TOUCHING
I once heard that the oldest parts of the brain associate themselves with ritual. On default, the primitive brain relapses, in some beastly instinct, the animal overwhelming the human with something as mundane as routine. You, the host, are responsible for crafting the ritual, but you cannot be blamed for giving in.
Can you?
***
This is how it happens: before leaving for school, I spend an hour lying in my bed. The hair on my bare hands prickle. I run a finger over my thighs, starting at the knee, sliding up till I reach the hipbone. I linger here, trace my fingers over its sharpness, rubbing, ever so gently, bone on skin.
Once, when I am nine, I refuse to eat breakfast. My father tells me that if I don’t eat, the acid in my gut will eat up my tummy, gnawing at the fat.
This has always struck me as a beautiful concept. The body, denied sustenance, feeding on itself, knowing its demise and rushing headlong into it.
When I lose weight, this is how I imagine the fat leaving. I starve myself until I can feel the burning in my gut. I see the body shrink, shrink as it shrivels and then—poof—disappears. Magic.
***
The first stage of any journey is always the most beautiful. There is a linear progression, where the body is a systematic thing, taken by surprise, easily controlled. I watch the weight fall off my body as if it is weightless. I lose, lose, lose until my skin adheres itself to the bones, refusing to be lost.
The latter stages are more complicated. Each day, my body feels new. I am astounded by how one night I will be able to trace my ribs through my stomach, while the next morning, there is no sign of bone at all, only flab upon flab. The problem with eating disorders is that the affected individual is both the host and the virus. The body becomes its own casket. My real body, small and bound and contained, has sunk into the fake one. A certain grafting is necessary. I could take a knife and cut myself out.
***
What is important: the plan.
In school, I develop a set of techniques to calm myself down.
One, that I still love, is raising my hand to my neck and wrapping my fingers around the base, while letting the larger half of my hand rest on my collarbone, sharp. I practise this in the mirror several times before attempting to carry it out.
***
The sides of the face by itself is a tricky area: the bone just beneath the cheek is a pleasure spot, but the cheek itself, sometimes soft and flaccid, sometimes stretched out and yet still not enough—upsets me like nothing else can.
My father comes out of his room this morning with red eyes that I pretend not to notice.
At breakfast, I glare when he asks me to eat one more serving, then sob when he heaps it onto my plate.
He drops his spoon to the floor and walks out of the room. My mother looks at me with anger? worry? blame?
I can’t bring myself to care.
***
That night, I dream of a man walking up to me, grabbing my breast and saying: are you ashamed of this? His eyes are firm and unyielding.
***
A problem: the food greases the toilet bowl. Pieces of shit now stick to the porcelain and I find myself scrubbing it out almost every other day. Once, I am exhausted from all the scrubbing and forgo the cleaning for the rest of the month. A huge chunk of shit waits in the bowl, layer sedimenting layer. The smell is sometimes unbearable, but I cannot bring myself to clean it out.
***
Remember your clumsiness, the moment with you hand on the cereal box, right before you open and rage through half the box? Remember coming back from holiday and your father laughing out loud, saying: you’ve grown so fat. Even though you’d looked at yourself naked in the hotel mirror each day, sucked in your stomach and hoped the space between your thighs was still the same. Even though you skipped your meals whenever you could and threw up the rest.
***
Some advice: ritualise.
Become a set of actions, sensation: weigh yourself at five, lemon water sting at six, burning when it touches your empty stomach, run at seven, light headed, breakfast at nine, dump food into the toilet, flush, weakest link at ten, lunch at one, flush, light headed, some days faint at two, black spots at three, stay, weakest link at four, if you’ve given in, purge, crave salt at five, sweet at six, run at seven, dinner, flush, flush, flush.
There. You are something made.
***
Sometimes, I wish I could not see myself. I do not want this terrible power.
***
What a distant relative says after a long period of time: My god. Look at you. My god. This is what I feel when I stand on the weighing machine after a month or so, my hand pulling at an unfamiliar flab of fat on my stomach.
I read once that the eyes do not actually process every single detail that enters your brain. Instead, they form a vague portrait on the foundation of necessity, and your brain will color in the blanks for you. You see only what you want to see, what you are used to seeing. That night, I write: do not trust the eyes. Do not trust anyone. Trust the numbers. Measure yourself. Keep track. After this incident, I have lists of everything that must go, starting from the clumsiness of my breasts to the fat on my stomach to the hanging skin on the lower side of my upper arms. I do not like these projections. I want to be like the word contained, to be nested within myself. There is something so safe in that word. I take notes, evaluate my position, rethink my stance. Map your body with touch.
In this way, you will find yourself.
***
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***
Some days, I do not feel the burning at all, no matter how long I go without food. This startles me.
***
At my funeral, the priest offers me a stranger’s body. It’s okay, he says, with a kindness in his eyes. Take it.
I wake in a sweat.
***
I hold my wrist in my hand and move my fingers—first slow, then rapidly—so that I can feel the veins at the inside dance, within the bones on each side, skin bruised blue there from friction, like brackets.
I am also fond of the eyes. Holding a finger beneath the eyelashes to feel each lash flutter, so delicate.
These parts strike me as the purest spots of the body. A place where I am able to touch what is outwards and link myself directly with the internal functions, once beyond my reach.
***
To the anorexic, her body is the last and finest accomplishment. To touch and feel nothing. Look how I have disappeared.
***
At school, my friend’s mother walks up to me, cups my hip and says: my god. My god, you’ve grown so thin. And so, so pretty. My god.
***
Shreya Vikram is a writer based in India. Her work is forthcoming in Smokelong Quarterly, Rumpus, Atticus Review and elsewhere. You can find more of her writing at shreyavikram.com
