i signed my casket ‘xoxo’

sometimes i wonder why i chose

my own death, how my pale

hands could willing rip my

flesh apart, watch numbers

fall like leaves to the ground

when hurricane winds trampled

in my hometown.

sometimes i wonder why i didn’t

treat my body as a hometown,

instead treating it like a cage

that held me back from

the life i wanted,

the one where i did not exist.

i rang in the beginning of 2016

with a coctail of iv’s, the bitter taste

of metal in my mouth as the

nurse filled me with saline, because

i was terrified of drinking water,

because i hated the feeling of being

full.

the doctor told me that i was in

the beginning stages of kidney

failure, that if i did not get better,

i was going to die, but i wanted to

die, have the satisfaction of signing

my own casket, ‘love zoe, xoxo’.

my mother told me that i did

not have the right to play god

with my own life, that it was

not my choice to live or die.

i told her that i haven’t been alive

since the rape; that i’ve been barely

hanging on to what he tried to

take from me.

my body cried for the first time in

months, begging for me to stop the

empty feeling, begging to be filled

with something other than

tablespoons of peanut butter

and lays original chips.

i rang in the beginning of 2019

with a coctail of smiles and laughs

from my family and friends as we

celebrate my recovery, celebrate

that i wasn’t part of 20% that

weren’t as fortunate as me.

i’m not part of the 20%.

i will never be part of the 20%.

i am the part of that latter that

survived, that made it to the top,

the ones that danced with the devil

and made it straight out of hell.

#challenge #eatingdisorder #anorexia #bulimia #recovery #closeencounter