Feast & Famine

I eat myself into a stupor each night - alone in my bed, chewing and swallowing frantically.
Gorging on chocolate and biscuits until I feel as if I might vomit.
I don't like chocolate. I do like biscuits a fair bit. But not enough to shove a packet into my aching stomach every single night.

I imagine I'm over-compensating in some sickened, co-dependent way for the meagre scrapings you bitterly permit your precious body. I stuff, you starve. I over-indulge, you cling determinedly to ravenous denial. I feel disgusted and sad and heavy and soft on all my edges and you feel light and angular and washboard hard and lithe and pure and clean and stiff with ramrod effort. Hardened in your mind and breaking in your heart.

I eat so much. My fingers are foul with the sourness of wetted biscuit and greasy chocolate. There are flakings and leavings and crumblings and stinking, guilty drops of this secret feast all over me and my bed. I can feel - beneath my fingernails - revolting, tiny wedges of fat and oil and dry sugar. I can't bring myself to lick and suck it away. That vague gesture of hand to mouth and tongue probing. It's beyond me. I want harsh soap and scalding water. I wish I could do that to my stomach and my fattening body.

When I cry - harrowing and hard like I'm going to wring out my soul - I am left feeling so empty and listless. Perhaps I am filling myself up to mend the wounds. The fullness feels terrible and yet I am distanced momentarily from your anguish. MY anguish. When we cry and our hearts are breaking and I give you all the strength in my hollow soul, when I put myself on hold and breathe every breath for you and your sorrow and fear, when I spew my heart out of my body, through my mouth and into your gaping aching mind - to nourish and heal you - I leave myself bare and ravenous and depleted. Running on empty. So I gorge to fill the void for when you need me again.