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I lie in the foreign bed within the unfamiliar room, staring up at the unknown ceiling. My heart is galloping like a bronco inside my chest, and a piercing ache develops inside my head. My muscles appear to be in pain, although this could be an illusion. In truth, everything around me could be a mirage. The anti-ligature luminaire attached to the ceiling or the highly secured windows, as well as the fragrance bulbs generating a bittersweet scent, can be a deception. The thoughts in my head run in an infinite cycle until the sense of worry awakens inside my chest, prompting me to deeply breathe in and lightly breathe out. This method clears my mind of superfluous notions, leaving only one thought: I do not belong here. These last several weeks felt like an eternity. I'm trapped within this facility, not even permitted to get some fresh air like a "healthy" person would. I am continuously accompanied by an adult who most likely does not understand me. They do nothing except feed me a lot and tell me that gaining weight is necessary for me. They have no sense of humour or sympathy. What they value the most is when their patient follows their instructions. For me, they are living machines who exhibit no empathy for the most vulnerable individuals. And they claim to understand me: lucky enough to be swapping shifts with others in order to return home, while I'm compelled to stay in this building for the entire time! Each guardian is slightly different, but they all share one trait: they care more about my weight than what goes on within my warped mind. Every day, I'm expected to eat six times. This is more irritating than listening to an OCD girl ask her guardian thousands of questions or seeing a depressed female sob in the restroom. And even though the amount of food I have to consume frustrates me, I refuse to give up; every mouthful I make, every sip I take, is for my family. My parents simply deserve a healthy daughter, not one who is locked up in a psychiatric clinic for months when she could be at school working. The wall of my temporary room is adorned with images of a happy family, a family that is mine, and I don't want to destroy something as valuable as a family just because I couldn't beat my eating disorder. This condition isn't worth it. I must continue to fight. For the sake of my family; for my own benefit. And, while I don't understand some of the other patients, I'm confident that they can all do the same thing: keep on fighting for the sake of their loved ones. As difficult as it is to overcome a mental illness, one can be stronger than the voice inside their head; since this voice isn't the real you! The true self is the happy person you once were, yearning to be released from the pressures that a mental illness can bring. And I know we can do this; we just have to. So I keep on eating, keep on fighting, and everytime I'm feeling down about myself, I go to my room, to the wall covered with family photos, to remind myself why I'm doing all of this in the first place. I want to be with the people I love, but I can't since I'm in this facility. The only way out of here is to eat - and I'm doing this right now. Another few weeks pass, and I do my best not to give up. I can't let myself down, especially now that I'm so close to being released. Sharing my room with someone who is working as hard as I am to get back on their feet enhances my confidence. Having a friend like them is extremely beneficial in keeping me on track. Their name is Yara - but I call them Lou. And, finally, the day of my release has arrived. Everyone congratulates me on my accomplishment, my new friends give me tight hugs, and Lou even gives me a present - a painted canvas with my name on it. "We have made this for you so you will remember us" , they tell me. "I will miss you so much." I try to stop the tears streaming down my face. I will miss you too!, I want to exclaim. I will miss you more than you'll miss me! But everything I say is “Thank you for the canvas. I really appreciate it!” With that, I leave them - it's now their turn to leave this place having accomplished something that they can be proud of. Once I step outdoors, I immediately spot them: my mother in her ivory-coloured coat, my father in his characteristic black cap, and in front of them, my precious sister carrying our dog in her arms. They look lovely together, yet their pack is incomplete. So I run towards them, a broad smile on my face. The moment I land in my mother's arms, everything is fine again. I did it! I've returned home. Our tribe is at last complete. And everything that has happened belongs in the past, where I hope it will remain in perpetuity. Two years later, I am sitting in my room in an entirely different country, at my desk, writing the story of my life. When I pull my gaze away from the screen, my attention is drawn to a colourful canvas situated on my windowsill. Guess what? It has my name on it.

