toxicity

140lbs
sprawled across the lines lies thin etches of perfection
dimensional figures and bone structure the concoction
of the preferred self bred from photographic memories of
impressionable teenage girls wanting more than just this
wanting all of that because television taught us never to
settle especially with underdeveloped breasts and excess
baby fat that never disappeared and how plastic surgery
and starvation were the only things left to strive for in
a world broadcasting perfection to the imperfect
the young and impressionable women of tomorrow who
will grow up insecure and unable to find love in the mirror
all because this body isn’t the same one from the photos
and i can’t dig deep enough to learn to love the folds
or wrinkles along my thighs sitting or standing, and the
world around me tells me that everything will come true
as long as i loathe and pray to the god of vanity.

140lbs
puberty is the latest rage with all the other girls filling up their
a-cups and progressing down through the alphabet while my
training bra itches beneath my sister’s old shirt all because
my breasts haven’t graduated from their elementary size to
match the weight on my hips that make it unbearable to
change for gym class when those goddesses tear their shirts
off just to compare cup sizes and prove to girls like me that
we really are never going to catch up like tv said we would
still i scribble in this book and conjure up the new self with
waist measurements and breasts that wouldn’t go unnoticed
by the slobbering upperclassmen who can’t wait to sink their
claws into freshman tits but my body is working against me
and the magic isn’t working and i'm still in a training bra
watching mtv waiting for the time when i stop watching the
screen and start watching my reflection soaking up all of the
beauty that i keep wishing to possess even though right now
i don’t think i stand much of a chance against those a-cups
who don’t have to stare at themselves to know they have it
all but i am still loathing and praying and some day soon i
hope will be my time to flaunt.

142lbs
and now they’re wearing makeup and mom says i'm not
allowed because i’ll look like a tramp and i'm far too
respectable for that kind of behaviour so i'm stuck being
this ugly respectable girl in a ratty old training bra not
getting noticed the way i've been writing about for months
now and so i’ve been sneaking into mom’s makeup
before i leave for school but now all the other girls are
laughing at me so maybe i do look like a tramp so i just
stopped…
and now i’m back to self loathing in a way that can’t be
covered up by mom’s makeup the way i thought it would
because i still don’t like the way my reflection watches me
and tries to guilt me into loving it the way i should because
my vanity is telling me over and over how much harder i
have to work to drop this weight that sags off my body in
all the ways i wish it wouldn’t so i put the mirror in my
closet for safe keeping for when my beauty spurt finally
kicks in and i can drown in it.

139 lbs
instead of purging my allowance in the profession of
shopping i’m forced into the ugliest van in the city so
my parents can find new ways to embarrass me in
public apart from making me wear my sister’s old
clothes and refuse to let me be a girl just because my
dad never got the son he wanted so he decided that
he’d make use of my underdevelopment and body fat
to convert me into a tomboy but all he’s achieved is
making me miserable watching him scarf down two
hamburgers while i chew on the same piece of lettuce
for twenty minutes all because i’m trying this new
thing where i don’t eat because i'll shed weight that
much easier but my parents keep pushing and prodding
food into my face but i ward them off with “i’m not
hungry” even though their fat, disapproving faces
can tell i'm lying through my teeth but they’ll just keep
pretending that everything is fine and that i don’t blame
them for my deformity even though their bulging
waistbands are to blame for my ‘big bones’ and
i wait patiently for the day they ingest themselves
and leave me alone.

141 lbs
and now i'm back to health class watching a low-budget
movie about how terrible and addicting drugs are and
listening to the breast goddesses talk about stealing liquor
from their parents and their plans to drink it at the victory
party happening this weekend and i think of all the people
that will be there being drunk and easy and i imagined for
a moment being drunk and attractive and going upstairs
with the quarterback until the teacher drew our attention
to a heroin user shooting up on the screen and suddenly
i wasn’t so interested in being drunk and i thought that
maybe i really was better than them… until that weekend
when i stole a beer from the garage and snuck it up to my
room and i was repulsed by the awful taste but i figured
it wasn’t supposed to taste good so i drank it anyway in
hopes of feeling something different but i still felt pathetic
drinking a stupid beer alone that left a foul taste in my
mouth just like the taste of conformity and the fact that i
really wasn’t better than anyone so i snuck another one
and hoped that it would get me drunk.

