When it’s dark, no one can see you. So I’m a four-foot-eleven hypotenuse in the dusky blue. My sneakers that have seen hundreds of miles in half a year cry out in squeaks and scratches, but I can’t hear them. There’s Taylor Swift hammering into my ears, my headphones like two wishbones tacked unwillingly to the side of my sweaty face. Taylor’s saying, Don’t blame me, your love made me crazy, and I’m thinking, I am crazy. I’m thinking, why can’t I bring myself to stop?

My cross-country coach finds me at the crosswalk near the high school I run at, lines like teeth stretching between us. I can’t ignore her because we’ve made eye contact now. I’m suddenly conscious of my presence, not within a Taylor Swift song, but within this world. I picture myself—my slanted posture, my awkward gait as I wait for the white figure to flare up on the black screen, allowing me to pass.

It’s off-season, but I can’t stop. I don’t think I like running anymore. But I like saying I went for a run. I like eating a heaping bowl of pasta and not feeling guilty. Running consumes me, corrosive sweat burning holes into my shirt and creating stress hives that tick down my back. I’m certain that if there was a window to my soul you’d only find number-filled holes. Grades and pounds and miles and minutes, too many minutes.

So when my coach tells me to take a break because it’s off-season, I tell her yes, but I mean no. And I’m embarrassed, because I’m really not that fast. It’s not like I’m letting my team down by taking a break. There’s only myself to disappoint. She tells me to run a certain number of miles, and I run two extra. That’s when I know I have a problem.

This is the same woman that made us do four miles worth of sprints in one day, the same woman that had us run thirty miles a week. Her regimen is like God’s to me. And when she tells me to stop, I can’t.

—

Foie gras is a French delicacy, but it’s banned in many parts of the world, including the U.S. Just hearing how the duck is prepared for slaughter makes me sick. They stick a tube down its throat crammed with cheap carbohydrates until the duck is so full it bursts, like some feathery balloon. But it’s worth it. The pinkish liver meat is so tender and rich it’s supposed to dissolve in your mouth like an ice cube.

Indian eating culture is one of paradox. The grandmother that force feeds you rice slick with ghee in childhood until you’re so full you can’t hold yourself up is the same one who mercilessly takes apart your figure as you get older. One more bite, she says. She’s gained weight since her marriage, she says.

—

Once, my mother coerced me into eating so much that I threw up in the shower afterwards, the reddened bile peppered with tomatoes and iridescent grease, falling evenly down the drain. I still feel guilty when I throw her food in the trash. I put plates of leftover food in the fridge—blanched rice, bruised vegetables, chicken cartilage—that I’m never going to eat. We both know it, but I can never admit it to myself even as my mother tells me, you’re never going to eat it. She takes her time making the food—cutting the vegetables, basting the chicken she can’t eat because she’s vegetarian, cooking the rice. She stays up at night planning what I’m going to eat, more excited about the food than I am.

She never had this much variety in her meals growing up. And I’m clogging the fridge.

My father thinks I have an eating disorder. My friend jokes, it’s because you run every day and eat celery for fun. But I’m thinking, my father’s part of the problem.

Every bite I take he stares me down with eyes the same color as mine, boring holes into my skin, until it’s exhausting to eat in front of him. He tells me that my legs have gotten bigger from running. He tells me to eat the protein and give him the bread. Rice is dangerous for me, but not for you, he tells me.

When my sister comes home from college, she always tells me how she’s going to gain weight in her time at home. She’s rail-thin, and I don’t know if it’s because she forgets to eat or can’t bring herself to, but the sickness in my soul is occasionally glad of it because my father shifts his attention to her. He tells me, your sister needs to gain weight, you need to gain seven pounds. Part of me is thinking, I’m glad he thinks I’m skinny. Part of me is thinking, why only seven pounds? Why not more, like my sister?

My mother warns of the dangers to the body that come with aging. You’ll need to watch your weight when you get older. Because you’re so short, every pound will show on you.

This is the same mother that scolds me for leaving a grain of rice on my plate. The same one that worries that I’m over-exercising and undereating. The same one that heaps a third, papery dosa on my plate.

And I’m like a frayed string, like a taut muscle, being tugged to one side and the other at the same time, waiting to break.

—

I’m certain that if there was a window to my soul you’d only find number-filled holes. Grades and pounds and miles and minutes, too many minutes.

I’m listening to “Misery Business” as my feet pound against pavement. At the beat drop, I imagine myself going from leaning against an elevator rail to a stage, the shot diagonal and staticky, in a mesh blouse and leather jacket. In my head, I’m somehow playing the guitar and the drums and singing at the same time. I’m in the business of misery, let’s take it from the top. My footfalls halt for a half-second when I hear, she’s got a body like an hourglass, it’s ticking like a clock.

—

My parents do not have a healthy relationship with food. My dad, in his mid-sixties, lifts weights three times a week and brags about how he hasn’t eaten a meal the whole day when he picks me up from school. My mom goes whole work days eating a handful of cashews.

