Let’s be honest- if you know me you were probably wondering when this post would surface.

Was it a scene from Requiem for a Dream? Was it like that HBO documentary? Was it just another vacay paid for by Daddy? Was Ke$ha there?

You all know I went, you all know I shared, you all know I prospered- so after putting our heads together today, my comrades in the fight have decided to help me share the (dirty) facts about life in the ED loony bin:

Am I embarrassed? Sure. Am I ashamed? No.

You need help- I need help. We find it one way or another-

Tonight’s post- the first of the 11- I’ve entitled ”Bitch, Please: There’s How Many Grams of Sugar in that Yogurt?”

Enjoy- and spread the love wherever it need be.

 

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1.)  Bitch, Please: There’s How Many Grams of Sugar in that Yogurt?

The day is here- you barely slept.

You rolled around the hotel bed with your laptop by your side- Mad Men Season 5 shifting from episode to episode on Netflix-

You’re wondering what movies will be on it when you get out; what you’ll miss at the Nitehawk in Brooklyn.

You’re texting the person you were dating before, sending them the salutations and the farewells. Telling them you’re sorry for being dishonest- hoping they’ll find someone while you’re gone.

You don’t know who you’ll be when you’re done.

You don’t really want to.

Face the nightmare, homegirl- Your life has come to a point where you’re binge eating two boxes of cereal a day.

Where your roommate knows to hide the chips and the cookies and the cereal in her room so you won’t eat it under the sheets in your bed.

You’re tired laying in that hotel bed, but you won’t sleep. You’re texting this person and you’re remembering how you once went on a date with them and threw up in a deli bathroom when they dropped you off at the subway.

You text your parents.

“You okay?” Your mom asks.

“Yeah, going to bed.”

“I love you,” she says.

You don’t really want to answer.

You’re not mad. You’re just tired.

You think about Bradley; wonder if he would’ve ended up like this.

You leave your room, wander down the hall past the concierge. You sit on a bench and smoke a cigarette outside the Fairfield Inn.

You cry because you know you’ll be crying a lot, and it’s overwhelming. You smoke knowing it won’t help.

For the next month(s) you know you will cry over the cookies you’ll be forced to eat (Oreos. So many Oreos), the high-calorie granola you’ll be instructed to finish (What, no fat-free?), and the Glazed Doughnuts you would’ve avoided like the plague (Hello, Dunkin) had you previously had the chance.

You know the first week will be rough- it goes without saying. You’ll get there- you’ll get lost.

You slink back to your hotel room, shifting your eyes away from the gaze of the people sitting in the lobby.

You bought some leggings today. You wonder if people dress up in rehab?

You wash your face in the sink and wonder if you’ll lose weight now that you won’t be free to binge.

You crawl into bed with your XL t-shirt and wonder if you’ll make friends. God, you hope they’re not insane.

You drift into uneasy sleep with your cell phone in your hand, your last message on Facebook sent.

—

And then the morning comes and you’re unsure whether to eat. Should you starve yourself before? Should you have one last binge?

You decide on a banana and half a cookie.

This is the first day of your life, you like to think- even if it’s cheesy.

You pick up your things around the room; sit in front of the mirror and apply your make up and scowl at your hair.

You don’t have a straightener, a blow dryer, nor a curler. A subtle reminder that you aren’t allowed those things when you’re crazy.

You’re waiting outside smoking a cigarette when the driver pulls up.

“You Lindsey?” he asks, a smile on his face.

Why are you smiling, asshole?

“Yeah,” you say, going to stab out the cigarette.

“No, no,” he says, holding his hands up. “Take your time. No rush.”

You nod ‘thanks’ but the cigarette and you have already divorced.

This is your last cigarette, you think, trying to make it memorable- but it’s not. You get in the car while he puts your suitcase in the back.

“Tom,” he says, reaching out for your hand.

He talks your ear off the entire way there. You’re annoyed. All you want to do is shove your headphones in your ear and self-pity.