145 lbs
i blame my parents for my inability to resist food the way
i can’t resist conformity so instead of chewing on celery
i ate my way through the pumpkin pie that was supposed
to be for dessert and i found myself with my head in the
toilet willing for some scrap of pie crust to emerge but i
couldn’t stick my finger back far enough and it hurt every
time i gagged so i settled for crying with my head next to
the porcelain god who wouldn’t grant me access to bulimia
and my body wouldn’t let me be anorexic so i was lost in
the nauseating feeling that came after eating a whole pie and
the frustration of being denied all of my wants in a single
sitting so i cried some more until my face was red and round
and i looked a bit like my mother so instead i buried my face into
a pillow in hopes that it would erase her image from my face
and that maybe kate moss would be staring me down next
time i checked my reflection but every morning the same mask
met me unhappy and perhaps nothing was ever going to change
and i was destined to be fat and ugly and underdeveloped
for the rest of my life but then i found you my book of secrets
and i remembered that there was still hope even if bulimia
wouldn’t take me.

146lbs
the candles on my cake reminded me of the numbers on the
scale that flickered beneath the weight of my stare and my
endless demands and wishes hopes dreams that tried to
douse the flames by their bulk but even i knew no candle
could shape my body the way i wanted it to be so i settled
for watching them melt away just as i wished to at that
moment as everyone stared at me in anticipation waiting for
when they could sink their fangs into my hunk of sugar and
lard that they chose to celebrate my aging with so i let the
candles melt into the icing until they died out in diabetic agony
and as the cake was spread to the pack of vultures that wore
the ‘friend for the day’ label i realized just how those
candles had been the closest thing to understanding anything
had ever shown me and not even the black holes that were
sucking in the remnants of my cake had taken the time to
understand just how i felt how i wanted to feel and once more
i returned to the security of this book to document the
revelation that my vanity my book and i really were alone in this.

145lbs
sometimes i feel like a ziploc bag with the amount of attention
i gather but i blame my invisibility on my genes because clearly
being transparent is the product of my parents mating rituals
and not because i really have nothing that’s worth standing out
not like the breast goddesses and their aura of perfection just
like tv told me about and anyone as ugly as me would kill to be
anything like those growing a-cups and their ability to hypnotise
the world around them when they made an appearance and
just like tv said no matter how many words were spilled at their
feet they would never grant me access to their cult their secrets
of how to get noticed how to be thin and developed and pretty
and all the things a proper mother should train into their child but
my mother was not the role model i wanted only women on the
ads of covergirl and victoria’s secret were worthy of my wishes
but yet here i stand in the backdrop of adolescence carefully
calculating all the steps i need to take to step out of the shadows
but until i can get out of this pilsbury suit i'm stuck being an extra
in this movie of life revolving around the ideal 21st century woman
and her waist measurements.

145lbs
my mother tells me that being pretty and thin isn’t everything
that i should love myself for who i am and all that crap that she
thinks will help boost my self-esteem and change the way my
smile is always inverted but it just makes me feel even worse
about myself because even my mother can tell that i am far from
what cosmogirl tells me i should be so i follow up each self-esteem
talk with a session full of loathing and then i turn to my bible my
cosmo and learn all the things that school couldn’t teach me like
how to stuff my bra or how to sexually please men in places that i
briefly learned about in health class or on tv and how to wear your
hair how to flirt how to be sexy how to do all the things beautiful
women and celebrities do and how badly i wished brad pitt was my
father not an overweight construction site manager and then maybe
i could afford plastic surgery to alter my brutish appearance that i
still can’t bear to catch a glimpse of in the mirror maybe then if i
could live the life cosmo preached to me through glamorous ads
and articles i wouldn’t hate myself the way i do but fate seemed to
have a grudge against me and the closest i can get is sleeping with
the magazine under my pillow, dreaming of the day i wake up beautiful.

144lbs
one of the only things i craved was to fit a candy pink a-cup around
my chest and have my tits fill the cups so i could at least pretend i had
something worth showing the world or my male classmates who had
found breasts far more interesting than algebra but my dream was
squashed as i held the bra against my barren chest trying to will my
breasts to grow only to find disappointment once more as my weekly
routine proved dismal but this time my mother tagged along with her
d-cups sagging beneath their enormous weight and i wondered when
the puberty fairy was going to come visit me and grant me a rack that
matched my specifications preferably a c-cup but d would do just not
a pair like my mothers that rested on her protruding stomach that could
easily be mistaken for a growing child but was just the aftermath of too
many nights of fast food and saturated fats and ‘big bones’ that i had
apparently inherited and as i tried to suck in the bulge that seemed to
have comfortably settled around my abdomen i realized that not even
holding my breath could even help shrink my dimensions and sullenly
we left the store but i had hope that by next week things would be
different.

