Two choices, one fear
Dinner time, I can't do it, it's not food at this point, it's just calories on my plate, calories that make me fat. My mother asks me why I don't eat. I say nothing.
It’s 2 a.m., I stare at the ceiling, listening to cas. I feel empty - no emotion, no tears. Everything is about food, I cannot think of anything else. In 8 hours, I’m supposed to see a new psychiatrist, but I don’t want any help. Because if they help me, they’ll force me to eat and eating means gaining weight and gaining weight means being fat. I can’t get fatter than I already am. Because if I do so, my dad will hit me and insult me for being like this. And I don’t want that to happen again.
I take my phone, Cry just finished, so I put on Space Song, this one makes me feel even emptier than I felt. I open my gallery, all these body checking pictures make me hate myself even more. A notification from Myfitnesspal comes up: “Hey, you forgot to track your calories for dinner!” so I open the app and see: “You ate 500 calories today.” I didn’t even eat anything for dinner. I just had water and ice. I want to start planning my meals for tomorrow, but then Romantic Homicide comes up, and I let my mind fly away with the lyrics.
“Wake up, we have to go!” what a lovely way to wake up. I get ready and don’t even step into the kitchen, looking at food makes me feel bad, so I just fill my bottle with water in the bathroom.
On the way to the appointment, my mom asks me: “What do you want to eat for lunch?”
I say I want to eat a cucumber, because I saw on Myfitnesspal yesterday that a whole cucumber has only 16 calories. I can allow that to myself after not eating dinner yesterday.
When we arrive, the lady tells us to wait. There are toys everywhere, because the psychiatrist has his office in the same building as a pediatrician. He comes up, for once it’s not an old grumpy man, but a quite young man. My mom explains to him that I don’t eat and that she doesn’t know what to do with me anymore.
When she leaves, he asks me: “Why aren’t you eating?” And once again the words can’t come out of my mouth.
So he tells me: “Betty, if you don’t talk to me, I can’t help you. If you want, we can make a meal plan so that you can try to eat more”. But I answered that I’ve got multiple meal plans and I just threw them away every time. Then he asks me to go to the balance to check my weight. When I see the number, I want to throw up because of how high it is.
He looks at what the other doctors wrote in my folder and with a sad look he tells me: “Okay, I’m sorry, but here we don’t have a choice. If you continue to lose weight, you’ll have a cardiac arrest. I have to do something, so I propose you two solutions: either I give you lots of anxiety meds which will make you sleepy and very hungry so you’ll have to eat something, or you go inpatient, and you get a NG tube.”
These were so much information for me at once, meds might make me sleep too much, make me lose control. But the thought of an NG tube terrifies me even more.
My mom took an appointment with him in 3 days, I had 3 days to decide. But how? Both solutions are torture for me.
I’m in my bed, it's 2 a.m. again, and I’m staring at the ceiling. My blade calls to me. A month ago, I saw a TikTok saying cutting helps with anxiety, and it does, briefly. I take the box where I’m hiding it, take it and start cutting. I feel so relieved by doing this, it makes me feel the pain, but not by starving. I cut my thighs, the part I hate the most. Nobody actually knows I self harm, because it’s March, 12th March, and we are still wearing long pants and sleeves.
It’s March 15th, we go back to the waiting room with all the kids' toys. I’ve not made my choice yet, it’s impossible. He comes and calls my name. I feel dizzy, but I go into his office.
He sits and asks: “Have you made your choice?” His words tangle in my head, he says something, but I can’t hear it, my head is heavy, the ambient sounds are so loud. I close my eyes and then nothing, just silence. This silence feels just like relief, I don’t have to worry about anything, just listen to this calming sound of silence.
“Do you hear me?” asks a woman above me. I don’t feel my clothes, for the appointment I wore my favorite Taylor Swift sweater that has a nice warm feel on my skin, but now I feel a kind of paper feel on my skin right now.
The woman tells me: “Betty wake up you’re in the hospital, you need to see the local psychiatrist. We’ve also put you in the anti-suicide clothes because of what you have on your thighs”
“Does that mean that I’m going to be inpatient?” I ask her.
She answers: “Yes.” But it was not just a simple yet, it was a deep yes that came from somewhere heavy, deeper than words. As the woman walks away, I stare at the ceiling. Inpatient—forced to eat, forced to feel.
