Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
I pulled my MacBook into my lap and did the sensible thing—I Googled my symptoms.
After only a quick perusal, it was clear.
I was going to die a long, painful death.
As with most of the medical information on the internet, it went straight to the direst conclusion. Even as I knew that reading all of this wasn’t going to make me feel any better, I couldn’t seem to stop. I devoured the medical advice, read every story out there about women who were currently anorexic and unable to conceive, and women who had been ten years healthy and still unable to conceive. Then I tipped forward into a deep dive, reading everything I could about what it would be like to be pregnant after having an eating disorder and how all the anxiety could come back when the body started to gain weight. Worse yet, the mind knew it was irrational to have these fears of gaining weight when the women believed they should only be concentrating on the health of the baby. But if I’d learned anything, anorexia was a hundred percent mental. It didn’t matter if a woman wasn’t supposed to think of her weight during pregnancy. It only mattered that she did.
By the end of it, I felt like a wrung-out towel.
My emotions were leaking out of me and onto the floor. My pain a constant knife through my stomach. My eyes blurry with unshed tears.
This couldn’t be happening.
Anxiety at its peek, I stumbled into my bedroom, shucked all of my clothes onto the floor, and stared at myself in the mirror, pinching the small pockets of fat on my hips and waist and thighs. I wasn’t like before. I wasn’t.
There was nothing wrong with me. I was just working out. I was still eating. In fact, I was working with a nutritionist now. She’d helped me figure out exactly what foods to eat to power my body through my training. This was healthy. Everyone had said so.
With a sigh, I stepped on the scale like I did every single morning. I looked at the number and frowned. I got back off and then did it again. Same number. See, I wasn’t going crazy. That was a healthy weight. I was still within the BMI. On the low side, but not in the underweight section. I’d been way in the underweight section when I had to be hospitalized. Way below.
This was… this was fine.
Fine.
My fingers fumbled for the shower, and I let it rain down on me, turning my skin pink. A hiccup escaped my lips, and I sank onto the tiled floor. I curled my legs into my chest, wrapping my arms around them.
Then I let go.
My chest heaved as I sobbed. All of my fear and anger and waves and waves of distress came out in that cry session. My eyes ached. I felt like I couldn’t get enough air in. Still, I couldn’t stop.
I didn’t want to look at why this hurt me so much. I knew why, but looking at it would make it a reality. I just needed to stay here in this shower until it was gone. Until all of it was gone.
* * *
I didn’t know how long I’d stayed in there. But at some point, I got out, put on an oversize T-shirt, and cried myself to sleep.
I woke to a hand touching my shoulder. Who the hell was here?
“Katherine, are you okay?” Lark asked.
I saw the concern on her face. I tried to reach back in my mind to find out why she was here. Had we had plans? My brain wouldn’t go back far enough to figure it out.
“Hey,” I whispered.
Lark settled onto the bed. “Your eyes are swollen and bloodshot. Have you been crying?”
I slowly sat up and brushed my hair back out of my face. “Yeah,” I whispered. “What are you doing here?”
“We were supposed to do dinner, remember?” Lark asked, alarm on her face. “What happened? Did you and Camden get in another fight?”
“Oh, right, dinner. Sorry.” Now that she’d mentioned it, it came back. “No, I haven’t seen Camden since Puerto Rico.”
“You’re worrying me, Ren,” Lark said gently.
“Because of this?”
“Yes, but before that. You’re not eating enough. You’re losing weight like it’s your job. You aren’t… happy. I mean, before, you always hid your happiness behind your bravado. But now, you’re not even hiding. I don’t like this. I don’t want to find you passed out in your room when you’d said you’d meet me. It scares me.”
“I don’t mean to scare you,” I told her. I looked down at my fresh manicure and back up. “I saw a friend of mine at the hospital when I was there for the charity.”
“Oh no, were they sick?”
“No.” Then I considered it. “Also, yes. She was a girl that I went to therapy with when I was hospitalized after high school. She started this group for… women who are infertile.”