When you search the name Kate Chilver, you’ll find one thing:
The worst cases of anorexia doctors have ever seen.
British. Mousy hair. 66 Pounds.
Nothing more than her disease.
Questions will remain unanswered:
What was her favorite color? Did she enjoy dancing in the rain? Was she ever in love?
No.
That’s the thing about anorexia, it consumes you, when you can’t stomach a thing.

You will learn that when she kicked the bucket, her skin painted green
The Grinch: Heart two sizes
Too small
It was incapable loving anything—especially herself,
Lost to her number, she starved
Willingly.

How could she do such a thing, you ask
Doctor’s denouncing her as troubled—
When they find her, vomit slewed
Across the floor, wary not to look under their own fingernails and
Ignore the cells buried there—skeletons in the closet—
Malicious words shoved down her throat
Fat.
Disgusting.
Pig.
How, indeed.

So look me in the eye when you push me onto the scale
Because I am nothing more than a
Number that has weighed me down my entire
Life, forced vomiting, starvation and for WHAT?
A couple glances, some whistles? A
“10” called out when I walk down
The school hallway.
10: the amount of pounds I need to
Loose by the end of this week.
10: the number of meals I’ll try to skip.
10: the countless nights—sleepless, Lost to the
Horrific visions—nightmares—of my own body
Because when I look in the mirror I see a whole lot of
Nothing that weighs everything.

If she’s conservative: she’s a prude, if she wears a short dress,
She’s a s***.
Because a skirt and some nice heals equates to consent and her cherry lipstick is a red flag, waving proudly,
“hoe.”
You tell me how not to be raped, instead of informing others how not to rape.
Because victim blaming is easier than looking your
Son in the face, knowing he had been
Drunk and as a product of your parenting
Found the deepest crevice of innocence, Jabbed a
Knife, twisted and apparently didn’t hear a hoarse cry.
And she—She—was
Asking for it when he pulled her down on to the ground,
Ripped her underwear with sickening pops,
Shot a couple rounds—let her see the blue smoke ribbon from a trigger,
Shoved the barrel against her skull and said she was going to do what
He wanted.

You shudder when women inject plastic into their cheeks, spend millions of dollars to wake up in the morning and gaze into something in the mirror that is anything but hers.
Knowing that each day before was a mistake—taking advantage of something
She will never get back; youth, love, time,
So don’t you dare tell me age is just a number, and if you do,
Know that it is just a ticking time bomb that has no plan on stopping until it detonates
And the shards seep into their bones
Paints them undesirable compared to the new and shiny
Model. So they spend millions on powders and plastics and paints and pencils so that
Just once they might hear the words
You look ravishing tonight one more
Time and that she’s still got it.

You planted the knife, the gun, the rope, reason
And yet you seem so surprised when the porcelain mask chips;
Confused when she guzzles a toxin, slits
Her wrists, sticks a bullet between her
Eyes, wears a rope as a necklace and kicks out the chair.
You—the ever quiet bystander—always willing to criticize but fall silent in times of need.
Looking around, saying:
Someone should do something about that.
And maybe-Just maybe
That someone is you
So when you’re looking at that splintered mercury sheet
Questioning how on earth someone can do such a thing
Remember than you chained the ball of oppression to her foot
Tossed her into an unforgiving ocean and
Let judgement feast on her body as the last bubble of hope faded from her decrepit lungs
Because you—
You didn’t give a damn about her, but you cry as if you were best friends—her funeral’s your own.

So when is it enough?
When will we finally be able to put the BE YOU in
Beautiful?
When will we stop praising masks, disorders and obsessions
Find love and cherish the differences that mark us as a unique human being?
Inside me, there is a specific string of unfathomably precious light made of a jumble of adenine, thymine, guanine and cytosine waiting for the chance to shine and spread hope to the world.
But it can’t.
Because you have crushed—me, her, us—until we are nothing but a collection of flaws
Stitched together with abuse and the constant reminder that
We aren’t good enough.
Because why bring yourself up when you can bring others down?
Why take some initiative to be the better person and grace us with you smile when you can cower behind cruel words?
Why insist that who we are is more important that what we look like when you can categorize us as fat, old s****?

And you call her weak.