142lbs
up until now the only image i had of ‘sex’ was a man and a
woman sharing a romantic kiss and then disappearing behind
closed doors and as i craved that mysterious interaction even
though i knew nothing of intercourse apart from black and white
diagrams that the teacher tried and failed to instruct us on i
wanted to experience it just so i could use it as a step up to my
distant popularity because even i knew that the breast goddesses
hadn’t taken that step yet and i wanted to be the first so they
would turn to me and accept me into their gang their group and
then the rest of my plans would ensue but now the black and white
edges melded to grey and suddenly i didn’t think i wanted to take
that step as i saw images of bare skin bare breasts private places
that even i didn’t know what to do with that caused the skin on my
cheeks to flush with that unknown feeling that accompanies shock
and embarrassment when i find out that perhaps i didn’t know what
i really wanted from life… but sex could wait, popularity could not.

143lbs
i was raised by a tv set and a subscription to cosmopolitan and mtv
that taught me everything i know about the world including how i
am supposed to look to be just like all the bodies that flit across the
glossy pages of my sermons that provide me with all the tools to
improve everything about me and my life because my mother and
father never tried to understand why i hated my life so much instead
they ignored it and tried their best to make my life that much harder
by being seen with them in public at school at the mall everywhere
so i was seen as the baby whale when i waddled behind their giant
figures but the first step to overcoming my familial disposition was
to pretend they didn’t exist and develop this thing called an attitude so
that they wouldn’t bother me more than they had to and as mtv
clearly dictated to me one evening that the farther i pushed my parents
away the faster i would find perfection the faster i would reach my ideal
body the faster i would get away from them and be the real me.

141lbs
gym class was slow torture as i stuffed my legs into the waistband
of my sister’s old shorts to parade around my muffin top to the boys
classwho stood on the sidelines scrutinizing every single body that
ms. bowles made run for their pure enjoyment at least for the breast
goddesses it was the ideal time for them to flaunt their boobs in public
without looking like a slut but here i cower in the corner trying to hide
behind a mass of self-conscious girls who stare in awe at the boys
across the gym who so effortlessly judge us on our tits our ass our legs
how close we look to Barbie how close we look to Kermit and there’s
no escape from their gaze as they rake through this class like an
unkempt garden and their sharp criticisms echo across the gym and its
just like elementary school i can hear the fat jokes roll off their tongues
across the room just to have them implant themselves in my love
handles in my pudge and when we return to the change room to
gather what’s left of our self-esteem i realize that i never had any
to begin with.

142lbs
sometimes i feel like there’s this force out there that is so against me
becoming more than just this chubby girl with a red face and a desire
to be anything but me because every time i try something new
something goes terribly wrong and i'm left grappling for reasons why i
can’t change my life why i can’t change myself even when i change my
hair it looks bad when i buy new clothes they don’t fit and i’m left
feeling so hopeless that i might as well just develop some sick disorder
that attracts enough attention to last me a lifetime but i can’t even force
myself into distress the way some girls can at least not the kind that
attract the tabloids the way it does on tv but one thing i learned from
real life was that there wasn’t many things to strive for apart from
being popular and pretty because being ugly and fat was the worse
feeling in the world because i knew from tv that fat girls finish last and
ugly girls never find true love.

140lbs
i always imagined the hospital to be this disgusting sterile place
that was full of sick oozing and broken people who cried from
their beds when you walked by and that the nurses and doctors
were all running around like they had more pointless lives to save
but i had never been more wrong in my life for this place was
sterling white and beautiful where no one cried out in pain or
looked unhappy or disgusting and the nurses and doctors moved
with a sort of grace as they walked by with clipboards and an array
of coloured scrubs like a scattered rainbow that bled into all the
wards including the icu where my father was being held his fat
red face that i had inherited looked out of place against the white
pillow and i felt myself scowl as he built up an ugly view in this
wonderful place so i busied myself with looking out the door instead
of listening to him moan about his condition that was really all his
fault because he couldn’t resist a damn cheeseburger or two and that
was why his heart decided to stop in order to protest his disgusting
eating habits but unfortunately he wasn’t punished enough so we
were still stuck with him and rather than acknowledge his attempts
to talk to me i stared at a thin boney ghost-like woman who
represented exactly what i wanted.

