Avery's Anorexia

Chapter Three - Abstinence

I remembered a time when I was young. My mother would receive bouquets of flowers from a secret admirer at work. She'd bring the flowers home and place them in a glass vase. I remembered the way the sunlight would shine through the window and hit her honey-blonde hair while she filled the vase with water and stroked the flower petals lovingly. I was about eight at the time.

Then there came a day when my mother didn't come home with flowers. Instead she came home, walked straight to the couch and broke down sobbing. There wasn't anything I could say or do to get her to stop. When the doorbell rang, our dog at the time-Bate, a German Shepard-got too excited and ran to the front door, but he bumped into the little table that the vase was on. The vase that held the last drooping flowers my mother received fell over and shattered on the tile. My mother yelled at Bate then answered the door. When she  came back she cleaned up the glistening shards with a blank face.

That was when I realized people were like glass vases. They couldn't stand for long before something knocks them down and breaks them. What was once inside spills out when they are broken. Then the mess is cleaned and you forget what was. I found it was funny I was eight when I realized that.

Two months went by. I lost more weight, but I had yet to reach my goal weight. The more time that passed it didn't feel like enough. Every time I stood on the scale in the guest bedroom I felt more shame than success.

I sat at my desk one morning, scrolling through tumblr on my laptop. One blog I followed featured skinny girls with absolutely ethereal bodies. They had it all; a flat stomach, thigh gaps, skinny legs, and a thin face. I glanced down at the tummy I still had and wished it was possible to take a pair of scissors and snip it all away. It wasn't fair. Why couldn't I look like them?

Spotting the time in the corner of my screen I found it was time to leave the house. My mother was already gone for work, which left me to lock up the house before I walked to my bus stop in the morning. The bus stop was only a block away. Bethany saw that as an advantage. She and I often jogged past the stop on our route, and if memory served correct she said it was great exercise to be walking there every morning.

There were five other weary-faced kids waiting for the bus by the time I arrived. One girl who I noticed was carrying a thermos that exuded the aroma of coffee seemed a lot more upbeat as she giggled with a friend. I plugged in my earbuds and leaned against a tree away from everyone. Blending into the background was a natural talent of mine. I felt more at peace when my music started playing. It helped me wake up and to deal with the anxiety of judgement for being a loner. With nothing else to do, I just watched the people in front of me- trying not to be noticable about it. I didn't want to be seen as stalkerish, but there was something I liked about seeing people interact with each other. The bubbly girl and her coffee, the tall boy with oak hair talking to his friend. Although I couldn't hear what they were saying, I enjoyed reading their body language. In a way, I envied how at ease they all were-without a worry in the world, and they didn't have to worry- they were flawless. Then there was me.

The yellow, metal monster pulled up to the curb in the that instant, heaving exhaust when it came to a stop. I was last in the line for climbing up into the bus. Most of the seats were empty, giving me relief from having to sit with someone I didn't know. I watched a girl in front of me as we got to the middle of the bus. Her figure was slim enough that in the body-hugging shirt she wore you could see the curve of her waist-a perfect hourglass figure. She strode past the seats with the grace of a swan. I on the other hand walked clumsily forward until I reached one of the first empty seats. I sat down and scrolled through the songs on my phone.

Watching people caused me to make stories for them sometimes. The fairly good-looking dark haired boy sitting in the seat on the other side of mine had all the right features to fit in with any clique of his choosing, but he didn't. You'd seldom see him chatting with anyone. He always sat alone, and never spoke unless spoken to. There was a single time I saw this boy during lunch. He sat under a tree in the school's empty back field. I was sitting on the bleachers by the football field, finishing up my Geology homework before class started. No one ever came to the field except for loners like myself. The more social butterflies and hipsters preferred the school's indoor pool, or the quad. Of course, I didn't have to be a loner. There was Bethany and the other girls, but at times I couldn't stand them. Other times I wanted solitude.