Who here likes cotton candy? Cool, me too. So I was listening to a song called sippy cup by Melanie Martinez. The song was good, but there was this one line that stood out to me. “Your favorite candy is cotton, that’s why all your teeth are rotten.” Makes sense right? I mean cotton candy is sugar based and sugar rots your teeth, but so does the acid from your stomach.

As I grew older, cotton candy became cotton and the cotton became more appetizing than the candy. Next thing I knew shoving cotton down my throat became an addiction. I was addicted to the choking and gagging. I was addicted to the vile traveling up my esophagus. I was addicted to the hot tears burning black lines into my cheeks. I was addicted to the feeling of being empty. But, I never saw starvation as an illness, I saw it as a form of art. A practice, not a problem. A hobby, not a habit. Just a way to relieve stress, a way to get skinnier, a thing that I could finally control, not an issue, not an illness, just a lifestyle. Until my lifestyle led to a hole burnt in the back of my throat, rotten yellow teeth, a weak stomach, my ribs and hips pushing through my skin, and a diagnosis.

“Bulimia Nervosa - a serious, potentially life-threatening eating disorder characterized by a cycle of bingeing and compensatory behaviors such as self-induced vomiting designed to undo or compensate for the effects of binge eating.” The cycle of this eating disorder revolved around my life for over two years. Two years of my body slowly dissolving itself as cotton candy would dissolve in ones mouth, two years of watching phlegm and blood come up from my stomach, out of my mouth, and into the toilet, two years of obsession with making myself empty, two years of compliments about my weight loss, with no clue why or how I was becoming so skinny, two years of me, being nothing more than skin and bones. Two years of my life.

Today, I still search for an explanation for those years of doing what I did, maybe I liked the feeling, maybe it was the anxiety, maybe it was the pressure of societal norms, I’m not sure why, and I’m still looking for an explanation as to why I still keep a bag of cotton balls in my bottom left drawer.