The Story of Me

This is Allison Knightly. She’s not involved in school, and isn’t a genius. She’s an only child of divorced parents and a girlfriend of 25 months. She’s afraid of spiders and loves cloudy days more than sunny ones. She is seemingly laid back and normal, however this ordinary teenager has some baggage that one may not realize.

The first thing that strikes you about Allison is her long, blond hair; “flower child”-like, it has been described. That is one thing she wishes she could be- a flower child. To live in a time of empathy. To be carefree and harmonious, living away from social norms and taboos, discord and politics, stereotypes and violence. One also notices her unusually blue eyes, ranging from a bright, vibrant blue to a plain, boring bluish grey. She could almost be characterized as “Aryan”, although she is far, far from that imagined perfectness that is associated with such a designation.

This is a story about deception, to oneself and to others. A story about perpetual change, contradiction, and confusion. A story about a girl whose mind cannot grasp the concept of herself. But most importantly, this is a story about redemption.

Who is Allison Knightly? She’s the girl whose hand was held in kindergarten when her father told her of her parents’ divorce. She’s the girl whose step-mother told her she was fat and needed to lose weight in fourth grade, the step-mother who wouldn’t allow her to call the room she slept in “her room”, the step-mother who kept the cat’s litter box in “her room” for two years. Yet she is also the girl that would give anything to live back in “her room” so she could be isolated once again and not give a damn, to be as creative as she was, and not have to try. She is the girl who doesn’t need to make an effort to get a 4.0 but who cries when she gets anything lower than an A because it is not perfect. She’s the girl whose empathy for every living thing is so strong that it consumes her life and controls her decisions. She’s the girl who lost all of her friends due to her tendency to push away those close to her. She’s the girl who wouldn’t admit to herself she had an eating disorder because “only skinny people have eating disorders”.

It is October 20th, 2005. Allison’s 13th birthday. She hasn’t eaten all day. At a movie with all of her friends, she feels and sees her heartbeat through her stomach. Back at home, she is crying to her friends that she is scared and they force her to eat all the junk food that she has. So she does, she eats cookies and cake and ice cream and chips and candy. She was hungry, after all. Following the binge, however, she hates herself- so much. Playing Apples to Apples, she regrets putting a single morsel of food in her mouth. It gnaws and tugs at her mind; she could feel all of the food sitting in her stomach, making her fatter and fatter, minute by minute. Years later, she would look back on pictures from that night and notice her ribs sticking out through her navy tank top.

Of course, what makes Allison interesting is her unbelievable ability to get over these difficulties solely by herself. With no one’s help, she conquered her Bulimia and subsequently conquered other unhealthy habits. She makes the best of what she has, spending as much time with her mother and father and boyfriend because down the line, she realizes, those will be the people who truly matter. She is cleaning up her shameful baggage, one day at a time.