• I catch the glimpse of a young lassie.
    She’s barely older than I was,
    Those days when my eyes were not shrivelled raisons,
    But were green grapes.
    Stinking jealous I was of my friend Holly,
    She breathed in beauty.
    Lollipop thin, and just as sweet.
    Everything I’d dreamed of being
    and more.

    She was walking perfection,
    And I was a walking disaster.
    She called me”gummy bear” and the name stuck.
    I thought she’d always be there for me.
    But it was a lie.
    The truth hurt more than an empty stomach.
    I was too fat to go near her.
    She repelled me like I was vermin.
    Fatty. Fatty fatty fatty.

    That’s when the nightmare began.
    The only thing I could turn to when things got sticky,
    Was now lying sickly in its porcelain deathbed.
    He never crossed my mouth without being brought back up again.
    Purging became my friend.
    Took half of me away, it did.
    But still I wretched and wretched until I was coughing up bile.

    Three years later, and those
    White Jacket freaks decided to examine me.
    Prodding me with gloved fingers to “avoid infection”,
    Sticking needles like knives in me
    As if I was a roast turkey.
    They put me on a drip and fed me through a tube
    What did they think I was? A flower they had to water?
    They pried into every aspect of my life:
    Feeding me soup and gawking at me until it was long gone.
    Spying on me in the shower in case I done vigorous exercise.
    I felt like an experiment.
    A lab rat. The rat I was to her.
    That place was for maniacs.
    Alone, cold and sour maniacs.
    Like me…

    Those days are long since gone.
    I wave goodbye to them with a fork in hand.
    I’ll never forget those drugged up smiles, and empty eyes.
    Never.
    I met new people - warm folks that helped me find my stomach again.
    The only thing I’ll ever binge on now is delight.
    Food will never be my love again.
    But he’ll never be my enemy either.