Amber Raiken

A Dye and Thin Upbringing

Chocolate Strawberries

            No traditional Asian girl would have her hair dyed bleach blonde and be playing “Timber” by Pitbull and Kesha at her sixteenth birthday party. She wouldn’t be worried about if she chose the right song to play when lighting a candle with and dedicated to her sister, either. But if I were a traditional Asian girl, I wouldn’t have this sister. If I didn’t have white parents, I wouldn’t have this big sister worrying about how busy I am in this cold banquet hall.

            I walk further down the hallway, now only a few feet away from the bathroom, and go in front of a full-body mirror. There’s a crack in the mirror, and I can barely even see myself in it because the lights around me are so dim. But still, my sister Iris stands behind me, and removes the tiara from my curled, blonde hair. She hands the tiara to me before pulling the loose hair tie out of my hair that was holding up my half ponytail. She feels the sweat from my head and hairspray from my hair on her hands and wipes it on the side of her short, red dress.

            My eyes are starting to water again because I’m still feeling guilty for leaving my speeches at home. My dad had already gone home and brought the speeches back to the banquet hall. Iris is currently holding them in her hands, yet I’m still crying. I’m still convinced that I ruined something, but Iris keeps saying to me that the crisis is adverted. She’s wiping the tears off my face and the sweat off of my dyed blonde eyebrows. She has wrapped her arms around my waist while standing behind me, trying to squeeze all of this guilt out of me. And despite how hard she’s trying; my mind is still busy feeling guilty. If I was a traditional Asian girl, I wouldn’t be stressing out about this privileged party girl problem. If I was a traditional Asian girl, I wouldn’t have any sweet sixteen party problems.

            “I’m sorry if Mom and Dad made you feel bad about leaving your speeches. They’re really not mad anymore. Did you serve yourself a plate of food for dinner yet?” Iris asks me very sternly, as if it is a requirement for a birthday girl to eat at her party.

            “No, I’m not hungry. I haven’t said hi to Judy yet, or Silvia,” I respond quietly, feeling unable to look Iris in the eye. Greeting my guests really is something that has kept me busy.

            “Those are Mom’s friends. You don’t have to do that. Just sit with your friends and eat.”

            “I know. I just feel too stressed about these speeches right now. I feel too bloated. I don’t want my dress to pop or something.”

            “Amber, it’s too big on you. You’ve been pulling it up all night,” Iris responds with a sigh before grabbing my hand to go back to the rest of the party.

            There is baked ziti, mozzarella sticks, some form of marinated chicken, beef, and macaroni and cheese all on two tables. My best friend, Pemba, is just like me, avoiding the macaroni and cheese section because she hates cheddar cheese. I see Pemba eyeing the mozzarella sticks, which is the only kind of cheese we both like, and I lock arms with her in line, with no intentions on getting food. She begins to clench onto and rub on my arm with the empty plate in her hand. She always did this when she felt like something good was happening. It’s how she responded when we were walking to class two weeks ago, and I told her I got my first 95 in AP Euro ever. Pemba’s been acing this class since the year started. And as my best friend, all I want is more moments where she could be happy for me and proud of me. I couldn’t imagine having this party without her here, even though she is that traditional Asian girl who would never throw a sweet sixteen like this.

            In my high school, the Academy of American Studies, I’m surrounded by girls who have Asian parents, so they were the ones who have a traditional Asian lifestyle. I did not. Pemba’s parents want her to do something in the medical field, are constantly on her ass about her grades in high school, and want her to marry someone who is also Nepali. She also knows that she will not be having a sweet sixteen at all; it isn’t the kind of tradition Nepali people follow. If she does decide to do anything for her birthday in June, it would just be a small gathering of ten people.

            Because Pemba has Asian parents, she says this is one reason why she has to keep them up to date on where she is after school. Because her parents are Asian, she will be wearing a traditional Nepali scarf after our high school graduation ceremony is over, since it is a symbol of congratulations and success. And according to Pemba, it is because my parents aren’t Asian that I get to major in writing when I’m college and I can wear whatever it is that I want.

            On the food line of my party, Pemba then starts pointing at all the other plates as a way to ask if I want her to pass me one. I shake my head, and she raises her eyebrows at me. I could tell she was silently asking me: do I need to be concerned here? Is there something you’re not telling me?

            “I’m good. Too nervous about this stupid candle lightning thing,” I respond graciously, while nodding at my Mom who is signaling me to come over.

            I release Pemba’s arm, and she gives me the most ingenuine smile before I walk away. It was an I’m worried about you smile but I won’t make a big deal about it because your birthday smile. Iris had given me this smile earlier. It’s getting so annoying.  

            While sitting next to all these adults: my mom, my godmother Judy, and my friend’s mom Silvia, I see how simple it is for them to enjoy eating. I am happy to see that everyone thinks the food tastes good. I am happy to be spending the forty-five minutes of dinner at the party bouncing around from table to table, talking to guests, inside of sitting in one place eating. As I bounce, I start to feel really fucking proud of myself.

            My mom is holding onto me tightly as I’m making conversations with all of her friends, having me sit on her lap like baby even though there is an empty chair right next to her. She keeps smiling at me and kissing the back of my head, and I can feel that she is happy because I am happy. I can feel that she has no idea that I have not eaten anything yet.   

            What I’m beginning to love most about this party is that I’m keeping busy. From moving from table to table, to reviewing my speeches to myself for the candle lightning ceremony, to making conversation with two of my friends, I am doing anything but eating. It’s my birthday, I should be able to do whatever I want, and not eating at my party is what I want.

            Worse comes to worst, I can eat something when I get home at 11PM tonight. But now, sitting here, talking to Silvia again about how her daughter Maya, who is sitting three tables down from me, is enjoying her new high school, I was proud to not eat.  I can control myself when to say no to food if that is what I want. I have become no good at saying no to people, especially my best friends, when they ask me for favors. I mean, that’s what friends are for.

            But saying no to food wasn’t like saying no to friends. I didn’t feel guilty. If I disappoint my friends, they could walk out on me. The first time I got in a fight with Pemba, I felt like I was guilty of being a bad friend, the kind of friend who will never be able to keep a best friend in her life. Even though Pemba told me that my thoughts weren’t true once we made up, I still felt this guilt. My mom thinks this fear has something to do with the fact that my biological mother left me in front of a police station on the station I was born, but I’m not 100% sure that’s relevant.

            I never felt this kind guilt when I didn’t eat food. The fact that I wasn’t eating wouldn’t hurt anyone else’s feelings or cause me to be abandoned by my friends. Food will always be there once I’m wanting it. It won’t get mad at me for not eating it, so why should I feel guilty? Why do I need to try to enjoy it today when pieces of me are still craving to be thinner in this gold dress that’s already too big on me?

            Iris sits at our table comfortably eating her macaroni and cheese, not feeling an ounce of guilt for eating three meals a day. She gets hangry when she goes long periods of time without eating. On this day, I can tell that eating is a relief for her because of how busy she’s been making this party happen. She hasn’t questioned me too much on why I am not eating because she knows it really is a busy day. She is having no problem feeling alive and well today. She never does. I’m jealous of her, even on my birthday.

            And when it is time to for Iris to light the second of my sixteen candles with me, since it is dedicated to her, we both start crying. With both our arms hanging onto the one candle that is lighting all the others, my father takes a picture of us both looking down and smiling. Before Iris goes back to her seat, she kisses the top of my head and once again adjusts my crown.

            Now that the candle-lighting ceremony is over, I feel like I could eat something, even though I’m not completely in the mood for anything big, probably because my stomach is so empty right now. However, dinner is starting to be cleared from the big tables and the desserts are coming out. The first thing I see on the table is the one thing I asked my mom for at this party: a chocolate fountain. The fountain looks tall and the melted chocolate looks like it is flowing out of the fountain quite nicely, and the bottom of it looks so fancy with its silver rim and base. Even though this wasn’t anything close to a gourmet dessert, I smile and jump up in excitement when I see it, while squeezing Pemba’s hand and pulling on her arm. She starts to jump with me, but I can tell she doesn’t care about it nearly as much as I do.

