catastrophe

'shame'
by warsan shire

I don’t know when I first realised that I could eat whatever I want and then vomit it out, the knowledge
was stunning and soon everyone loved me more; my mother, my friends, the men in the streets. Beauty
is a strange place, a road sign in the distance that you never actually reach. The term bulimia in greek
means ‘ravenous hunger’ and I was starving. It’s incredible how long your body can last on nothing
until you lose everything.

Bulimia is a secret that rots your teeth, bursts the blood vessels in your eyes and intimidates anyone that
could ever dare to love you. You despise your own body, cruel irony. Every single thing of joy, was
corrupted by my illness. Music was used only to hide the sounds of my retching, film, to satiate the
hunger when I had taken twelve diet pills and could not feel the tips of my fingers. That whole part of
my life is almost a myth, I was twenty years old, killing myself and not one person noticed. I knew the
consequences, I was already experiencing some - the enamel of my teeth abandoning me, my periods
disappearing, my body just hurting all the time.

I learnt how to lie with a beautiful skill, the careful calculation of how long after eating with your loved
ones that you must excuse yourself to go to the bathroom before the food starts to digest. How to flush
the toilet repeatedly or run the tap to hide the sounds, taking off all your clothes because the vomit
always splashes back. How to hide the bleeding gums, the bloody nose, the bloating of face. I did
nothing else, but gently manipulate everyone that cared about me.

Then, a hammam in Marrakech, I watched the women walk around partially naked, the soft swell of
belly, the thighs and hips, flesh being scrubbed and oiled and steamed, a woman with hips as wide as
mine, with the same thickness in thighs, the same dimples on the small of back, same waist, navel, skin
so carefully soft and human that I was afraid to look. Why did I hate my body when hers was the same
and I could not stop looking.

Essentially, if our secrets are secrets because we are told to be ashamed, then we must share them.
There is no shame in being sad or struggling or trying to heal. We are all desperate, depraved and
sacred. We are all terrible and brillIant. I can list all the things that can make a girl want to escape her
own body (re: patriarchy). But I’d rather list all the things that make me want to stay in my body, and
adorn it like a home, rub oils into my skin, tell it how sorry I am for trying to leave, for trying to hurt it
into submission.

Eating disorders don’t disappear, many have no idea that there is something wrong with the way they
are hungry, with they way that they eat. That they exercise until they cannot move, that there is always
a new diet, that the scales are the first thing to touch your body in the morning. We live in a world
where the worst thing a woman could be is at peace with her body. We are obsessed with destroying,
controlling and colonising everything, even our own bodies. I’m interested in kindness.

‘It took me Twenty-something years to learn how to love myself, I don’t have that kinda time to 
convince somebody else’ - Daniel Franzese