A Story I Want to Change- Published by Livi Moten

"Just lose some weight, then you can talk about it. If I don't look like I'm starving, it's not real. If everyone around me is clueless, then so am I." They don't stop replaying. It's the same damn film on repeat the same voice, the same lines. I keep waiting for the credits to roll but they never do. Just another showing, another day I wake up already tired of existing in this body. I watch myself from the outside. The girl who laughs at lunch. The girl who pushes food around her plate. The girl who's fine. I hate her. I love her. I don't know where one ends and the other starts. It's like the screen's glued to my eyes. Every reflection, every mirror another scene, another angle of what's wrong with me. I try to look away but the film keeps playing under my skin.

The hunger isn't just in my stomach anymore it's everywhere. It's in my chest.

My throat. My thoughts. I want to smash the projector. Rip the film apart. Step outside and feel something that isn't this endless loop of guilt and wanting and pretending. But I don't. I just sit there in the dark, letting it play again."