[I could feel the tube bounce against my bra as I swiveled my body around. My hands were all but lifeless at my sides.]

She looked in the mirror, half naked, studying her body with an impassive expression. She felt a sudden, overwhelming urge to cry, but her face remained blank, her eyes dry.

A nasal-gastric feeding tube snaked its way out of her right nostril; the excess of the tube lay against her chest after wrapping once behind her ear. Despite the weight she had gained inpatient for her eating disorder, her ribs were still prominent and her skin kept a hint of its sickly yellow hue.

[My eyes were rimmed with black, but I imagined them rimmed with my red eyeliner from back home. I looked sick when my eyes were red. Maybe wearing that red was a cry for attention and that’s why the lure was so strong, but I liked to believe that it symbolized something less obnoxious and something more special.]

Her fingertips lightly brushed the bathroom sink, and without looking, she could envision the contrast of the blue veins running down her pale hand. She thought that if they were anybody else’s fingers, they might be beautiful.

[My gaze broke with the eyes in the mirror as I fumbled with my journal. It was skinny and weak and lay on the sink - to the right of my fingers.]

The journal was open to the cardboard side of the last page. Taped to it was a photo of the girl. It was taken without her knowledge, but when it was presented to her, she took it with a small smile. She thought it was a nice picture; she almost looked thin. Her feeding tube was visible.

[Underneath the picture, I wrote “I am sorry, Mom. I love you”. I felt guilty I hadn’t included Dad, but I had acted hastily. Every couple of seconds, I peeked back at my reflection in the mirror and my face would twitch. My reflection hurt more than the occasional chest pains. Whether those were complications from my “poor eating habits”, I wasn’t sure, but either way, my health was of no concern to me.

After this, I won’t have to feel anymore.]

She double-checked that the journal was evident on the counter and took a step towards the toilet. Perhaps there was a sound outside the door (she had a roommate after all), but she paid little to no mind as she took a deep breath.

[It’s not a suicide note, but I think the picture would strike them as more precious. It wasn’t typical and I didn’t want to end everything being so predictable.]

She was told - sometimes in whispers, sometimes in a loud, clear voice – depending on who was speaking, the patients or the professionals – that vomiting up food with an NG tube could be fatal. Throwing up would cause the tube to come up along with the contents of her stomach, and if it got caught on something, she could die.

She also was told it was a high risk and so it was in her best interest to abstain. She listened with more interest than one would hope; anything fatal was worth paying mind to.

[I’ve never purged. I’m not that girl. I was the girl surviving on an apple but I wasn’t the girl that stuck her finger down her throat. But I’ve fallen in love with the fantasy of death. Though, apart from my usual fallacies, death was not fantasy - not like novels one could read; death was dark and empty, and most importantly, only too easily attainable.]

She knelt down to the floor and surprisingly, her legs weren’t shaking. The space between the tiles scraped her knees, but the contact only gave her a slight tinge of euphoria; where there was pain, there was a darker pleasure.

[I think I started crying. I wasn’t paying too much attention; I’d cried enough and at the moment, it was simply irritating. It was an emotional blockade.

I slid my hand up to my lips, and I felt wetness where the tears had already traveled down my chin. I decided not to peek back at my journal; my resolve would disintegrate if I dared.]

She stuck her finger down her throat.
~~
]I was lying in bed. My attempt at suicide had failed and, despite my efforts at apathy, I felt disappointed. I couldn’t brush it off.]

Her chest rose and fell with a steady rhythm.

[I contemplated how my eyes looked now. I was sure they were rimmed red.]