Poetry, Wellness, 3 min readRuthie YaaEating Disorders, Bulimia, Dieting, USA

I Am Tired

Poetry, Wellness, 3 min readRuthie YaaEating Disorders, Bulimia, Dieting, USA
I Am Tired

I am tired.
I have always been tired because I was the kid who always had to run more than she could
Because that was supposed to prove something.
That thing being that I wasn’t fat.
It may sound like an insignificant thing,
But I felt like an insignificant thing.

At age five, I did not eat my insignificant meals,
And the smaller I was, the bigger my existence,
Because I was only allowed to make an impact on someone’s life if I was barely there.

At age eight, my mind managed to convince my body,
That the only thing I was allowed to feel at the pit of my stomach,
Was hatred for myself and how I looked.
Anything extra was forced out when my fingers danced around the end of my throat.
I cherished the moments my fingers danced because it was the only part of my body I thought I could move without causing an earthquake.
Of course I was young and didn’t think of tectonic plates back then and the only plates I ever knew of were not supposed to move from the kitchen cabinet. 
If they did, I would become even more insignificant.

At age ten, my stomach was tired of churning air so just turned on itself.
I was told it would hurt me so I had to make myself insignificant three times a day.

At age thirteen, I missed breakfast.
Mom went out to by a treadmill so I wouldn’t mind making myself insignificant.
I still couldn’t do it.
I got on it and I tried to run away from what was left of me.
I tried to run away from the person who could not see the beauty in her mind;
Who could not see the beauty in her body;
Who could not see the beauty in herself.
The only time anything had any beauty was when I started to die.
I would rather have died feeling alive
Than live a life that killed me everyday
Than live dead.

At age sixteen you tell me that I am only perfect if I go green.
I start to look down on myself and see that I have to make myself insignificant where I am told to be perfect.
My new homeostasis is bulimia
And your narrow limits make me sick.
No matter how much I try to decrease
I still create more of me that I cannot love.
I still create more inches that are void of any hope to be beautiful.
Because green is beautiful.
And I think I want to be green just so other people think I’m beautiful.
Because my worth is in beauty,
And no matter how many times my mind tells me it’s not true,
My heart tells me my beauty is in other people.

I know that we do not understand the universe so we write
Dictionaries to try to fathom the language of life
And I have found that even though I’m in them, I am not defined by other people.

Still, I’m sixteen and I know not to listen to people,
But someone in the cafeteria just turned thirteen.

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