Chapter 22 :The disease of stupid vanity

* Chapters writen in italics are flash backs.


My mum pulled the chair out opposite me at the table and groaned pinching the bridge oh her nose. Her face tight with a mock concern that the doctors told her to have. She said it coast to much too feed me, so I stopped eating, and for a while she was happy, but now there were rumours and whispers that one of Lily’s children had the dreaded A word. The disease of stupid vanity - Anorexia.


“You have to eat Mia. You have to eat something,” My mum half growled. I stared at the plate of chicken and potatoes and pushed it around a bit with the edge of my fork. I could have ate the whole plate. I wanted to, and I needed to, but something inside me called that eating was wrong, that one of the most natural things for a human to do was fundamentally flawed. Without food I could leave the body that I was stuck in, that got hurt, away, and let my spirit float on the breeze to a place where the bad things couldn’t find me, but… I was hungry.

Finding the smallest bit of chicken I could. I put it into my mouth and chewed slowly, twelve times exactly. Twelve had become a safe number, a good and happy number. The bad things didn’t collide with the number twelve. Swallowing hard I did the same process again four more times before putting my fork down. Defeated. Even twelve couldn’t manage the food. A whole army of twelve’s couldn’t fight off chicken and potatoes.


“I can’t, I’m not hungry, I….I mean I feel sick,” I chorused, rolling the excuses off the back of my tongue with ease before I pushed the plate away in a defiant gesture. My mother pushed it back. Her rage building. She was going to explode now. Explode at me. She had wanted to all along anyway. I had just given her the green light


“Eat it!” She snapped, picking my fork up from the side of my plate. She stabbed a piece of chicken and for god measure added some mash potato and a slice of tinned carrot before thrusting it before my mouth. Like a defiant child I clenched my lips shut. I couldn’t face the calories, I told my self. I was strong empty, pure and shiny inside like a reflection in the bottom of a crisp clear stream.

“Eat it you bitch! Eat!” My mum jumped up from her chair and darted around to my side of the table knocking my plastic tumbler of water over before proceeding to hold my nose. When I had no choice but to open my mouth to breath She shoved in the large fork full of food. and I choked, spitting the food out on to the table before continuing to retch into my hands. The kitchen span around me as I couldn’t get enough oxygen into my deprived lungs.

“Eat Damn it!” She yelled her face turning a deadly shade of scarlet next to mine before her hand struck the side of my head and I fell to the floor with a thud still coughing and spluttering. With out the food my body would eventually make no sound as it fell to the floor and then it wouldn’t hurt.

“If I get in trouble for this Mia I swear I will make you wish you were never born,” my mum yelled, throwing the plate of food down next to my head with a crash, The ceramic smashing into a hundred different pieces. She was all ready too late to make me wish that though. I was eleven years old and I wished I were dead.