Free Why Me? by Sarah Burleton

Burleton , let’s stay calm. This is about Sarah now,” the principal said as he sat back down in his chair.
    Suddenly the nurse’s office closed in on me, and my throat grew tight. “They found out!” I thought in horror.
    “Sarah, are you starving yourself?” the principal asked with a quaver in his voice.
    I summoned my courage and looked up. “Yes,” I said softly.
    Dale Richard put his head in his hands, and Mom sat back in her chair and crossed her arms.
    “Do you want to talk about it?” the principal asked in a soft tone.
    “No!” I said, rather defiantly.
    “Could you sit in the hall for a minute?” the principal asked.
    Without a word, I got up and stormed out of the office. I was furious: furious that someone had learned my secret, furious that Mom had found out, furious that they were going to take away the only thing I had control of in my life. “Run away, Sarah!” my mind kept telling me. But before I could get up, the nurse came out into the hallway.
    “Let’s go to your locker and get your books,” she said in a kind voice.
    “What’s going on?” I asked.
    “I’ll let your parents tell you. Don’t worry about it, Sarah. Everything is going to be OK now.”
    I got my books and followed the nurse outside, where Mom, Dale Richard , and the principal were waiting for me. “Good luck, Sarah,” the principal said as he gave me a hug. Dale Richard put his arm around my shoulders and led me toward the car.
    Once we were inside the car and safely away from the school, Mom turned around and looked at me with fire in her eyes. “Now I have to send you to a clinic because you won’t eat?” she screamed. I started crying. “SHUT UP, you fucking mistake! What a BIG mistake you were, Anorexic Annie!”
    I stopped crying and sat there in disbelief. I was anorexic? That’s what I was? Now I was diseased, had a clinical disorder? I’d thought I was just skinny, not anorexic. Now I was going to a clinic for help? “What kind of clinic?” I asked.
    “A clinic for stupid kids,” Dale Richard said.
    “A clinic for crazies so they can attempt to be normal again,” added Mom.
    The rest of the day was a blur. Dale Richard and Mom packed a bag for me and had me admitted into an in-patient treatment center before nightfall. I spent the evening feeling like a caged dog. There were doctors in white coats walking around, and crazy kids strapped to their beds being wheeled in. Someone was watching me while I went to the bathroom, watching me while I ate, even watching me while I slept, making sure that I didn’t make myself sick or get rid of the food that I had been forced to eat for dinner.
    I had lost complete control. In a matter of a few hours, I had gone from doing OK at home and school to being committed to a treatment center where right down the hall was a child in a straightjacket, screaming obscenities at the top of his lungs. “I’ve got to figure out a way to get out of here!” I thought in panic.
    For the next two weeks, I focused on getting out. I told the psychiatrists what they wanted to hear; I made up stories about why I’d started to starve myself; I ate with a smile on my face and managed to keep the food down. Not once did I talk about the mental and physical abuse I suffered at the hands of my mother. That would have just meant more time in the psychiatrist’s office and more time in that damn clinic. And lo and behold, after two weeks I got my discharge papers!
    Dale Richard and Mom came to pick me up after my two-week stay. At the clinic, they hovered all over me, hugging me and helping me put my bags into the car. After we pulled away and I had waved to the last nurse out the window, Mom turned around and said, “Well, Anorexic Annie, they sure fattened you up again, didn’t they?”
    “Why does it have to be me?” I thought as tears streamed down my face. “Why me?”
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    Chapter 9
    Homecoming
    I didn’t change much after