missing the hunger (big tw)

My empty stomach shakes with that low, comforting growl, the one I've now become well acquainted with. I sit in my 8th grade French class, shifting uncontrollably because now matter how I sit my bones poke out into my chair. My leg had fallen asleep again. I'm not listening to anything anyone around me is saying, I never do. I have better things to focus on. All of my attention is on my Chromebook, my cold hand scrolling through Twitter pro-anorexia threads. Risky, on a school computer, but deadly on my own, my parents watching over every click I make on the world wide web. I would stare at the screen in awe, hidden at the back of the class where no one could see the countless pictures of stick-thin pale girls and dainty little pink plates with two or three slices of cucumber on them, maybe a rice cake if they were feeling extra hungry that day. This was my bible.

Afterwards I would go home, pour myself another cup of black coffee in that pink, sparkly hello kitty mug and run upstairs to my room where I spent the rest of the evening, except for dinner, the battlefield of serving myself as little as possible but enough that my parents wouldn't say anything. Dinner was awkward, quiet. My parents knew what was happening, but didn't know what to do, not until I was forced into the hospital a few months later. 

Sometimes I miss this. It was simpler. I never thought too much about politics or had the time to be angry, which feels like the only emotion I have nowadays. I think rose-tinted nostalgia for an eating disorder is a pretty common thing. Missing the hunger, the mind fog, everyone being worried and caring so much about you. I know I was killing myself. I know I was too tired and cold to do anything I loved. But the stockholm syndrome lingers quietly in the back of my mind. Sometimes I do reminisce. But I'd never go back.