TRUE STORY by Jasmine Marshall

i went to the gym the other day and got hit on by a man over twice my age he asked me about my tattoos and where i went to school i was straddling the hip adduction machine wearing an art school t-shirt i explained how i didn’t go there anymore how i went there for music but i used to want to go for dance why did i feel the need to explain myself to this random stranger he made a joke about ballerinas and eating disorders and how i dodged a bullet on that one i wanted to spit my venom back at him and explain how he was full of shit how i gave up my once-dream and still got anorexia but i swallowed it instead bit my forked tongue and barred my fangs in a brittle smile always take the high road later i told my mother she said i should’ve been more polite i told my father he said i should’ve been more rude i told my boyfriend he asked if i was okay i said i am used to it i used to be a good girl now i’m a psych patient i remember when i got catcalled for the first time and took it as a compliment i remember when my ex congratulated me on going to the gym and “fighting obesity, the leading killer in this country” i remember when my eating disorder treatment team dropped me they said i was treatment resistant the way the flames of birthday candles flicker back in resistance to the exhale i used to be disciplined now i’m disordered when they thought i wasn’t sick enough it meant i wasn’t sick but when i thought i wasn’t sick enough it was a symptom of my sickness my hair falling out but i am used to it my skin growing scaly but i am used to it my blood turning cold but i am used to it i bite my forked tongue and swallow back the venom swallow the seeds to make me feel fuller longer trick the body i know lots of tricks like that i am an artist master of deception i am a portrait of myself hot tears painting salty cheeks the shape of me half-sculpted by the gnawing of absence hunger, my chisel because everyone knows feminine pain pressured into american ideals turns to diamonds our sorrow airbrushed mascara stains with a glittery eyeshadow finish they say recovery is when you have nothing left to lose i’ve been there you know the place like walking a graveyard at night but flipped dead among living daylight graylight the dead don’t feel hunger but we do feel grief and cold and manic paradoxical existential dread the destination at the end of the high road you took driving yourself mad trying to rationalize the irrational irrationalize the rational answer all the questions question all the answers you realize that it never ends that there is no destination that you’re already a ghost enslaved to this cyclical order isn’t it odd that they call them eating disorders mine is very orderly that’s the entire problem order, reason, rules, control what’s so great about all that life is chaos anyways the sooner we accept that the better everything doesn’t always happen for a reason why she left you why he abused you why they hurt you didn’t understand didn’t believe tried to stamp you out and shut you up why you survived when you could’ve died you could’ve died you could’ve died but you survived and you’ve tried and tried and tried but trying to find order will always lead you to that same dead end nowhere to turn nothing right nothing left to lose not an inch or an ounce something you can’t explain but i still hold it all inside i let it leak out in songs and tears sometimes it’s hard to make room for fullness when i am still so full of empty but i am used to it i try and i try and i try not to try so hard i keep telling myself that healing is possible but i don’t know how to make myself believe it i ate a snickers bar the other day for the first time in years probably it tasted nostalgic like childhood halloweens i didn’t even feel guilty and i’m not used to that.

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IG: @the_jasmine_marshall

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Mad in America hosts blogs by a diverse group of writers. These posts are designed to serve as a public forum for a discussion—broadly speaking—of psychiatry and its treatments. The opinions expressed are the writers’ own.

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