About two years ago, the anger and frustration built up inside me began stirring up into a monster with a mind of its own. It rests behind the thick steel bars that guard my heart where the showers of internal tears and storms of internal, prolonged sadness serve the perfect space for it to bathe and drown in rivers of more anger and frustration. The monster has become too heavy to carry around; so heavy that I no longer possess the strength to get out of bed on most days, and sometimes barely enough strength to simply sit up.

No day is different than the next. I could easily end this all by reaching for the emergency kit under my bed. If only I weren't so afraid of sharp edges or had the courage to just reach for those sleeping pills. Instead, this morning I rolled out of bed and dropped to the ground below. Too lazy to untangle myself from the blanket still tightly wrapped around me, I stayed laying on the ground like a corpse thinking abou- "GRACE!". I jumped to my feet and quickly worked up a "YES MOM!" from my rusty vocal cords, rushing toward the restroom to get ready for school before I got another beating for failing to respond to her calls fast enough.

I sat on the toilet scrolling through my social media making sure to screenshot and save any photos of girls with perfectly sculpted bodies I saw in my Instagram feed as I waited for each drop of pee to leave my body. Every. Drop. Mattered. After pulling my pants back up and flushing the toilet, I turned on the bathroom lights and brushed my teeth while I looked in the mirror in which a tall, obese, figure stared back at me with dark, black, tired eyes. She had pitch black hair resembling a starless night sky and skin so pale it was as if it has never seen the sun. You get uglier by the minute, don't you? I told myself as I dug my nails into my grossly fat thighs out of anger. After giving myself the daily hate speech, I turned toward the scale hoping I at least lost one pound, just one, since yesterday. I closed my eyes, stood on the balance, then looked down hoping for the bare minimum goal to be reached. It read "71.2 lb.," only 0.6 pounds less than yesterday. The creature living inside me grew stronger in rage and it began to bang against the walls of my heart, trying to bite through the steel bars with its sharp teeth, but it failed to escape. I let out an unheard cry of pain but quickly put myself back together as I heard my mother call for me once more and headed back to my bedroom.

I slid on some sweatpants that were obviously too big for me and a hoodie that my ex-best friend had given me when we were 11 years old. The smell of fresh pancakes filled the house, instantly making me dizzy. I grabbed my backpack and started toward the stairs. I tried to rush out the door but of course, my mom stopped me. "Have some pancakes, honey," she demanded rather than suggested. "Uh, I'm in a hurry I'm going to miss the bus I'll take it to go." I stuffed 3 pancakes into a Tupperware and located the nearest dumpster as soon as I stepped out the house, tossed the pancakes into it, and rushed toward the bus stop.