Little Lost Girls

 

"The reason birds can fly and we can't is simply because they have perfect faith, for to have faith is to have wings."

J.M Barrie

The window on the left corner of the group therapy room was the only one in the house that could be opened without setting off the alarm. 

That was the rumor we were banking on when we decided to escape through it. 

And we did. At roughly 5 a.m. on a thursday, my roommate Caitlin, and I crept downstairs in our pjs, slid open the window, and clambered out into the misty mountain air. 

We scurried over to the neighboring day program apartments to scribble a cheeky message on the kitchen white board before returning through our window. We tucked ourselves back into bed just in time for wake up call, satisfied with our humble flight. 

It wasn’t an act of rebellion. It was a metaphor. 

The irony of treatment was that even though we lived in this environment where our daily lives were structured around our meal plans, for many of us, we were more free than we had been in a long time.

For some of us, we were freer than we’d ever been. 

One day we were all brought gifts. Caitlin and I were given foam swords that immediately transformed us into pirates. We’d “Parry!” and “On guard!” all through the halls and up the stairs. 

I remember one day in particular we’d been squash-buckling through the upstairs hall when Caitlin dropped her sword and said, “I’ve never had fun before.”

I froze mid-lunge and cocked my head. “What do you mean?”

“Before I came here, I don’t think I ever had fun.”

In that moment, I saw in her doe brown eyes the child that had been prematurely slaughtered by a lifetime of starvation. 

Each one of us had grown up too fast. We’d been ten year olds who counted calories. We’d restricted our bodies through puberty, flirting with death before we’d ever fully tasted life. 

In treatment we were being reborn. Rediscovering our our bodies, our souls, and the wonder that is ice cream.

We ate picnics on the roof. We played baseball in the back yard with Ensure bottles.

We frolicked around barefoot like Lost Boys. We drank in sunsets from the tops of mountains, dipped our feet in waterfalls. 

We woke up singing, had sword fights in the hall, choreographed dances in the living room. We wrote, we painted, we danced, created, spoke up, sang, screamed, sobbed, broke plates. 

We lived. 

Vibrantly. Unapologetically.

Without our disorders, we had nothing left to hide behind so we collided with life in a way that transcends wordily description.

We kept photographs of ourselves as children by our dining room place matts. The children pictured reminded us that even if we couldn’t remember, there was a time in life where we weren’t afraid of ourselves. 

These photos also served as proof that underneath all our scarred years of self-inflicted suffering, our inner child still had a heart beat.

Note: This essay was published in the 2019 America's Emerging Writers Anthology