"Clara?" I hear my Mum say from outside my bedroom, "I've got you a tea, no milk or sugar, just how you like it. It's outside the door. Please take it baby girl. You have to have something." When I don't reply she continues, "Please cough if you're still with us, Clara." I cough weakly and a pain shoots through my chest. I hear a sigh of relief, and she weakly says, "thank you. I'm going downstairs now; you can get your tea." I hear her walk away but I don't get up yet. I check the time and shakily reach for my permanent marker. I make a diagonal strike on the wall through four other vertical lines. I count them. There are now thirty lines on the wall. It has been twenty days since I locked myself in my room.
Twenty days ago, I passed out at school. The nurses shouted at me and told me it was my own fault when I refused to eat a piece of chocolate after to bring my blood sugar levels back up. They called my Mum to collect me and get a doctor to see to me. They told me I have something called body dysmorphic disorder and it's making me anorexic. I didn't believe them and I screamed at them until my Mum arrived and carried me screaming through the corridors while everyone stared at me from in their classrooms. My Mum isn't a particularly strong woman but seemed to carry my eighty pound frame with ease. Needless to say I haven't been back since.