            Pemba, and Alesia and Yassmin, my two other best friends from high school, all got into the dessert line as a group. Pemba and I both had the same thing on our individual plates, two chocolate-covered strawberries. I don’t want to do more than that, if I do, I will feel bad for having dessert before and without dinner. But the fact that two chocolate-covered strawberries will be all I have eaten so far for the day is okay because it’s my birthday.

            When I take the first bite of this chocolate-covered strawberry, the dessert tastes better than it ever has before. The scent of the chocolate is overwhelming but in the best way possible. It has that milk chocolate kind of taste that I adore, and I can feel the creaminess of this taste melt in my mouth. Strawberries always taste both sweet and tangy to me, but this time, it tastes more so on the tangier side even with the chocolate, and I absolutely love it. I am so happy eating this strawberry that I just want to finish the rest of it in one bite, and I easily could, but I don’t want to completely ruin my lipstick or look too un-lady like at this very formal party. But what I do know is that I am happy to be eating in this moment. I have made the right choice to stop being busy because this dessert tastes so good, even though the only reason why it tastes so good is because my body is so starving. My stomach is still growling, and I know it will continue to do so throughout the night because these strawberries won’t be enough for it. But I don’t care. I lift up the strawberry for another bite.

            “It’s picture time!” Iris says to me in her high-pitched excited voice. She’s standing in front of me now waving her professional camera up in her hands.

            “Right now?” I ask disappointedly. I could feel some sort of exhaustion in my voice. But I refuse to be tired during the hour and a half that was left of the party.

            “I mean- it doesn’t have to be. It’s just the DJ is going to start up again soon and everyone has been asking me to take pictures of you with them. Is now a bad time?”

            Iris is looking at Pemba when she says this, as if she has all the answers. Pemba is exchanging a should we be worried look with my sister, then she gives me her is there something wrong eyes? It’s her if there is something wrong why haven’t you told me or Iris eyes. I nod in response. I really am fine. My stomach growling is fine. I won’t say no to Iris on this. I won’t worry Pemba. As I walk away from the table, I see my two chocolate strawberries sitting there. The chocolate strawberries that I should have finished eating by now. My body is finally getting hungry, even though I don’t have time to be hungry.

            Within fifteen minutes, I get pictures with Alina, Khiabet, Arjun, Julie, Hannah, Alyssa, Arianne, Justin, Ilan, Gabby, and Rebekah. Despite the fact that none of these people can be categorized as my good friends, they are still here for me. So really, I can’t say no when all they are asking for out of me is pictures.

            Suddenly, the chandelier lights of the ballroom go off and the party lights come on. Alina is trying to pull me over the dance floor, but my feet are killing me. Five-inch heels are no fun for a girl who still has kids size feet. I signal her to go and that I’ll meet her there after I bring my shoes back to the table. The truth is I still want my chocolate strawberries.

            When I get to the table, the caterer is clearing plates off the two tables down from mine, so my strawberries are still right where I left them. I think that maybe I can sneak two more quick bites before going back to Alinq. However, Yassmin sees me seeing alone for at most eight seconds as I’m taking my shoes off and pull me out of my chair. I follow Yassmin with a smile and once we reach the dance floor, I still have my eyes on those strawberries. Yassmin then spins me around while we are dancing, and when I turn again to look at my table, my two strawberries are gone.

Blue In a Can

            I know how to ignore my two best friends when it is necessary. While sitting in a Starbucks that is a block away from our flat in London for the semester, my roommate, Marie starts tapping the top of my laptop to get my attention. My other roommate, Emma, is already putting her laptop back in her bag. 

            “We’re going to go make dinner before we go out tonight, you’re coming out, right?” Marie asks me with her a low but also stern I’m concerned voice. Pemba’s I’m concerned voice is very similar to hers too.

            “Yes, of course.”

            “Then you should come back with us now to make dinner, my dude,” Emma, somewhat demands me to do.

            “So, you can’t not eat. You have to make yourself something before we go, please. Katie will nag you about this too. Okay?” Marie asks me before grabbing her backpack.

            “Yes, I promise.”

            Emma and Marie smile at me as they stand up from the table, and while I’m still looking up at them, Marie gives me a pat on the head.

            I have known Emma and Marie for only two months now, but they have become my best friends. There are three other girls who live with us in this flat, Sidney, Eliana, and Katie. But the bonds that I have with Emma, Marie, and Katie are the ones that are actually growing. It feels easy to talk to them about so much and to just find things to constantly laugh about. It never felt this way with the friends I made during my freshman year of college. However, there’s only so much they know about me and my eating habits, and there is only so much I am capable of telling them.

            I can tell them that even though I am twenty, my stomach can only finish meals that are the size of the ones on the kid’s menu. I can tell them that because I am short and because I weigh less than 105 pounds, it is okay for me to be eating one meal a day. I can tell them that I am fine doing one meal a day, and truly mean it.

            However, no matter what I say, there is no changing the fact that they can see right through me. They know that the one thing that keeps me from wanting to go out is the fact that I have to eat dinner. Sometimes they laugh along with me when I say, “I don’t have time for eating” or “I don’t think eating is necessary.” They know how problematic it sounds, I know how problematic it sounds, but it is not their job to fix me. Yet that doesn’t change the fact that they want to help me. They really just want me to eat.

            But I don’t want them telling me what to do. I don’t want them to get mad at me because I don’t know yet that this is disordered eating. I don’t know this right now, but I will come to the realization that I am broken. I will come to see that no matter how much someone tells me to eat, it’s up to me to change it. I do now know this right now, but soon, I will come to the discovery that not eating could kill me. I will eventually question if that is what I want. Am I not eating because I want to die? As of right now, the answer is no. As of right now, there is no answer to why I am not eating. The simplest answer would be that I’m accustomed to not eating normally. But that’s also a mother fucking bullshit answer. Has my need to be skinny gone too far? As of right now, probably.

            The eating disorder that I do not know that I have is the one thing I want to change about myself. I want to be able to cook stuffed peppers in our apartment like Marie does. Or accidently put rice in a pot when cooking but forget to put the water in it like Eliana did. I want to see eating as a necessity, but I’m just not there yet. My mentality is not ready to be changed.

            However, for the next few hours of this night, there is something I can change. As I walk out of the door at Starbucks, I head over to Boots, the local pharmacy in Bayswater. I step in and I grab the can that makes me happy.

            This can of one wash only blue dye is a part of our theme for Halloween, that being girls wearing all black but with colored hair.

            Throughout the last eight years of my life, I had made many attempts at dying my hair, most of which were successful. From light brown, blonde, red, purple, and jet black, every time I did this, I told myself I was doing it because I needed at change. But I didn’t really need anything, I just felt so much satisfaction when changing my hair color. I was in control of changing myself just like I was in control of not eating. The pride I feel in not eating was the pride I felt when dying my hair. 

            It’s been a few months since I did some kind of color in my hair, and the fact that I am dying my hair blue later tonight gave me some freedom. I’m feeling excited because this is a change that everyone could see. This change makes me feel like I’m not boring.  

            I walk up the six flights of stairs to our apartment and enter it feeling out of breath, just like the five other girls do every time they walk through the door.

            Marie smiles at me with her headphones in. I can hear and smell the broccoli, onions, and peppers. It smells very good, I find it quite tempting actually, almost too tempting. It makes me mad at myself for not trying hard enough to cook. But then I remind myself that I’m honestly a lot busier with school work then I expect. I don’t need to do that. I’m too busy to cook like Marie can. I like the smell of food, but I don’t really need it.

            Once Marie is done with the kitchen, I go in to make some Pesto Pasta, peppers, and tomatoes so everyone would just shut up about my eating. It feels like someone is breathing over my shoulder. I think to myself that it is definitely Katie, who takes the role of the mom in our flat, looking over me to make sure that there is actually pasta in the pot and not just boiling water. It feels like the breathing just keeps getting heavier, so I turn around, but there is no one there.

