This place isn't back up, really; I just vividly recalled this a few days ago, wrote it down, and needed to get rid of it, to release it. It isn't healthy to dwell on the beginnings of things that have ended.

The bathroom was blue, as it always had been; it may still have had the tiles that seemed to float off the floor if you stared at them. It must have been night, since the light was on and gave the room a yellowish wash-- a sick tinge for a blue room. It's still like that at night. I'm glad I don't go there often anymore; it's my brother's bathroom now.

I stepped on the scale. (Nothing good can come of that sentence.) My mother peered over my shoulder at the numbers, lurid red and counting upwards. They jumped up, down, still, up, down-- that old scale caught every fidget of cold bare feet. We don't have it anymore. The one that replaced it is off by five pounds, but at least it's consistent.

I can't remember now what the number was, or even how much lower it was than the previous time, three pounds or five. It shouldn't make a difference. But I remember saying, with a woman's bragging instinct, that I had lost weight. I remember my mother sounding warm and amused, telling me that weight fluctuates monthly (I knew.) I remember protesting, still in a pitiful too-old-too-female scoff for a girl brought up to believe that age fifteen should be no different from age ten, that three pounds (or five) was too much change for a month. I had to be losing weight.

I remember panicking the moment the words left my mouth-- a fluttering, heart-clutching panic. That was it. It was the insidious uncoiling sickness that was just beginning to sew my lips closed telling me Shut up! Shut up! You'll give yourself away!

I knew that I really was losing weight. For the first time in my life, I was. But I had to keep it secret, hide it from the warm faces peering over my shoulder at the indecisive judging numbers on the scale. If I did not, the game would be up and the cold sick thing I was becoming would die. I did not then understand. But when my mother, hiding laughter, indulgently said, "All right then, I guess you're losing weight!" I felt regret. Guilt pricked at the bare soles of my feet as I stepped off the scale. It had never occurred to me before that what I was doing was a thing to hide. A diet was a public thing, announced while picking at a sandwich to a group of supportive, equally dieting friends. An eating disorder is a thing behind closed bathroom doors, waiting for the scale to resolve two meager pounds lower than last time. An eating disorder is a thing behind closed lips.

I will not pretend that was when it started. But that was when I should have known.