Page 1 of A Dark Melody

one

Low music is playingin the background as I make my way through the small crowd backstage. The doors to the venue just opened and you can hear the low hum of the crowd of fans gathering in front of the stage. There are still a few hours before I’m meant to take the stage and close out the concert.

I head to my dressing room, making my way past the A-lists and B-lists with backstage passes and the other bands’ members that fill up the backstage area.

I pass two other rooms, looking for the one with Abbey Dark written on it. The first one saysKey Failures, the opening band, and the second saysHaunting Memories, the second band on the concert bill.

The tour consists of the three of us bands. Technically, I’m a solo artist with a backing band that plays with me, but the point remains. A three-band tour is kind of small, but it gives us longer set times since, from my understanding, none of our bands are small or unknown. We are all fairly big in our own right, all signed to the same label. Not that I’ve heard of the other bands. I try to keep to myself.

I push open the door with my name on it and drop my back on the couch. Scanning the room, I noticed it's not muchdifferent from the other dressing rooms I’ve become used to. There is a couch, a table with a mirror on it, a bench in front of it, a full-length mirror on one wall, and a bathroom- which, of course, had a lock on it.

I start to set up my things to get ready for the show. I had to make sure to look like a glamorous rockstar, after all. Had to look just sexy enough to draw in the crowds, but not too sexy that I’d be considered trashy. Being considered trashy would be bad for the label.

I’ve been signed to Veritas since I was sixteen. With them, I have released three full-length albums and two shorter albums. At 23 years old, I am almost a millionaire.

Being a famous rock star has its perks. I know I’m very fortunate to have the opportunities I have. The most amazing thing about it all? I get to do what I love in front of sold-out crowds, night after night. I feel incredibly lucky to have been discovered. Even better, I have landed a wonderful contract with Veritas, one of the biggest record labels in the business.

I have a talent many others only dream of having. I am grateful that I was gifted with my voice. I can sing better than almost anyone out there. I know my voice is extraordinary. It’s all anyone ever talks about.

Plus, I’m hot. Or I was, anyway. I was quite gorgeous, until I started starving myself and throwing up everything I ate. Then, I lost too much weight, and I became a skeleton. I lost my figure, my black hair started to fall out, and my once round face became too angular. You could see my ribs. You could wrap an arm around my waist and touch the other side. My bones protruded from under my skin. My flesh was pulled too tight over my bones.

It wasn’t until I got down to just under one hundred pounds that the press started to comment on my diminishing frame that the label started to care. I tried to cover the increasingchanges in my body. I claimed they were from all the touring, so they decided to cut back on touring. They started watching me closely, checking on my health constantly, and that’s when I switched to forcing myself to throw up. I couldn’t get away with not eating anymore while I was being watched like a hawk.

Despite their efforts, I was still losing weight, and they finally sat down to talk with me.

They threatened to have me committed. There were talks to put me on a conservatorship. They were going to strip away all my self-control. They were going to send me away, force-feed me with tubes and shit. Then, someone proposed another plan. A test run of a conservatorship until I gained a substantial amount of weight and kept it on for some time.

My manager, Sue Cox, will be glued to my side until I weigh 120 pounds. I have to stay at that weight for three months before they will consider lifting this restriction. She gets say over what I eat, and when. She will watch me pee, watch me change, and ultimately have control over my life.

All this happened almost a year ago. Now, I weighed somewhere in the low 100s. My hair had begun to grow out, and my face was getting some of its fullness back. I was still skinny, but you could no longer see my bones protruding from under my flesh.

To say I missed it wouldn’t be true. It wasn’t about being skinny. I didn’t care about the being thin aspect of it all. I didn’t starve myself because I was concerned about being the prettiest, tiniest person in a room, like many other women. I did it because I enjoyed the feeling of being empty. I enjoy feeling hollow. I crave the hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach. Every time my stomach growls and burns from being empty, I feel joy. I like the feeling of emptiness that fills my soul with each hour that goes by without eating.

I hated throwing up, but after I was done, the feeling of emptiness would come back, encouraging me to do it anyway. The desire for the hollow feeling overrides my hatred of hurtling my guts up. I would push my fingers down my throat with no regard given to what it did to my throat or vocal cords.

Honestly, it didn’t do as much harm as I thought it would, but people started to put the pieces together when I started sounding a little rougher.

It was Sue who first questioned me about it.

She asked if I had an eating disorder after another dozen blood tests to find out why I was dropping weight so rapidly. She questioned me about my eating habits. She would order pizza and cheeseburgers to be delivered to my dressing room before and after shows, apparently thinking that would solve some of the issues. There were only so many times I could say I wasn’t hungry before she started to press the issue.

She is the reason I had to resort to bulimia in the first place. That didn’t seem to matter. The minute my voice began to sound off, rough around the edges and full of gravel- she forced me to admit it. I had an eating disorder.

Well, actually, she caught me in the act. Just walked into the bathroom without knocking. Yanked on the door handle and came right in, when I had two fingers shoved down my throat.

I tried to play it off, like there was somehow a reason to have two fingers shoved into my money makers, but there was no use. The cat was out of the bag now, and there would be no putting it back in.

Somehow, the whole thing played out well for her. She got a nice raise and unanimous control over my life.

Now, the bathroom doors were locked, so I couldn’t get in to “purge,” as they called it. I couldn’t use the bathroom without her being present or timing how long I was in there, like I was a parolee who just got out of prison.

She made sure I ate at least three square meals a day. Though, it was often more like four. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and an after-show meal to ensure I got the proper amount of nutrition. Sue would give me this run down whenever I gave her a look or complained.

I guess I couldn’t complain too much. She also got me drugs, the ones I needed so desperately for survival.

Xanax was prescribed to me because of anxiety. Of course, I only had one appointment with a therapist. The record label couldn’t have me in constant therapy. That would look bad for them and me, but they could keep one appointment under wraps. Not that I was complaining. I didn’t want to see a shrink any more than they wanted me to.

My mind is not a can of worms I want to open.

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