Dear Anorexia,

Welcome back. When I said that things between us are over, I meant it, and deeply so. But somehow you convinced me that you were a good idea. Again. With round three of a relationship on the horizon I’m both dreading and loving the idea of the next few days.

Congratulations, by the way. You’re so effective that I ate two pieces of lettuce and water for dinner. I wanted cheesy pasta. Emphasis on cheese. Emphasis on pasta. But no. If I ate cheesy pasta, even once, I’d get fat.

Emphasis on fat.

You’re efficient, and you know it. You know how to twist “you look amazing” to mean “you look fat” and “how are you doing” to “I really don’t care about you, I’m just asking to be polite.” You’ve turned a hug into a grope, a wink to demean, and a handshake as a reminder of how fat my hands are.

So, thank you. Thank you for starving me until I hated everyone and everything. Thanks to you, I now have osteoporosis, a weakened immune system, and insomnia. My bones are literally fading away as my body begins to digest itself from the inside out, my protection shutting down as keeping me alive is deemed more vital than keeping away a cold. Sometimes, you make me wish it was the other way around. I can’t sleep, can’t eat, can’t poop. I am less functional than a newborn, yet I get up and go every single day. I pretend that I am not hungry, that I do not have demons, and pop another diet pill. I pretend that nothing is wrong, I’m fine how are you, do you need some help, and all the while I am a 2-year-old inside, kicking and screaming and having an absolute fit, separation anxiety and visions of food comforting and destroying me as you put your icy cold hands around my throat, begin to squeeze self-control into me as I get dizzier and colder and meaner.

You are the apple of my eye, and I am the apple of yours. Or so it seems. When I focus all my attention on you, on your rules, on your horrific demands, you grasp the necks and minds of people all across the world, gouging out eyes and bloodying mouths, burning tongues and slowly cutting into flesh with your razor teeth, sucking the life out of me and making it feel like there’s nothing left to live for except pain.

It’s like screaming, but no one except you listens. And so I go back to you, time and time again, longing for your comfort and willing to pay any price just to feel safe again. Just to feel like someone cares. Just to numb it all out and not to feel anything. The ugly evaporates first, pulling the bad with it. Slowly the pink roses dissipate with them, leaving nothing but a sky so clear it is transparent, leaving me staring at the heavens, wishing for death.

There is something wrong with our relationship. It’s not me. It’s you. You strangled me, choking life and death and the will to do either out of me, leaving me an empty shadow of a human being crouched in the corner, hissing at life, daring it to come closer, clawing and fighting and screaming as if life is taking away my most precious child, death.

The presence, the attention, the numbness that you gift to me is amazing. Your gifts that money cannot buy go further than any other present I have ever received before, giving me everlasting comfort and security and love. The things that I received but never took ahold of swirl around me, leaving me in a blur of goodness and heaven and absolutely no desire to live, but that doesn’t matter. We all die someday, so why bother prolonging a miserable life instead of enjoying a wonderful, albeit shorter, one?

Your logic is infallible. Net calories. Exercise. Lettuce, water, carrots, water, water, water. Starve and binge and purge because it numbs the pain. Starve and binge and purge because there’s nothing else to do. Starve and binge and purge because no matter how far you take it, no matter how far you push it, there’s always something bigger and better behind those doors of elation. There’s always more euphoria, more validation that does not come from anywhere. There is always a bit of doubt, a bit of trouble, a bit of angst, but the security blanket covers it all and refuses to detach, no matter how much force I put behind it.

And so I learned. I learned to stop fighting the behaviors and start fighting you. I got so knocked around by you in round one that I ended up in the hospital for nine weeks, kicking and screaming all 63 days of painful, hellish recovery. But I returned with a fire consuming me from the inside out, rage at you and your lies. I bruised and bloodied you, but when I looked down at your broken form, I could not bear to leave you there so openly exposed. Still angry, I shoved you into a too small trash can and hoped for the best as I hobbled away.

Anorexia, you are already beginning to leak out the cracks in the garbage can, and that is okay. I know how to defeat you, and I will.