Faux-etry

I often catch myself thinking that I can't write poetry.  That is not true.  I can!  I think anyone can write poetry of any kind if given an outline to follow.  I don't mean to bash the great poets and such.  I guess I just.... don't really get it.  Anyway.  For me, writing poetry means putting words and thoughts on paper and arranging them in an artistic fashion.  Basically, not in paragraph form (like this is.)

Last fall, before I went back into day treatment (for the 5th or 6th time, I forgot just exactly,) I was at school in English class and I was suddenly struck by the fact that people were eating.  Everywhere.  All around me!  In class!  What a weird concept!  Never in a million years could I do that.  I can drink coffee or tea or soda in class, no problem.  Eating?  No way.

I remember back in the fall of 2009, I was taking a Sociology class at PCC and there was this girl who would eat the weirdest things in class!  I can understand eating snack foods in class (although I hate when people eat chips or anything crunchy during lectures, for obvious reasons.)  I can even understand eating foods meant to be "to-go" such as Subway sandwiches, bagels, even salads.  But this one girl would bring cheeseburgers and french fries into class!  It drove me crazy for several reasons.  One, it smelled horrible.  Grease, fat and salt.  Ugh.  Second, it bugged me because she was thin!  Well, thin in a non-fit kind of way.  She was what Kristen Stewart called "skinny fat."  (Hey, she said it, not me.)  Anyway, I thought it was totally unfair that this girl could eat that stuff daily and stay as thin as she did.  I'm sure her arteries looked like Broadway and Market at 5pm though.

Anyway, coming back to last fall in English class.  I started paying attention to the people eating.  What they were eating.  How they were eating it.  How often they were eating it.  I started listening to them.  I studied them!  Like the anthropologist I am, I studied the "normal eating people" like they were a foreign tribe.  Which, if you think about it, they were to me!  Their conversations were equally as strange.  I remember walking down the stairs in Cramer Hall one day and being disturbed by a particularly heavy girl saying to her friend, "oh my gosh, I was starving yesterday!"  

In English class, I actually got a little mad one day.  In my defense, I was sick.  I still am sick, don't get me wrong, but my head is a little clearer now.  I was very malnourished last fall.  Probably should have been hospitalized.  But anyway.  I made little notes in the margins of my spiral notebook and from them, I built a poem.  Written October 10, 2012, it goes like this:

Cheetos, skittles, granola bar, banana,
something wrapped in foil.
These people surround me
with all these things.
I had coffee and gum for breakfast.
I am so much stronger than you.
My stomach is stabbing and
I'm sitting in class.
You would all be home in bed.

"Oh, I need to eat."
That's so funny.  No you don't.
Not looking like that.
You never NEED to eat.
I know because I never do,
but I am so much stronger than you
because I can ignore the pain but
You would say "I'm not gonna make it."

The Freshman 15.
You're in your twenties!
This is our country, our culture, our world.
NOT MINE.  I'm not built for this.
I'm built for better.
I am SO much stronger than you.
I can say "no."  
You don't know how.

Lunch at 10:30?  You have got to be joking.
There is no need for that.
You're weak.
That's why you will never look like me.


Pretty harsh and judgmental, eh?  But I was so proud.  So fucking proud and so fucking powerful.  I still feel like that sometimes.  I am strong, so strong.  I can go without.  I honestly sometimes feel like eating is totally superfluous.  Rationally, I know better.  But that's the whole thing about eating disorders, right?  To be so strong that I don't even need food.  Pretty sad.