Colour me beautiful...

“She ran her hands over her body as if to bid it good-bye. The hipbones rising from a shrunken stomach were razor-sharp. Would they be lost in a sea of fat? She counted her ribs bone by bone. Where would they go?” 
― Steven Levenkron,

‘Are you sure this is what you want to do?’ Something in me constantly questions. ‘Really? But it feels awful.’ Everytime the numbers go up, every time you allow a morsel to pass your lips. Everytime you let her down, it hurts. People assume it gets easier, but the honest truth is, everyday gets harder. Anorexia kicks, bites and claws that little bit more ferociously every single time you try to fight, and my God, that bitch can scream. A cacophony of abuse is relentlessly airing in my head, bombarding me with my every fear and doubt. I feel disgusting. I feel ugly. I feel like I’m letting my most loyal ally go. What will be left if anorexia is quelled? An empty, fat shell? A devastated shadow, bereft and alone? What am I now? I am here, I think. When I lift my arms I see hands that I presume to be mine. Small and still with delicate, bird like bones. It is strange to think these things are mine. To think that I may be blind to the reality in front of me. I presume this must be similar to the knowledge that one is color blind. The simple awareness that you cannot quite see what is in front of you. That, the image before you is not that which others can see. To me my body is black and white. Anorexia creates a World without colour. This may seem unthinkable, but it feels safe. I feel secure in my World of monochrome, where all edges are slightly blurred, where life appears in a slight haze. Here, the monsters seem less threatening, the troubles are less real. I do not have to wholly confront that which may harm me, for I am small and numb. I am fading. It is easier to create my cage of bones and crawl inside than to face the World around. But I must release myself from hibernation, because the truth is, although this World is numb and protected, in here, life is never beautiful. Even when you are as high as a kite on the endorphins of starvation, you cannot truly dance, love or hope. In this parallel World, we are all ghosts, with still beating hearts. We push ourselves so close to the edge that we can almost see the other side. When I collapse from exhaustion and the empty pain inside, sometimes the devil asks me to dance. When you are so alone and scared that living seems too hard, the offer seems appealing, but I am waiting for real love, to sweep me off my feet and spin and kick and wave our arms, for the dance of life can be beautiful. Sometimes it will not. Sometimes you will miss a step, pirouette all wrong, seem ungraceful, but that is life. Things will not be perfect every single day, sometimes they will seem impossible, sometimes your heart will be broken into a million little pieces, sometimes you will fail. But we do not live for these times. I will live for the moments when my heart is whole and full of love, when I am so happy I could scream, when I laugh so much my stomach hurts and when success is within my reach. I am just learning that things will never be perfect and life would not be anything if it were. You need the bad to show you the true beauty of moments and the half life of a ghost gives you none of the colour but much of the pain. I need to begin colouring my life again, hoping that things will be beautiful. 

Life in glorious colour