I guess that this post needs a preface. I am not in any way pro-anorexia. It is destructive. I know this. I have seen its aftermath first hand over and over. I am, however, thankful that my anorexia came in when it did to rescue me from a deplorable situation that I would not have been able to handle otherwise. My anorexia, in its season, was a lifeline. I am no longer in need of it. But I do need to thank it for how it helped me when I could not find my voice.
You slithered in like an unbidden snake, or like a welcome warm breeze. Or both.
Flailing, I was drowning in unfamiliar waters. Alone. Assailed by the ghosts of things unseen, unspeakable. I didn’t know how to swim. Heck, I didn’t even know what water was. I was ill-equipped, unequipped to navigate the consequences of the sins of those who seemed to me as saints. Stamped as evil, I waged a war against mere vapors, remnants of something that never happened. I fought the air.
I had dreamt of a savior, a redeemer. I had longed for someone, anyone, to come and purchase my soul back from the night. Someone to purge me of the evil that followed me. A pipe dream, until you came, a skeleton riding in on your white horse.
Yawning chasms emerged, emptiness of all self, removed a million lifetimes from the former ghosts. Your lullabies, in minor key, drowned out the screams of the demons of my drowning years. Hunkered down, sinewy arms wrapped around an empty abdomen, I learned rebellion and anger. You held my hand, mirroring yours, as we took on the world.
You saved me from the monsters. You taught me to swim, and to emerge on dry ground. You got me out, you grew me up, and you taught me safety. You showed me how to scream with every deficient fiber of my frail, decaying body. To scream without words, with no voice.
Translucent skin that they finally could see through. A heart that began beating the arrhythmias of the perversions of a thousand grievances. Miss-firing neurons that short circuited the repeat-play nightmares, leaving blissful white noise. You re-wrote my body.
Without you, I would have been consumed in the brain-fire that no one would extinguish. You poured your kind waters over me, removing the smoldering, blazing, searing red-hot pain. You left me, a pile of ashes, and beauty has risen. A Phoenix, I have flown, reborn.
