Animal.

2011.

Well.

Its late.You are alone, as always and far too awake .Your last remaining roommate is asleep to garner the energy it takes to live in the daylight as she does.The whole world is asleep.You move through the clean empty house picking up books and make your way out into the yard into your shack.

You have an economy of movement now.A precision borne of pain and resilience.

Get changed ,  pull on your tee-shirt and shorts.Take your long hair and wind it into a top knot. The stars look down on you. God denies you.The moon is bored.The darkness bares silent witness to your endless  punishing self hatred. You are so fucking useless.

You find your hands flutter, moth like ,alighting on all the  most despised parts of your blighted anatomy. The hips,stomach,breasts. Your mind flashes to all the fat women that you see with their immaculate manicures and hairstyles, their perfect shoes and handbags. As if that is going to avert your eyes from the evidence of their gluttony,their laziness.

They make you sick and you ,you body dysmorphic fuckhead,you make yourself sicker than all of them put together….

You silently make your way over to the bench-press.All the weights ready and where you want them. Your aim is to be as slow and silent as possible .Its 2 in the morning. The aim is to make your corpse bark with pain.You take nurofen ahead of time knowing what you are about to inflict apon yourself. 2kgs of extra weigh are strapped to each wrist,secured with thick white medical tape.

Begin.

Breathe,focus on the spiders that have made their transient homes between the gaudy multi hued Xmas baubles that you hung from the rafters years ago,back before you went color blind and still believed in beauty. Stay steady loser. Hold fast.Every rep is the last thing you will ever do. Your mind drifts,imagining a leanness so severe that you can halt your menstrual cycle.You dwell there.You smile….it doesn’t last.

Control. You have given up counting reps.You stop when you break. This takes around an hour.Drenched with sweat. you can hardly lift your fat ass off the bench.You stagger into the yard and stretch.

Still not good enough.

Have a shower.Scrub the salt out of your weary battle scared dermis.Do this in the dark.

Now go to bed.

When you wake up two hours later with your legs spasming with muscle cramps don’t be a baby.You don’t have to turn on the light.You know where they are.Pop the blister pack and dry swallow two voltaren rapid 12.5 and try and sleep.

Asshole.

The alarm goes off at 2:00. Crack and slam the disgusting room temperature Red Bull that you put by your bedside the night before.. Sit up and pull on your socks. Sports bra follows ,two skin tight running tops to crush your deflating despised breasts into your ribcage,You look down,ribs stand out against thin skin proudly,your sternum stretches for days. Still not good enough.Now,grey tee shirt,soccer shorts,shoes. Braid hair pull it through the back of sweat buckled baseball cap.I- pod on. Gum in rotten mouth,sunglasses..Out the door by 2:30.Not even awake yet.

By the time you hit the oval it all comes back.Every slight,every hurt.This is the antithesis of the therapy sessions that you drag you ghost self through week after week but right now? Who cares. You are an abortion. You cant even define what is real most of the time.

You trust no one.This is the only time,  the ONLY time you feel in control of everything that you are,whatever the fuck this wreck is that you have become,its the control that you have lost. And right now?, right now its yours and its fast .You  have been lacking for so long you couldn’t give a shit.Fuck what the doctors say.You need this. Here is the fleeting high you dip-shit, so make it last.Those endorphins that avoid you like the plague? here they are,let them in.Shoulders erect,core engaged, now you are,abet all too briefly, an animal to contend with.

Animal.

You can smell the grass being crushed under your fast feet,you time the beat of your heart to the air you exhale,drums.Your eyes narrow,shoulder blades pull together ,lock like the stumps of severed wings. The wings you attributed to another.The wings that you forgot were once yours as well.You gain speed.

The Lebs with their stupid fucking hair cuts loitering in the car park grow silent and lower their gaze with every storming pass you make by them.You know the veins are up in your arms,neck.You are so magnificently ugly right now its all you can do not to throw your head back and howl.

Animal.

Let it all flood your frontal lobe. Every friend that have thrown you over.Your dead and beaten heart. The love that swore it would make you a bride and lied .All The shit that you now spend your life confining so it cant hurt you. Let it rip. They say that this will hinder your recovering from PTSD. That you are allowing your flashbacks.That this is harmful and wrong.Detrimental. Breathing is fucking detrimental to you right now. Big fucking deal,being,exactly what you my lard arsed dear,are not.

You spit and squint.

Go around again.

Feel your fat shift and settle with every foot fall.Every breath.You are not good enough.Go around again. Do it you useless cunt. You better be able to wring your tee shirt out ant the end of this.If you stop you fail.

Go around again.

Do it again.Again.Again.Again.Again.

Now cut across the car park and sprint the hill.Push till those little back dots break away in your peripheral vision and retreat when you try and focus on them.Past the school now.Go faster.Hips aching like food poisoning. Now take yourself home.

Go through house,grab soda water.Neck it.Pull your wrist and ankle weights from the line.Strap them on.8 extra kgs.

Now go and kick and lunge.Thousands of leg lifts.Sit ups.

Get back on the bench.Shoulders,lats,chest,biceps,forearms.

Stop.

You eat 2 tins of tuna from the can.You drink more water.Your not sure if your crying as you shovel the fish into your  dry panting mouth or if its just the sweat. You don’t give a fuck.

No one does.

Shower.

The alarm goes off at 2:00……Repeat.

Burn.