I Speak for the Empty
Tags: Teenagers, Eating Disorders, Speech, Poetry

To the children like me who see these broken bones in our society but cannot even stand to fix our own. Our world feeds us these unreachable ideals telling us we are not enough knowing we are young, we are simply children. And I ask why? Why put our world’s future through such pain? Do they realize the damage they do, the self hatred they cause? In short, they do see the harm, there’s no way they don’t. But a small waist is worth far more than a generation of healthy bodies.

An older man told me once that I look different from the girls my age, I’m bigger. And what I will say is that man had no room to judge. Anyways, he did not explicitly say this was a bad thing I understood. Because my tag said medium instead of small I was automatically different, I was worse. I did not know this man but his words stopped me. He looked at me and changed my worth because of the size of my body, the very body that keeps me alive. He acknowledged my existence yet stripped me of my significance as if I were a weed opposed to a flower. He was the first of many to distort my image of beauty, like one of those mirrors at the carnival. I’m told that I’m beautiful the way I am but at this point it sounds backhanded and hopeless. His words are stuck in my head, branded with an iron rod. This should not be my reality, our reality, because aren’t we just kids?

The characters on my TV glamorized starvation throughout my childhood. These illnesses were romanticized- telling us that we could one day be like them, one day be what society deems perfect. This disorder spreads like a wildfire upon our impressionable minds, burning our bodies until we are nothing but ash. For we are young, naive, we will listen to anything. If the pretty actress says diet, we diet, if she says exercise, we exercise, if she says starve, we starve. For we are just children feeding into the idea of emptiness forever leaving us hungry. And aren’t we just kids? For the media to look at us and tell us to conform to their twisted fantasy is torturous. We are to be loved and valued no matter what the tag of our jeans says because aren’t we just kids? What happened to the equality and positivity you to me preached just yesterday? Yesterday you told me to let myself live free of expectation, and not to give in to the societal pressures of perfection and today I read an article saying that I don’t need to eat every meal. We should not be subjected to such hypocrisy for we are just kids.

I’m constantly told by my doctor though; lose weight, that I’m at the top of my weight class. I’m told to be healthier, skinnier, prettier when I was never unhealthy to begin with. And aren’t I just a kid? I’m built like an athlete, I always have been. I have more muscle than fat, and while I could stand to be in better shape, I am healthy. Even after adjusting my diet, cutting out extra sugars, and working out every day I remain at the top of my weight class. And still I’m told to lose weight. So I do, I try at least. I leave my stomach empty but fill my ego, because now I’m thin. Kids my age, we don’t understand the damages either. We act impulsively, craving validation rather than food. And it’s not until we almost pass out while driving home from practice after not eating anything besides an energy drink we may recognize the problem. Yet the recognition of this only pushes us to work harder, to eat less. It’s the dreaded competition of a distorted cycle planting seeds in our brains while draining our bodies of the nutrients to care for them. And still, we’re told we’re unhealthy because of a number on a scale.

Now trapped in the cage that is my broken body I struggle to even look in a mirror. And aren’t I just a kid? I’m tempted to give in, so just maybe I can look like her. Maybe the old man will tell me that I am enough, that I’m like the other girls. Now that my hair is falling out and my hands are shaking, maybe now I am enough. But this is not what I want, what any of us want. We want to love ourselves the way we loved our stuffed animals when we were younger. The way we loved that one flavor of ice cream. The way we love our best friend. We deserve to love ourselves and be loved more than anything in this world because aren’t we just kids?