Romanticized Anorexia

Step One:

Read the book wintergirls, tuck away every detail like you're cramming for a test.

Dog ear the pages and carry it with you like a travelguide.

Decide that with your fingers and toes always icy cold for as long as you can remember, you were destined to be a wintergirl.

Reread it periodically, for inspirational purposes.

Step Two:

Download the myfitnesspal app, use it to track every calorie that you put in your body.

Memorize that an oreo has 70 calories, an apple has 50, a cup of hot chocolate has 80, and a bagel has 277.

A number that teriffies you.

Let numbers float behind your eyes all through the night and let them stay there as you throw the covers off to do guilty situps.

Ignore the warnings shouted at you in red text when you eat less than 1200 calories per day.

Look at the projections it gives you for 5 weeks from now.

A weight that seems both too small and too large ar the the same time.

When youre net for the day hits negative after weeks of trying, feel the slightest ping of satisfaction.

Step Three:

Find your thinspiration.

Make a tumblr just to look at pictures of jutting out spines and thigh gaps.

Hold your phone up next to your reflection in the mirrior and pick out every way your body differs from theirs.

when the girls on the fitness blogs start looking too heavy for your goal, find the eating disorder blogs.

Obsess over their bodies almost as much as you obsess over yours, but not quite as much.

Step Four:

Begin losing weight.

Imagine yourself folating away, feather lights.

Imagine yourself becoming skin and bones.

Imagine this as you drag your heavy body from class to class., as your nucsles wear away from malnutrition.

Imagine this as you have to clean you have to clean your hairbrush out three times, while you work tangles from your hair.

Imagine this as you snap at anyone and everyon, as yoyu spend hours locked in your room.

Step Five:

Become a poet and write about yourself.

Romanticize your own demons, just by calling them demons.

Use as many metaphors as you can, to avoid the harsh language of the truth.

Especially avoid writing about the crippling guilt that hits when you eat to much and when you dont eat enough.

Voices in your head never abating.

Avoid writing about your lack of motivation and constant exhaustion.

Always, always use words that imply mystery.

Describe your mind as foggy, call your body diminishing.

Never say how it is because then you could convince yourself to quit.

Never say its torture and youre in pain and you just wish you were 8 again, never considering this path.

Never say that you need help but you don't want help.

If you have urges to say these things, say only that this the disorder is not one you would willingly give up

because you finally have something to control

because it is the truth

but it also is the romanticized truth.