The Truth of You, of Us. in Always Recovering, Never Recovered.

The truth isn’t pretty.

The truth is losing myself to you, losing my mind in you, letting everything else slide away from me like marbles down the hillside, because nothing else matters like you matter.

The truth is the blurred edges of reality, everything rocking on its axis, no longer sure whether I’m standing up straight or swaying in the wind. Everything out of focus, so light-headed, light-footed, faint and drifting.

The truth is the panic attacks, like trying to breathe in a hurricane, the wind whipping the air from my mouth. Like trying to breathe in a plastic bag, everything closer and closer until my ribs ache, my lungs ache, my hands are numb, still nothing is enough to grab oxygen.

The truth is reading the online diaries of other ruined girls, discovering the unparalleled release of sharpness against my own skin, the way it calms ne instantly, the way I can breathe again; it’s morphine.

The truth is slipping away from normal, forgetting what normal is. Licking stock cubes to remember what flavour tastes like. Eating hot chocolate powder straight from the jar, starved to the point of delirious, weak and shaking. Clenching my stomach muscles over the toilet bowl to throw it back up in silence, one mouthful at a time. Walking alone for miles along the side of the motorway, to the big out-of-town supermarket, never buying anything, just looking at food. All the lines are so blurry.

The truth is hurting everyone around me, and knowing it, and not caring. Borrowing a friend’s dress for the summer ball and seeing horror wide in the eyes of my friends, and I’m so proud, I’m proud because it hangs off me like a curtain on a coathanger, I’m all elbows and knees and hard sharp angles, all of my ribs show from my throat to my chest, I look terrible and it feels amazing.

Refusing everything mum puts in front of me, every meal becomes a battleground, trench warfare. And I’m so proud, I’m proud because I always win, and you hold my hands under the table and tell me that it doesn’t matter what winning costs, because someone else is paying. I hurt everyone around me, but I only think of you.

The truth is working fourteen, sixteen, twenty hours a day because all the time I am working, I’m not eating. All the time I’m working, I’m walking, burning more of myself away. Eating nothing but carrot sticks until my skin is a strange orange colour, until my hair falls out in clumps, until I’m cold all the time, cold right to the centre of my bones and I can never escape it, until sitting on hard surfaces hurts because I don’t really have a backside any more.

The truth is lying, lying all the time, lying to everyone. Telling people what they want to hear. I am a fucking good liar, thanks to you.

The truth is letting my life fall apart piece by piece, letting it happen around me, because you and I are together in the centre of the storm, and you are all I need.

When I’m weak and so tempted, I have to remember the truth of you.

Because the truth isn’t pretty.

The truth hurts.

Last updated October 25, 2014