Most people believe that someone who has anorexia just eats less because they want to be thinner but it is so much more than just that. Anorexia is a mental illness which can consume you completely.It can start with just a single thought.This tiny thought grows and grows in the back of your mind until its the only thing you can think about.Anorexia becomes like your best and worst friend.She tells you that shes helping you be happy because after all skinny equals happy in our world.“Dont you want to look like those girls in the magazines”“You're not trying hard enough”“You want to be thin dont you?“ „You're not good enough”The more you listen to this voice in your head,the more you believe everything its telling you. After time, you realize that the voice is bad for you but at that point you are so consumed by thoughts, rituals and that fear, that overwhelming fear of gaining the tiniest bit of weight that you dont even care anymore. The vicious cycle starts and its so hard to break out of it. Everyday you get up and weigh yourself. Then you go through your day thinking about that one number on the scale and counting every single calorie you consume. Everyday you try to consume less and burn off more than the day before. Every calorie you consume adds to the noise in your head, the more calories you eat the more you think about how to burn them off and the harder it is to concentrate. At one point, you decide that if you're going to get through your day its easier if you dont consume any calories at all. Little by little you fade away without even realizing it. Because lets face it, what is skinny enough? there is no skinny enough. Anorexia will never let you think that you are skinny enough. You could be on the brink of death and look in the mirror and see yourself as overweight. That is due to something known as body dysmorphia. The longer anorexia controls you the worse it gets.The problem is that Anorexia is not always painful. Often its torture but sometimes there are moments where starving yourself can make you feel euphoric. That feeling of emptiness becomes an addiction, a craving. You long for it. Restriction gives you this sense of total control that you cant get from anywhere else. Its a way of finding calm in the middle of the storm which is your life and in a way it makes the bad parts worth it. It is so often said that the hardest step to recovery is having the courage to ask for help. Thats not true. What is hardest is what comes next. Recovery is so hard because you are constantly having to fight with your own mind. Part of your mind is telling you how much you are missing out on because of this illness, how the best years of your life are slipping away from you and how this pain isn't worth it.The other part of your mind is screaming at you to do everything in your power to loose weight, eat less and burn more calories. You are at war with yourself. Every bite of food is an internal struggle that makes you desperately want to turn to your many ways to cancel out that food. You have to find something that motivates you to keep fighting, something that makes you realize that your life is worth living. You can see therapist after therapist but in the end they wont be able to help you. They will guide you and try their best to help you through all these dark, destructive thoughts but in the end you are the one who has to make that terrifying choice to recover. It has to be your decision. For a while, everyday will be harder than the last. Some days will feel amazing and you”ll get this sudden burst of energy because for the first time in ages your body isn't eating away at itself but more often than not, that feeling of guilt and hatred towards yourself after every meal will make it seem like giving up altogether is the only way out but eventually it does get easier, things will look up, and you”ll stop seeing food as the enemy. Little by little you”ll start to be able to enjoy all the things that anorexia took away from you. Possibly the hardest thing about suffering from an eating disorder is that so often, even after recovery, somewhere at the back of your mind those thoughts are still there. Those same cyclical thoughts about weight and food are still there and they could be triggered at any time. It is so hard to fully recovery from an eating disorder because of the society we live in. You see pictures of skinny, famous and popular girls and of course you want to be like them. You see those pictures of the sad, fat before girl and then the pictures of the happy skinny girl that says “I went on this diet ,lost weight and now everybody loves me”.Its so hard to recover because everywhere you look there is a reminder of that thing that used to be the most important thing in the world to you and deep down you still want it.So, you learn to live with these thoughts, you learn to keep them at the back of your mind and you learn to forget them but that doesn't mean that they're not there.

