FAMILY Zoe Gac 12th Grade • William Jones College Prep
My parents admitted me to the hospital as a last resort. They never intended on it, none of us expected my condition to get to the point where I was beyond their help. By late spring they were pumping me with three thousand calories a day, yet I was dropping weight every week like clockwork. The ship was sinking. They were desperately plugging up every hole they found, but I was carving more holes into the wood than they were aware of. I was dead set on drowning. Against all efforts I was only getting worse. Every attempt was met with an equally intense backlash, many of which they never found out about. They could smell something poisonous, something taunting them, but anorexia is an unseen force. I was killing myself with what they couldn’t see, and it drove them crazy. Rendered them helpless. Initially I blamed them for handing me over to the hospital, but at the time I didn’t realize it was the only thing keeping me from death. My family was worn out, I was worn out. The hospital wasn’t an ideal ending by any means, but the alternate ending was unspeakable. Imagine that: fighting so desperately for all those months to bring me out of my delusion only to have me die anyway. I would have left them with something even worse than nothing. Unrelenting guilt, unspeakable grief. The ghost of my suffering roaming the halls every night, asking them why couldn’t you save me? Of course none of it was their fault, but if I died it would have all come crashing down on them. The
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