But you don’t- damn you Tom- you think when he pulls in through the metal gates. Jumping out of the car, he opens your door and helps you out.

“Good Luck,” he says- as if you’re going off to war- and a lady with a trim figure meets you at the car to guide you into reception.

Of course she has a trim figure, you think, glancing her up and down. And you hate her on sight.

Hours pass. Instructions are dealt. Suitcase inspected. Your “Team Red” Binder stamped with your name. (What is this-  Middle School Field Day?)

So here it is, you sigh finally, sitting on the entry couch. It’s your first day and all the skinny bitches are running around the halls with their feeding tube IVs and their waft figures, and here you are staring at some hand-crafted artwork from a patient 7 years ago that reads “4319 days is ENOUGH” in eerie black and red paint; an XXS t-shirt you assume this satanic painter once adorned hanging beside it.

You are jealous of this person on this first day, and her XXS willpower. You wonder what 4319 ED free days would look like-  disgusted by the thought. The Oompa Loompa you’d turn into. The triple chins. The Facebook photos that would have the social community whispering “Poor thing, she used to be so thin back then.” Oh God, the cellulite. Cut it off. Can you just have that knife to cut it all off.

You want to run thinking about it. Your body telling you to- your toes tensing in your shoes, your muscles clenching in your black jeans, telling you they’re weakening by the moment. Run, it’s instructing. Don’t let yourself give up you lazy bitch.

But I ran last night, you explain. I ran for you, you say.- I ran and I cried and I laid on the gym ground with my knees to my chest and I said I was sorry for never working hard enough.

If I had just gotten to that perfect weight, you think. I could’ve stopped before it came to this-

Why couldn’t you get there. You don’t understand. If you’d gotten there you would’ve quit binging. You would’ve stopped lying. You could’ve sat between people in the subway. You could’ve taken that rest day once in awhile. And God, you’d let yourself eat that cake your mom made at Christmas. You only binged because you looked at yourself in the mirror. Cellulite, skin, weight clinging to you- like a tick to your leg.

These are your thoughts that first day, have been your thoughts for so long.

You’re on the verge of tears. You’re comparing yourself to every person that walks by- the girl with the baggy flannel and cut off shorts, the model with the boniest waist you’ve ever seen and the tube hanging from her nose. Oh, there’s the pretty ones, and the bigger ones, and the ones you assume came in on drugs, and to be honest, you’re not judging them- you’re judging you. You’re sitting there catching their pale eyes and their skeletal frames and when you see the shoulder blades on the woman in the corner- all you can do is wonder again whether you actually need to go through the humility of this experience. Should I leave? Should I call my mom? Oh God, what would (insert ex name) think if they knew I ended up here?

You think about the last time you saw that ex- the way they looked at you when you changed your shirt- the eyes gazing at your dinner plate- the tightened jaw when you laid together in a bed and they rubbed their hand over your rib cage. “I can feel your ribs,” they whispered. And you smiled because you’d won.

You always won, then- before you moved to NYC and could no longer run as much.

You tried the 5am work outs- you tried the midnight runs- but the weight crept back. A pound here, a pound there. You laid in your bed pinching the side of your hips- hoping it would shed like a snake- so you could stop hating yourself.

So you could go to that birthday dinner-

You think about your friends at home now. You think about your mom leaving the night before. The way her head hung to the side, her eyes bleary- She loves you, and you know it.

And then someone talks to you from the couch over-  A Southern girl in boots and ill-fitted jeans. She’s staring at you with a curious look on her face, along with a group of girls precariously picking you over in their minds. “Is she a binger, a bulimic, an ano?” Sometimes, it’s obvious. In your case, it isn’t.

You’d done it all, yes, but ”doing it all” doesn’t show when you’re a healthy weight with an ass a little more cushy than a sponge.

“This your first day?” she asks.

You smile like you’re going through your 2007 Sorority Rush. “Uh-huh,” you say. “Yep!” You add for good measure.

You hate yourself.