I don't have the normal story people take the time to write down; I mean normal by eating disordered standards. I don't have any fascinating stories of all the time I was in mental wards. I don't have any horror stories of being trapped in a hospital. I don't have any inspiring quotes about hitting rock bottom and reevaluating my whole life. There's no patient doctor who got through to me, lock ups, or meal plans. There's no parents trying harder to be what I need. There's no life altering epiphany that inspired me to knock this shit off. I longed for understanding of my own mind. I became obsessed pretty young with reading stories about troubled youth with mental illnesses. I'd always loved reading, and I longed to find something to relate all this confusion and pain to, to not feel alone and broken like I could never be fixed. Part of me always still felt lost, because I never experience what this book characters did, fiction or nonfiction. I never had the opportunity (or punishment depending on how you look at it) of being sent to some fancy hospital. It led me down the dark path of never feeling sick enough, so I felt alone, never quite deserving of worry or help, no matter how bad it got. It was never going to be worth the time or effort to fix me. There's something to be said for being the kid no one notices while also having a mental illness. There weren't parents who cared enough to pay attention. There were no doctors to demand I be shipped off for reprogramming to eat like a real girl. And even if either of those things were different, there was no money to support any type of capitalist recovery program. I never even saw a dentist as a kid, (conveniently, since that would have been the doctor to pick up on the eating disorder due to what that does to your teeth). My mother took me to the doctor just enough to get my shots so I could go to school, and my doctor always ignored my shrinking weight, my never getting my period, and other health problems. Doctors will later tell me that the childhood neglect and emotional abuse would have strongly affected my personal susceptibility to having an eating disorder. My childhood piled with future abuse and trauma will also lead to a diagnosis of BPD (borderline personality disorder, not to be confused with bipolar disorder). I've been in and out the therapists and psychiatrists offices my whole adulthood, constantly changing doctors, never even knowing where to begin anymore. I do often wonder if I had gotten to be a normal child, with parents who give a little more of a shit, if none of any of this had happened to me, if I still would have gotten stuck with this disorder, this addiction. I'll also later learn I have a cousin who is anorexic, so perhaps the genetic factor would have screwed me over anyway, even if I grew up in a loving, caring environment. I would often sit and wonder, if any of this was worth it. If I was gonna feel like this forever, if this was the kind of sick that never truly got better, then why even bother continuing to live. Sometimes I couldn't find an answer to that, and those times ended up as very bad days. I often felt too lost to be found. I was always either too much, or never enough. And no one wanted to deal with the girl who never got better. No one has time for you when you stay sick. Living with an eating disorder throughout most of your life makes adulthood exceptionally more difficult to accomplish. You spend years of your adolescence not planning any sort of future, having zero dreams, because you just don't see yourself making it that far. You don't expect a long life, any sort of love story or successful dream career because you aren't going to live that long. Either because you plan on taking your own life to escape, or because deep underneath your denial, you know what you're doing is going to kill you, sooner rather than later. Recovery just a little blip on the radar that you aren't paying mind to, because you're not sick, you're just too strong to give up now, you've gotten so far.

I thought he was the first person who could see me, but he was just the first person to speak about me with any authority. Told me he knew what I wanted more than I knew myself. He made me feel like a girl in a rock song, sugar turning to something poison. He loved to be the thing that poisoned me. He always said that. I told myself I wanted to be a good friend, but really I would have done anything for a boy to like me. When I looked outside of myself I knew that I was valid and worthy and good. I got straight A's and I was the newspaper editor and I was a cheerleader and I had enough friends that I wasn't totally alone. But I craved. Everything was happening to anybody but me and I was born with this big dumb body five sizes too big and if I could have skinned myself like a carrot I would have. There was not an inch of myself that I did not hate, did not want to hack off piece by piece until I was a bloody mess with a heartbeat humming a Taylor Swift song. By the 8th or 9th grade I realized everyone was sick of hearing me call myself fat and so I stopped. I did not give the feeling a language and kept it deep in a hollow inside myself. Would walk past a mirror and pinch my skin—arm, face, elbow, hand, it didn't matter—and wish it would be gone. Fall asleep at night trying to put my face on a skinny girl's body. Night after night I could never make the image make sense. I would have to start over, shave off piece by piece until I got a version of myself I could live with. Wonder how many pounds it would take to do that, and always assume it must be a thousand. Feel trapped in this stupid flesh that I never even signed up to inhabit. Never ask to borrow my friends' clothes, because it will not fit, and then I will die. So when a boy with black hair and brown eyes and a smile like it knew my secrets wanted to touch my heaving earthquake body how could I ever say no to that? It did not matter if he would leave me waiting for hours or if he would pick fights or sometimes call me things like a dumb slut stupid whore just it admit you know you are one. Because sometimes he would press his forehead against mine and trace his fingers against every inch of me. I want you so bad he would whisper with his hands full of my skin and for a moment, gasping, I would believe him.

