Title: Short Term Confusion
by Olivia from London | in writing, fiction
The girl wondered whether she had an eating disorder. The truth was she didn't.
But when she looked in the mirror, staring at her bland body with its saggy white bra and granny pants that she never knew were for losers, she wanted one. She needed it, to feel the gnaw of hunger biting into her stomach, making caves where slices of jelly-fat now lay. She couldn't breathe well, a tight hand around her throat and she wondered why. And so the next day she threw her lunch in the bin and excused herself to the library. She ate her dinner and logged on to a calorie counting site, '500', it said. She was satisfied. It carried on a week, pausing on weekends, then she began to feel its grip which she had not noticed before. She felt the panic that led her to take food from her plate and put it on her brother's. She was scared. Then the caves came. Joy. Success. Triumph. But the depression that had led her had gone. She didn't know where. She didn't know why. Not PMS, she knew, what had made her keep her head on her knees the whole of lunch, break down in front of the mirror, what had provoked her friends to question her mental state? She slackened, eating lunch every so often, realised her body was curvy but fine. The panic would come back but less. And afterwards, as she grew wider and her friends ever skinnier, she wondered if she had had an eating disorder? It seemed like anorexia in a week.
Story about anorexia in a teen magazine.
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