Paper skin and rubber bones, once palpable under my frail fingers, were replaced so suddenly with alien meat. Glued to my body, taken as a hostage. Soft, squishy, sickening. I once was able to play hopscotch on my spine, snakes and ladders on my ribs, trace rivers on my arms, now to be drowned in a tidal wave of flesh, I can only submerge myself in fabric to conceal my monstrosity. Stripes on skin, they disturb my masterpiece. What once was anorexia’s creation of breathtaking beauty is now a mess of bruises and body, big and beefy, unwanted and ugly. Volcanoes erupt from the pit of my stomach, burning lava scarring my throat, screams dying at my tonsils. My matchstick legs, as thin as twigs, so skeletal a wisp of wind would blow me away now dissolving into history, leaving me to screech for what slipped through my fingers so quickly. I am nostalgic for my skeleton, craving the sensation of death dancing gracefully at my fingertips, grieving for a sickness which only wanted me dead from the start. Yet, as I feel material stretch uncomfortably across my abdomen, buttons promising breakage, I cannot help but miss what I once had. My melancholy madness tortures me, once displayed as battles on my body, of a concave stomach with only a wolf inside, howling day and night, skin as white as snow, flaking off like powder now hydrated. Reflecting in the mirror, my eyes shine like stars, bright, ebony. Full cheeks, dotted with crimson, freckles making constellations, acne illustrations. Healthy. A word which only evokes terror. Fury. White hot rage which burns every cell, shooting through veins like knives. Yet, staring back at me in the mirror is the girl from before. Before dry rice-cakes which stick to teeth in a wet mush, when chemicals didn’t intoxicate my body, consumed so quickly it substituted blood, flooding, my organs floating like luthers in an ocean of sugar free soda and redbull. Before I was a slave to the scale, obeying every command, kneeling at a porcelain bowl every night, confessing my sins and begging the numbers for forgiveness. Sit-ups, excruciating and exhausting done on the bedroom floor at 2am, cobalt nail polish over yellow nails, purple crescents below weary eyes, brittle hair clogged in drains and strangling combs. When bread tasted like terror and everything else tasted like numbers and diet coke for breakfast was failure and success all at once. Addiction to self-destruction, obsession with emptiness, appreciation of numbness. A cacophony of violent voices demanding pain, transformation from girl to calculator, whizzing thoughts, quick additions, effortless subtraction. No. In the glassy mirror, is the miraculous return of a girl whose mouth is full of pearls and laugh full of joy, like a disease, so infectious one exposure would contaminate an entire room with bubbling cheerfulness. Her shoulder blades may not be wings and she may not see constellations when she stands but her limbs move gracefully, absent of crippling pain and her heart beats with ease. Once stood a skeleton, bones breaking and anorexia’s prize, her biggest accomplishment. Now, the girl in the mirror stares in shock and awe, pulls off her rose-tinted glasses, breathing in every inch of herself. Mountains of flesh, seas of cellulite, rippling magnificently on the surface, tiger stripes, battle wounds. Mountains are grand and have never apologised for the space they take up and she silently promises to do the same.