“why can't you just eat?”

People ask why you don't just eat, they ask why you're obsessing over something so early into your life, they ask why aren't you eating, WHY is it so hard to eat? You're human aren't you? You do realise that is what it takes to live, don't you? You're stupid for doing this to yourself. All of a sudden, mental illness is my fault. It doesn't matter that this disorder, this urge to be thin that feeds into my brain, tells me to starve, tells me an empty stomach is better than a full one, CRAVES the feeling of bile raising up into my throat from lack of nutrition and the migraines I receive, is a mental illness. Because I'm not stupid, right? I should know that it's just food, it's so utterly ridiculous to be afraid of food. To be treating it as if it isn't a necessity. 

People want to act nice, tell you to take care of yourself and your mental health-- until it comes to eating disorders. How can someone as smart as me, the student who studies and studies and studies until all I remember is how to solve for X, the student who will never get anything below 80, whether I've studied or not, how can that very student refuse food? It's hilarious, isn't it? It's funny, and nobody seems to care. Eating disorders aren't taken seriously until you're wobbling to school everyday on twigs for legs, until you're fainting in the middle of class, as pale and thin as a sick skeleton. Taking food made from your parents, whose very eyes beg and plead for you to just willingly put something in your body. Who don't want their daughter to end up in the hospital, who just want their daughter to be fine. Hiding that food upstairs, or shoving two fingers up her throat in a cruel attempt to bury the sin and guilt of greed. The nights she stays up watching the thinnest girls you'll ever see, the nights she spends with harsh insomnia from the pure pain her stomach is in. The days she endures with that very feeling, the tears nobody ever sees-- because she's ok. She couldn't be any better. She's losing weight, she's working towards her goals, she's determined! But when she ends up dead, that's her own fault. That's my own fault. Opening my mouth to say, mom, dad, please. Please help me. I'm sick, and I'm sad, and I want to die because I spend every passing moment thinking of food. Waiting for the next day I'll be able to take a bite, waiting for the next step on the scale with exhaustion painting the crevices of my limbs and mom, I'm so tired. I hate it all and I never wanted to be like this. So why me? Why have I had to live with this? And you don't even help me. You don't even try. But all I want is for you to hold me and tell me it will all be okay, that I will be okay. Opening my mouth, means my worst fear. The very same one I thought was death, becomes shadowed by weight gain. I would rather die than ever admit it. I'll never look pretty healthy, I'll never look pretty fat. I'm only worthy thin and dying. Wasting away, just praying for some kind of fairytale to appear. Only God knows it's simply a dream. Only God knows this disorder is bringing me every little step closer to him. Because, fuck, I did this all myself.