Haunted Bag of Bones

By Melody McCoy-Cole

Haunting secrets loom over your head,

Worse than the monsters that lie under your bed.

Next to you lies your wastebasket full of your vomit and pride,

Confidence so low you can only hide.

Hide your secret, hide your disease, hide all the ways you displease yourself and me,

Throw away the garbage but keep the self-hate, remember to recycle your smiles so

you can learn to appreciate.

Appreciate your master, the controller of your mind, the one who controls what goes in

and out from inside.

Appreciate your reflection of yourself in the mirror, the one that shows the truth even if

it’s your worst fears.

Appreciate the ones that try to understand, yet you keep everything hidden so it doesn’t

look out of hand.

It doesn’t look that you’re wasting or starving yourself, so no one hears the wretches of

your throat when you spew it all out.

Into the endless void everything goes, from your thoughts, your true self identity and the

snot from your nose.

Your identity now lies in your new hands, with those acid blistered fingers that make

your new plans,

Plans to seize the day by calorie counting, deficits, fastings and light recipes,

Praying to the skeletal goddess for strength to not eat,

Moving every moment whether it’s by racing thoughts or dancing feet, burning off the

weight on every single beat.

Stepping on the scale to measure your self-worth, and yet be disappointed every time

by numericals that don’t logically work.

A slave, a meandering fool, or even a beast that’s not human which scours the Earth

and wastes away,

“You’re never good enough” the inner voices all whisper and scream and shout to the

point you cut yourself to bleed and leak all the hate out.

Some never make it and die in their sickness,

Some learn to recover and live by new improved voices.

The rest of us like you and I, we are stuck in between.

There is no life or death, there is just bleak.

Stuck in our minds that won’t let us change.

Stuck in all the habits that make us keep our behaviors and ways.

We continue to plod on with our lonely desperate days.

Fueling ourselves with pills, caffeine and sleep,

No time to complain and no time to weep.

The disease keeps us hidden and makes ourselves weak.

Bones sticking out but still to our dismay, we pull and prod at our skin that still gets in

the way.

Measuring ourselves compared to pencils and magazine models whose collarbones

jumps from the page,

We are nothing like them so we must be a waste.

I’m sorry body for what I’ve put your through,

Living in a hell that I know wasn’t really you.

Holding yourself closed when you should have blossomed, and now are stuck with

repercussions that come often.

I’m sorry body for not allowing you to taste, for putting things down your throat and for

counting every number of calories and pills to take.

I’m sorry body for not comforting you, for not having the strength to grow or protect you,

For having not enough mass to keep you warm, for losing your pretty head of hair that

falls out in giant swarms.

I’m sorry body for all the hospital stays, the sickness, the torture and for the pain.

I’m sorry mind for making you say and feel all those negative things, forcing you to see

delusions and have nightmares for dreams.

I’m sorry mind for brain controlling you to the point you couldn’t think, and for the beliefs

that made you cry into the deep sink.

I’m sorry mind for not showing you the way, the way to help, the way to positivity, the

way to wanting your life to stay.

I may have not gotten you to your haven close enough, but I still believe that you are

tough.

You have help now and can use it in your favor, learn new things about recovery and

changing your behaviors.

You can come out the other side blinding with hopes and dreams, you can move on with

your life, share your story, make friends and be anything you believe.

Remember that you are worth it every single day, and even if you are not at a certain

weight, that doesn’t mean that it should change your ways.

Remember that even if your past was traumatic, torn and injured, your future can be

bright, happy and full of pleasure.

Remember that you deserve to be loved and everything will be okay, because baby girl

you are perfect in this moment in every single way.

Being human is what’s incredible about being alive on this world, allowing our creativity

to constantly flow, love yourself, treat yourself, and allow yourself to grow.

You never have to go back to that haunted bag of bones.

By Melody McCoy-Cole