I arrived here at 20, rail thin in a polka-dot Dress Tooth enamel dissolved by stomach acid I was banking on my high school sweetheart To be a source of love An injection for a supply I'd been mercilessly Cut off from It didn't work In the time we'd spent apart, he'd become a surfer Up in San Luis Obispo And had developed a penchant for getting high At 5 in the morning I spent my time with him mainly A. Not eating B. Checking the status of my hip bones C. Hiding from his alpha roommates I'd wander around town cosplaying as a girl next door Hitting up TJ Maxx Like a normal American girl In a normal American world Far from a singing career, close to Failure I was a Bulimic College Dropout With No family Except there was a family My Mum, who I called in desperation To book my plane ticket home Things went sour fast and my high school sweetheart Turned to aspartame dust I took the train to Hollywood (like a cliché) and drove The Amtrack like I was in the lap of luxuré Relieved to have escaped the tension of a reunion gone Bad Hollywood Boulevard smelled like the apocalypse and The pale winter light added to my feeling of Dissociation Of not being real anymore Of life being a numb game I could've died and not felt anything I spent my days visiting emo stores on Melrose, dodging drug addicts on trains And shopping at Forever 21 On my last night I caught my reflection, a silver light Bouncing off ribs protuding crudely from my back It was then that I realized the jig was up My plan to be thin hadn't worked I didn't make him love me Years later, we meet again at the Roosevelt Hotel Two old friends sharing the same soul connection We'd had in high school. He told me when he'd seen The 'Hollywood' video he'd felt sick Because I'd achieved my dreams. Because I wasn't a lunatic And somehow it healed a forgotten part of me He was the only one I'd ever told about my dreams I was no longer a victim. I had been redeemed No longer a dropout. He had seen me succeed And finally, I wasn't who I was at seventeen anymore