Learning to love myself has been one of my longest life challenges. My self esteem has been at battle with a twenty-year old eating disorder. Turning eleven brought a birthday gift of weight gain and put me on a path of restricting, binge eating and over-exercising. It seems like it has taken forever to understand how manipulating my weight and appearance in both healthy and unhealthy ways was a reflection of how I felt on the inside of myself. Bombarded with images in the media of impossible beauty standards and socialized norms of feminine behavior, my eyes looked into the mirror for a sense of self esteem. Instead of empowering female friendships, mine were competitive. Who had a thigh gap? How many boys were drooling after us? Whose closet was larger than life? All that criteria was external and I couldn't win. So I skipped parties, weddings and graduations because I felt unattractive. The "when, then" game ruled my life: I thought 'when I lose twenty pounds, I will have a boyfriend" and "when I lose twenty pounds, I will be happy." I didn't realize that projecting my happiness to the future meant I was missing out on the present moment. I lost a lot of time to this unhealthy obsession. Instead of building personal coping tools like meditation, work-related skills, or even participating in sports, I spent years hiding in therapy and eating disorder programs. I was desperate to find out what was so wrong in my core that I put so much emphasis on looks and weight. One mind-blowing incident started my journey towards self-love. I remember spotting her six years ago while I rode the subway. She was my ideal self: petite, with manicured nails and blond hair. Why couldn't I look like her? For sure she had a boyfriend! I ruminated over this for most of the ride. Finally my ears decided to interrupt my brain and I heard her speaking to her friend. Her voice was sharp and she spent the whole subway ride complaining about her life. She seemed miserable and shallow. I came home and told my mom I would never want to be that pretty if it came with being so negative. My family physician also held the key to a lesson I still think about daily. She sat me down once and asked me to look outside her door. There was a woman in head to toe Michael Kors, dripping diamonds, with highlighted hair. She asked me what I thought of her and I went with "beautiful." Within two breaths my doctor told me that her patient's life was falling apart because of divorce and bankruptcy. "Never assume someone's happy based on what they look like or what they wear," she warned me. That day my doctor really called me out for the way I was looking at the world. It was as disordered and self-destructive as my eating. Working in fashion was also one giant leap towards recovery for me. I am a sales associate, fitting women of all shapes and sizes and working hard to establish our collective self-esteem. When I accompany my clients to their fitting rooms, young women and their mothers regularly share with me their fears regarding the shape of their thighs, booties, and breasts. It was out in the open now and I confronted how ingrained body shaming is across my gender. Answering “does this outfit looks good on me?” or “does this make me look fat?” is my opportunity to reassure women. I let them know that confidence, posture, and inner beauty radiates beyond body shape or size. As they try on the latest in Spring styles. I like to vocalize my appreciation for what sets them apart, be it their freckles, or their life accomplishments, friendships and career achievements. There are too many stresses in young women's lives. The pressures of social media, peers and fierce academic/job competition face girls every day. Dinners are hardly made at home anymore. Routine discussion between family and friends is often interrupted by constant texting. The pressures of exams, lack of sleep and Red Bull, penetrates young lives. I hear about my client's struggles with their bodies, Mara Teigen and Ashley Greene on Instragram, as well as what boys think about them. This the context in which our feelings and thoughts about our bodies are developed. So when will this self-deprecation end? As long as there are to be beauty products and fashion brands to be sold, marketing may continue to rule female self-esteem. I am writing to let others know that there really is a path to becoming self assured in ourselves. When I chose to put the most value on achieving personal goals, and deciding to really interact with the world, there was socializing and activities which built up my self-esteem. I could really list what I liked about myself based on my capabilities and social media has been banned from my life. I am finally doing the activities I always dreamed of despite of how I worried I am or anyone else is about my looks. I cross my fingers and wish that for every girl and women I ever get the opportunity to dress!

