Feeding The Monster

******TRIGGER WARNING******

“Do not feed the animals” is probably the most common sign that you will see in a zoo. The people who work in the zoo are the only people who are given the express right to feed them at a time of day that’s arranged and appropriate for the animal. This baffles me because if they were in the wild, none of those animals would have a set feeding time. They would eat wherever, whenever and whatever they wanted. The nature of being wild, I suppose, is to live by your own rules and therein lies the chaos. This is the same chaos that the zoo keepers wish to avoid and so they provide strict rules for the feeding of their animals.

Why do we eat? We eat to survive, of course but do we eat because it is time to eat or because we are hungry? If it is time to eat, then it is simply a habit we must fulfil every day. For me, I eat breakfast in order to take my anti-depressants and I eat dinner to take my second dosage. As a general rule, I don’t eat lunch. There is no point. I have no tablets to take then and the food only makes me fat. Why would I wish to put myself through that torment?

Sometimes, in my fight against The Monster, I find that feeding him quietens him for a while. Today, I could hear him banging against my head as I rode my bike home from counselling. I pedalled furiously towards home, repeating over and over, “This feeling - let it go”. I was trying to banish the fidgety feeling that I had. The feeling that threatens self-harm. I could feel him there. He was angry. As angry with me as I become at myself. I didn’t let him win the other day and much like Death feels himself cheated with every cure against an illness, My Monster feels like I have cheated him. I wrote about him and I diminished his power for a while. I was not sick. I did not cut. He is angry with me for this. He was cheated and he wants some payment from me. I do not want to cut myself but I can hear him inside of me. My Monster tells me that cutting myself is a worthy punishment for being happy for a day. I did not punish myself for being alive yesterday and I must pay him for this today. It must be a punishment that costs me. The Monster knows that I hate the sight of blood; it makes me feel sick and I do not like to cut myself. This is the payment for ignoring him.

I’m running out of space on my arm to pass it off as an accidental attack from a tree that I’ve climbed or from being so clumsy that I’ve walked into a fence that’s preparing to battle an oncoming storm. All the same, I ask him, “Where shall I cut?” and he laughs mirthlessly at me. I am so scared of him. I do not know what he wants from me. No; that’s a lie. I know what he wants; what I deserve. He wants to take my life from me. I must try to take his first. Somehow. Someday.

I believe there must be a tiny corner of my mind that I can still fight with. It is here that I have formed a plan, which I’ve used before, to shut him up. Throw a hunk of meat at a prowling lion and the animal will become tame as it eats the meat and its energy will focus on that. In much the same way, I have realised that I can tell My Monster to shut up, sometimes. I cannot simply shout, “Shut up!” into the void of my mind, as that would surely lead to a bad punishment but My Monster likes to eat. Maybe the food gives him some power but it makes him quiet for a time and for a time, I don’t have to listen to the persistent shouting of, “Cut! Bleed! Cut! Now! Do it now!”     

It’s not that I love food. I don’t. Sometimes I really hate it and I wish I never had to eat again. Sometimes it’s like a traffic jam inside my throat and it chokes me but I must force it down. If I continue to eat and I continue to force food down my throat; he won’t see me. My Monster loves food and he devours it. I did not cut when I came home. I shut him up. I fed him three slices of toast. I fed him several squares of chocolate. I fed him couscous. Now, I am feeding him three more slices of toast. I do not want to eat. The food is getting stuck in my throat but this is now almost a compulsion. I am compelled to eat to shut up The Monster and to stop myself from cutting my arm.  

Right now, I think I am winning because The Monster is quiet. There is some peace and my arms are intact but I am uncomfortable and swallowing is hard. My stomach is full and I feel sick but he is happy for now and that is a price I must pay to keep him quiet.

Who am I kidding? I’m not winning. I know what this means. The Monster always wants me to make myself sick or to cut myself but to avoid that I have made myself so uncomfortable that I must now punish myself for being so stupid. I am stupid. I do not want to be fat. I don’t want to be that useless person that I was warned I would become. I will never be good enough if I continue to eat like this. I probably won’t be good enough anyway. I must punish myself; so I scratch my arms and I hit my head. I begin to feel a pulsing in my head. I think that The Monster is awake.

“Please”, I beg him, “Just leave me alone. Just stop this. I don’t want this. Any of this. Please.”