Project
Slam Poem

Date
12/14/2023

- Warning: Senitive Content -

I'm in a toxic relationship

I have to admit

The kind of relationship that abuses me, confuses me, refuses me

But yet I keep coming back

They say that it's easy to get help

Just call a friend, anybody

Just get a professional

Just find a way out, different route, time-out

But it's not that easy

I want to leave

Believe me, I honestly do

But yet-----I just can't

No matter how I look at myself

Bones popping out of skin

God, I'm so emaciated

Yet somehow I'm an inflated mass

My brain only hypnotizing, advising, patronizing me

I deserve this, I'm the guilty party, the puppeteer

The pain of this emptiness is somehow comforting

Why must I feel like this

The mirror must be lying to me, full of distorted images I don't recognize

Why can I only see her

The girl who is white as a sheet of paper

The girl who has sticks for her arms and legs

The girl who you can't grab hold of, just out of grasp when she turns to the side

The girl who has sunken eyes black rimmed from exhaustion and hunger

The girl who is me

People approach me

Asking questions that hurt

My brain muddles thoughts together

In one weird conglomerate

"How do you stay so skinny?"
"I'm jealous"

"You're so lucky you're thin"

"I wish I was…

Just stop it

I starve myself

Okay

I admit

Are you happy now--satisfied, stuffed

To the point where your happiness overrides my delusion?

My health is shit

But I don't know what else to do

I'm hungry

Yet the thought of food makes me physically sick

My body rejects food

In this most complex of relationships

Every bite I take I'm reminded

I don't deserve this

I should just take a step back

I'm not hungry

I don't have an appetite

Even when my stomach screams at me

Just eat something

I can't bring myself to

My body turns into Audrey II only chanting

"Feed me" "Feed me" "Feed me"

The voice becoming louder in my ears

Until I can't take it anymore

Why won't I listen

My mother always told me I had strong will

Who knew that I would use that will

To cause myself pain every day

Why did you make me like this?

Why did you give me a fast metabolism, staying skinny all the time?

Why did you let me dance for 15 years-brainwashing me into thinking this was normal?

Why would you allow me to cinch my waist until I forget the hunger?

Why did you litter my mind with images of the thinnest girls in the world?

Fuck you

Fuck society

Fuck the world

Always pushing unrealistic beauty standards

I don't want to be thin to the point that I see my ribcage

I don't want to keep living like this

I want to eat

Believe me I do

But no matter what I always come back to this

How can my body lead me, lull me

Into its own fucked up abusive relationship

You're not helping me

With your words like knives-cutting me, shredding me, tearing me

You say that I would be pretty as a model, a dancer

Thinking your words only give me comfort

But I don't want your comfort

Only polluting my mind with terrors

I don't want to continue this deadly rampage I'm in

Surrounding myself with toxic, deadly, lethal people won't do me any good

I don't want to be thin

But I don't want to be fat

This double-edged sword slices, dices skin

Until I die

Is this what my life leads to?

Stuck in a shell I don't belong in?

Going around and around

Denying myself the one thing needed to survive

I only know to deprive

Deprive my feelings

Pushing everything down

Deprive my hunger

Starving myself day after day

Deprive my family

Of a girl who is happy and healthy

Deprive my life

Until I won't be alive

What have I become?

One missing meal turns into another

And now I'm this

This grotesque monster

Only cowering away from the truth

From help

How did this happen?

I only eat to feel full

To feel pain

To feel something

My body taunting me with my wants

Only feeling emptiness

Even after I eat or drink

I know it's wrong

Living a life like this

Day after day

Giving away food at school so I don't get judged

Wasting food at school so I don't get judged

Doing anything to make it seem like I'm eating

Hiding the truth from my family

I'm sorry Mom

I'm sorry Dad

I'm sorry I'm a fuck-up

I know you only taught me how to be full

But somehow my mind messed it up

And I only learned how to be empty

But now as I expose myself

Sharing thoughts that never seemed to escape my mind

Maybe, just maybe

I will find the strength I've never known

And maybe, just maybe

I will find the strength to say

I'm hungry