Callen Fletcher

Ah the year 2016. The year of girls in magazines and playboy bunnies making top headlines.

The years of bikini tops and keto diets.

The year in which the reflection in the mirror was not mine.

I'm in sixth grade, just fresh out of primary, and into the years of boys moaning in the back of the classroom, the years of the girls trying to get friends and fans on instagram, and the years that the teachers finally crack down on the appearance of those who do not already fit to societies standards.

You ask a girl what she wants to look like and she'll tell you the name of another girl, the name of a magazine with those pretty girls on them, the name of those shows that have the pretty girls who have the blonde hair, blue eyes, and a size 0 in pants. 

As the girls get cracked down on more, they begin to realize that this world is against them, that their body is a sexual object that men can't control the urges to touch, and to use, to break and to feel.

I was never a skinny girl, I've always beena bit curvy, and always shopped in the "plus size" section. I never took offense to being called "fat" because I never knew that I was supposed to.

I never knew what an eating disorder was, until my friends had told me that I should find a way to lose weight, till my friends told me that anorexia wasn't a threat that she was my friend, and that to lose weight I would be pretty, I would be like them, the perfect middle school image.

At lunch I used to skip eating, I would drink as much water throughout the day and hold it till I got home, the feeling of the cold slipping down through my throat being enough to hold me over until I arrived back at that small house on that curved block, the one in which the mother was never home, to support the house alone, the one in which the ashes, upon ashes of so many people that I grew up to love, the pets that I grew up to love, the people that I may not have even known.

I would go home and binge, keep eating until I couldn't anymore, keep eating until I felt sick. I would look in the mirror of the yellow-lit bathroom, with those sickly yellow walls, the sticky grey floor, and the stained porcelin of the sink and stare back at the reflection in the mirror.

stare back at the reflection that wasn't mine.

Stare back at the refelction that looked nothing like me. 

Stare back, and see the reflection slowly fade from my eyes, as the world went black.

December 16th, 2016.

I'm in the mall by my house. My mother had offerd to take me out on her day off.

We got slushies, and cookies, all kinds of other treats, that I knew wouldn't do much harm because I hadn't eaten that day.

As we're strolling through a store I get dizzy, I get drowsey, and feel my eyes slip closed. 

The world begins to fade to black as I realize that anorexia had not been my friend. 

I wake up in the hospital. A needle in my arm, and a bucket full of what I had eaten sitting in front of me.

As I ask to use the bathroom, I head in, shut the door and look at myself.

I am pale, and sickly, the color of my eyes drained, and the sweat on my brow now visible.

The reflection is mine.

It always has been.