Page 56 of Guy's Girl
But another voice whispers:Don’t worry. You don’t have to keep it down.
That voice is right, she realizes. She can do it. She can have the best of both worlds. She can taste something she has long denied herself, and then it can come right back up.
She slips out of her room, scoops out a handful of candy, and returns to her bed. She unwraps a Reese’s this time. Pops it into her mouth. Chews and swallows. It’s just as good as the Snickers. She unwraps another candy. Then another. And another. Before she even knows what’s happening, five pieces of candy are gone.
It isn’t enough. She needs more. She gets another handful. Eats it without blinking.
The fourth time she goes out to the kitchen, she gives in and grabs the entire bag. When she returns to her bedroom, she locks the door.
Ten, eleven, twelve pieces of candy. Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen. A small mountain of shiny wrappers starts to build beside Ginny’s left knee. She doesn’t stop. She can’t.What the hell is happening?She feels... strangely out of control. Like her hands and mouth are operating without her permission. She keeps telling herself to stop, that fifteen is enough, that it’stoo many, but then she reaches for another. And another. Whatever mechanism within you that tells you to cease eating, that you’ve had enough—it seems to have broken. She has broken.
I am bingeing.
The words come to her from far away, a flicker in a long, dark tunnel.
I am bingeing.
Only when the entire bag is empty does she finally cease chewing. Her hands hover over the chocolate-flecked comforter,quaking. Even after thirty-two pieces of candy, even as her body twitches with the overload of sugar, it isn’t enough. She wants more.
More.
More.
She stands up and slips out into the living room. Opens the refrigerator. Every cabinet in the kitchenette. She’s looking for something sweet, anything. A pastry. Ice cream. Honey-coated peanuts. She finds nothing.
She glances over the staircase. Tristan is asleep, and she would bet every cent in her bank account that he keeps a couple of king-sized Snickers bars squirreled away in his bedside table. Her fingers twitch. Does she risk going inside?
Ginny stands, rooted to the spot with indecision. Her breath comes in shallow little gulps.
While she ate, Ginny felt strangely numb. She could almost detach from herself, could watch the girl in that beautiful bedroom eat those beautiful candies. All that kept her inside her body was the press of each sugared bite onto her tongue, the feel of it sliding down her throat. It was easy, in the middle of her frenzy, to detach from the reality of what she was doing. What she was putting into herself. What it would do to her.
That numbness ends as soon as she stops eating.
Imagine this: you go from five years of wholehearted restriction, of believing that to eat too much or to eat the wrong thing will ruin your entire life, straight to stuffing your face with as much candy as you can find.
Ginny is fucking terrified.
The fear rolls over her in long waves.What did I just do? What did I just do? What did I just do?Each wave sucks her in, pulls her under, clogs her nose and mouth until she can no longer breathe.
She runs into the bathroom, shuts the door, turns on the shower, and waits.
Normally, this would be the point at which the food comes up. Ginny would push with her throat, and her dinner would be right there, waiting. Eager to leap back into the world. But when she pushes, nothing happens. The candy doesn’t come up. Neither does the alcohol, nor anything else.
“Come on,” Ginny grits out, hands on either side of the toilet bowl. “Where are you?”
Nothing comes; it’s as if her throat has closed itself off for the night.
So Ginny does the one thing she never wanted to do. The line she thought she had drawn.
She sticks her fingers down her throat.
There is nothing calm or discreet about this style of purging. It isn’t quietly spitting up into the bushes or pushing mush into a coffee cup. It is sudden. It is violent. Your middle and index fingers hit the back of your throat over and over. If you haven’t clipped your nails recently, they scratch at the tender flesh, leaving behind marks you’ll never see. But you don’t stop. You push those fingers farther, deeper, seeking the trigger that will open the gateway between your stomach and your mouth. You push those fingers in over and over, even though your body is crying out for you to stop, please, stop. But you don’t. You keep going. You violate yourself. It is punishment. It is rape.
Eating disorders are abusive relationships. They coax you in with kisses and promises of love. They tell you they will treat you right. They tell you that only they know how to love you properly. They make you promise after promise. And, for a while, they keep that promise. They keep you skinny. They make you like what you see in the mirror. They make you feel good about yourself.
But it’s never enough. You will fail. You will eat. Youhaveto ifyou want to stay alive. And when you do, your eating disorder will punish you. She will yell. She will hit. She will tell you that you are nothing without her. That, on your own, you are ugly, fat, unworthy of love. And you will believe her. And you will return to her. Over and over. Over and over.
The next morning, the boys gather in the kitchen, coffee bubbling in the high-tech Black + Decker in the corner. It took Adrian three tries to figure out how to start it. Tristan, who, for reasons Adrian cannot fathom, doesn’t drink coffee, was of little help.
