Without a Life Jacket.

I was in the wrong appointment.
My diet plan sat staring at me, my dietitian discarded behind it in a black chair.
I cried into my sleeves, trying to stop the tears that came from nowhere and meant nothing.
She offered me a tissue, fumbling for the box and moving around the portion perfect plastic food
that stood between her and the therapeutic emotion stoppers.
"I don’t usually cry, sorry."
I couldn’t shake the look of her face from my head. I felt weak; flawed.
The room I was supposed to cry in was down the hall, painted a baby blue with windows that let
in everything but the words you where looking to find.
I could only cry when I saw my diet plan laid infront of me, the black writing displaying one-sixteenth of a days
worth of calories.
I could only cry when I saw the miniature plastic cheese blocks and bowls of cereal, that
I just couldn’t stomach.

I squatted on the floor, running my fingers along the spines of all the self-help books I had already read
and horded. I turned my head to the side, hoping to find a new one
that would just have
one sentance,
one paragraph,
one word,
that would help pull me out of the water I dove into without a life jacket.
I felt my body tense. There was a presence next to me, but it was faint. Thin.
My eating disorder reacted
quickly, pulling corset strings around my ribs. I looked up, and the outline of a skeleton
stood staring down at the same books, holding a coffee in her right hand.
Her eyes caught mine for a second – and what could have been her or her eating disorder – gave me a small
smile and continued to scan the books.
I got up and walked away. Drowning at sea I would throw my life jacket to her anyday.
And the tissue.