Jealousy

        It was Sunday night and I was sitting upstairs on my bed, glancing sideways at a crumpled ice-cream sandwich wrapper that rested a few inches away. I’m labeled as “recovered,” but in my opinion, the words read something closer to “work in progress.” The ice-cream I just ate wasn’t really an indulgence for me, more an acceptance of defeat. It was one of my bad days today. I hated my body, the number on the scale. I decided I should give up. It doesn’t make sense why, for me, this food was a representation of my problem, an assessment of my quality and health as a person, but for other people, it’s just fucking ice-cream.

        My experience with anorexia has prompted this jealous and wanting feeling within me. I envy those who can eat a cookie and just let it be a cookie, who don’t calculate how many more calories it adds to their day, or how much they will weigh after. Who don’t have to live around an eating disorder, to work so hard when nobody else can even tell. I am jealous of people who don’t think about food for nearly every second of every minute. Where life is about homework, and sports, and family and friends. Not about how their stomach looks when they sit down, or if the extra three pounds will slow them down on the track. It all sounds like a cliché but it is so disturbingly real. I’m jealous of people who can sit down and enjoy a meal, laughing, smiling, conversing. Who don’t take every bite as if it is going to be there last one, because they are so used to starving themselves. I’m jealous of my old self, because I know that I used to be like that. It’s like part of my was taken away, chewed up, and then spit back out. I hate myself because I know, for some reason, I deserved this. I don’t understand what happened. I don’t know if what I used to be is what I really am, or if this is. Where did I go?

Where did I go?