10 Things I Hate About Anorexia.

I feel drawn to the William Shakespeare poem that the famous movie ' 10 Things I Hate About You' is based upon because it outlines the poetic lulling of being in a tainted relationship. I believe it perfectly captures the complexities of loving something or someone that you also despise, reckon with or feel perplexed by at times.  It's difficult to compare anorexia to a poem because I believe poetic writing to be inherently beautiful, which anorexia is not. However, it's something that I easily believe to be a necessity because I think the comparison of anorexia to this poem is an opportunity to explore, thoroughly, the battle that anorexia truly is. Anorexia is the most belligerent force in my life, driving me to these tremendous extremities of sadness, fear and desperation. I long for a life in which I never became so ill, one where happiness was in the front seat instead of the back. I'm exhausted and depleted from its misery, yet equally hopeless as I continue to hold tight to it despite knowing its cost.

1. I hate the way you talk to me and the way you cut your hair. 

I think my following description is something that many other sufferers are going to understand, for to me, anorexia doesn't talk to me; it whispers in my ear. See, communication in the form of talking is often reasonable and agreeable because people are more careful about what they say out loud when it is for the rest of the population to overhear. People usually whisper sinister things, things they're ashamed to say too loud, for they know of its cruelty, its unacceptability and its element of secrecy. Anorexia knows. Absolutely, it knows. It knows that everything it has to say is unkind, tormenting, bullying and unwise. The way it talks is through whispers because if it's quiet enough that only the sufferer can hear, those without it can't intervene and call it out on its heinous ludicrousy and sinisterness.

2. I hate the way you drive my car. 

Anorexia is often driving my car. In the beginning, anorexia would ask me to turn left or right but ultimately, it was my choice. I didn't always listen. I still had the will to drive to the places I wanted to go, to watch the sunsets I wanted to watch and to have the passengers I wanted to have. So, anorexia fixed the problem, the way it always does when it doesn't get enough say in a matter. Anorexia drove more and more until it was the only one who ever drove. Now, when I'm the one who wants to go North or South, I'm silenced and ignored. My desired location, my preferred route? They're both jokes, laughing matters, and unimportant remarks. Because anorexia drives all the time, the way it wants, everywhere, because then that way even if I express my opinion, all that can happen is for it to float away into thin air. Anorexia never asked me if I wanted it to drive. Just one day, I suppose, I realised that I couldn't remember the last time I drove my car. I miss driving my car, the one that smells of ideology, the taste of my future on my tongue and the sound of the revolutions of love motioning into gear. Now it sounds like rust and fumes, a toxic, spoiled engine leaking all over the place with old, expired fuel.

3. I hate it when you stare.

I stare at myself to the point where I've ceased looking into my soul and have begun solely staring at my physical external body. This act that lacks self-compassion and is entirely superficial drives me to feelings of utter emptiness. I hate it when you stare. I hate it when you stare at my body as if it's the only interesting thing about me. I hate it mostly, though, because I know that no matter what you see staring back at you in the mirror, your satisfaction will never be complete or enough.

4. I hate your big dumb combat boots and the way you read my mind. 

Your boots are the ones you stomp around in, in my brain that create my evil thoughts. My thoughts that were once aligned with enjoyment, satisfaction and creativity are all trod on and squashed by the thoughts of restriction, reduction and regemity. I hate your big dumb combat boots, I hate the way you read my mind, the mind that gave me you.

5. I hate you so much it makes me sick; it even makes me rhyme. 

The more I hate you, the sicker I become because the more time I spend with you, the deeper our connection seeps, the deeper we understand each other, and the deeper your sickness intertwines with my health. Everything I have to do with you involves the inevitability of you making me sick, whether it's one time in one interaction of a day or several in many months of the year, you're there, waiting, to purge all of your germs into what's left of my life. You do it with every rhyme you whisper into my ear.

6. I hate the way you’re always right.

Sometimes I find these beautiful glimpses of peace and freedom away from you. They're like shooting stars in a night sky: few and far between though nonetheless, are glistening. But your righteousness awaits them in the form of a cylindrical pot, ready to catch it, hold it and wait for it to die out. Your desired caloric intake is right. Your desired safe foods are right. Your desired purpose is right. And in your righteousness, there is no room for other righteousness to exist. It is your way or the highway as they say so bluntly, deathly, and endlessly.

7. I hate it when you lie.

I have spent so much time believing anorexia's incessant whispers in my ear, such as that x amount of calories will make me lose x amount of weight, that I'll be happy if my hips look a certain way or feel enough when that tube is down my nose. So when I've reached so many of these points on so many different occasions and my happiness minuscule and momentary, if there at all, has just led me to latch on to a new goal that anorexia says will be the goal that will finally work, at the end of it, I'm left with this pool of misery, swimming in what I can now see, after many years of hindsight, as being a pool of lies.

8. I hate it when you make me laugh; even worse when you make me cry. 

As I sit alone in my room, my heart gently tethering and fraying at the edges, heart splitting millimetre by millimetre, the tears from my eyes begin to finally fall, dampening the corners of my eyes after all day, people walking by, me trying to not let big droplets fall, embarrassed by what it is to have your side intertwined by mine. Sometimes I can laugh you off when somebody makes a joke about your shock effect, your stupidity, your sole existence. But other times I don't find anything about you funny, the very thought of you being enough to make me whimper, afraid by your pure connivingness and spite. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it when you make me cry because once I'm brought to this state, everything inside me is ripping apart, no sunlight able to make its way through. You tear me to pieces of fragile dampened paper mush when you make me cry. The world is black, the hollowness of my shell being filled by the word 'anorexia' written over and over and over again.

9. I hate it that you’re not around. And the fact that you didn’t call. 

When I'm forced to push my eating disorder aside, whether it be when I'm being force-fed in a hospital or I need to have energy for a holiday, work or an event, I hate that not using the one thing in this world that brings me the most misery also makes me miserable. It feels like a losing game, a situation in which I can never feel content. I hate that when anorexia isn't around, I miss it because it feels wrong to miss something that is hurting me so badly. I want to be happy and it feels as though perhaps I never will be. And that is the truth that truly kills me the most. 

10. But mostly, I hate the way I don’t hate you, not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.

I hate the moments when you trick me into believing you're enticing, the moments that I become fulfilled by the emptiness that it is to love you: the isolation, the misery and the sick sense of relief you provide me. I hate it because I know that to anyone else, they'd run a million miles from you, yet I'd drop everything to run to you. It scares me because I know it's true. And it scares me even more that I do it despite knowing that. You make me afraid of myself. Because I know how wrong it is to love love like yours: a toxic, broken, battered and bruised, abusive one. And I long to know, is this all my life will ever be worth? Will I ever choose my other loves above yours? Or will this one withhold me in your chained arms forever until it kills me, or worse until it just continues to do it a little bit by a little bit, a slow, long, painful death drawn out, miserably but wholely over many years?

'Ten Things I Hate About Anorexia' is so grim because although its timeline has a beginning point, nobody knows its true end. In real life, ten things I hate about anorexia doesn't stop at ten... It doesn't even stop when someone dies.

Kisses,

COS x