Goodbye Reckless

The doctors say I'm dying.
I remember when I first heard that. My mother was in the room; she started to cry.
They tell me my body can't take it anymore, that I put myself through too much stress for too long a period of time.
They tell me that I would have been much healthier if I'd stayed 40 pounds over weight, as opposed to trying so hard to lose it.
They're saying that I've killed myself.
I blame my parents, I really do. And I say that with no malice or hatred whatsoever. They didn't know what they were doing.
When I was little, my parents potty-trained me using M&M's. They potty-trained my brother with money.
Fast forward fourteen years, and my brother was a business major who was put on a prescription of two Haagen-Dazs milkshakes a day because he was underweight.
I was put on a strict diet of vegetables and a treadmill.
I hated going shopping with my friends because they would try clothes on in all the fashionable stores with the white walls, white floors and white ceilings; with dressing rooms that were only curtains separating different sections of another white room and dresses that were impossibly small and impossibly gorgeous.
Never did I buy clothes when out with friends.
My friends used to joke that they were fat. They complained about their 'love handles' and their flab. They said they would get a belly button ring if their stomachs were flat and they turned down candy because they claimed the extra calories were unneeded.
They wore bikinis in the summer.
I used to get home from school and head straight to my room. I'd lock the door, make my bed and put all the pillows on the floor. Then I would lay down flat and spread out my legs and arms so far that I couldn't feel one limb against the other. I would close my eyes and turn on Third Eye Blind and breathe.
I would breathe deep and slow, for such a long time that I'd lose all grasp of consciousness. I'd fall to that place between awake and asleep and it was then that I would pretend I was thin and beautiful. I would pretend that I was complaining about my fat thighs while wearing a string bikini that made all the boys stare in all the right ways.
And sometimes if I had really managed to convince myself, I would smile.
At fifteen, I started to get sick of it.
My brother eating a bag of chips for a snack because his metabolism worked too fast and his clothes were much too loose lost its humorous effect. My friends telling me my brother was hot while I knew that his friends would never, ever say anything like that about me became bothersome.
I was tired of shopping in the section other kids would make fun of in the company of only my mother. Friends saying their ambition was to fit in a size zero while I just wanted to hit single digits started tearing away at me.
I yearned to have a boy hug me and to feel small in his arms; not like I was too big - like I didn't fit at all. I wanted to feel protected and tiny and like I belonged.
I began to cut down.
At first I took out sugars. Then I took out all carbohydrates. Meat became a nuisance. Fruits had too many natural sugars. Dairy was all fat. I only ate salads and soon enough, the dressing held too much fat and it was just lettuce.
Water in the form of a green solid.
I said I was a vegan.
I ate like a rabbit for two months before even that became too much. Putting anything in my mouth worried me.
The burning in my stomach wasn't so bad. The first few days it was a distracter and the dizziness was discombobulating. But I became accustomed and I began to love the acid in my abdomen. I could feel the fat burning when my stomach would growl and the feeling after the growls was amazing. It was that slow relief after pain; like I couldn't appreciate the normal without the hurting. I lived for it.
It made me feel whole.
Food made me sick. Putting it in my mouth made me gag. The smell made my head spin and just the thought of it put a sour look on my face.
I had lost fifty pounds but I decided my arms were still too big and my cheeks were too round.
I could shop in those white stores now and I fit into the size zero. Suddenly my friends were envious of me.
But I could see in their eyes that they knew what was really going on. And it was then that I realized that with all the things they said about not being thin enough or pretty enough, that they never were that serious. They would never hurt themselves for it.
I cried for two hours after that actualization. Because I knew I would never be able to stop.
I was already too deep.
When I was hungry I drank water and when I was tired I ran faster until my vision was blurred and all I could see was stars dancing before my eyes and my body was numb.
Sometimes I would pass out.
It was one of the times that I passed out that my mother found me. I was sprawled on the basement floor, shorts and a tank top donning my skeletal figure. I woke up in the hospital.
That's when I met the first person to tell me I was dying.
He said I needed help, now. He sent me to a rehabilitation center; away from my healthy friends whose cheeks were pink with life. Away from my too skinny brother who suddenly seemed ashamed to know me. Away from my upset mother and denying father. Away from my other brothers who shook their heads in confusion. Away from everything I knew.
After two weeks at the center, they hospitalized me. I'd fainted again. I still refused to eat.
They fed me through a tube in my throat so I couldn't resist. They put me on bed rest. They wouldn't let me exercise. They did everything they could to make me fat again.
The psychiatrist told me I would die if I didn't try. The nurses looked at me with pity.
As soon as I improved, I was back at the center. They watched me like a hawk and I put on a show of eating. I ignored my hatred of it.
They didn't know I snuck laxatives into my food.
After a year at the rehab center and no visible improvement, they sent me home. I refused to comply with their rules. I refused to eat; and if I did eat I refused to let the food stay in my body long enough for it to have an effect.
Since then, I've been told by two more doctors that I'm dying.
They tell me that it's not a question of if I go; it's just when. They say that I could perish at any time now and even if I really tried it's far too late.
I don't lay spread eagled on my bed anymore and hope for skinny. Instead I curl up in a ball and wish I wasn't so cold. I ignore the disgusted glances of friends and family.
They all hate me now.
My mother is slipping into depression. My father is pretending she's fine, but I know she isn't. They had three boys and a baby daughter's death before they got to me. And now their only little girl won't live to see eighteen.
It's been two years since I decided it was more important to be beautiful than it is to be healthy.
At seventeen and a half, I'm going to die: at any moment, any time.
I go to bed and know there's a substantial chance I won't wake up in the morning. Sometimes my heart starts randomly thudding so hard in my chest I think it will burst from within me.
I used to be afraid to die.
When I was healthy and I had a choice, it scared me. I could never fully comprehend the thought of just no longer being. If there really is a God, will He accept me after this sin? The greatest sin anyone could commit; to take away God's most precious of gifts - your own body and your own life.
And if there is no God then what happens? Do I just stop being? Do I walk the earth in a delusion of life?
But none of that is important to me. I know that whatever it is that is coming is now inevitably closer than it once was.
And I am no longer afraid.
Because at seventeen and a half, I am dying.
Even as I write this I can feel my heart trying to fight its way from my body and I feel like I may die right now. And the scary part? Not at all is that an exaggeration.
I can no longer be saved.

Scar tissue.
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