Inside your room, you take bite by bite of your banana and blueberries. The taste seems to flood your dry mouth, drenching your entire body like a monsoon would a desert. You chew each bite thirty times before swallowing, until the food is nothing but a liquid pulp in you mouth: easily digestible, and quickly transferred into energy, instead of fat. Your bones ache as you sit down, flipping open your laptop and turning it on.

Signing into livejournal, your mind and body are melted down and processed by the world into which you are absorbed every day. You lose yourself like dandelion seeds in a thunderstorm as you spread out, hungrily reading, commenting, thinking, traveling and sinking deeper into the communities into which you have scattered your soul. It is the purgatorium, filled with familiar names and familiar situations. Even more saddening are the ever-increasing newcomers who are probing bulimia -just as you once were- stretching it to its limits and back again. They ask questions like 'what is a BMI?' and 'should I tell anyone?' You help them out, pointing them in the direction you wish someone had told you to take. Sometimes you answer their questions, but sometimes you beg them to delete their accounts and get out while they can. The responses are always on a similar wavelength. You can tell when someone's in as deep as you, and when they're just dipping in their toes. Just like nearly every other member, you know whether to offer them sympathy and advice, or whether to snap at them for their hurtful ignorance, and just like nearly every other member, you're stuck fast on this little space on the internet. It's all you've got, and the letters that make up the names of the other members are your only support.

With every pause for loading -with every reference to food, chocolate- your mind stumbles and falls flat on the image of the chocolate muffins sitting downstairs in the kitchen. Eight of them. You even write an entry, ranting about how unfair it is that such a good start to a day could be jeopardized but your mother's brash and thoughtless action. People tell you to be strong, but not hard on yourself. Maybe you deserve a treat. For a few seconds, you drift away with this idea, agreeing. You find yourself about to fold up the laptop, getting ready to go downstairs, when you jolt to your senses.

How stupid are you being?

You had your treat, last night. How could you forget? You ate that entire slice of cake, the one your parents shoved in your face. You didn't even chew each bite 30 times, just mangling it in your mouth briefly before swallowing, practically choking it down. You want to start crying again, ashamed, but also saddened by the facts of your life. You can't really remember a time when you could eat a slice of cake and not think twice about it, but you know there must have been one, or you wouldn't have been so fat in the first place.

After the purgatoriom, you begin on the second community to swallow you up. In the past year that you've been a member, you've returned to it desperately every single day. If ever you can't, you go back the next day to catch up. This community doesn't require your interaction. At realthin, a community for 'real thinspiration,' all you have to do is click and admire. Your nose does, and probably always will, wrinkle up at the word 'thinspiration,' but the name isn't important. It's page upon page of thin beauties that snare you and drag you. You can spend countless hours looking, at times crying with jealousy at the hipbones and rib bones and chest bones and wrist bones that poke out and in your face, rubbing in what a failure you are. Your pathetic BMI of 16.6 is laughable, compared to their average of 13. Sometimes, this is how you think: enviously, competitively. Why should you suffer so much just to be fat in comparison?

Still, most of the time, like today, it makes you sad. You see people posting pictures of themselves, when really, they should be in the hospital. It makes you want to promise yourself that you will never end up like that. It makes you want to give it all up, today, and you nearly do; it's nearly achievable, stretching out and touching the tip of that ledge that will haul you up into recovery. But your hands fall by your side as you glance down at the current state of your life. You don't know where you would be without it all. You wouldn't know what to do with yourself, without sit-ups and calorie counting and measurements. It'd be like riding your bike for the first time, only that when your mum lets go this time, you're on the motorway, hurtling down it at 70 miles and hour with no support. You flinch at the idea of our life without everything you've known, everything upon which you depend.

You smile grimly, burying back down into yourself. Maybe one day you'll be able to give it up, but for now, this is all you've got. It's what keeps you going; the reason you get up in the morning is to burn calories, loose weight. The goals you set yourself are achievable, something to which you can look forward, whereas normal girls your age probably anticipate parties or scoring with 'that guy.' But you depend on it, like it depends on your need for support, and that's the way it works. Giving it up would be like making the decision to cut off your legs.