            It is true that you have become something for your friends to worry about. How could they not worry? You eat dinner at 9PM like it is no problem, after going the entire day without having a bite of food. Katie, Marie, and Eliana never even see you drink water in class. Do you drink water? You don’t even carry a water bottle. When Eliana asks why you are making dinner so late, you don’t even have an answer. Time difference would be a bullshit one and you know it. You don’t give a shit about eating. You would pick not drinking and not eating over drinking and eating. You’re getting far too excited about the four hours of change you’re going to have for the night. Your heart is set on that blue color in this can.

            Later in the night, Marie, Emma, Katie, and I step into the Piccadilly Institute with our colored hair, and I feel noticeable. Even though this dye will be gone in the morning, it makes me feel different, just like dye always had before.

            A boy in the bar smiles at me from the distance. A tall blonde who I think is British. Emma sees it and signals our group to move closer to where he is. I can’t tell what color his eyes are because it is dark on this dance floor, but they keep on looking at me. I give him a small smile back and push my hair back while dancing, even though it wasn’t in my face.  This isn’t the first time I’ve flirted with boys like this in London. I know what I am doing. He’s starting to walk over to us and I know what he is going to ask.

            “Can I buy you a drink?” he screams into my ear, despite the fact that I can barely hear him because of the music. He’s looking down at me now, standing in the middle of our circle. Marie and Emma are on each side of him and Katei is behind him. All three of them were giving me a “go for it” nod.

            “Yeah, sure,” I respond with confidence. I’ve never felt confident talking to random guys before. Was the hair doing this to me?

            At the bar, we are attempting to make small talk in the best way we could. His name was Marco, a twenty-six-year-old man from Italy and is shocked to have met a girl from the United States. I know the chances of me ever seeing him again were slim to none, but he’s good enough guy to talk to. And then I start to think, as Marco rambles on about how much he loves to drink a good beer with pasta, how this time, I feel bolder with him then I did with any other guy.

            Am I starting to think that the blue hair is what is making this older guy like me? He seems much too attractive for me, even though Emma had said he wasn’t. Even though Marie had said a few weeks ago that I was a difficult person not to like, I feel like having dyed hair made me more likeable. Because I’m not me. Anytime I had dyed my hair in high school, I was happy to not be me, and I feel like that is what made me attractive to Marco. This pretty and unnatural hair color is who the twenty-six-year-old wanted to talk to. And I really hate to admit it, but the I’ve lived my life dying my hair and expecting attention from it, and this night is no exception. I like the attention I would get from boys, or even friends, because of the looks of my hair. I wanted to be noticed in high school and every time I actually went through with that change I told myself I needed, I always looked forward to the comments and acknowledgment I would get because of it. Sounds pretty selfish, vapid, and vain, right? It is, and I hate that this is something I am still fishing for.

            Emma walks over to us at the bar, giving her are you okay eyes? and I nod. Marco offers to buy Emma a drink too, and she nods her head quite fast. The red in her hair is shimmering from the light of the bar too. Her eyes light up the second Marco hands her the cup of free alcohol. When in London, it’s the little things that appease you.

            Marco, Emma, and I walk away from the bar and back to the dance floor. Marco stands behind me, smiling at my friends, waiting for me to turn around to kiss him. I feel his hands around my waist and enjoy the attention. This 6’1 boy didn’t hesitate to bend down and kiss the girl whose ass he’s trying to touch, the girl who’s barely 5’1. And of course, I didn’t decline it. But I know we aren’t going home together. I may be feeling bold, but not bold enough to be that girl tonight.

            We dance and he breathes his whisky breath in my ear. He never compliments the blue in my hair.  

You’re Not Sick

Pt. 1

            In one week, there are a list of items I wish I could throw up:

            -Chicken Pad Thai

            -Cheesy Garlic Bread

            -Chicken Pesto Pizza

            -Water

            It’s the first Monday since spring break ended, and the only time where I can be alone in the living room of my apartment in Ithaca is at 11PM.

            “I’ve been crying all day, Pemba. Jesse and I ended whatever the fuck we were,” I say to her as I’m sobbing through the phone.

            “Please don’t be so hard on yourself with this. I know how much you liked him. This isn’t your fault,” Pemba responds with her reassuring mom voice. And I just wish she was here now, sitting next to me, playing with my hair gently like she always did when we’d cry to each other every day about problems much simpler than this.

            Instead of crying with me, she’s in her apartment in Buffalo, studying hard for her midterms. Yet she take pause for me when I text her saying that I feel so sick to my stomach because of how upset I am over this boy. Since then, we’ve been talking on the phone and my mind has just been blanking the entire time. I haven’t eaten anything yet for the day, so everything just feels out of focus, but this isn’t an abnormal feeling. However, hearing her say soon you’ll get better, you deserve better than this, I love you and I’m here for you, always, is all I needed for now. It was the only form of comfort I wanted when ending this three-month whatever thing I had with Jesse. The first guy I thought I could see myself falling in love with. The first guy who I ever really became vulnerable with me. The first guy in two years who didn’t just want me for sex. Or maybe he did, but he was really good at hiding it.

            After running through these memories to Pemba, I tell her that I love her but that I have to go. It is midnight and I have not eaten dinner yet.

            My three roommates are all upstairs in the beds, fast asleep. They aren’t getting hungry at midnight because they ate dinner at 6PM and lunch at noon, neither of which I did.

            I go into the refrigerator, which reeks of Steph’s, one of my roommates, rotting chicken, to find something to eat. I don’t really have an interest in cooking, so I grab my leftover chicken pad thai from the top self and put it in the microwave. There is a decent amount of it left in that contained, since I only had two bites of it yesterday when Steph and I had ordered it.

            Once my meal is done heating up, I bring it to the living room couch and very quickly eat while watching an episode of Friends that I’ve already seen six times before. I’m eating fast because I’m stressed about the long chapter I have to read for my Poetics class that I’m still yet to finish. I’m eating fast because I really miss Pemba. She didn’t come home for winter or thanksgiving break this year. I’m eating fast because I’m mad at Jesse. I’m eating fast because I miss the minimal time I had spent with him in the course of a few months. I’m eating fast because I’m angry that I am the one who ended it, since he failed to communicate with me at school.

            Finishing that container of chicken pad Thai feels like stress eating, but in actuality, I’m just eating dinner. And five minutes after I emptied the container, I feel my stomach start to growl. This does not make sense. I just ate. I don’t want to eat anymore. I won’t eat anymore.

            I slowly walk up the stairs to go to the bathroom, trying to step as softly as I could so my feet wouldn’t make a thud on the metal. The floor of the bathroom has been absurdly sticky for weeks and none of us could figure out why or find the patience to clean it. My white sock gets stuck to the floor the second I stand in the of the toilet.     

            I feel a pain in my stomach once again, almost like someone is punching the inside of it back and forth. I begin to sob once again as I make my way to sitting on the bathroom floor. Every part of my body feels like it is going numb. Was this because of the food? Did eating really make me feel this way? Or am I not eating enough? I hate myself for finishing all that food.

            I force myself to cough while leaning over the bathroom toilet, as if something is stuck in my throat when it wasn’t. I keep thinking that something is going to come out of me, but there’s no luck. So instead, I take two fingers and push them down my throat. As hard as I could. But then I stop myself because I don’t know how to force myself to throw up. I have to stop because I don’t want anyone to hear me. I have to stop because this meant that the guilt I felt for eating is starting to become real. So, I decide to just go to sleep.          

            I wake up the next morning pretending none of this ever happened. I put my red lipstick and hoop earrings on, trying to be happy. I smile at myself in the mirror and looking happy works, but the feeling isn’t there. I still feel sick. I think I am sick. I don’t know what an eating disorder really is. I don’t want this to be an eating disorder, but I know that’s what it’s leading to. I see Steph rising up from her bed as I begin to put on my shoes.

            “Amber, don’t forget to take the Student Senior Council signatures form with you around campus today. We need to get like a total of 200 to run,” Steph tells me in an I’m just waking up kind of voice.

            “Yeah, sure. How many do we have so far?” I ask while grabbing the paper off her desk.

            “I got 25 in the last two days, and I think Julia is also getting some today.”

            I nod at Steph and gave her a wave goodbye. I’m excited to have something like this to do today. Something to keep me busy. Busy enough not to eat. I’ve found a reason not to eat lunch. No, I shouldn’t be thinking this. But I can’t stop thinking like this.

