#anorexia

She used to look forward to changing in the locker room when other girls stole shocked glances at her emaciated body last spring. Now they would look at her and think she was fat--just as fat as all the other girls, maybe even fatter. Nothing separated her from the parade of thunder thighs trooping up the stairs from the locker room to the gym. ↗

— Steven Levenkron

#eating-disorder #fat #thunder-thighs #change

Every lineament of the girl's wasted body is a testament to her inner turmoil. Willow can only imagine what kind of pain she must be in to destroy herself that way. She knows there's something ironic in her compassion for the other girl, but she can't help feeling that this utter mortification of the flesh is far worse than anything that she herself has done. ↗

— Julia Hoban

#depression #eating-disorder #mental-illness #self-harm #self-injury

Why? You want to know why? Step into a tanning booth and fry yourself for two or three days. After your skin bubbles and peels off, roll in coarse salt, then pull on long underwear woven from spun glass and razor wire. Over that goes your regular clothes, as long as they are tight. Smoke gunpowder and go to school to jump through hoops, sit up and beg, and roll over on command. Listen to the whispers that curl into your head at night, calling you ugly and fat and stupid and bitch and whore and worst of all, "a disappointment." Puke and starve and cut and drink because you don't want to feel any of this. Puke and starve and drink and cut because you need the anesthetic and it works. For a while. But then the anesthetic turns into poison and by then it's too late because you are mainlining it now, straight into your soul. It is rotting you and you can't stop. Look in a mirror and find a ghost. Hear every heartbeat scream that everysinglething is wrong with you. "Why?" is the wrong question. Ask "Why not? ↗

— Laurie Halse Anderson

#eating-disorder #school

She began to be reassured by these pains, tangible symbols of her success in becoming thinner than anyone else. Her only identity was being "the skinniest." She had to feel it. ↗

— Steven Levenkron

#eating-disorder #skinny #thin #eating-disorders

She ran her hands over her body as if to bid it good-bye. The hipbones rising from a shrunken stomach were razor-sharp. Would they be lost in a sea of fat? She counted her ribs bone by bone. Where would they go? ↗

— Steven Levenkron

#bones #eating-disorder #fat #skinny #thin

She lay on her back and walked her fingers down her ribs, skipped them over her abdomen, and landed on her pelvic bones. She tapped them with her Knuckles. [. . .] I can hear my bones, she thought. Her fingers moved up from her pelvic bones to her waist. The elastic of her underpants barely touched the center of her abdomen. The bridge is almost finished, she thought. The elastic hung loosely around each thigh. More progress. She put her knees together and raised them in the air. No matter how tightly she pressed them together, her thighs did not touch. ↗

— Steven Levenkron

#bones #eating-disorder #skinny #thigh-gap #thin

Soon I'll be thinner than all of you, she swore to herself. And then I'll be the winner. The thinner is the winner. ↗

— Steven Levenkron

#eating-disorder #skinny #thin #eating-disorders

She'd lost two more pounds. A picture of the models she'd cut out of the magazine flashed through Kessa's mind. And the winner is... seventy-three! ↗

— Steven Levenkron

#eating-disorder #models #weight #eating-disorders

Kessa began to cut her meat into tiny pieces. As a whole it was unmanageable, frightening; but divided and arranged, the meat could be controlled. She cut four pieces. She'd count to four between each bite. ↗

— Steven Levenkron

#control #eating-disorder #ocd #eating-disorders

[. . .] and in addition to the feeling of being full there was another more terrifying one, as if a hundred appetites were raging out of control within her. She couldn't explain it, but she felt as if everything was in chaos and something awful was going to happen. She had eaten and now something terrible would occur. ↗

— Steven Levenkron

#eating-disorder #eating-disorders