SCARED

Today's word is SCARED.

Don't believe me? crawl inside my paranoia and take a look. Everything is terrifying.
I'm scared to die, scared to live, scared to feel and care. I lie in my bed pretending to sleep and wait for the world to end outside my door.

I can't sleep.

I have five layers of clothes on and two blankets. Everything is so warm. I'm drowsy, but painfully aware of surroundings. I get up and decide to go shopping. Therapy, if only I had the money. I find some old American bills and a couple gift certificates. I'll exchange the money downtown.

My eyebrows still feel smooth and vulnerable. I am a naked mole rat, plucked from the nocturnal earth. It was my first waxing, but I barely flinched and the war wounds were hardly as red and puffy as I had imagined. The mother came out looking like a bird had pecked away her forehead.

SERVES HER RIGHT

Serves her right for forcing me to go to family counseling, where she can cry about how I've ruined her life and I can shrug my shoulders, because what else can you do? I didn't ask her to care. I didn't ask to be sick. I didn't ask to be treated like a five-year-old
Every day she asks me something about my eating disorder or tells me something about my eating disorder. Every day. Every day. I could explode.
Or weakly and defeatedly, implode.

The mother is a walking "concerned parents advertisement" that I can't turn off. Can't mute. Can't smash into a million pieces.
She dropped me off at the father's house and we argued about the graduation BBQ. She left, offended. I walked up the newly painted "concrete moss" steps, muttering

STUPID BITCH

under my breath.
My dry and rotten breath. I smell like a compost bin, decaying and pungent.

Downtown I set out to spend every dollar I had acquired. My gift certificates bought a cute little summer dress. Size extra small. It felt good. So good. My American-exchanged money bought jewelry for graduation and a plaid shirt. And the money I stole from student council, my last act as Treasurer, bought sixty beautiful little green tea diet pills.

I hid in the bathroom of the mall and took two pills at once, chugging them back with diet Redbull. The package said to take two at different times of the day with a full glass of water, but I figured why not get a head start?

Why not?

Because you'll feel like death on the way home from shopping, that's why. You'll become nauseous, you heart will palpitate a billion times a second from the extreme rush of caffeine. The nothingness that's been sitting in your stomach will wrestle with the foreign energy source until you can barely stand. You'll clutch your stomach and repeat

I WILL NOT THROW UP
I WILL NOT THROW UP

Over and over and over again until you finally reach your stop. You'll want to collapse on the ground and never wake up again, but you'll trudge up the path and make it home alive anyway.

On the bright side, they work. I go to the kitchen and take the food I packed for me to take work out of my bag. Another shift canceled because the theatre is never busy anymore. Code for they think I'm a shitty employee who tarnished their Mystery Shopper reputation. I have a big BAD written under my evaluation. I need a new job.

I take out my dinner and plop it in the microwave.

BEEP BEEP BEEP

I'm not hungry. I eat my tofu dog (60) begrudgingly. The zucchini (60) and potatoes (179) are scorching hot. I choke down half the container and put the rest back in the fridge. I feel like I might explode.

I am 299 calories.
I am empty.
I am full.
I am the strength I didn't have yesterday.
I will not fall victim to the temptations of food.

I will win my stupid little game.
I will make it out of this horrible trap alive.
And I WILL NOT go to Crazy Camp for Crazy Little Girls.