You tell yourself that you really should be doing something productive. You've got three assignments to complete by the end of the week, and so far you've only attempted one. You tell yourself that after this page you'll get up and begin, but it's two hours later when you finally peel yourself away form your scrunched up position on the floor, shutting down and folding away you laptop.

It's the middle of the afternoon, which scares you. The day is already filling up, and you feel unsatisfied with what you've achieved. You find yourself picking up your phone. Its empty screen stares back at you, and the disappointment aches a bit inside. You remember a time when there would always be a text waiting for you. There would always be something going on to which you were invited, someone asking how you were, or someone telling you the gossip from last night.

Now, there are no 'last nights.' You don't go out that much in the evenings any more; it disrupts your routine too much, and disrupting your routine is one of the most dangerous things. There is no wondering how you are, because they all know what you will say. You will smile and say you are fine, and your response will be so dead and lifeless it will freak them out. It unsettles them, so they don't ask questions to which they no longer want the answers. There are no invitations to things for the same reason; your company is worse than your absence. People don't ask you places because they don't want the girl you've become being there; you seem to have a negative influence on the air around you. After all, really all teenagers want to do is shriek and run around and have fun. With you there, it's like there's a brick wall waiting to be run into; you get in the way of their fun. They feel no obligation to the face you still have, reminding them of the friend you used to be, and without you they don't have to feel guilty. There is another reason, because besides the zombie girl you are (calories and routines and fat contents and measurements whirling round and around your head while you stand there, lifeless) there's also that monster inside of you. You know it's there. You see it rearing its head every so often, but you ignore it, wary of its presence.

Your friends know it's there, too. It's there when they irritate you. It's there when they offend you. It's there when they ignore you. It's there when they hurt you. It jumps out of your mouth and pounces on them, tossing and turning its ugly head, ripping into them and everything around you for the few seconds it possesses you. You bite and claw and snap at them for the littlest of things. Then it passes, and you're standing in front of the shocked faces of your friends, the embarrassment too much to hide. You run away for a moment. You can always hear the words 'she's storming off again' falling form their lips as you run to that bathroom stall at the end of the girls' toilets. When you meet up again it is never mentioned, but it's there, in the air between you. It's there when you are looking down at your phone on a Sunday afternoon, wondering why no one wants to meet up with you.

You take a deep breath and decide to call one of your oldest friends. Truth is, you are lonely. You may have just spent hours interacting with your eating disordered community of 'friends,' but they are always, always faceless. Nameless. Scentless. They are less than friends, than people. They are just words typed and read through the hum of a computer screen, and that is all they will ever be. You miss the bond between friends- real live flesh and bones people, flawed personalities and all. By dialing that number, you're reaching out. But she will never know it.

She's distracted. You listen to the life she tells you about: about that "mental drunken party last night, man," and the boy she pulled, and the guy's birthday party to which she's going tomorrow night. That's another thing that aches inside of you. You miss boys -miss flirting and pulling and being invited to their parties- but they make you feel so awfully uncomfortable, you simply can't cope. You're constantly aware that they are judging your looks, your body. You can't bear to be touched by anyone anymore, and so they just see you as this shy, frigid little nobody. It's hard to remember, but you think you used to be cheeky, flirty, and spontaneous before you were chained down to your world of obsession. Guys would comment on your sense of adventure and fun, at any rate. Guys don't compliment you these days, but you hear what they say sometimes. You see their rolled eyes and their looks to your shoulder bones. Some of the blunt ones (ones with whom you used to dance and joke) harshly point out your lack of boobs these days. You fold your arms and frown, but most of the time, they see straight past you. Their eyes are on pretty, loud and confident girls, dancing around the room, laughing.

Each word your friend says makes you twitch inside. You're jealous, but it also stirs a deeper feeling: a feeling of longing inside you. You want that life back- that crazy and wild and carefree teenage life that you should be living. But you tell yourself you just couldn't cope, and as she continues your mind wanders. Eight muffins. Chocolate ones.