And this is the moment I realized, that something inside me is broken.
It’s 2 a.m., I stare at the ceiling, listening to cas. I feel empty - no emotion, no tears. Everything is about food, I cannot think of anything else. In 8 hours, I’m supposed to see a new psychiatrist, but I don’t want any help. Because if they help me, they’ll force me to eat and eating means gaining weight and gaining weight means being fat. I can’t get fatter than I already am. Because if I do so, my dad will hit me and insult me for being like this. And I don’t want that to happen again.
I take my phone, Cry just finished, so I put on Space Song, this one makes me feel even emptier than I felt. I open my gallery, all these body checking pictures make me hate myself even more. A notification from Myfitnesspal comes up: “Hey, you forgot to track your calories for dinner!” so I open the app and see: “You ate 500 calories today.” I didn’t even eat anything for dinner. I just had water and ice. I want to start planning my meals for tomorrow, but then Romantic Homicide comes up, and I let my mind fly away with the lyrics.
“Wake up, we have to go!” what a lovely way to wake up. I get ready and don’t even step into the kitchen, looking at food makes me feel bad, so I just fill my bottle with water in the bathroom.
On the way to the appointment, my mom asks me: “What do you want to eat for lunch?”
I say I want to eat a cucumber, because I saw on Myfitnesspal yesterday that a whole cucumber has only 16 calories. I can allow that to myself after not eating dinner yesterday.
When we arrive, the lady tells us to wait. There are toys everywhere, because the psychiatrist has his office in the same building as a pediatrician. He comes up, for once it’s not an old grumpy man, but a quite young man. My mom explains to him that I don’t eat and that she doesn’t know what to do with me anymore.
When she leaves, he asks me: “Why aren’t you eating?” And once again the words can’t come out of my mouth.
So he tells me: “Betty, if you don’t talk to me, I can’t help you. If you want, we can make a meal plan so that you can try to eat more”. But I answered that I’ve got multiple meal plans and I just threw them away every time. Then he asks me to go to the balance to check my weight. When I see the number, I want to throw up because of how high it is.
He looks at what the other doctors wrote in my folder and with a sad look he tells me: “Okay, I’m sorry, but here we don’t have a choice. If you continue to lose weight, you’ll have a cardiac arrest. I have to do something, so I propose you two solutions: either I give you lots of anxiety meds which will make you sleepy and very hungry so you’ll have to eat something, or you go inpatient, and you get a NG tube.”
These were so much information for me at once, meds might make me sleep too much, make me lose control. But the thought of an NG tube terrifies me even more.
My mom took an appointment with him in 3 days, I had 3 days to decide. But how? Both solutions are torture for me.
I’m in my bed, it's 2 a.m. again, and I’m staring at the ceiling. My blade calls to me. A month ago, I saw a TikTok saying cutting helps with anxiety, and it does, briefly. I take the box where I’m hiding it, take it and start cutting. I feel so relieved by doing this, it makes me feel the pain, but not by starving. I cut my thighs, the part I hate the most. Nobody actually knows I self harm, because it’s March, 12th March, and we are still wearing long pants and sleeves.
It’s March 15th, we go back to the waiting room with all the kids' toys. I’ve not made my choice yet, it’s impossible. He comes and calls my name. I feel dizzy, but I go into his office.
He sits and asks: “Have you made your choice?” His words tangle in my head, he says something, but I can’t hear it, my head is heavy, the ambient sounds are so loud. I close my eyes and then nothing, just silence. This silence feels just like relief, I don’t have to worry about anything, just listen to this calming sound of silence.
“Do you hear me?” asks a woman above me. I don’t feel my clothes, for the appointment I wore my favorite Taylor Swift sweater that has a nice warm feel on my skin, but now I feel a kind of paper feel on my skin right now.
The woman tells me: “Betty wake up you’re in the hospital, you need to see the local psychiatrist. We’ve also put you in the anti-suicide clothes because of what you have on your thighs”
“Does that mean that I’m going to be inpatient?” I ask her.
She answers: “Yes.” But it was not just a simple yet, it was a deep yes that came from somewhere heavy, deeper than words. As the woman walks away, I stare at the ceiling. Inpatient—forced to eat, forced to feel.
And this is the moment I realized, that something inside me is broken.
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