You know how sometimes people put little notes in different places of the house to be reminded of something to do or whatever? Buy toothpaste, don´t forget your phone, this is where the keys should be, you are beautiful, smile more often, etc. These are usually things people have to write down because they don´t fit into their regular routine, which is usually the reason why they forget to do them.
In the case of Ruth, the things she wrote in those yellow post its were those that would be considered a basic need by the regular folk. For instance, there were a few that simply read "EAT" without any specification of any kind, meaning no "eat more fruits" or "eat less cookies", no reference to the health or balance to the action described whatsoever. Simply those three little letters that hanged across her view and stared back every time she looked at herself in the bathroom mirror or when she wanted to lock the door. Sometimes, she went as far as leaving a sticky note on the desktop of her computer with the exact same message.
It wasn´t that she didn´t get hungry, she did. It was just that the thought of the taste made her dreary and a little disgusted, at times it was almost impossible to swallow. She didn´t mind the smell of food at all, on the contrary, she highly appreciated and enjoyed it, but the moment the meal at hand made contact with her anxious tongue, her esophagus would immediately close and start rejecting whatever it is she was having. When this didn´t happen, it was the chewing part that did the work. It was the mechanical movement of her jaws that turned the hunger into nausea, after two or three bites she just couldn´t do it anymore. Drinks were ok, she had weeks in which every time she would come across this note she would open the fridge and take a nutrition drink and think of how annoying it is you can only take one per day. The last time she read that note she hadn´t eaten anything in 12 hours.
Notes with words like "SLEEP" or "DRINK WATER" were also found often around her house and room. It was a mystery to her how is it that she remembers the dentist appointment made a month ago or the lyrics to a song that she learned when she was 12 and still, she is not able to realize its past midnight without the alarm set on the clock at 00:00 and then every 15 minutes until one so she can have a sense of how late it is getting.
Now it was 3:17 and she had just woken up. This was going to be a long day.