            I don’t bother asking for signatures during my education class, I don’t know anyone there, let alone seniors. When this class is over, I go to the pub, per usual, and wait for Marie, Emma, and Meredith to come sit with me.

            Meredith is always first. She places her lunchbox on the table and sits in the seat across from me. She has homemade vegan chili, cooked vegetables, and some carrot sticks. She’s fantastic at both cooking and eating healthy.

            I hand her the page of signature to sign, since I had texted her about this the day before. After she signs it, she takes a spoon out of her bag to start eating her chili. Next comes Emma, who is already eating an apple before she sits down. She’s also really good at bringing her own lunch. Emma looks over at the paper Meredith has just finished signing and grabs it to put down her name, trying not to get any pieces of her apple on this paper. Emma’s really good at staying healthy. When Marie comes to the table, she has a salad in her hand that she bought from the pub. She starts to glance over at the paper Emma is signing.

            “It’s for senior class council,” I say to Marie with pride.

            “Oh wow, you actually said yes to doing that? I thought you didn’t want to,” Marie asks with this somewhat puzzled look on her face. Marie knows that I’m the one to bite off more than I can chew. I know she is thinking this, and she isn’t wrong.

            “Yeah, but it’s a good resume builder. Who knows if we’ll actually win.”

            Emma passes the paper over to me. Marie can’t sign it because she’s still a junior. Every begins to eat their lunch except me, I don’t have the time. I take the giant book I have for Poetics class out of my bag. I can’t keep pushing this reading back any longer.

            “Are you just not going to eat?” Meredith asks, in a little too concerned of a voice. I look at her hard. We are not close enough yet for her to be talking to me about this.

            “Uh-no, I’m not hungry,” I say.

            Meredith gives Emma a look. Meredith never saw the way I would or wouldn’t eat in London, so the look wasn’t unjustifiable. Emma didn’t give any look back. She knows this isn’t here place.

            “Have you already eaten?”

            Meredith was starting to get on my nerves.

            “No, I’m not really one to do breakfast or lunch.”

            “I don’t think that’s very healthy.’

            “No, probably not.”

            It’s now silent at the table, but Marie breaks the ice and brings up something else. Anything else. I feel like I’m going to start crying. Like Meredith is going to turn my closest friends against me because I’m not eating. I don’t even know her that well, yet this assumption is sticking with me. Marie gives me a half-smile, knowing that I am starting to get upset.

            We leave the table to go to class, and I have class until 3:50PM, so I won’t have enough time to eat before then. Once class ends, I go into work at 4PM at the Neapolitan Café in the pub. I’m going to be spending the next three hours making coffee and flatbreads. My supervisor Bill, who is a sixty-seven-year old guy, is my second grandpa and best friend. When I wasn’t approved to live off campus and had to get my name taken off my lease two weeks ago, I cried to him about it in the back of the café, where no worker or customer would notice. I vent to him about all the times Steph is driving me insane. He lets me get away with giving free food and drinks to my friends. Him and Marie make jokes together about how short I am, and I don’t get the slightest bit offended.

            Whenever I’m feeling hungry, after hours of not eating before my shift, Bill lets me stand in the back and eat during times when we are slow. I can’t handle a full meal right now, I don’t want to. So, I grab a bagel and a cup of lemonade and bring it to the back. I take bites of it throughout my shift but couldn’t manage to finish the whole thing once the shift had ended.

            Bill tells me to make myself a pizza or something for dinner before I leave, but I say no thanks. I tell him that I’ll make myself something at home. I have a meeting in four minutes, and I don’t want to be eating a big dinner there.

            Once the meeting ended, I go back to my apartment at 8:15PM. My roommate Taylor are there, but my other roommates, Steph and Katie, aren’t. Taylor has already eaten dinner, but I haven’t seen her all day. We start talking for about an hour about nothing that has much significance. I want to keep talking to her instead of making dinner, it’s keeping me busy.

            When Taylor asks me if I have to read my bible tonight, which is the nickname she has for my Poetics book. I quickly respond with a disappointed sounding yes. I then make my way up to my room to finish the reading and write the response. I can just make dinner after I finish, it’s only 30 pages to read.

            12AM hits, and after many distractions, I finally finish my work. And now that it’s finished, dinner doesn’t feel as important anymore. My body is starting to ache from exhaustion, or maybe starvation. My stomach is starting to make noises and my eyes just can’t seem to stay open. I just feel so weak. I take that as a sign that my body is telling me to go not to bed. It is not telling me to go eat.

High School Lunches

            During our freshmen year, Pemba and I make our way down to anywhere but the cafeteria during the forty-five minutes we have for lunch. According to Principal Bussell, the fact that our high school is made up of two campuses in quite wonderful. But really, because we have these two campuses, all the students have to go down four flights of stairs in the north building just to have class in the south building across the street, and then seventy-nine minutes later, we have to make our way back to the north building for our next class.

            And of course, the elevators in the north building are completely off limits to students. They would be too overcrowded if students attempted to go in them. It is the Tuesday of my eighth week in high school, and Pemba and I aren’t taking the crosswalk to go to the south from the north building like we’ve been told to. We quickly rush across the street before anyone can see us, pushing our way through the cars in front of us that are parked way to close together.

            After we show our school IDs to the security guards in order to get into the north building, I see my French teacher, Mrs. Ghafary, walking towards the elevator. She’s the teacher who annoys me the most but also the teacher I want to like me the most. She’s also a dean of the school, and after French class last week, she pulled me aside to tell me how inappropriate it was to be wearing a shirt that showed an inch of my stomach. “I know it’s nice to be young and have nice body,” she says, “but you don’t need to be showing it off in school like this.” I thought her comment was inappropriate because she knew absolutely nothing about my body. She knew nothing about why I look like this. But I wasn’t going to tell anyone that I felt like this. Was any guidance counselor really going to defend me over the school dean?

            Mrs. Ghafary gives me a fake wave and smile when Pemba and I cross paths with her, and I do the same back. When Pemba and I make our way to the third floor, we take a break from walking up these steps. A break from the big crowds. And all I could think about is how fucking nice it must be for Ms. Ghafary to not have to worry about these crowds. To not be winded by four flights of stairs. Ghafary isn’t worrying about the fact that this walk up the stairs shows how out of shape she is and how fragile her body is starting to become. On her elevator, she isn’t thinking about how much her backpack has been hurting her shoulder for the last two hours. Lucky bitch.

            Once we get to the fourth floor, Pemba and I find our usual table outside of Mr. Deng’s, her geometry teacher’s, classroom. As we start to sit down, we see our two other best friends, Alesia and Yassmin, making their way towards us from all the way down the hall.

            Because every freshman at this school has lunch at the same time on Tuesdays and Thursdays, the four of have created our own cafeteria. One that is less crowded and filled with more laughs anyway. And in this cafeteria, just like in the usual one we eat it Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, everyone has lunch except me.

            Yassmin and Alesia had snuck over to Green Tea Deli across the street to each get a bacon, egg, and cheese sandwich. Alesia also bought a peach Snapple and Yassmin got a bag of Lay’s potato chips. Ms. Ghafary is known for catching freshmen sneaking into the deli to buy lunch, and if she had caught Yassmin, who is also one of her students, and Alesia, she’d rip them a new one. Pemba is eating these homemade Lo Mein and vegetables that her Mom made for her and her sister for lunch.

            I’m surrounded by all this food, yet I don’t feel tempted to eat it. Lunch doesn’t feel really important to me in high school, primarily because nothing about high school lunches seem appetizing to me. The first day of school, I paid $2.50 for a lunch in the cafeteria that consisted of a cold peanut butter and jelly sandwich, apple slices in a plastic bag, and a Greek yogurt that I know I wouldn’t eat. And it tasted just as terrible as it looked, on a nice Styrofoam platter, so why would I make my parents pay for something this gross?

