You know that feeling when something is going to happen. A rumble in the pit of your stomach. Unclear to whether it is bad or good, Your body alert of every moment, anticipating. It was a frosty December morning when I felt it. When I had finally decided I guess you could say.
I stood that morning in the steamy bathroom. I swiped my hand against the layer of moisture against the mirror and saw myself staring back.
Despite my shower my choppy hair was tangled and sat damply on my shoulders, my bangs framing either side of my face so that they hid the ends of my eyes. I took a breath and the hollows of my collarbones cratered. My pale skin thinly stretched over my ribs, bones protruded, as my diaphragm rose with the breath. I exhaled but the craters didn't any less deepen nor did my ribs retract back into my body. They stayed.
My skin covered my skeleton tightly without a hint of muscle or fat in between.
Sharp shoulders and knobby knees.
Hard hipbones and jutted joints.
The bones and scars could be covered by baggy sweaters but nothing could hide the dead look in my eyes.
My body was a reject. I was the defected doll that somehow made it through the factory line, packed in a shipping box and into the hands of the disappointed girl. She would love me anyways because I would be her first doll – of many. And it would be too soon that she would forget about me. Her other toys becoming more important and I would be shoved to the back of the dusty closet.
I wanted to unzip my skin like a dress and peel it away from me. To be free was my wish. But I couldn't in the way which was right. It was too late now.
Everything was consuming me.
My fingers now gripped the metal fence pressed up behind me. I looked down but it was too dark to see anything. My ears met with the sound of rushing water.
I could hear my heart pounding in my chest then nothing.
In movies now would be the scene where the lover comes running down the street, yelling at me to stop. She would talk me down; help me climb back over the fence then hold my shaking form as my heart would burst. Shattering in millions of tiny shards, it would only make the cuts deeper.
This wasn't the movies. This was real life.
If I've learned anything in my short 17 years of life it's that if you want something, you go out there and get it. Well I wanted to be free. And tonight...that wish would be granted.
Jump Anna.
Jump.
