It was all my fault, really.

I did this to myself, I let people control me. I listened to the hungry barks of men and the curling breaths of the hounds around me and let the big bad wolf get to me.

At least I learned my lesson, at least I know now that I'm actually worth something, and that I could have bloomed liked I was supposed to given more time, given better circumstances, given more love.

I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I treated you with disrespect, I'm so sorry that I hated you. 

I'm so sorry that I celebrated the unhealthy jut of bones against your skin and each pound shed like a victory. I'm so sorry that I cut you and watched you bleed and thought you deserved it for not being as pretty as that woman in the magazine, for viewing your worth as a number on a scale.

I'm sorry I never realized you were always as beautiful as you wanted to be and still hold disdain for the cold figure inside the casket.

As for the people around me, well, I can't say you're faultless in this.

You dedicated only a few seconds to me, the ones it took for you to say that I'm undesirable and the lowest brick that makes up this wall, and I dedicated hours to you, dedicated my entire life to listening to your cutting words because it's what I've been trained to do since I was born.

You called me ugly and stupid and you told me I wasn't worth anything, so I believed it, and I started saying those words to myself until the hate I had for the girl in the mirror got so overwhelming that it was enough to make me throw breakfast, lunch and dinner down the drain.

I wanted to become sticks and stones and little bones and be a pretty, pretty little picture.

I wanted to bend to your every will and let you control me and nurture me, because I believed you to be correct and infallible.

I guess you could say that my life was a mess, but what matters is that I still look pretty in my dress (the dress I'm wearing in my casket, to be exact, but that part of the story comes later).

Some people would have considered the way I gazed lovingly at my ribs, at how the indentations between them ran deep and shadowed sick, but I thought it was beautiful. Some people would have considered the intense pangs of hunger I felt after days of starvation uncomfortable, horrible, but I welcomed them with open arms. Some people would have thought that six days without eating was torture and something to cause disgust, outrage, but I thought it was merely another personal record which I had to break.

I was wrong, wasn't I?

I died with my fingers in my mouth to the tune of a ringing phone in the background. I died wearing a pretty yellow dress about two sizes too big for me. 

I died with clumps of fallen hair on the bathroom floor around me and yellow nails that hadn't grown in months. I died.

I'm dead.

And it still wasn't enough for you.

Now I'm a faded ghost, a wisp of cold breath on the air, but at least my image has been branded into your brain. There it is, finally: The sound of a compliment. 

It's strange; I've never heard that whistle before, never heard praise directed my way. What a shame that I couldn't hear it while I was alive, because it was said in regards to my portrait in the newspaper obituary.

The doctors all say it was death from starvation. They should call it murder, because you all did this to me. Don't be sad, I don't hate you. I hate myself. 

That's what started all this, anyway.

At least I have the satisfaction of knowing you all feel guilty, knowing you realized your part in all this. At least I died skinny. 

That was the point, right? To be pretty, to be perfect?

It doesn't really feel as good as I thought it would.

At least, now that I'm dead, I'll never feel hungry again.