Stiff, plasticky sheets crackle as I struggle to sit up amidst all of the tubes. A needle is stuck into the fleshy part of my arm, the part that bulges. The room is bare, blindingly bland. Cheap-looking lights hang from the ceiling, boring into my eyes with unbearable brightness. A loud beeping rings in my ears and invades my mind, screeching deafeningly. I feel groggy and numb. I’m freezing, shivering. The sound of my teeth chattering penetrates the empty room. The noise refuses to cease.

I lay back down, suddenly exhausted. The bed feels as strange and unfamiliar as everything else here. I feel bloated, uncomfortably full. Staring down at my stomache, I wonder if my hipbones are as defined as they used to be. I let my eyelids pull my brain away, from reality to dreamland, the place I like so much better.

That's when it all comes back to me. The eating disorder. My finger fused to the back of my mouth, and my dinner falling out. The feeling of power, like I was beating myself in an invisible war. My body shrinking, the gap between my thighs. Translucent skin that clung unnaturally to hollow bones, and long cracked fingers. Shoulder blades sticking out at odd angles, legs that could barely hold me up anymore. Fragile twigs, ready to snap at a moment’s notice.

"What's wrong?"

"Nothing."

And so I became the number on the scale. Day after day, slowly sinking, drowning. Silver bubbles drifted to the top of the water and popped, the remainders of my silent scream. I was too deep for the sun to reach me, swallowed in a desire for the numbers to keep dropping so I could finally say, I'm the skinniest.

It really is crazy. The way that society drills into us, day after day. Skinny. Be skinny. Skinny is beautiful. Skinny is perfect. Eventually, skinny becomes everything, and it’s not society telling you those things, it’s yourself.

Yet, as I walked the halls, skinny was the broken promise. Once I was skinny, I thought I’d be different, a better version of myself. Maybe I would find myself. But I was the same as before, maybe worse. Far from beautiful, popular. I was the outcast, who was stared at sidelong, my own eyes at my feet. I showed off my bones that peeped through ghostly skin, and what made me proud disturbed my peers. Anorexic, freak, skinny, scary, ugly, they would whisper, thinking I couldn’t hear. But I was already underwater, too far below to hear them. Voices get distorted underwater, twisted. Maybe they were inside my head. Maybe they were never there at all, maybe I was never there. If I had been any skinnier, I would've disappeared altogether.

I am nothing but a memory. I am a ghost, a skeleton. An optical illusion. Withered, nothing. Humpty Dumpty, the one who could never be put back together again. There is no glue for me, no easy fix, and no cure for what I’ve become. I’m supposed to get better now, make a recovery. But I know that won’t ever happen. I’m broken.