            There were days when I did eat lunch. I would eat some of a bagel with cream cheese from the deli before school started and the save the rest for later. But today wasn’t that day. Today, I just don’t want to eat lunch. I don’t feel hungry. My mom knows that I don’t feel hungry for lunch, and she wishes more than anything that I did. But she can’t come with me to school every day and make sure I’m eating. It’s not like my doctor is saying I’m unhealthy or underweight. I just don’t do lunch. I see a lot of kids in the cafeteria just sit at lunch and not eat, so wouldn’t that just make me like everyone else? And besides, that makes my mother’s homecooked meals from dinner that evening about ten times more exciting because at that point, I’m so ready to eat.

            While my three friends are eating, I start to take notes in my agenda on what I have due for tomorrow. Algebra questions, living environment reading, and global history reading.

            “You didn’t bring lunch today, again?” Yassmin asks while stick chewing on one of her bites from her sandwich.

            “Not today, I didn’t really want to bring anything from home and school lunch here is trash,” I respond to her, just waiting for her to give me respond with, that’s not healthy.

            “That’s okay. High school lunches are overrated. This is the only day so far this week where I haven’t skipped lunch too.”

            I smile at Yassmin before going into a conversation with Alesia about how awful Mr. Best was in our Living Environment class this morning. I never even noticed that Yassmin did this too. I should have noticed that one of my new best friends was so similar to me too. Yassmin and I are both fairly reserved people, yet when it comes to talking to each other one on one, we’re very open with each other. She knows that not eating lunch was just my norm,

 and in this moment, she isn’t giving me shit for it. In fact, she’s doing her best to just normalize this habit that is so unhealthy. She is one of my favorite people to talk about my eating habits because she has been able to see them a part of me, not as something that hurts me. When I come to lunch every day, without a lunch to eat, and she doesn’t try to make me not eating the butt of any jokes, like some of our other friends.  

            But during lunch the next day, back in that cafeteria, those other friends didn’t know how to normalize my eating habits. They always think of it as something funny. A bad quality about me that just makes me. They didn’t know how to be like Yassmin.

            I’ve recently started dating someone named Nicko from my Living Environment class. In the beginning of the year, he sat on the opposite side of the room from me. But once we started going to the lab instead, he decided to sit next to me and my friends. He was somewhat flirty during class prior to this, but not enough to think anything too serious of it.

            But still, I bring him to lunch that Friday to meet my friends because he had asked to sit with us, even though the two of us are still in that awkward new relationship phase. When he sits down at our table in the cafeteria, I want him to be talking to Pemba, Alesia, and Yassmin. The three people who’ve gotten to know me the most. But instead, Lina and Kimberly, two girls who I became friends with through my algebra class, took control of the conversation.

            “You’re not eating lunch?” Nicko asks me with sympathy in his voice as he unwraps a peanut butter and jelly sandwich that he bought from the cafeteria.

            “Please, Amber, eat lunch! That’s so cute!” Lina says, bursting out with laughter, before I could even respond to Nicko myself.

            “How’s that cute, Lina?” I can feel Nicko put his arm around my waist and clench onto my hip. Lina’s worrying him for no good reason here and we’re too new of a couple for him to be worrying at all.

            “Amber doesn’t do lunch! It’s crazy!” Kimberly says to him with her hands flaring up in the air to emphasize that I do not eat lunch every day.

            “When does Amber eat? We have no idea! Maybe she’s just scared of food!” Lina then butts in to say really loudly. Lina, Kimberly, and their three other friends at this table find this joke hilarious. Alesia, Yassmin, and Pemba are smiling and laughing along with this joke too. Leaving me to feel somewhat betrayed. I thought you understood, Yassmin?

            “But babe, you’re so pretty. You don’t have to worry about your body. Everything about you is pretty, especially your hair. Not many Asians can work light brown hair like that,” Nick says to me sweetly before giving me an uncomfortable hug.

Narrow Beauty

            The only form of exercise Pemba and I know how to do in the gym is use the elliptical and treadmill. All around us, there are women in their twenties and above doing perfect squats and lunges, moves that Pemba and I didn’t ever bother trying to attempt in our $3 Forever 21 leggings and crop tops.

            After an hour at the gym, we go back the locker room to get our stuff. And the entire time we are there, we don’t see any other sixteen-year-old girls. It seems like we are the youngest ones here out of every woman at this gym.

            “Want to go to the Chipotle across the street?” Pemba asks me as we are leaving the gym.

            “Dude we just did a workout, is fast food really the best idea?”

            “Um-yes!”

            “I don’t really want anything, but I’ll wait in line with you if you’re cool with getting it to go.”

            While Pemba and I are in the Chipotle line, my phone lights up with a notification from Facebook Messenger.

            “Who texted?” Pemba asks, putting her head over my shoulder to look at my phone.

            “No one,  just my mom’s friend wishing me a late birthday,” I respond, putting my phone in my coat pocket.

            Once Pemba starts to order her bowl, I look at who the Facebook Message was from. It was a new message from Nicko, ex-boyfriend Nicko, saying, hey sexy, are you home?

            I’m out right now, but I’ll text you later, I respond.

            I feel bad lying to Pemba about this, but I honestly feel ashamed for talking to Nicko again, at least in the ways I’ve been talking to him lately. We broke up during the end of freshman year, but we’ve been video chatting and messaging each other like a couple for the last six months. Not really a couple, but more so like so kinky and horny teenagers.

            When I got home, I’m flooded by texts with him saying, I wish we fucked when we were dating. I’ve always loved your ass. You were just at the gym, right? That’s so hot. I would kill to see you working out in that body. I’m hard just thinking about it, babe.

            I gave him my usual response, you’re so hot, too. I wish I could be next to you. You turn me on too. I didn’t mean any of this, but I am getting enjoyment out of these compliments and the attention. He’s calling me his babe again, and the fact that he still sees me as beautiful is catching my eye. No other guy in high school has called me beautiful except Nicko. Last week, he sent me texts about how he wanted to play with my gorgeous, blonde hair. And despite how much I enjoy hearing all this, there is still this floating question of what all this really means.

            As we’re texting, I’m starting to wish that my body wasn’t everything he wants because then maybe, we could have a shot at starting a real relationship again. Is he just calling me babe again because he thinks I’m pretty? Is he just so turned on by this skinny body that he knows nothing about? The body of the girlfriend he watched get shit on for not eating enough last year. He doesn’t know that I keep telling my body that skipping lunch is not a big deal because I’m still doing well in school. This body is not sick or underweight. But it still feels weak pretty often. Me and my body need to take two-hour naps before dinner because I come home from school so exhausted. It’s not like I even do that much during the school days, so why does my body feel so tired? Would Nicko find this body so pretty if he knew how exhausted it was from not eating sometimes? If he did know, maybe he would stop associating this body to the pretty hair he wants to play with.

            Or maybe I’m the one who is associating my body with my hair. Because I know I wouldn’t like me if I wasn’t pretty. I know that being thin and having dyed hair makes me feel like one of the attractive girls in this crowd of pretty, white blondes in high school. I would never have the white and clear skin that they have, nor the blue eyes, yet this is something that I find so pretty. In all the movies I’ve seen about high school, it’s always the skinny white girl who gets to fall in love, never the Asian. The Asian girl would be lucky to even have more than a supporting character role.

            When I look in the mirror in my bedroom after going to the gym, I lift up my shirt to stare at my stomach. I wish I could see my rib cage, or at least that the flab coming from my stomach was gone. I want it to get to the point that I am so skinny that the doctor needs to tell me to gain weight. But when I stare back at myself, touching my ribs, the body fat is still there. And feeling disappointed in myself starts all over again.

            As I’m still looking in the mirror, I hear my phone, which is sitting on my bed, make a ding. It’s another steamy text about my body from Nicko.

            You should send me something babe, right now, his message says.

            What do you mean? I text back, even though I have a feeling I know what it is he’s asking for.

            You know, like nudes

            Are you fucking kidding me?

            Don’t get mad, it’s really hot. I’ll send you something back if you want ;)

            Nicko, I don’t want to do that. I’m sorry

            Come on, really?

            Yes, really.

            So you were just texting me back all hot and heavy for nothing? Why are all girls such a fucking tease?

            Fuck you, Nicko.

