Determine her Fate

Anorexia and bulimia are well known to target young teenage girls.  In fact this disorder actually affects more adult males.  About 10 percent of these teenagers have a chance of dying.  Although the symptoms I write about are true and there are more but these will not be so obvious. 

I first met her in primary.  We used to be quite close and the girl I knew loved chocolate.  We would buy fish and chips from the nearest store, head to the dairy for sweets and then sit on a playground talking, laughing and eating.  At that time I was thinner than her.  Now, for the first time in two years I see her again.

When I first saw her I almost didn’t recognize her.  But her auburn hair was not easy to miss yet it was brittle and has lost its shine.  She gave me a thin tight smile with her pale-bluish lips.  Her eyes were bloodshot, with a slight recognition in them.  Eye bags hung around under them.  Slowly, she waved her hand at me, her baggy clothes flapped in the wind.

As I talked to her, I couldn’t help but notice the awkward, rigid movement or her body.  Her shoulders were tense and she said it was cold although it was spring.  When I commented that I felt sleepy, she immediately spoke, quietly.  Apparently if you slept late, you lost a lot of weight.  She confessed that she was very sleepy and when she blinked she took a fraction longer than normal.

I laughed and confessed I needed at least nine hours of sleep.  Hesitantly she replied that she had been sleeping about three hours a day.  She stared at my gaping face.  Blaming her inability to get to sleep, she shrugged and avoided my eyes.

As we walked through the streets, she was meditative, staring with hollow eyes.  In her daze, she kept massaging her arms.  Her blue nails were pulling at the flesh that was hardly there.  When I commented at her slight figure, she scoffed and expressed her hopes to lose at least “a bit more”.

Once I invited her to my house where we watching a horror movie eating chips, sweets and coke.  She didn’t touch the coke though, claiming she didn’t like fizzy drinks and asked for water instead since she felt dehydrated.  She took a pill for vitamin C and soon the food was gone.  She went to the bathroom for ages and told me that she had brushed her teeth as well.

A few days later she stopped coming to school.  Rumours spread everywhere.  Whilst most were exaggerated, the truth was that she had fainted in her room.  She now lies in hospital, connected to tubes that determine her fate.