Sophie
57kg and falling

I had this amazing fairy-tale childhood filled with sea-gully seaside holidays and bountiful feasts packed tight with friends and family at every special occasion. My wonderful parents gave me a good life without spoiling me, and up to my high school graduation I think I turned out okay.
My reward to them was to take a gap year in Europe with four guys from school and go on a drug binge, dropping out of contact for weeks at a time. My parents had paid for the holiday, not a luxury tour, but enough for backpacking and airfare, on condition I got jobs to pay for anything else I wanted. I didn't want much, and guys are extra kind to traveling girls who like to get high and experiment with their new-found freedom, so I never worked a day.
I wanted to experience everything and everyone, and went from being the good girl with straight A's to that girl people whispered about, the one living in the spiral of addiction, always on drugs, sexed out, and losing a year of my life in a trance-like stupor.
Stupor, where we get the word stupid.
When I was sent back by the immigration officers after my visa expired I came back home with an all-over tan, a phone full of photos, and several STDs. Nothing else, not even coherent memories from my year away.
My parents, having given me trust and me having thrown it out the window, sent me to study. Something. Anything. They were upset that I hadn't worked, hadn't visited art museums or attended interesting talks on things they cared about. I did tell them about the drugs, the emigration officer had been quite clear in his report anyway, so they sent me to six months of rehab. I never told them about the STDs, those I worked on with a private nurse at a clinic, skulking in for a checkup every second Monday before class.
And then everything was a comfortable routine again. The first few weeks of College were hard, the happy faces on the college brochures difficult to spot among the crowds of exhausted students and the apathetic, bitter lecturers with their patronizing life guidance. I missed the endless summer of Europe, getting up when I wanted, or sometimes just staying wherever someone had dropped me off for the whole day, sometimes having sex just to get a comfortable place to stay. I was not a prostitute, I was a free spirit. My travel friend Clarence called me a Hobosexual – someone who has sex to avoid being homeless.
Now I was back to the routine, still a bit messed up from the drugs, but I was getting over that, I could feel my consciousness seeping back and my stomach returning to normal. And there was the other thing, the secret thing I didn't like to think about. The thing only I knew about and would take to my grave because it was the worst thing a human being could do.
Then Luke came along, buying me a strawberry daiquiri and an ecstasy tablet late one night at Lefty's, and I felt like I was back in a Portuguese hostel, just having fun. He told me his drug use was not an addiction, just recreation, and I totally got that. Still, I needed to escape. No matter where I was I wanted to be somewhere else, and art felt like the way out.