Eating My Pain Away

Silence,

I suppose you are the person I write to now. For almost all of my childhood I felt erased. Erased. That is the best word I can think of to describe my experience.

Does this bit of information mean anything, really? “As far as anyone else was concerned, it didn’t seem to matter whether I was alive or dead. At the age of eight, I started eating my pain away. My mother had grown tired of trying to control what me and my sister ate and so at eight I was allowed to eat whatever I wanted. When I entered the 4th grade, I had gained 60 pounds over the summer. I really didn’t get a sense of how stigmatizing my obesity would be until a few years later. Obviously, children can be cruel. It didn’t help that the first two times I was punched in the face I froze up and cried. By the time I was in high school, I took everything that was given to me, all of the abuse I received, internalized it, and decided I was a piece of shit.”

Remembering the past drowns my hope
Under tidal waves of kamikaze soap
Standing, staring through the open rope

There is no sunrise that stirs me
No window scene that allures me

Oh Silence, how I’ve found a friend in you!