starve til your pure

sleep! dont stay up exercising, you will fall asleep during the day and be more hungry

drink water and other fluids

take fiber supplements instead of laxatives, they are gentler on your body

use caffeine to stay awake and have energy

honestly exercise is overrated unless its at a gym and it doesnt even burn that many calories so do it for your mental health if you want but dont feel obligated

fill up your life with things you love other than food

never CHOOSE to eat

do not complain about the cold or turn on the heat

if you can skip, SKIP

no food after dinner

if you think about eating food or consider eating food, pinch or hit yourself

never clear your plate

always be walking, fidgeting, moving to burn calories

chew thirty times before swallowing

never eat with friends

never bring up food if youre planning on eating it

2 sips of boba tea (100)

1/2 rice crispy treat (70)

She sits by herself. Headphones in, probably listening to old music or underground soft rock. I like to imagine that she doodles in the margins of her notebooks, hearts and stars and flowers. She’s not good by any standard but something about her sketches is mesmerizing. Messy and chaotic yet makes perfect sense. I guess that’s how I imagined her to be. I vaguely remember her freshman year, she came in from another school, another town and over the course of the year made friends all over the school. People loved her because she morphed into a different person for everyone, of course they liked her, they were seeing a mirrored version of themselves. At first she wore long sleeves, even when it was sweltering but eventually she stopped and everyone could see why. Left arm, both sides, scars and fresh cuts, gashes and bruises and scratches. A cutter. I remember being weirded out at first but after a while I got over it. A few times that year it got really bad and she wrapped her arm in a bandage or plastered her forearm in bandaids  to cover them. I don’t think anyone else could really imagine what she was going through or why she did what she did, I think that’s maybe why she left. 

Sophomore year and I had just about forgotten about her. Trips with family and sleepovers and food had filled me with a kind of temporary sense of contentment. I came back to school, laughing and nervous and was shocked by what I found. Something had changed about her. Physically, she was thinner, her stomach puffed out and her arms were bony and frail. Her collar and cheek bones were prominent and her once perfectly round and soft lips were dry and cracked. That wasn’t even the worst part though. Her eyes never moved from the same round position, like a doll, even when she smiled. She met my eyes once and seemed to stare into me, past my pupils and into my being, my soul, judging me. The gaze only lasted a second but I felt as if she had seen everything about me and that’s when my obsession with her began. 

It wasn’t a crush as my friends claim but more of an intense interest in what was going on in that girls head, what made her tick, what made her smile and cry. I considered myself to be deeply invested in her wellbeing, not as friend but more as a scientist. I watched her every move, watched her arm fill with cuts and her body turn to bones. I observed the careful way she walked across school, even footed so that she wouldn’t step on any cracks. I peeked glances at her in the classes that we shared, watched her pick nonchalantly at her skin, wrapping her hand around her arm, checking that it was still as thin and bony as yesterday. She probably didn’t even qualify as underweight but you could see the starved look in her eyes, the stomach that so desperately longed for nourishment. It puffed out, bloated and sick as if attempting to keep every ounce of nutrition in leaving her to rely on laxatives and coffee for the bathroom.