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My mind is still a battlefield. The sides? Self-acceptance and self-hatred. The soldiers? Thoughts of the challenges I've overcome and thoughts of burying myself again in restrictions. The victor? It depends on the day. Anorexia, upon reflection, was inevitable. It took root when I was 8 years old and crying in bed because I thought I was fat. It blossomed when I was 10 after my dad commented that the mashed potatoes I was eating contained carbs, which would make me gain weight. It permeated my mind when a boy's eyes flitted over my body and told me I had big thighs. It began to guide my daily routine until people started to compliment my appearance. Then, it took over. Anorexia was never a voice in my head; it was more of a silent dictator. It rewarded me with an overwhelming feeling of satisfaction when my aunt compared me to a Barbie doll or my ex-boyfriend proudly exclaimed that I had the physique of a mannequin. It punished me when I disobeyed its orders. Even when I considered it my closest friend, I knew that it ruled me. I tried to "give it to God" so many times, but I was slowly destroying the body that He had given me. I stopped worshipping God because I had sold my soul to the scale. 130. 125. 120. High school graduation. 115.110. Holidays. 115. Compulsive exercise and starvation. 110. My mother's death. 105. Binges. Anxiety. Fear. Emptiness. Nothing. No emotion, no expression, nothing but the feeble cries of a body that was dying. I was dying, and I loved it. Here's the thing about Barbie dolls and mannequins though: they're incredibly fragile. And, like them, my body began to break from the blows anorexia had dealt it. My binges became frequent and aggressive. My body was trying so desperately to save itself that I felt compelled to eat anything in sight. Eating entire jars of nut butter or pints of ice cream became a regular, dreaded part of my daily routine. Even when I tried to throw up after finishing these monster meals, my body said "Hell no." I gained fat, muscle, more fear, more anxiety, and more support as I told more and more people about the demon that had dominated my life since I was 8 years old. Then, a miracle: my body began to regenerate. I slept for 10 hours each night. My period came back. I reluctantly began seeing a dietitian. A therapist came soon after. And the whole time, the number on the scale rose. Starvation didn't work anymore. I was a different shape physically, but my hatred remained unchanged. I hated myself through the pounds I lost, and I hated myself through the pounds I gained. And here I am, finally physically well and mentally sound, but still battling this mass of hatred in my chest. Do I hate myself? Maybe I can't decide where the hatred should really go. I could direct it toward my mom, but she only wanted to feel more beautiful. She didn't know that the medicine she took after undergoing cosmetic surgery would ultimately kill her. I could use the hatred to attack the society that pressured both of us to strive towards unattainable standards, but that wouldn't bring me real relief. I could talk through the hatred objectively with a therapist over thousands of appointments, but that wouldn't make it dissipate. I could take to social media in search of wisdom to diffuse the hatred, but the words of comfort bounce right off. So my immediate impulse is to internalize the hatred, aiming it inward towards myself. Eat a little less, move a little more, because those are the instructions anorexia sometimes still whispers when self-acceptance seems to be losing the battle. Maybe skip a meal. Or a day. A few days. Never eat again. If I shrank physically, maybe my feelings would shrink too. My mind was too exhausted to dwell on emotional pain when it was fighting to feed itself. That was nice. Sometimes I miss being numb. But, as I said, my Barbie body broke. My present and future are now undeniably human. Starvation wouldn't shrink me. I would remain the same size, and the hatred would only grow. A body that doesn't cooperate is an easy target for hatred. I can't go back to that; I won't go back to that. Of course, as self-hatred and self-acceptance continue to wage war, I also have to recognize that I own the battlefield. I supply the artillery for both sides, so I can determine the outcome of the battle. I choose self-acceptance. And, so help me God, it will be victorious.

A few weeks ago, I made the difficult decision to keep a secret. Now, several of my friends won't speak to me. Keeping secrets is something I always thought was a part of good character - something that people would find worthy to respect. While my friends now ignore me, I still feel that I made the right decision. A few of us stopped at a local bar for happy hour. Not long after sitting at a table I noticed a familiar face at the bar. So did my other three friends. “Isn't that Mike?” Linda asked in a horrified tone of voice. “Sure looks likes him,” Margie answered. “What do we do?” Terri queried. “Nothing,” I replied trying to sound blasé. Mike was the fiancé of Rena, another of our friends but he wasn't with Rena. He was sitting at the bar, openly flirting with another woman. Although we tried to enjoy the rest of the hour, seeing Rena's fiancé with another woman dampened our mood and before our pitcher of beer was finished, we began saying our goodbyes for the night. “Remember to call Rena,” Margie urged. “You have to