, looking for something new.

Thinspiration.

A new obsession to replace the blade digging into my flesh.

A thought to occupy me from the chaos of the past three years.

A secret that didn’t need to be hidden by hot, suffocating sleeves or dark, twisted poetry.

Click.

Username: fadingfast

Begin Weight: 130

Goal Weight: 90

Current Weight: 110

I clicked around her page.

No personal pictures, just Nicole Richie in a saggy yellow swimsuit and bug-eyed sunglasses: thinspiration. Her most recent entry asked if diet pills really worked.

She thanked other users for the tip about drinking water…it really does help silence the grumbles.

I wondered how tall the girl was. Maybe if she were really short, I wouldn’t feel as bad while reading her entry. Her begin weight was 130? Her BEGIN weight?

Click. Back to my own journal.

Username: fragilebonesx

Begin Weight: 162

Goal weight: 100

Current Weight: 120

Scroll past my user info. Click click. I had new comments.

“Wow, I can’t believe how much weight you’ve lost. Don’t worry about screwing up, it happens to the best of us. Better luck with your fast tomorrow!”

Quick glance to the thighs. I practically expected to see the olive I succumbed to plastered under my skin, a lardy tumor for my disobedience.

There was nothing I admired more than the girls on Xanga who fasted for days. For twenty four hours or more they excelled in excuses, fought to control the shakes, and silenced the roars of deprived bellies.

I wish I had that strength.

The longest I had ever fasted was for a day, and I ended up as a sorry tangle of limbs sprawled along the sides of the bathtub.

For minutes I was unable to move, to pick myself up, to stop the dry-heaving that would have been splurges of vomit had there been food in my stomach.

If I had been able to speak I would have yelled, “Mom! Bring me breakfast!” How I would have given it all up.

I wish I had their strength.

----

I was third in line at Taco Bell, but I had the shortest order. Ashley, my 90 pound friend in front of me: two cheesy gordita crunches and a bean burrito. I cringed at the thought.

“May I take your order?”

“One small drink please.” Diet Coke. Always Diet Coke.

There’s about six of us, so we spread out amongst two tables. Everybody begins to unwrap their meals with greedy anticipation.

“Lexie, aren’t you going to get anything?” Katy asks, raising her beef taco to her mouth.

“I don’t have any money.” She gives me a “sucks-for-you” look and bites into her taco.

Once you stop eating and start observing, you realize how barbaric it is.

Massive bite into taco.

Bits of lettuce tossing themselves from the predator’s teeth at a last attempt for survival.

Wads of meat plunging to their suicide onto a paper wrapper.

And within a matter of minutes the disgusting act is finished, too quickly for even the digestion system to register all that was consumed.

“I’m stuffed. Here,” Ashley tosses the bean burrito in my direction.

“Oh, no thanks.” Everybody stops and stares. Needing defense I add, “You paid for this.”

“I’m just going to throw it away,” Ashley says. I shake my head. No thanks.

“So you’re not going to eat it even if she’s just going to throw it away?” Katy’s eyes are piercing me with an ambiguous intensity. I shake my head again.

As we’re crossing the parking lot I have to cross my arms to cover myself up. I wouldn’t have felt more translucent if I were naked.

It was just the first of many excuses. My mom’s feet were planted in the door frame, her arms wrapping from my sides to where they met in a grasp at my stomach.

“You’re so little. You’re wasting away into nothing!” I blamed it on the vegetarianism.

My Spanish teacher, watching me disapprovingly as I entered the room and took a seat at my desk.

“You’re too skinny.” I said I was the same weight as everyone else.

My dad, when I visited on Fridays always slimmer than the weekend before.

“You’re really losing weight quickly.” I said Yoga worked wonders.

My Global Studies teacher, trying to playfully drop a hint at the start of class.

“Eat a sandwich or something, kid.” I told her I just had one last night.

It was the comments at school that were the hardest to deal with.

Boys would whisper and moo at girls across the room, joke about their protruding stomachs and the cellulite on their thighs.

They would turn to me and make a joke about my lack of muscle.

They would call me tiny.

When my favorite pair of jeans started to be baggy, it was a boy that commented.

“Those are practically falling of you. That’s nasty.”

He traced the outline of my collar bones, my pride and joy, my two mini mountains of dedication and discipline. “You can barely even see mine. Yours are like, popping out.”

Just ten months earlier I had seen the way he watched me move across the room, wrinkling his nose as his eyes passed over my thighs jiggling with my steps, my love handles spilling from the tops of my jeans, my stomach that would never flatten no matter how hardly I tried to suck in.

Disgusting.

He made me feel disgusting.

And now, after almost a year of brutal work-out routines performed on an empty stomach, weeks spent solely eating apples, and tons of money spent on the five different sizes of jeans I had to update, he was calling me disgusting. Now.

“So tell me, what is your idea of perfect? How should I look?”

He shrugged then pointed at a blonde girl, busy hugging a disinterested love interest who was obviously wanting to fling her off.

I bit my tongue and fought the tears. I pressed my lips and ignored my hunger. I hugged my knees and killed the shaking. I’m stronger than that.

----

I don’t know when or how it all became too much.

I don’t know when I decided I was tired of the lying, and the secrets, and the hunger.

I don’t know how I began to eat again.

I don’t know when I started to think of an apple as a fruit, and not 52 calories.

I don’t know how I gained back ten pounds without punishing myself for weeks.

I don’t know when I began to eat the portions of a normal person without feeling guilty.

When did I start to see myself as an average teenage girl, with natural beauties and imperfections?

I didn’t.

When will I be able to accept my body as human and healthy?

Never.

I overcame anorexia without ever telling a parent or counselor. I killed the compulsion to feel the pain deep within my body, like I had killed the desire for a sting on my arm.

But I will never be able to kill the voice in my head, constantly reminding me that my shape is ugly and that it will never be good enough.

Logic and senses will never defeat my heart, every day weeping for the malformed womb that will be its casket.

Anorexia wasn’t just a disease. It was Ana, a destructive friend that I would never be able to ditch.

But no matter how much Ana plagues me, I will never find any beauty greater than a curvy woman carrying herself among the stick figures as if she were a ballerina tip-toeing through the stalks.