Then something unexpected happens. She invites you out for a meal with the others tonight. Two feelings crash into you, and you don't know how to act. There is happiness at the thought of escape from your room, and the muffins, and that dream, but there is also fear- a cold, metallic fear that snares inside you. For you, a meal is a disaster waiting to happen. You tell your friend maybe, and hang up after an awkward goodbye. You spend the next half hour simply sitting there, wondering whether or not you should go.

You try and remember some of the people your friend said were going, and call one of them up. It rings for a long time before her voice flutters on the phone. You ask her what she's up to; she barely seems to hear you. Then you hear laughing in the background, and your stomach lurches as you realize she has people around. You know you shouldn't be doing it, but you test her, and she falls into your trap. She lies, and says she thinks she's going to have a quiet night. Then she says she has to go because she's "uhm…. busy" and she'll speak to you tomorrow. The phone rings dead before you've even bothered to say goodbye. You sit there for a second while it sinks in.

You stifle tears and call another one up. This one reaches the phones more quickly, but it's laughter that greets you, burying the hello. Again, you ask what she's doing. Her reply is like a shock of cold water thrown in your face; she's round the house of the friend you just called. You wonder if she was laughing because of you. Her reply to the question of what she's doing that night is short and cold. She's 'busy, but maybe you could do something next weekend.' You get a sick lurch of satisfaction, knowing what they don't: that you know they're lying. You hang up, and you're crying as you say goodbye.

It only takes a few seconds. Blinded by the hurt of what they've just hit you with, you stumble downstairs and grab the whole pack of eight chocolate muffins. You stuff one into your mouth before you've even left the kitchen. It sticks down your throat, and you have to swallow hard to get it down. You're panting when you reach the stairs, already unwrapping another one. This one is gone in four big bites, which you barely even taste. You might as well be swallowing a lump of plastic.

In your room, you get another one out. You rip into it and stuff it in your mouth, crying and shaking. Your hands are trembling and covered in dark, black crumbs. You're beginning to feel sick. As you get out the fourth muffin, you pause. You look down at something you know you are going to see again in a few minutes, corroded by stomach acid. Your face collapses, and it seems like your insides have been unhooked, crumpling to the bottom of yourself. Your whole body sagging, you feel ashamed of yourself, but there's nothing you can do; that fourth muffin is in your hand, robotically making it's way to your face. You catch sight of yourself in the mirror, and not even crying could express the sadness of what you see. Your eyes are swollen with tears, standing out on your pale, makeup-free face, and your mouth is red, smudged with crumbs. You only make it halfway through the fourth muffin. You wonder what you're doing. A tiny sliver inside of you screams at you to stop- begs you to be sensible, and put the muffins back. The whole packet is a sorry sight now, crumpled and ruined, as it lays half-empty at your feet.

You've eaten two more by the time you stand up. Your stomach, so flat this morning, is now bulging. It stands out so much it looks unreal. Silently, not even crying anymore -just trembling- you reach out for the little red bucket, hidden under mounds of stuff. You rip off four sheets of kitchen roll, put two on the bedroom floor, and place the bucket on top. You get on your hands and knees, positioning your head over the bucket. You open your dry, sore mouth, and the chapped fingers of your left hand reach inside it.

Everything goes eerily silent. This is the moment where time seems to stand still, the moment upon which it all depends.

Two thoughts: Get it all up. Three buckets full at least, but also You don't have to do this. You could stop purging. All you have to do is get up and put that bucket back and it'll all be over. 6 chocolate chip muffins, 200 calories each, apparently. That's 1200. If you don't eat anything else, that would be a normal amount, but you can't stand it. It's over 1000 calories alone, and you can't bring yourself to keep down anything over 1000 calories a day. You look at the clock. The days is nearly over, and outside, the evening sky is reeling in.

With out another thought, your brain shuts down. Your index and middle fingers find their place at the back of your throat, and push.