tell her,” Linda persisted. “I'll go with you if you plan to visit her,” Terri offered. I stood determined not to do anything to hurt our friend. “Why me? And why are you all so insistent that we hurt Rena and rip apart the relationship she has with Mike? Before we do anything, we should find out how much she knows.” Margie said that since I knew Rena longer, it was not just my job but my obligation to tell her. “You're right,” I said quietly. “I have known her longer and we are closer. It's for that reason, I won't say anything.” Linda gave me a look of disgust and waved her hand in dismissal. As she walked away, I heard her say in what I deemed contempt, “So much for friendships. Glad to know we can all rely on you to watch our backs.” As I stood there in dismay, Terry and Margie said their quick goodbyes and walked to their cars. Here it is, three weeks later and my so-called friends haven't said a word to me. At least not yet! They will call, however, and I'm sure it will be in the next day or two. You see, I didn't have to say anything to Rena about her fiancé. She suspected him of seeing other women for a long time and without telling anyone, was at the same bar that same night and saw him. She visited me three days later and between coffee, wine and a lot of soothing ice cream, poured her heart out. She didn't want her friends involved since this was between her and Mike. Rena felt the more people that knew, the more embarrassing the situation would be. Being a strong woman, she wanted to handle matters in her own way and appreciated me taking a step back. She said it was only a matter of time, anyway, until Mike slipped up. After all, you can't cheat forever and not get caught. That's why she kept putting off arranging a wedding date. Smart girl! I thought as she hugged me before falling asleep on my couch. As I pulled a coverlet over my friend, I realized that no secret is safe. Eventually, the one who starts it, will break it - whether by word or action. Another thing I realized is that there is no need to go running to your best friend with every small detail that might cause hurt. It's more important to be around to pick up the pieces and lend a strong yet comforting shoulder. I also realized that my integrity was still intact and to me, that's something to be proud of. I smile as I think back. A few weeks ago, I made the difficult decision to keep a secret. Now, several friends ignore me like the plague. They still refuse to speak to me. However, once Rena makes known her own discovery, my so-called friends will call again. It's now up to me to deice if I should answer their calls. Friendships work both ways. You can't be a friend only when it's convenient to you and when it's on your terms. A true friend will be there for you, in thick and thin and stand with you rather than turn against you when times get rough. Rena and I are still close and each week to out to dinner to celebrate her new-found freedom. I celebrate my friend and the fact that I took a stand that didn't hurt anyone. There are times when honesty can be hurtful. We must always think twice before we speak. I am ever grateful that I did.

Long ago, my health became detrimental to normal life. First intermittent, now it's more often having escalated at a city shelter. I could no longer continue to work or finish my university studies pending health changes. Shelter food made me choke, vomit or sent me to the loo. It affects me daily. Every meal is sheer torture: I never know if I'll keep it down. A fluoroscopy confirmed that frequent up-chucking has narrowed and scarred my esophagus irreversibly. These dark times must pass. Like a boa constrictor who regurgitates barely-digested animals complete with that sticky gelatinous saliva, my choking is a lengthy painful process. Unfortunately, my constant throwing up isn't seen as an ingenious way of avoiding danger. The turkey vulture purposefully pukes up an entire stomach's wing-heavy contents, so that a rare predator will turn away from the maggot-infested stinky shit and rotting carcasses. My purging is just plain embarrassing and uncontrollable. Like boas who feed on rodents, songbirds, lizards and other small mammals, my normal diet is varied. My favorite meal is fish/seafood, rice/risotto and grilled vegetables. I like chicken, beef, lamb, and pork but can't consume these proteins without painful hard swallows. I can relate to captive boas prone to Inclusion Body Disease characterized by chronic regurgitation and abnormal painful postural positions: their challenges are like mine with Eosinophilic Esophagitis and other serious ills. Like a non-venomous boa, I wrap my coils around my faith. With God around me, I trust that things will improve henceforth. Also coiling myself around my friends, church family and sister, they act as the editors of my life and writings. Like the monogamous vulture, I'm fiercely loyal to those I love. Now others need to stick by me through thick and thin. Dark days must soon pass. Like boas whose habitat is threatened, so is mine, as Toronto's housing crisis means rising costs and limited affordable accessibility. As boas have adapted their perambulation to a straight line, I adjust to the times. Extinction threatens vultures too: they are poisoned by eating dead livestock given medication toxic to them. Shelters have fed me food months-to-a-year-beyond-expiration dates, poisonous to my now-delicate system. By picking dead carcasses