by Audrey T. Carroll
A man shouts the myth
over me
at a bar in the middle
of the day & I am seething but
I have not yet learned how
to turn my fury into action
It does not matter that we
declared bankruptcy
1 year before my first period
2 years before Weight Watchers
3 years before I was assaulted
the first time
It does not matter that I wanted nothing
more than to dissolve the parts of me
that an adult man had touched,
as though I could detach body from memories so simply
But this betrays the truth:
a mental illness is no more rational
than a country letting its people starve
I understood his point—
it was all about choice
But whose choice?
(Who’s to blame?)
Because anorexia is the illusion
of choice, so often made in lack
of any alternative, the only control
in a world full of variables
Because anorexia is a mental illness,
right there in the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders—
See: Feeding and Eating Disorders
See: Anorexia Nervosa
See: F50.01 Restricting Type
(& the last time I checked,
telling people they’re at fault
for their mental illness makes
you an asshole)
But he was right, in a way:
a grown man’s choice
seeded the need for control
(control lost, control gained)
Who’s at fault?
(Who’s to blame?)
& poverty is certainly no
choice—no one chooses to bankrupt
themselves on cough & cold medicine
during flu season, to rob themselves
of fresh summer fruits when literally
any other option seems viable
& yet poverty is a choice:
a choice of people who have
pensions, 401Ks, yachts
& summer homes & plans
for retirement—but enough
of the victim blaming bullshit
So much overlap, too:
counting calories counting dollars
losing hair losing hair
weakness & dizziness
fatigue & strain
adrenaline & cortisol & norepinephrine
They don’t tell you
in the DSM or the online fact sheets
how the mental illness stays with you—
always—
how stress triggers your body into food repulsion
how not eating when you can’t afford to annihilates
appetite & immune system,
overrides
the will to live
They don’t tell you
& they don’t listen
***
Audrey T. Carroll is the author of What Blooms in the Dark (ELJ Editions, 2024), Parts of Speech: A Disabled Dictionary (Alien Buddha Press, 2023), and In My Next Queer Life, I Want to Be (kith books, 2023). Her writing has appeared in Lost Balloon, CRAFT, JMWW, Bending Genres, and others. She is a bi/queer/genderqueer and disabled/chronically ill writer. She can be found at http://AudreyTCarrollWrites.weebly.com and @AudreyTCarroll on Twitter/Instagram.
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