            After that message, I decide to block him on Facebook and also his phone number. That night, I fell asleep feeling guilty. Did wanting that attention from Nicko make me a tease? Yes. I want to be a hot, pretty like blonde, and to him I was. But the fact that he wanted to see that for himself made me feel more disgusting than ever. However, I still want to be have that nice body because maybe, someone who wasn’t Nicko, would respect me and love me for it. My head has become so wrapped around my body and beauty ever since I left middle school.

            I was never in the category of pretty in middle school. Kids would tell me that Iris was the pretty one in the family, so it was clear that we weren’t blood related. Maybe I just wanted to be pretty for once. Truth be told, I know I care more about maintaining my light-colored hair and getting that rib-cage showing body more than Nicko ever would. All Nicko wanted was the naked body of some girl to jerk off to, and the flab of my stomach that continues to stress me out, is probably something that has never crossed his mind.

Home Economics

            Sorry. Amber has to go eat something for a change, Silkie texts to Yassmin. Silkie, Iris, and I are sitting in the Pizza Hut that is a block away from my house, and Silkie is refusing to give me back my phone until I eat the personal pizza she put in front of me.

            YAAAAAY ambers actually eating ! :O, Yassmin responds to Silkie. I’m starting to get irritated that their doing this fucking joke about my eating habits on my phone.

            THANK YOU. You know, I like you.

            Right now, Silkie and Yassmin, I don’t fucking like either of you. I snatch my phone back from Silkie while she is in the middle of a conversation with Iris. She starts to widen her eyes after I do this, but then I hold up a piece of pizza and continue to eat it. This shuts her up and gives me the chance to put my phone in my pocket.

            Silkie has been my best friend for over ten years now, and I trust her more than anyone. We used to act out the Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty, and even music videos from High School Musical when were little. When we were nine, we rode our bikes around my neighborhood together, talking about how excited we were to be grown-ups with kids of our own, kids who would be the best of friends. 

            When my thoughts of suicide arose during the eighth grade, she was the one I turned to for comfort. I would send her texts saying, sometimes I wish I wasn’t alive, or I’m not sure why I exist in this world anymore. Twenty minutes later, she called me saying she was going to come over and mentioned that if I ever were to try to commit suicide, she would kill me. Sure, this wasn’t the best response, but I know the thought of me dying terrifies her. I know I had shaken her up in the past with this fact. But it did reassure me to know how much I did matter to someone other than the Mom, Dad, and sister I have in my life.

            But as Silkie, Iris, and I are sitting together, it feels as if what I really want doesn’t matter either of thme. I don’t want to eat. I don’t want to be sitting in this Pizza Hut. I tell her that I had lunch about six hours ago with my mom. It was half a chicken sandwich from a café the two of us went to. Silkie shakes her head and tells me that I need more. We have just finished our freshman year at two separate high schools, how could she possibly know what I need?

            As we begin to walk back to my house from Pizza Hut, the sun is starting to set. The three of us are in awe of this pink, purple, and hints of orange sky. The kind of sunsets that you only get in the summer. It is the sunset that remind us that summer is really beginning. 

            “Let’s make a music video!” Silkie asks in excitement. She’s looking at Iris to film it. I’m looking down at my phone, still mad at them both.

            “Sure! What song?” Iris responds in excitement. I scoff at her and she gives me a dude what the fuck face/

            “What about Ho Hey?” 

            Iris nods at her and opens up the app video star on her phone to start the music video. Silkie then begins to walk ahead of us, trying to keep her balance on one of the long wooden ledges on the sidewalk. I start keeping my eye out for when Silkie will come running back to us. I know she probably won’t and will just wait for us to get to her, but I can still see her. She’s far enough away to not hear us.

            I continue to text Pemba, and Iris covers my phone with her hand to get me to look at her.

            “Could you make it more blatantly obvious that you’re ignoring us?” Iris asks me, her voiced filled with snark.

            “I’m not doing anything dude,” I respond to her, making it very clear that I’m annoyed about something.

            “You’re annoyed about something, what’s wrong now?”

            “You do realize, Silkie took my phone and started texting Yassmin without asking, right?”

            “So?”

            “And she started talking to Yassmin about my eating habits. And not even talking, just making jokes about how I eat. It’s just how I am, if they were good friends, neither of them would have done this.”

            “Amber, it makes sense why the jokes hurt you, but just because they made they jokes, doesn’t make them any less of your friends. In fact, I think it means they care about you more. They’re concerned for you.”

            “That’s nice, but if they were concerned, maybe they wouldn’t be turning it into something they can laugh about over iMessage,” I say sarcastically.

            “You’re being really over dramatic, Amber.”

            “And why didn’t you stop them from texting each other? You would feel just as uncomfortable if your friends did this to you.”

            “Uh-Uh Amber, no. I’m your sister and I love you but it’s not my job to fight your battles for you and defend you when you can’t even say for yourself when you’re upset.”

            “I know. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean it like that. I just hate when people talk about my eating habits. You hate when Mom talks about yours.”

            “Very true,” Iris says softly.

            We both knew it is true. Iris despises when my mom gives her shit about her weight, how much she eats, and what she does or doesn’t eat. At her yearly checkup a month ago, Iris’s doctor said that her cholesterol levels were a little high, but there was nothing to worry about. She just needs to add more vegetables to her diet, which she is doing. I’ve seen her do it. Just a little bit of a change is what the doctor said.

            Later that night, Iris and I walk through the door to see our mom still awake on the couch and reading a book. She smiles at us when we walk in, but a look of confusion then starts to grow on her face when she sees the fries from Pizza Hut that Iris put on the dining room table. Here we fucking go again.

            “Iris ,why did you guys go to Pizza Hut?” My mom sternly asks us, death glaring me more than death glaring Iris.

            “I mean- why not go to Pizza Hut?” Iris responds cheerfully, looking at me with a smile. I laugh back because I’m amused, even though that’s the last thing my mom wants me to do.

            “Because it has about a thousand calories per meal. That container of fries alone probably has at least two thousand.”

            “Mom, it’s not a big deal. The doctor said not to worry.”

            “Iris-you’re seventeen-years-old, you need to eat better. That food is fucking garbage. Seriously, don’t do that to yourself!”

            My mom is screaming now and more than anything I want to go to my room, but there’s no way to leave casually without being seen.

            Iris grabs her backpack off the table and begins to stomp up the stairs, leaving the fries alone. After all her stomping, I hear our bedroom door slam. I go into the kitchen to put the fries on the counter. I try to pass by my mother in the living without a word, but she stops me.

            “Why did you let her get that food? Did you influence her to do it?” My mom begins to interrogate me, still sitting on the couch.

            “Are you fuck- no, I didn’t influence her. We just decided to go because we were hungry,” I angrily tell my mom.

            “Watch your tone and language, Amber. Okay, but she’s your sister. Why couldn’t you recommend somewhere else when you know she needs to eat healthier?”

            “Because I’m not her fucking babysitter. It’s not my job to tell her where she can and cannot eat. It isn’t my fucking problem.”

            “Do you want her to become overweight? Can’t you just try to be a better influence! You have better eating habits and a better diet than she does.”

            “How many times do I have to tell you, Mom, stop projecting your issues with Iris’s eating habits on me. God.” I can hear my voice is starting to break, so I run up to my room before she can say anything else. I know my mom will come upstairs to apologize like she always does when she does this. She’ll go to Iris first and then me, and then things are fine, well kind of. I wish my dad was home right now to tell her she was overreacting.

            When I get to my room, I shut my phone off and look at the ceiling. Anytime Iris is upset, she likes to be in her room alone and watch YouTube videos to make herself feel better, so I won’t even bother going to her right now. But where my mind is going is to what my mom said about my eating habits. Are they really that good? Does she thinking me eating a meal a day is good? Every morning before school, she brings me a cup or orange juice, some strawberries, and two slices of toast with butter on it to my room. After putting on my makeup, I drink the cup of juice, have one slice of the toast, and a bite of one out of the three strawberries she leaves me. Does she think this suffices as a real meal?