clean, unsuspecting environmentalist turkey vultures are on clean-up and recycling duty to prevent the spread of disease. Their acute sense of smell has helped gas companies detect gas leaks as vultures circled attracted to the smell of gas also found in dead animals. Concerned with the environment, I enter contests funding tree plantings, clean-ups, and literacy programs. When migrating or searching for food, vultures congregate in ‘kettles' flocks of several hundred. I feed off the Salvation Army Bible study groups, kettle-crazed too. Like a baby boa, I was immediately independent, somehow discerning appropriate food without instruction. According to my father, I was ‘contrary' from birth refusing to drink my ‘milkies' and spewing up formula. My parents fed me pediatrician-recommended melted ice-cream. Somehow, I survived my first year, lactose intolerance then unknown. Again, I puke up constantly: it's hard to get nutrients into me. I'm not like others. I never thought as others do. Research is in my blood. An independent thinker, I can figure out most things with little or no instruction. Nowadays, Google becomes my first line of defense when faced with an unknown. Similar to boas and turkey vultures I hiss if threatened or encountering social injustice or iniquities upon the vulnerable. My sometimes-biting words are intended to propel others to act. Now I observe people's movements and utterances. Like an eagle-eyed vulture, I wait for the next juicy story. I write stories for contests. I may win one or not. But either way I'm the better for honing my observational, research and writing skills. Contests keep me alive. Everyday I write to achieve self-imposed entry deadlines. Too busy to worry about all the exigent conditions around me, including my own life's horrors, I focus elsewhere. Dark periods will lift someday. Till then, I keep my mind active even when my body fails me. Sometimes I write in floods like the expulsion of a boa's or vulture's stomach contents. Virginia Woolf's stream-of-consciousness. Other times I hover, searching for words. Like a vulture circling its prey from high to low altitudes, I scavenge for details to fuel my stories by people-watching. My prey is not physically dead. Yet like the city's forgotten vulnerable many are dead in prospects, motivations, hopes and dreams. Like the turkey vulture circling overhead, I hope for that tasty tidbit. Rather than with menacing size, I want my writings to stand out shining a light on social injustice. I want to change minds - ‘What ifs” to ‘right now.' I'm different. Boa-Turkey-Vulture Me.

The bare bones of writing comes down to expressing a thought, idea, or feeling. We use it to communicate with others, as a way to convey a message we find important or personal. The bare bones doesn't care about brilliance, complexity, mistakes, or your chosen medium (pen and paper, anyone?). It's significant in only having written your word or words of choice, and the rest—be it a masterpiece, or just a grocery list—is up to you. When I was a teenager, the act of writing was a way to release, and to entertain myself. I wrote stories with characters that accurately, if not dramatically, conveyed the emotions that I had a hard time expressing in my adolescence. The themes crossed paths with things I experienced, and things that I anticipated to experience. It was my world, glittering and bright, even through the dark themes and circumstances that were written. While I didn't know it at the time, it was an important self-reflection through elaborate plot lines and quirky characters. It didn't matter that it wasn't what I had deemed publish-worthy. All that mattered was that I conveyed my feelings, and sometimes shared them with others—and with that, catharsis. I stopped writing like that years ago. These days, writing has become something of a chore. The pressures I put upon myself to just write something good, or even better than good, made my joy burn out like a candle wick. I put writing on hold while my life unraveled into the milestone of young adulthood. Through it all, I'm certain that my life would have a clearer direction, and my soul a happier glow, had I written... anything. No matter what though, I couldn't bring myself to do it, even if it were simply “Today sucked.” The desire to create was burning in my veins, but my self doubt riddled me with a hate plague I couldn't shake. Taking a look back, I knew I yearned simply for life experience. I wanted to experience without reflection, even if that took me through a lot of impulsive choices that I regret now. It also took work to sit down, focus, and write. Now, with the desire to be heard, to be seen as articulate, and with something to offer, I still struggle. The fear of a page written with utter garbage is a greater fear than of an empty one. And I want to change that—even if the page is merely filled with one word, I'll know I've put forth an effort to say something. In today's world, where everyone puts out their best image, their best work, and the edited, filtered versions of themselves—I vow to allow myself to be raw, messy, mediocre, and riddled with mistakes. To speak what's on my mind, to dare to create, to do. It's now my time for honesty, even if it masquerades as a poem, a crime drama screenplay, an essay, or an account of my day. The bare bones are all that matter, and even if to no avail, it all ends up in a graveyard—then, at least for a moment, they lived.