vitreous / hs. (DISCONTINUED)

say you're lovely

V I T R E O U S – N I N E T E E N

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It’s been another two weeks now. Atlas and I have been trying to do better, but God it’s really hard. It’s easy to say ‘Yeah, I’m going to do better!’ just like that, but when you sit down and look food in the face it’s a no-brainer. You’re not eating.

I haven’t had a decent meal in as long as I can remember. When I was in my first few years of elementary school, I would watch all the boys play ball outside and run around and I remember thinking Wow. That must be fun.

And then I tried out for the soccer team, I didn’t make it. They all did though. I would watch them play and as the months passed I gained weight and they didn’t. I was fat and disgusting and they were skinny and popular.

All the girls liked the skinny boys. Everyone liked the skinny boys. They were pretty, they got what they wanted. No one liked me; I was huge. I didn’t get girlfriends. When middle school rolled around, everyone made new friends but me. I was left alone eating next-to-nothing in the cafeteria.

I didn’t even eat that much, I didn’t understand how I gained so much more than them. I would never be skinny like the pretty boys. But God, I tried didn’t I. I stopped eating in the hopes of completely reducing my calorie intake and only ate breakfast. I started to exercise like them, but even more.

I was going to be a pretty boy too. That’s what I wanted. I was going to be skinny and beautiful and everyone was going to love me. I ran to and from school every day, I swam in my pool three hours every night, and I did high-intensity workouts after that in the hopes of shedding a few pounds.

A few pounds turned into a couple dozen when people told me I had lost weight.

“Harry, you look marvelous! Have you lost weight?”

“You’re looking great!”

“Do you work out, Harry?”

I needed to lose more, if I was doing such a good job. I could do better. So I kept going. I swam for four hours. My mom started asking questions, but I told her I just liked the water. She said that was alright. I kept going.

When she started getting suspicious of my constant loss of appetite, I started eating again and throwing it up instead so she didn’t get curious. I got skinnier, but no one was talking to me. I was still sitting alone at lunch.

I’m probably not skinny enough.

So I stopped eating breakfast. The only real thing I was taking in was ice-cold water. Eleven cups a day. I had read somewhere that would help with weight loss. I had an apple sometimes. If I forgot to puke after a meal I’d go to bed sobbing because God, how could I have been such a failure?

People still didn’t notice me. I was almost as skinny as the pretty boys, wasn’t I? Maybe not, so I kept going. Still, no one liked me. That was when I started hurting myself. It started off slowly, but soon enough I was cutting almost every night. I hated myself.

I got better in math though. All the counting of the calories and equations I was doing to make sure I wasn’t eating a shitload or not exercising enough really did pay off. After a while I started to memorize things and soon enough I could recite the number of calories for almost every item in my fridge.

I was so pathetic that even after trying so hard to fit in, no one liked me. Everyday tasks like getting out of bed and even just walking were getting harder to do. That motivated me though, to know that what I was doing was working. I was going to be beautiful.