            She knows that I skip lunch sometimes, not every single day. But she doesn’t ask me every day if I’ve had lunch. She shouldn’t have to do that, but I still wonder why she isn’t worried about me? No, I’m not overweight or have high cholesterol, but my shoulder is in constant pain. My mom thinks it’s just because of my backpack. And I always come home exhausted from school, and I think it could be because I haven’t eaten enough for the day but I’m not sure. I’m too afraid to ask my mom because I don’t want her to scream at me like she does at Iris. She just thinks I take two-hour naps after school because the day was filled with so much stress, but that’s not true. I don’t know if I should tell her that’s not true. I don’t know if I should tell her that I only drink a cup of water a day when I’m in school.

            Do I need to go to a different kind of doctor behind her back to tell her that me skipping lunch, and barely having breakfast, really is a problem? Maybe I’m at risk at being underweight, which can be just as dangerous as being overweight. Or maybe I was right all along, maybe this strategy of skipping lunch sometimes, even though she doesn’t know yet it has become every day, is something that she sees as healthy after all and that’s why she isn’t worried. So why am I worried?

You’re Not Sick

Pt. 2

            As I start turning the alarm clock coming from my phone off this Wednesday morning, the exhaustion that I felt in my body last night was completely gone. Maybe the feelings I had last night were just fake starvation. Maybe I was just making up the aches because I was feeling guilty for not eating, when in actuality, my mind is okay with it. However, fifteen minutes into my Poetics class that morning, I could feel that my starvation is back from the grumbles my stomach is making. Sidney keeps looking at me, but no one else notices, and I tell her not worry.

            Once this class is over, I only have an hour until my next one, that wouldn’t be enough time for me to go get any food, so I choose to read instead. My stomach has finally stopped making noises. I think it is tired of even trying anymore.

            After my 1PM, which ended at 1:50PM, there still isn’t time to eat. I have to get more signatures for that senior class council thing, so I spend an hour walking around the pub and talking to seniors who have never really spoken to me. But I’m good at making conversation, and I’m proud of myself for it. I’m proud to keep myself busy with getting signatures for a position that will ultimately have no meaning when I graduate.

            Once I get home, it is already 2:45PM and I have class again at 4PM. I begin to get really tired all of the sudden, and I wasn’t ready to admit to myself that my starvation could be the reason why. I’m just going to nap until 3:40PM instead, since I do have time to eat after work.

            When I step into work at 5:30PM, there is garlic bread on the table in the back, bread that I didn’t know even existed in this store. Bill tells me that he made it out of the pizza crust and then added some mozzarella cheese and garlic paste on it before putting it in the oven. It looks like the most appetizing shit in the world.

            Throughout my shift, I start going back and forth from making coffee to eating that bread. The first time I go back there, I took two pieces of it. Since there’s no one around, I start to read my Poetics book while eating. Five minutes after I take out my book, a rush people on the Track team start to swarm in to order coffee.

            After making three iced caramel macchiatos, I go back to the back for three more pieces of bread. There’s still a lot left, so I don’t feel too bad for eating so much of it. Bill is insisting that I keep eating it too. And with every bite I take, the cheese on this bread just melts in my mouth so perfectly. I feel the taste of garlic on the back of my tongue, and I yearn for it to stay. I don’t think I have eaten bread this soft in my entire life. The warmth of the bread is something my body is completely consumed over; a warmth that is helping settle my stomach. I take two more pieces of the bread before realizing what I’ve done. 

            Am I really starving myself so much that bread is starting to feel like the most appetizing thing in my life? This bread isn’t even legit bread. It’s not like it came fresh from a bakery. It’s not like this is something even close to healthy for me be eating. Yet here I am scarfing it down. Because this is the third time this week that I have spent a whole day becoming so empty.

            I haven’t talked to anyone all day about the fact that I haven’t really eaten anything. But as I began to sweep up the red peppers all over the floor at the end of my shift, I realize that I have to eat. Meredith is right. I’m not healthy. Quickly, I make a chicken pesto pizza for myself. It is one of those small personal pizzas that I see customers finish in one sitting. So, it should be so hard for me to do that too, right? This isn’t a healthy, but it is what I have time for.

            However, when I get home that night, with the pizza box on the table and me sitting in front of it, all the confidence that I had to change is disappearing because I am starting to remember. I remember stuffing my face with greasy bread. That’s disgusting. Who eats that many carbs in one sitting? And it wasn’t even god bread. There has to be something wrong with me for eating that much of it. There has to be something wrong with me for enjoying it so much. There has to be something wrong with me because I was feeling so hungry at work. There has to be something wrong with me for even trying to eat “real” food at the end of this day.

            If I can skip lunch, I should have the power to skip dinner too. I tell myself it isn’t hard to skip meals. It’s only Wednesday, the week is barely done, I can try again tomorrow or Friday to eat. The food isn’t going anywhere. I still have homework to do tonight, and the chicken pesto pizza is still sitting in front of me. I feel too disgusted to be looking at it. Bloated. Empty. Too Full.

            I decide to just throw the pizza box into the back of the fridge and then make my way to up to the bathroom. I’m standing in front of the toilet again, wanting to throw up the cheesy garlic bread that I had just spent the last three hours eating. It didn’t work with the chicken pad thai, but maybe it would work this time? Maybe I would feel healthier. All the carbs would be gone, and I wouldn’t feel so bloated. However, as I am looking down at the toilet, I just can’t get my body to move.

            The second I hear Katie come out of her bedroom, I bolt out of the bathroom and into my bedroom. I then hear her go into the bathroom and close the door. I move on to doing my reading for my education class and then go to bed, angry that the bread was still in my system.

            It is now Thursday morning, and even though this would be the fourth day of my body barely having any food in its system, I am not hungry. I’m starting to forget the last time I sat down for a real meal. Was it Monday when I had the chicken pad thai? Did the garlic bread from last night count? What about the half of a bagel I had on Tuesday? As I start going through all this food during my education class, I start to think that I should eat something for lunch today.

            But after class, I begin to look through my planner and realize that I have a poem due for my next class that I completely forgot about. The prompt is to write about something challenging that is happening in your life. I could write about my eating issues, but I don’t think that really is a challenge. Instead, I begin to write about the time my best friend stole my debit card. My phone begins to light up when I get a text from Marie, asking if I am going to lunch today. I respond with a “No, I’m sorry. I’m really busy writing a poem for my next class.”

            When I got back to my apartment at 5:15PM, after having only two sips of water and one cup of coffee throughout the day, Steph reminds me that we have to leave at 6:30PM for our platform presentation for student senior council. I nod along and for once, I think I should try to eat. The week is almost over.

            I bring the pizza box from last night, the one that was pushed towards the back of the fridge, into my bedroom. I did heat it up a little bit in the open, but it is still a little cold. Cold pizza is something I used to love, at least when I was in high school. My dad and I ate cold pizza at 11AM most Saturdays. My mother would look at us grossed out, and my dad and I would laugh.

            But the second I take a bite of this pizza, I hate the taste. I’ve had this pizza many times before. My tastes buds have never been so disgusted and uncomfortable by food before. Have I completely killed my appetite for the rest of my life? Am I never going to be able to enjoy food again even when I try?

            I take another bite and try to absorb the food, eating as slowly as possible. I’m telling myself that this food is good for me, I need to do this. Bu on my forth bite, I quickly spit it out. My inside cannot handle it. My body is telling me no to food, when only four days ago, it was beginning my mind to say yes.

            Moments after I spit out the food, I feel like I can’t breathe. I begin to sob and shake while sitting in my desk chair, holding my knees tightly to my chest. I can’t stop hyperventilating. I can’t move. My bedroom door has been closed, and I need it to stay closed, so Steph could keep out while I’m like this. For just a minute, I can freak out in peace.

            While the tears streamed down my face, I began to push my hair back with my hands and FaceTime my mom. After three rings, I see her face right in front of me, looking back with a terrified look on her face.

            “Amber, sweetie what’s wrong?” my Mom asks with a great deal of worry in her eyes.

            “I just- I think I’m sick, Mom. I can’t eat. I just can’t,” I tell her with my voice breaking and breathing getting faster.

            “Breathe for a second, please. What do you mean you can’t eat? Is your food making you sick?”

            “Worse. My body just doesn’t like food anymore. It just won’t take it in.”

