Relapse

The deep dark trenches of my past welcome me with open arms

I know this familiar comfort is anything but a safe haven,

Yet I want to feel the hollow emptiness;

All I seem to crave, is to run and let the familiarity comfort me;

Secure me in its ominous embrace

The bony grip clenching onto my wrists; piercing my skin and leaving behind bruises Bruises as deep of a violet as my fingertips during my temporary winter

Such a cold and bitter winter, but once the throbbing agony subsides, what's left is numbness;

Like children making snowballs; compressing the glistening white powder together the way I compress my feelings and deepest thoughts into the pit of my empty stomach;

Grabbing fistfuls of snow that burn and tingle momentarily, until a warmth prevails and the sensation of biting rawness is ineffectual

These feelings and thoughts lying at the bottom of my hollow core cause a constant excruciating pain,

The desolation desperately trying to escape; attempting to climb through my protruding ribs like a ladder rung by rung

Memories flash before my eyes like blinding lightning, images of a figure nearly as emaciated as this skeleton in my closet, sending chills up my spine

Food is no longer food as it is now numbers;

I gaze upon a plate, and see all that my intellect is capable of contriving:

An indisputably exact calculation and a quantity; either allotted or forbidden

All quantities much too large; numbers much too high

Calories in the triple digits stirred up intense self loathing the way I used to compulsively stir my green tea I hated the taste of just to speed up my metabolism and the way my stomach would stir trying to work after all of the damage,

My malnourished self would pray for forgiveness for letting myself eat knowing full-well I would never forgive myself,

I would clasp my hands so tightly together while kneeling on my bony knees, just praying to God to help me not be so worthless

There is nothing like the satisfaction of seeing a digit on the scale decrease,

Like the feeling of drinking cold water on an empty stomach,

Like the feeling of reaching down my throat expunging all of my mistakes and emotions as if emptying myself of negativity,

Like lightly skimming over your own corners and edges; and being able to feel the hard solid prominence of your own skeletal structure,

Like the weightless sensation, feeling as if you're a piece of paper drifting through the wind freely,

When this is the only way to fulfill your biggest craving

The only way to be anything but empty without guilt;

How do you resist satisfying this particular hunger?

How do you resist striving to win?

Racing to the finish line as if there is a trophy for the the most famished waiting there,

As metallic as the pennies I flipped into wishing wells, wishing with all my might to take up less space than anyone around me

To simply be small, not just small, but the smallest

When you are losing, you are winning

And when you are winning in that sense you're on your way to being one of the ultimate losers

I'm fully aware of this fact yet in the deepest parts of my mind,

crammed with thoughts I do not disclose; being the ultimate loser is also the biggest achievement for there is no farther to go

Rather than weighing 6 pounds less,

You are simply 6 feet under;

You've reached the end, meaning the game is over and you have won because after all,

Losing is winning, and this is a battle I would love to win, and I desperately miss being so close to that finish line