(Esmee) A compromise with the devil

A compromise with the devil

I wasn’t sure what emotion took me first as I for the last time sucked in my tummy as far as it would go  to try and do up the button but there was no way it was going to do up. They had been tight for days but I  hoped if I just ignored it rubbed my belly and told my baby that I loved her it would be fine and time this day came I would be Ok with it, after all it meant my baby was growing but the trouble was so was I.

I suddenly felt lost in my own bathroom like maybe the four wall of the bathroom were responsible for my expanding waist line that if I stepped back outside the walls and into another room the 12 would slip on easily that in fact they might be a bit too lose again that I might need those size tens. Emmet had got scared when I first got back into that size. He had spotted the label in the back of my jeans when he was doing the washing and he had thrown them down on the table in front of me in an almost huff telling me to explain. I had done and apparently I did it well because he said nothing again after that as long as I promised I would try and fit back into the 12. I had done but neglected to mention that my head had been more obsessed with the size six jeans that lurked in the bottom of a box that I had stored labelled “Anorexia, never again.”  The trouble was for some reason unknown, for feelings beyond logic, beyond all common sense that I had gained as a nurse and a human being I longed to see bones under my skin again, to feel the cruel stab of a hunger denied as my body feasted on mussel and organs. It would be easy to get to the pits of anorexia again to watch my life fall away as I lost my baby first then the fat then my hair, as I developed the bones of a nighty year old and gained ankles that threatened to snap just by walking. I could blindly stand by and watch as sores appeared like magic on my skin and beaded down into my already crumbling bones. It would be Ok to lie and fight for every breath as my heat struggled to maintain a rhythm. The asystole that would follow… peaceful after that hell.

“I don’t want to fucking die!” I shouted at myself a little too loudly the last thought to travel through my mind scaring me at how easily it came, at how easily I could except that fact I could lose everyone around me. “You just need some maternity things, that’s all,” I tried to comfort myself. Six months and I could work hard. I could run and cut down and lose all the weight I had put on but it would all end the same way  for once I allowed myself to start there is no way I would be able to stop, making me trapped exactly where I was now, in a body that was slowly starting to fee alien to me again.  I was falling apart at the edges.

“Mummy loves you,” I whispered slowly to my baby gently stroking my fingers over where she lay inside of me, “and daddy, he loves you to, very much. You have to know that none of this is your fault and even if I go crazy I will always love you, that I will fight for you to the ends of the earth and take all the blows for you,” I promised tenderly even though the tears cracked the words open as I spoke them. The outline of my body lying in the mirror eating at my soul and sending my blood boiling as I tried not to look into the fun houses looking glass, I knew it distorted what I saw.

“An eight,” I confirmed to myself agreeing on a compromise that sounded good in my head as I looked at the reflection and let my hand drop from the side of my bump. “After the baby is born I will drop to an eight as quickly as I can and then I will stop, I promise I will stop at eight,” I stated confidently running my fingers down one of the longer scars that swirled down from my left breast to the top of my right hip where I could squeeze the lard that had gathered on them in between two fingers so hard that I hissed at the sharp pain that would go on to leave a bruise. “Or a six there are a load of women that are a size six and I am so short any way. A six would be better, longs I don’t go below 78lbs I will be OK,” I stated confidently bulking my body up to its full height and pulling everything in so the outline of my ribs pushed gently at the edges of my skin. I arranged the same smile on my face, the one that would get me throw the day and lie to everyone that I loved confirming that I was Ok before I turned the corner in our bathroom to leave and almost bumped into Emmet who stood frozen to the spot, tears glittering in his jade eyes.