My mom talks about how she was skinny even though she ate samosas and rice and idli every day, until she had children. I woke up this morning to overhear the conversation spilling in from the kitchen, my mother discussing how to lose weight with my sister, and they’re talking about calories and exercise and intermittent fasting. I hear my mother go, Hey Google, how many calories in a cup of raw cabbage? It makes me curious. So the first thing I do this morning is enter my age, my weight, my height, the amount of times I exercise a week into an online calculator on incognito mode—I look up, how many calories in a grande hot chocolate, how many calories in six dumplings, how many calories in a cheeseburger, and I calculate.

My mom tells my sister—in her late twenties—to be careful with her weight, to eat right and exercise. So she lost weight on a calorie deficit. My other sister is five inches taller than me and weighs only a little more than I do.

There is a safety net of shoelaces and sports bras that I have fallen back on. I tell myself, I can eat whatever I want, as long as I run. I struggle imagining what I’m going to be like when I’m older, how I’m going to maintain the label of small and bony that has been stamped on me since I was five. I decide I’m probably not going to have children. I decide I’m going to proselytize myself into a salad-lover. I decide I’m going to work out as many days as I can, for as long as my legs hold me up like brown stilts to prevent a flood of fat and flaws.

—

The white Ikea dresser I’ve had for years keeled over two weeks ago, brimming with western clothes—skirts and jeans and midriff-exposing tops from a Forever 21 sale, older sequined shirts with cheesy inspirational quotes from Target. There is a small section of my dresser designated to the Indian clothes my grandmother had tailored for me; silken pavadai sets and dupattas that glisten like fish scales, shine like quicksilver rivers struck with sunlight. But the Indian parts are not what made it tip over.

My mother, rightfully so, has asked that I do a purge of my closet, with three piles: keep to wear, donate, and keep because of sentimental value. The latter consists of a gold-sequined dress I wore at my third birthday party, my first memory.

I try on clothes I wore years ago and feel a sense of satisfaction when they fit, even if they chafe and claw at my skin. Multiple times I walk to the mirror to see if my backside has gotten smaller from less intense exercise, if my frontside has gotten bigger. Like a car on display at a dealership, I turn left, right, I face forward. I’m all mechanical angles and fake shine. I assess and break down until there is nothing left but a body I can’t remember. I mistake shadow for muscle, I mistake constancies for growth. In my head, I’m taller and lithe, I have a six-pack as defined and glossy as bread rolls, and cords of muscle twine around my arms.

I look in the mirror and I don’t know who I am anymore. I look at the pile of clothes I’ve sifted through, the sheer amount of American in them compared to the thin pile of silk in one corner of my room, and wonder if it’s even right to shame a culture I’m not really part of. Is the American culture of eating better?

—

Julie Beck, a senior editor at the Atlantic, tackles the American treatment of suicide in her article “When Will People Get Better At Talking About Suicide?” Beck refers to a “restricting sort of politeness” pertinent in modern culture that stops people from trying to breach the barriers between themselves and their loved ones, especially barriers that prevent us from discussing mental health struggles like suicide ideation or eating disorders.

Bernice Pescosolido, a professor of sociology at Indiana University who studies the stigma behind mental health issues, theorizes that this rampant politeness is because society increasingly promotes individualism over community and showing concern for others. This is especially true of American society, in which nearly every aspect of our lives are hyper-competitive, including mental illness (I have it worse than you do).

My family is different. My dad frequently threatens to send me to a dietician because I “run like crazy but don’t eat like crazy.” My sisters will explicitly ask me if I’m anorexic, and I them. We’re so blunt in our prying questions that we’re accustomed to clamming up and lying.

Perhaps what we need is a bridge between politeness and prodding. Perhaps, if our low-cut tops and diamond-studded churidars had more of an equal footing, the world would be better off and the dresser wouldn’t tip over.

I have friends that over-exercise and go on keto diets for a whole month, I have friends that forget to eat, I have friends that intentionally don’t eat. I see the changes in their bodies, I see the changes in their eating habits, and I don’t say anything. What if I’m wrong?

This, or we over-talk about it, we make light of it, like it’s normal to live this way.

At lunchtime, my friend says, I didn’t eat anything today, and I joke, eat for me, babe, but I also don’t let her braid my hair until she eats some of her lunch. In that way, I am like my dad. I joke that my dad thinks I have an eating disorder and my other friend says, maybe it’s because you do, and we’re laughing. But I know that she did have an eating disorder. We never talked about it, and if we did, it was through a screen, a pixelated shield.

Once, a friend came over, having lost so many pounds it was visible even from a distance. My dad was going to comment on her skin-and-bones physique, but my mom stopped him. Later, after she left, my mother told me, you need to help her, that poor girl.

I tell her I don’t know how.  

—

My friend is taking me home, and naturally, Taylor Swift is playing in her car.

There’s a strange phenomenon that comes with being in a car with your friends at night, in which you forget and become hyper-aware of yourself at the same time.

For once, I’m moving in the liquid dark without having to pick up my feet. My heart isn’t rattling, my core isn’t a clenched fist. I feel like propping my feet on the dashboard, next to her taped magazine clipping of Timothée Chalamet.

But of course, I’m leaving earlier than I have to because I have to go for a run when I get home.