141lbs
at school i eavesdropped on the breast goddesses who were gossiping
openly about another party that was happening just a few blocks away
from my house where the drooling upperclassmen would be waiting
for a freshman to throw themselves at their feet and this attitude i
developed had the urge to be that freshman so that night i stole four
cans of beer from the fridge knowing that my father wasn’t about to
drink them and snuck out the basement window to the party wearing
what i could find what i could fit showing enough of my flat chest to
differentiate from the boys trying to look what cosmo said was ‘sexy’
and just before i found the house i opened two of the cans i was
awkwardly carrying and sat down in the bushes trying to drink it as
quickly as i could without gagging from the awful taste but i ended
up spilling most of it on my jeans so i wiped what i could off and made
my way over to the house with my stolen beer and stepped inside the
world i had only ever witnessed on tv feeling weird and gross from the
beer and nervous at the same time and as i pushed my way through the
house glazed eyes followed me making me feel unwelcome because i
honestly had no right to be there and the attitude i had brought with me
abandoned me at the front door and i was left wading in people i didn’t
know feeling weird but i stopped to open up another beer trying not to
spill it as i splurped and gagged trying to look cool…

…and i can’t remember where i put the other can and i wasn’t walking
right and this strange sensation had taken over and maybe i had finally
gotten drunk but i couldn’t see anything quite right so i guessed that i
was drunk but even as this invincible feeling overcame me i couldn’t
pry the hinges loose on my jaw as more people filed past and came by
and the ease of socialising that i had witnessed the breast goddesses
perform just wouldn’t come and despite this courage that was bubbling
in my stomach i stood rooted swaying on the spot as the heat of the
house started to seep into my pores and maybe it was my lack of
self-esteem holding me back my self-consciousness but i didn’t feel
motivated to do anything but clench my stomach because the courage
was churning uncomfortably and maybe i did drink the other can but
i couldn’t remember because it was so hot and my stomach hurt and
everyone was staring at me making me feel just as awkward as i felt
and maybe i shouldn’t have come shouldn’t have drank and the swaying
made me feel even worse and suddenly the hinges on my jaw eased
open and just as i thought the social butterflies were about to erupt
out of my stomach another substance came out in the form of my
stomach acid and my stolen beer and the party stopped to revolve
around my puke and i felt the roots binding my feet to the floor ease
up and i found myself ushered out with their eyes left to stagger home
through the wet streets with one haunting thought – tv lied.

144lbs
the attention i had been craving came in a different form at school
in public the laughing gaze of students as they recognized the
flat-chested vomit-machine who couldn’t hold onto her nerves her
liquor who stained the persian rug at her first party and i wanted so
badly to be invisible again but no matter how hard i tried to stuff
myself into my locker they still saw me and the feeling on eyes beating
down on me from all sides felt so violating but the eyes were better
than the words that were shouted down the halls in the class across
the gym when i drew near and people who i thought knew nothing of
my existence were suddenly drawing me into focus bringing down the
attention and despite being embarrassed by my parents by our home
by my clothes i had never felt more humiliated by my own stupid actions
and my stupid attitude that didn’t bother to stick around and as soon
as i got home i threw my cosmo into the garbage and told my parents to
cancel my mtv subscription.

145lbs
hating myself had always been easy when i was focused on the outside
but the inside had always been so personal so close to me that hating it
made me feel worse than being unable to be perfect and as i sobbed into
my pillow as dramatically as i could the only solace i found was when
my mother put her hand on my back and told me that she loved me
because that was my moment my revelation that no matter how rude how
mean i was and how much i wanted my mother to disappear she would
still sit there and rub my back and tell me she cared about me when i had
been so stupid believing what cosmo told me what mtv showed me and
even though i had been so warped by these tools these devices she could
still love the fucked up person i had become and the feeling of her hand
on my back made my skin feel so real so much more there than it had
before and in that moment of my ultimate vulnerability i had never felt
so together so human that i maybe wasn’t as defective as i thought i was
and maybe just maybe i was focused on changing something that was
really out of my reach maybe i needed to learn to love myself or maybe
i just needed to learn to love maybe i just needed to learn.

– lbs
this is the part in both of our lives where we meet a fork in the road
and while my path is one way yours is the other only a dead end where
you’ll rot in a box under my bed until i reach the age where i’m ready
to delve into my nightmares into my past when i am ready to face the
person i was because this is the part where i turn over a new leaf and
try this new thing called ‘love’ and ‘learn’ so this is where we part
thanks for being my confidant my only friend my support but it really
was not meant to last my toxic friend and here you shall rest in dust
vaguely remembered.


(c) 2011 The Avalanche
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Contact: taylor(at)crookedteeth.org