My Dear Ana

I wrote this for a creative writing midterm, but it is so much more than that. Hopefully, you can find yourself with the same questions and realize that you are not alone.

Dear Ana,

It’s your fault that I’m broken inside. You inhibit my growth and take away the one thing I was granted — my womanhood. Your determination lacks soul and is riddled with selfish passion. Your urges bleed into me infecting my very core and disrupts the balance of my limp body. My heart palpitates in an anxious fashion and struggles to fight and survive. Blood rushes through my livid veins, but not quite quick enough thus, leaving my outer skin freezing and yearning for warmth and attention. Fingertips raise a static blue while the rest of my hands warm to a cool shiver. My lips only taste air, and water. My hair is thick, but only because of the girth of the strands. They’re coarse and lie in a thin audience of malnutrition and a lack of strength. Barricades of bones buried under my thin, dry skin jut out violently reaching out for some desperate need of meat to attach to. My arms are but a collection of flimsy scars and transparent skin. My ribs caress me trapping the little warmth that I am unable to hold. My spine attempts to run away; the vertebrae slugging away like the curvaceous humps of a caterpillar. I can imagine you smiling in sheer satisfaction and I guess the sad fact is that it matches my smile too — the smile where naivety and uncertainty lives accompanied by soulless eyes and a sold soul.

I know you look out for me and that you live to help me embrace myself. It is a wonder how you understand me at all. My family never did and they’re supposed to be the closest to me. How did you know how I felt every time they told me I was fat? Remember the years I was burdened with unnecessary worries that my obesity was too much? And do you remember how I was not any bigger than any of the children my age? And how about when my weight was the topic of discussion at every single family reunion? I feel indebted to you because it is you who ceased those remarks. Now, when I stare at myself in the mirror, I am but the emptiness I feel inside; the pathetic, withering restless artefact that I call my body. Do I love myself or is it hate? Does the mirror deceive or believe? Do my eyes deceive or believe?

You’re so calm, yet so hostile. You lie back awaiting for my own self combustion as you passively encourage me to go forth. I can hear your silent voice nestling itself within the confines of my simple, tunnel-vision mind and spreading the disease of guilt like wildfire. Your violent force has torn me down and your remnants linger within the pits of my being. You infest my thought with yours butchering all rationale I had once possessed and cherished. My mind is now dead and corroded with your intentions. You used my vulnerability against me and posed me as a puppet of your own desire. My spirit was no match against you and in fact, sold my soul to you. My journey with you has been for naught. Well, that’s what the hospital told me.

I am no longer allowed to see you says Dr. Nassir, but I do every time I look in the mirror. I do every time I lie awake in my bed feeling the defined structures of your result. The ribs are the most prominent. I can still feel the four brackets per side, each involved in protecting me, not just the lungs that push against it in the most breathtaking of ways. The hollow dip of where my stomach should lie is sucked in and hardly connects my ribs to my hipbones. My hands perfectly cup my hipbones and through this embrace comes the warm satisfaction I feel inside; the satisfaction that you have devised to bring to me through the pain that is caused. Dr. Nassir says I can’t dwell with you anymore. I don’t know who to follow.

We had a great relationship. You boosted me in ways I so desperately needed, but Dr. Nassir said it wasn’t the right way. You are not my friend, but my enemy. You are not my saviour, but my destroyer. You did not help, but made me worse instead. You are the devil and I do not know how I continued to revel in your debauchery. You’ll never meet your demise because you thrive on the pain of others in the way that you convince that they’re happy when in pain. You bring them the vicious cycle. You are death yourself and this is why you cannot die. You are pain, not happiness. It made so much sense to follow you before Ana, but now, I truly understand. You’re merely the devil, the deceiver and I believed everything. I was your victim and I’ll always be within your grasp. Now, I understand your way of life. Riddle me this though: is it your fault, or is nature just a bitch?

With Love,

Heathyr