We’re talking about the unnaturalness that is going from middle school to high school, from high school to college, how there are people you go from seeing every day to never seeing again. We talk about how, despite this, her and I are still united with these people by the sheer fact that we’re all the same age, going through roughly the same things.

My friend is a Marathi-American. Earlier that day, she explained how the finish all the food on your plate mentality made her forget hunger signals, how she was body-shamed at such a young age, how these things partially led her to where she’s at now. I picked at the wrapper of the blueberry muffin that she baked but didn’t eat.

Abruptly, she asks me, do you ever forget your body?

I ask, what do you mean?

Sometimes, I just forget where I am.

I nod, but it’s too dark for her to see me.

I’m just a mind talking to your mind, I say. Sometimes, I feel trapped in my own body.

—

An older woman stops me in the middle of one of my runs. I always hate when they do this. It’s awkward to continue pedaling my legs up and down while she’s talking to me, and eventually I stop running and take my headphones out to hear her better.

“I just thought you should know,” she begins. “These two white guys on drugs attacked my best friend’s daughter around this area.” She points to a row of houses on an adjacent street. “They grabbed her and tried to take her car. They had a knife. They were going to cut off her thumb.”

“I’m so sorry,” I say breathlessly, not fully processing what she’s saying. Did she say white dogs? White guys?

“It was around this time. I always carry pepper spray with me now. Just be careful.”

Her dog puts his paws on my legs.

“I’m sorry about that,” the woman apologizes, pulling her dog back. “You have beautiful legs, by the way. I used to have legs like yours.”

I keep on running, going different routes so she doesn’t see me ignoring her advice. I hold my ponytail to my chest so no one can grab me from the back, keeping one earbud in my pocket so I can hear my surroundings.

I wonder if, when I finally move to open the front door, one of my thumbs will be gone.

—

A couple months earlier, my mom and I watch Bohemian Rhapsody together—her second time watching the film—and I start listening to Queen, growing saddened that I’ll never get to see the band live, hateful of the way time works. How remarkable it was that someone like Freddie Mercury existed—Indian and bisexual and unconventional and famous. I play songs for my dad on the way to school, and he taps his foot along to “Another One Bites the Dust,” but he doesn’t understand the appeal of “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “Somebody to Love.” He doesn’t have the attention span for a five-minute song, and I can’t blame him.

On runs, I thread “Killer Queen” and “Somebody to Love” into my repertoire, along with Taylor Swift’s reputation and Olivia Rodrigo’s SOUR.

There’s a period of time, in off-season, where I run much more than I have to—conflicted between wanting to maintain my fitness, wanting to eat whatever I want, and wanting to burrow myself into the sofa and take a nap, wanting to rest my tight and tired legs.

I lace myself through the sidewalks like an inkblot in the dark, writing a letter for myself and the overhead lights, only half-scared of someone sneaking up behind me, grabbing me by the ponytail. Back and forth, back and forth, to the school and back ten times, twelve times.

“Somebody to Love” is the kind of song I long to put in my mouth. If I could swallow it, I think it would go down tasting of glitter and prison bars. When I wake up, it’s the first thing I think about. Oh each morning I get up and die a little. Can barely stand on my feet. Take a look in the mirror and cry.

For days, I listen to it three or four times during one run, my mind going to strange places:

I picture myself having conversations with fictional book characters. I picture myself doing cartwheels and flipping over a scooter, landing skillfully on the sidewalk. I picture a montage of beautiful pictures of me playing at my funeral. I picture a much more attractive version of myself screaming into a mic, and instead of other band members doing the harmonies, it’s clones of me in my favorite outfits. It’s a purely selfish act, trying to love a version of myself that doesn’t exist. But that’s the only part of me that somebody else can love, I think.

By now, I know I have a problem. I’m certain that if there was a window to my soul you’d only find number-filled holes. Grades and pounds and miles and minutes, too many minutes.

After this run, I make a promise to myself to text my friend, ask her how to “undo an eating disorder.” This addiction. This guilt.

But I don’t stop until a mechanical voice chimes in my ears, workout complete, and I’m shoved forward with relieved momentum.

—

One line of “Somebody to Love” strikes me the hardest.

I feel my rambling heart halt for just a moment, swathing itself in the harmonies like satin scarves, becoming aware of where it is and what I’m doing to it.

In this moment, my soul dares to despise my body. After all, I’ve placed it in a specimen jar, soaked it in sweat and adrenaline, mistaking that for formaldehyde, for preservation. Really, I’ve left it to disintegrate.

My soul is singing, I’ve just gotta get out of this prison cell, someday I’m gonna be free.

Lakshmi Sunder is a junior at the Kinder High School for the Performing and Visual Arts in the creative writing department. She primarily enjoys writing poetry, fiction, and creative nonfiction that delves into balancing her Indian and American heritage, intersectional feminism, her family background, and mental health. Outside of writing, she enjoys participating in and leading activist organizations like Girl Up Houston and DON HISD and teaching free creative writing classes to younger students in the Houston area. In her free time, she enjoys reading, going for runs, playing piano, and listening to music.