Mist

i am. i am. i am.
Breathing in the sparkling blue air, street rolling sideways like
liquid in a tipping glass, head floating from my shoulders, i repeat
the mantra and concentrate on connecting my trainers with the concrete.
For the past few years this little excersize has kept me from crashing
to the ground like a crazy person. i just have to feel the dizzy
sickness curling round the edges of my brain, just have to see the
beginnings of the blue blinding sleep of a faint and the "i am i am i
am" record gets stuck back in it's groove, shocking me back into
consiousness. Before i discovered this little trick, i fainted pretty
often, about once every two weeks. The worst time was in the girls
toilets at school. It was the first aswell. One moment i was washing my
hands with bog-issue green soap and admiring my new cheekbones in the
mirror and the next i was blinking on the floor, hard white tiles
glittering all around and Laura slapping my face and screaming. Laura
isn't the toughest of girlies, and as soon as i could say my name
without stammering she ran to the nearest cubical and threw up. that
was when i saw blood shining in the dirty grooves of the tiles beside
me, and promptly passed out (yet again). Me and Laura. We're made for
each other.
Anyway, after alot of flapping about i was helped to matrons office,
dazed, bleeding and stared at like a circus freak all the way.
Matron was brisk, phoned my mother, bandaged me up and gave Laura an
asprin (for shock). my mother was not. Our conversation in the car was
hardly the concerned, can-i-get-you-another-icepack-darling?
mother-daughter bonding session i'd been after.
MUM: Don't you dare try and fob me off with another pack of lies my
girl, i know what you've been up to and theres no way your going to
deny it-
ME: mum...
MUM: No, for once your going to bloody well listen. I've let you get
away with this diet for too long and this is what i get. When you don't
eat, you fait. Simple as that. I know you didn't have lunch today and
you hardly touched your breakfast! You've taken things too far, can't
you see that?
ME: for gods sake, i can't beleive you can't even trust me. What sort
of a mother are you? The only reason i fainted was we'd done too much
running in PE and i was tired! Ask Laura if i ate lunch and you'll see
just how sick your mind really is, she'll tell you the truth if you
won't beleive it from your own daughter!
MUM: I'm not letting you spin me that same old line again, Lauras lied
for you so many times already bladdie blah blah etc etc
it just went on and on. Mum and me, fighting is our national sport. The
most annoying thing is her obsession with my body. As if she's anybody
to talk, with her rolls of blubber and sweaty pores and doughy hands. I
compare her over my water glass, eyes flickering from puffy ankles to
sagging cheeks and then over my own slender (skeletal) legs and
delicate (skull) face. She's jealous. She wants me stuffed, she wants a
little fattie to giggle over diet sheets and excersize videos, not
somebody sprinting ahead, gold already gleaming round their neck,
beating her when they should be behind.
Or maybe i'm just being horrible. I look in the mirror and i realise
i'm just making up bullshit to make myself feel better. I know mum
cares, i know i want to show her i love her for all she's done for me
(disney land at christmas: pictures of us in the snow with micky,
laughing, cuddling, chubby cheeks pressed together, hot chocolate
glowing in our tummies), but it just gets deformed in my throat. Thanks
turns into screams, laughter to tears. I can't win, whatever size i
am.
I'm trying to put things right. thats a stupid, crazy idea since i
weigh six stone and my hairs falling out and i wont eat or go out, but
i have to try. Today is my first councelling session. We're walking
across the carpark, towards the grey building that could hold our
futures. I just hope i can make it there without fainting or throwing
up.
wish me luck.