#rachelwiley

When we find ourselves affected by something, we often seek out things of the same nature. Sadness is remedied by sadder music, grief is released by seeing others grieve. It is within our nature as human beings to look in search of others who feel what we feel. 

My guilty pleasure is indulging on videos of slam poetry - for hours, I could listen to people speak simply because each poem is fueled with so much emotion that needs to be seen and heard by all.  So naturally, what a better thing to do than look for poems about eating disorders when your own is eating you. 

A few years back, I came across a video of Rachel Wiley - established poet and author from our very own Ohio - reading her poem. Wiley is beautiful all on her own, but it wasn’t her that drew my eye. The poem was titled “For Fat Girls Who Considered Starvation When Bulimia Wasn’t Enough”. I clicked the video almost instantly because it was something I could relate to not just in part, but in full. 

Wiley begins the reading and compares her teeth to her “perfect brother’s”. The poem centers itself around how her teeth are her pride and joy; she wasn’t athletic or thin like her brother, but man, her teeth were perfect. She mentions how he can eat an entire box of oatmeal cream pies and stay thin, while her baby fat isn’t baby fat anymore 

I remember distinctly listening to the poem progress, and feeling like I had written it myself. Wiley recalls how she’d wanted to be a ballerina, which left me reminiscing over the tablets scribbled full of beautiful ballerinas, asking for pointe shoes for Christmas, and more likenesses of my childhood. I’ve never been one to cry over a poem - especially one that I didn’t write. I listened intently as she continued to speak, up until this line:

“My mouth is a music box - a small girl spins gracefully at the back of my throat on point. I am sure if I can just reach far enough back I could still have her grace. I reach for her every night after dinner while the bathtub fills.”

After hearing those words, I realized how powerful this comparison truly was. The grueling, painful, night hours spent on a bathroom floor didn’t feel as lonely anymore. Comfort and warmth overwhelmed me - it felt like every person struggling with an eating disorder knew what I was going through, but just had their own version. 

The bathtub reference, however, made me giggle.

My choice of sound camouflage was the white lie of brushing my teeth. The sink faucet would run and eventually, I would brush my teeth. I’d brush them for five to ten minutes, trying my best to keep their purity. I found a laugh hidden in that part, maybe because we all really do have our own ways of dealing with the sickness, or maybe it was concealing a sadness that can only be found in a child running their bathwater while overflowing toilet bowls inches away. 

She reflects on health class and how she saw “a mouth crammed full of broken, yellowed dishes”, caused by bulimia. The extra emphasis and description of the teeth was a brilliant idea - if you’ve ever met someone bulimic, I can bet their teeth is a huge insecurity.  To damage yourself in the process of already committing such an act is a blow hard to swallow. 

“And my perfect is a ransom I cannot bring myself to pay for the spinning girl So I swallow her and then nothing more for 4 whole days My mouth is a music box, plays a low gear grinding that puts me to sleep”

This is the reason I chose to analyze this poem. The simple line, “and my perfect is a ransom I cannot bring myself to pay for the spinning girl” is so haunting that even after five years, I still hear it on days when the battle becomes harder. It made me ache to read. Perfect is far from us, just beyond a gate that bulimia has the key to so having any perfect is cherished. White, shiny teeth are like the metal beams to the gate - they hide the spinning girl that we bother so often. 

Wiley mentions how she swallows nothing for four days, which I’ve always considered the “stubborn” phase of bulimia. After so much time spent on hard tile floors with no change, a fuse is switched. How easy would it be to diminish myself completely if nothing was being offered? Undoubtedly though, stubbornness cannot last forever.

After the body we own has not changed after four days of licking envelopes and gargling mouthwash to pass the time, we stop. We cave in to our desires - to the late nights scrolling watching videos of unhealthy, and we binge. 

The end of the poem made me happy when I first listened, but I can’t help but cling to the notion that caving will never feel as good as winning. We grow weak, succumb to our wants, then repeat. The cycle brings temporary bliss and wasted treats. I said earlier that when I’m struggling, I listen to poems relating to my pain. I search for struggle that only certain people will ever know.