Let 'Em Eat Cake

TW/CW: Direct references to eating disorders (Specifically anorexia & bulimia) this is accompanied by other mentions of poor mental health & feelings of self-loathing. Please please take care of yourselves while reading!

The table was round. The table was silent.

“Pip-squeak,” Pippa’s father said quietly. “I’m going to light the candle now” 

Though the girl didn’t seem to have tuned in at all, she nodded absent mindedly. 

The family, and her friends stared intently at the girl’s gaunt face. Pippa’s mother hit play, Happy Birthday began filling the room. 

The noise didn’t bring her back into the present. There was a presence of thick, suffocating sadness in the air, but if it was reaching the birthday girl she didn’t let it show. Her eyes were blank, she appeared to be lost in thought. 

Pippa hated her birthday. 

She hated it. 

She didn’t remember licking the whisk clean as her sister baked. She didn’t remember tugging on her favourite dress, even if it was clear she was too big for it. Even visions of her sister creating swirls of pink frosting on top of a blue cake were memories only in the photographs on the fridge. At the time, when she cut the first piece of birthday cake she would make it big enough to keep an entire buttercream rose. She couldn’t remember her mother asking for “just a sliver”, not even when those words later spilled off her own tongue. She didn’t remember sitting impatiently in front of the oven, waiting for a variety of different baked goods to puff up. Sitting on the kitchen floor was now reserved for late nights when she was embarrassingly tempted to open the fridge. Pippa sat with her cheek pressed into the cold white door, willing her stomach to stop growling. Eventually, even the feeling of going to sleep on a full stomach had disappeared from her mind. It felt distant, unattainable. She didn’t remember when it happened, but she remembered not even realizing when she was hungry anymore. At some point her stomach stopped growling, and if it did, she didn’t have to will herself not to listen. 

Pippa couldn’t recount the events of her eighth birthday. She didn’t know the way she sat excitedly at the table, her thick curls bouncing off her shoulders. She laughed as the guests sang to her in celebration, her eyes, and face full of life, her small stomach full of cake. She loved the sweet filling her mouth, she would eat cake for breakfast lunch and dinner if her parents would let her. She wouldn’t think about how much she ate later, not with an air of guilt at least. She didn’t remember shutting her eyes, leaning towards the candles,  and not knowing what to wish for, she had everything she ever wanted. 

Pippa remembered her fingers down her throat, confections with a bitter aftertaste. There was a distinct bubbling in her stomach, she couldn’t tell if it was the dessert itself, or the anxiety that came with eating it. Possibly neither. Probably both. She remembered feeling pretty. She was dizzy, and tired, but still pretty. She remembered getting compliments on the way her dress hung off her bony shoulders, and she remembered the praise she received for eating a little salad at dinnertime. She remembered pushing down the question of whether or not they’d praise her if they knew it was her only meal of the day. She remembered the pride in her chest when none of the jeans at the store were small enough to fit her itty bitty waist. The pride of being able to weave a shoelace easily through her belt-loops. 

She remembered the taste of cigarettes and vomit, the disgusting truth of being elegant. 

Ten years after her eighth birthday, the soft singing at the dining table felt more like a taunt. A slim candle poked out of a hefty cupcake.; wax slowly dripped down it, the fluffy frosting falling victim to the heavy droplets. To Pippa, the cupcake was ruined, she couldn’t eat a candle-covered cupcake. This however, didn’t make her any more inclined to blow out the candle. To prevent the wax from falling. She didn’t want to eat the cupcake anymore. Maybe she never had wanted to. Her plate was full of sugar, and butter, and carbs, and it would feel impossibly filling in her weak stomach. The number of calories in the cupcake probably could’ve gotten her through the day a year ago. 

The clock on the wall seemed to slow down, far too many sets of eyes surrounded her. The walls seemed higher than usual, but somehow, the room felt more suffocating. With the curtains drawn, the room was dark. It didn’t help that the lights were dim, dim except for the one above her, glimmering like a spotlight. She was sat at one end of a circular table, the guests stood, swarming the other side. Imbalanced. One cupcake on a plate. One. Only one, for the only one sitting, she was the only one eating. She hadn’t started yet of course, but she would be momentarily, in only one or two more seconds. If she didn’t eat it, the eyes would fill with pity, and she’d feel a different sort of guilt. Possibly shame. No matter what she did she’d feel shame. If she didn’t eat the food on her plate, she’d feel ashamed, those who she loves would find it pathetic. If she did eat it, a small voice in the back of her would convince her to be ashamed of herself. There was no winning. There was never winning. Not with food. Sometimes she’d give in, eat as much as her stomach could handle. Later she’d spit it back up, until emptiness itself consumed her. The world slowly became less vivid, and less saturated with every skipped meal. Her hands brushing on the wooden table drew her back to the party. The party, the cupcake, the guests. The cupcake. 

She caught her reflection in the window as she glanced for a way out.  She wasn’t fond of what looked back at her. Her perky nose seemed like a pig snout, her sad thin curl was the tail to match, even the pink sweater suddenly seemed distasteful. She focused back on the cupcake, the fire moving farther down the wick with no surrender. 

“This looks incredible” she lied, her dainty hands rotating the plate, the sound of scratching that the porcelain made on the placemat was the only noise in the room.

“You shouldn’t have done all this” She added feign gratitude in her voice as she glanced over at the guests. It was hard to tell, but she meant it. They shouldn’t have done all that. She took a small breath in, she’d stalled for far too long already. Leaning forwards she shut her eyes and blew out the candle. 

She knew what she was wishing for this time. She had nothing. She wanted everything. She wanted to be better, she wanted to be worse. She wished to be skinny, and she wished to be pretty, to be happy, and feel better, and she wished to be anyone other than herself. She wished, she wished, she wished.