Young Adult Fictional Opening: Scaling Down

The sickly dishes were being passed around, like the flu was spread from student to student in my chemistry class. The uproar from the Bar Mitzvah caused tinnitus clouds to disperse my thoughts. I watched as my mother woefully consumed knotted bread, like a locust that didn’t wish to feed but has the subconscious urge to do so. That was Day 6 of the Purge, I named it so due to the euphoria and purity emptiness gives me. I should probably explain what triggered Day 1, but even now I cannot quite recall where the thought came from.

I heard an array of explanations for my situation , but still none seemed to make much sense. It was not societal pressure branding me with unrealistic images. It was not so I could improve my long distant running skills. It was simply a thought that made perfect sense.

I’m Jake. 17. Jewish. Semi-orphaned. Anorexic. My mother and I are binaries that only exist because of the other. I am anorexic and she is obese. Without my anorexia she would not be obese and without her obesity I would not be anorexic. She says it is as if I am the sun and she the earth; she can always see me and I her. However we will never touch, never meet, never embrace one another. Our distance is fated and set out in stone, we cannot ever truly understand one another.

Since my father died she has been cooking. Borscht, Brisket, Farfel, Goulash, Knish, Lox, Schnitzel. A range of foods that only the Jewish seem to know. But since my father died I have been starving, perhaps as a form of rebellion against the deeply embedded shards of Judaism that I wish I could remove. To me the performance in the Synagogue is unbearable, like a terribly cliché melodrama where all the actors are oblivious to the fact it is indeed just a pretence.