            “What the hell does that mean, Amber?”

            “I don’t know okay. I just feel like I can’t eat. Like I don’t even enjoy the taste of food.”

            “Amber, it’s not that hard. Please, just eat your food. It’s not that difficult.”

            “Mom, it is, for me. You don’t understand. I think this could be an eating disorder.”

            “You think you have an eating disorder? You do know that’s a serious matter,” my mom responds with a very serious voice.

            “Mom-I know that, but I really think that’s what it is. It shouldn’t be so hard for me to eat,” I desperately try to explain to her while wiping the sweat off my forehead.

            “Amber, please don’t create a problem for yourself. Don self-diagnosis yourself with something you don’t have, just eat, okay?”

            I nod back at her and then tell her I have to go. Maybe she’s right and I do not have an eating disorder. I know she doesn’t fully understand what eating disorders are, so I’m trying my best not to be mad at her. But I really am so fucking mad at her. Why couldn’t she just listen and see this problem as a problem? Why did she make it seem like I am purposely giving myself an eating disorder? Like an eating disorder is something I want. Maybe I did overreact about the fact that I couldn’t eat this pizza. It’s not a big deal, at least not to my Mom. So why am I crying? I hear Steph knock on the door, and I quickly wipe my tears.

            “Yeah, come in!” I shout.

            “You good to go?” she asks, lifting up her backpack from her desk chair.

            I nod at her and grab the pizza box to put back in the fridge once I get downstairs.

            And of course, when the presentations were over at 8PM and I am back in the apartment. I’m still not hungry. After spending two hours talking to Taylor, I come to realize because I’ve been so busy doing that, I haven’t tried to eat since the pesto pizza incident. But I’m not ready to try eating again. My body is getting to its exhausted state and going to bed 10PM didn’t sound too shabby for me.

            That night, I slept for about twelve hours, not waking up until 9AM Friday morning, two hours before my first class of the day. And of course, I’m not hungry. There are other things I need to be doing, like reading or showering. It’s too early to be eating, so I’m not going to. I’m never hungry in the morning, this is not out of my character.

            In my 11AM Poetics class, the classroom is set up in a way where all the students end up sitting in a circle around one big table. As we’re all waiting for Professor Jaime Warburton to come in, I begin talking to Sidney about this new boy she’s been talking. My stomach is growling again, but we both ignore it because Sidney’s in the middle of telling a story.

            When Jaime comes in, she takes the attendance the usual way by asking every student the same question. Usually it’s something simple like “what’s your favorite meme?” or “who’s the person you feel the closest to in your life?” When I answered these two questions, I said my favorite meme was something a joke about “road work ahead” and that the person I feel the closest to is my sister. These answers weren’t out of the ordinary, they weren’t worrisome.

            “Ali, what is a problem that you’ve been having today?” Jaime asks while marking down Ali’s name on the attendance sheet.

            “Hm, I guess that my boyfriend told his Mom that he wants me to marry him. It’s kind of scary,” Ali responds with a laugh.

            The entire class began to laugh and ask more questions about Ali and her boyfriend’s relationship. Jaime then moves on to asking the student student a question. Before she works her way to asking me, I hear problems like “there are a lot of ants in my apartment,” “I didn’t give myself enough time to start my paper,” “my best friend and I are fighting.”

            “How personal can we get with these answers?” Sidney asks when it was her turn.

            “Oh, you know me, go for whatever you want,” Jaime responds with a reassuring voice.

            Sidney then goes further into the fact that she’s been hooking up with this guy, Alex, but that she has no idea what she wants. She even goes as far to mention that the hickey, which wasn’t super noticeable on her neck, was from Alex. Again, this was something funny to the class, but also personal.

            “Amber, what’s your biggest problem today?” Jaime finally asks me. I’m one of the last names on the roster.

            “Um-I’m not sure if I should say it, but yeah I will,” I respond, feeling like I’m going to burst with all of the eyes of my classmates that were looking at me. “I haven’t been eating properly lately. Like the last real meal I had was on Tuesday, and it’s what, Friday? Like I’m eating tiny things, just not like actual meals. I don’t know, sorry. That was a lot.”

            “Wow, Amber, that’s okay. I would just say go to CAPS about it, ya know? They can definitely help,” Jaime says to me reassuringly.

            I nod back at her with a smile, and she starts to move on to the last two students on the roster. As Vivian begins to answer the question, I feel Sidney grab onto my arm. She begins to stare at me very intently. “I’m fine,” I mouth to her. “Let’s talk after class,” she whispers back to me.

            But through this entire class, I start to feel like I made the biggest mistake of my life. What kind of student share information about an eating disorder to an entire class? Everyone probably thinks I’m fucking insane or that I have a lot of problems. Or, what if they think if I was doing this just to get attention? What if Jaime thinks I’m crazy or too emotional of a student? What if Thomas, who has been my best friend since freshman year, is thinking to himself that I really am sick? I didn’t want to worry him. I didn’t want to worry anyone, yet this was the only thing that came to my mind when I thought about problems that I have been having. Is that so bad? It’s starting to feel like it was. I can feel my anxiety rising in the classroom, and my legs won’t stop shaking while Jaime is teaching today’s lesson. Good thing I’m sitting all the way across the room from her. Bad thing that I’m hating myself for bringing this up to a professor I met only four months ago.

            When class ends, Sidney and I go into the conference room on the fourth floor of Smiddy Hall at Ithaca College, which was right next to classroom we just had class in.

            “Why didn’t you tell me about this?” Sidney asks calmly with her hand placed over mine.

            “I don’t know. I didn’t know how I guess. I don’t even know if this is an eating disorder,” I tell her, looking down at my still shaking legs.

            “I mean-maybe? Have you talked to anyone else?”

            “My mom, but she didn’t fully understand it. I shouldn’t have even fucking said anything in class. I’m so stupid.” My nose is getting all stuffy and my voice is breaking.

            “Dude, no. I’m proud of you for that. No one thinks any less of you for doing that.”

            “I just don’t want Jaime thinking I’m crazy or something’s wrong. You know?”

            “It’s Jaime. She would never think that.”

            I then start going into detail with Sidney about this last week. What exactly happened, how I’ve been thinking about throwing up for the last five days. How I still haven’t eaten lunch today. All I am having during our conversation is a bottle of water, and I know this is all I am going to have until Steph picks me up to go to Chipotle, which I’m forcing myself to eat. And I tell Sidney how I know I’m going to hate myself after I do eat this Chipotle. She starts bringing up all these ideas for me to prepare meals at home and then bring them with me on campus. She tells me she wants me to go with her grocery shopping. She wants me to talk to her about it more. “I am always here for you,” she whispers during our hug goodbye.

            And eight months after this week of not eating and this conversation with Sidney, I am still skipping meals. I still feel ashamed of myself when I eat more than two meals a day. I don’t talk to Sidney about this shame because we aren’t friends anymore. Her boyfriend, Alex, tries to smile at me when I’m crying in the pub to my friend Margaret about how much trouble I’m having with my eating disorder. And I’m glad it was Alex and not Sidney because if it was Sidney, I would be angry that she got to see me at my weakest point. I would be angry at Sidney for not being my friend because Emma, Marie, and Katie, my best friends, were no longer friends with her.

            As a now college senior, I think about this week of not me eating all the time. I think about the fact that I was actually so sick that week. I think about how I still am sick. I can’t handle big meals. I go to sleep some nights wishing I could just throw up the dinner I had just eaten. It has gotten to the point where I find myself feeling guilty for eating two meals a day. I

            “We will get you so help, Amber. I know eating disorders can be hard. Everything’s going to be okay, I promise,” she tells me over the phone.

            “Why didn’t you ever take my eating disorder as seriously before?” I ask her while once again sobbing.

            “Because the fact that you feel guilty eating two meals a day terrifies me, Amber. It isn’t normal, and I’m sorry I didn’t know about it sooner.”

            “I feel weak.” Saying these words to my Mom feels so freeing because she is really looking at me. I can finally feel my eating disorder as an eating disorder when I talk about it with her.

            “It’s okay, you’ll get better soon. And there’s no rush.”