The girl’s staring at you with her toothy Alabama grin. “It’s not too bad usually,” she says. ” But we’re doing rounds right now so everyone’s in a bad mood.”

“Rounds?”

“For levels,” she says. “On Tuesdays, we get to find out if we move up a level. I’m on escorts and I wanna move up to level 1 but everyone’s different.”

“Escorts?”

“Yeah, if you’re on escorts you can’t go to the bathroom without supervision.”

“Someone goes in there with you?”

“No,” she pauses. “But you have to count real loud while the staff stands outside and listens.”

Before you can press her further on this whole level system business, a lady in a light yellow cardigan and long blonde hair walks out from a room “Stacey?” she says, staring at the girl you were speaking to.

“Well,” she grins. “Wish me luck”

You smile politely and watch as the girls around her pat her back and make flustered movements.

“Where you from?” the girl in flannel suddenly asks.

You look up at her standing in the corner, her worn Van sole pressed to the wall, hair in her face, paint all over… well, everything.

“Texas.”

“Me too,” she says. But she doesn’t look happy about it.

“Cool,” you say. “Yeah, Ft Worth- Dallas area.”

“Denton,” she says, looking you up and down. “Or, well, actually Plano, then Denton. Then New York. Then here.”

You nod. “I live in New York right now actually.”

She nods. “Alright,” and turns back to the girl sitting on the ground in front of her. “This is fucking bullshit,” you can hear her say to her.

“Yeah, but you know if you weren’t such a bitch all the time they’d let you move up.”

She throws up her hands “I’m done with it.”

The girl on the ground looks bored. “No you’re not. Sit down.”

“I’m sick of it,” she says again. But she slides down next to the girl who you assume was a dancer at some time in her life.

“Stop fighting them and you’ll get out.”

“I’m not even thin anymore.”

“Yeah, but you’re still acting on symptoms.”

“Not in the last week.”

This is how the first day goes.

You hang out in your room later with the floral Floridian comforter, the connected bathroom with no lock. Your roommate’s things strewn over the room.

You are too overwhelmed to cry.

Dinner comes, and you know you’re hungry (when aren’t you?) so you file behind the other girls. Some are friendly. Some are blunt. A girl with cuts up her legs and arms smiles at you with her pageboy haircut and says ”you’re pretty. I like your smile.”

It takes you all night to realize she’s only 14.

You sit in the cafeteria across a girl named ”Wes,” and it takes you all night to realize Wes is no longer a girl.

He helps you through dinner. He watches you when the tray is placed in front of you and you look down to see the cup of WHITE rice, broccoli rabe, tofu (you chose the healthiest you could on that awful menu), and yogurt for dessert.

You grimace, but you think you’ve beat the system. “Tofu and yogurt,” you cackle to yourself. “I could’ve chosen the chicken and 2% milk like that fool over there, but I went safe.”

It’s then you peer down at the nutrition label on the yogurt and break into tears. You sob. You refuse to eat.

You’re crying over grams of sugar in a Dannon’s Vanila Yogurt (27g to be exact).

“I can’t eat this shit,” you say.

Wes pats your hand and tells you a joke.

The table is laughing with him and ignoring your tears- used to the sobbing reactions of the new people.

Someone puts her hand on your back.

“You’re alright girl, you got this.”

You don’t, you think. You really don’t.

“We all had to do it- First night’s the worse. Don’t think about it.”

You stare at the goop of yogurt you’ve now pushed onto your spoon.

And eventually, you take a bite- because you’re polite.

You’re polite and your mother taught you to be seen and not heard.

You eat the damn yogurt- bite by bite- imagining the sugar fermenting into your veins.

The mounds of fat you’ll feel on your stomach when you lie down for bed.

You let the tears stream down your face.

And no one says anything; they just clap for you when you finish.

As the cafeteria clears, you leave feeling like a lamb for the slaughter.

And that night, tucked under the starch white sheets-

You cry yourself to sleep.

This is Rehab: Day One