AN: I wrote this a long time ago, and it wasn't Faberry. Umm, I seem to have this weird thing with giving Quinn remnants of an eating disorder. Sorry if that's not your thing. I just realized, people actually read this. Some like it. What is that? I had no idea haha. If you do, I'd really appreciate a review. Thanks, and I hope you like.
Oh and the italics are when she's in the tree and normal, in her room.
I'm standing just inside the doors of my closet. I like to pretend they're shielding me from what I tried to run away from. Another thing I failed to do. Slightly out of it, I trace the lines on my arms. Dirt remains and it clings to my mesh shorts. I make to brush the remnants off, but my fingers divert themselves, instead pulling the shorts a little lower. I can't take it, how big I look. How full I feel, like there's so much of me. I try to wrap my arms around my stomach, but mother is right: it's too big, I can't find solace when my arms don't even fully encompass me. I wish I was back in the pine tree, picking bark off monotonously.
Every branch that I disconnect, it's a dead piece of me, a pound I will starve away that will never be allowed back. *snap* I will begin again. *snap, snap* I can be perfect. *snap* I refuse to be weak, to be reliant on something that others cannot get enough of. *snap* I will feel that power that comes with resisting what others overindulge in and later whine about. *snap* I will no longer break down in fitting rooms, or be judged by cheer mates when I walk in with a larger size. *snap* There will be no large sizes. *snap* I will go back to where I was. *snap* No, I will go lower. I will be cold and light-headed. *snap* Light of conscience, free of sin, free of anything but *SNAP* her…
My shirt is huge, just like my shorts. Another thing mother noticed.
You've been wearing your big clothes again. I wouldn't be surprised at all if you've gained quite a bit more.
I want to hit something. I want to cry. I want to eat something. I want to be empty. I want to stop feeling, stop caring. I want to hurt. I ghost over to the bathroom. Mother is right down the hall; I'm trying to be silent, as though if mother can't hear me, doesn't comment, then I'm not really here, I'm still in the tree.
I don't know where I planned on going. The TV room didn't work; mother refused to leave me alone to 'sulk'. So I stormed out. I stopped in the woods, turning like a carousel. Round and round, where it stops no one knows. It never really reaches a new destination. But I was going to escape, if only for a little. Weaving in and out, jaggers catching into my thighs, going quite deep, it didn't matter, I couldn't feel over the fullness. I remembered this giant, half-dead pine tree. I remember tucking string cheese into my shorts and pretending I was a spy on Kid's Next Door and this was some epic mission. I'm crying, but not normal crying. I comes out as blood on knuckles, thighs, anything. I just need to climb higher, get to the sky, push through every branch. *snap*
My shirt is dangling from my fingertips. They smell of blood; there it is, dark, dried red under the nails and the area in between my toes is mangled and distorted. It rushes through me then, hot and pulsing and I feel so defeated. The shirt is wildly whipped at the wall, not even close to being aimed but I just feel destructive. There is barely any sound ripped from my throat, just pathetic squeaks and cries. I want to put my foot through the wall again. I wish I was strong enough to shove something down my throat and take something to my ripe and seamless skin, do something that would force new cells to bind it together. I need to run. I need to stuff myself even more. No, NO. I grab at the fat covering my stomach, roll it in between my fingers. I angle my stomach so that I can't see beyond the bump that should be flat. I disregard other objects in the room and take a fist to my stomach, one after the other after the other.
I thought I was content to sit here, head on my arms on a branch, listening to Katie Perry and Ke$sha and hoping the times ticks away. I see mother open and close a door several times, but it's for the dog, not me. I decide I need height, some sort of advantage over anything. I grasp above me and use my feet to walk up, walk up beyond the clouds to heaven where God is and so is she and they actually love me and I can give up, stop hurting and just rest forever…
It actually stings and there are red marks to prove it. No one has ever said anything if they hear it, my'friends' at school, father or mother or sister, no one. For all they claim, they don't know anything. I'm crying now, pushing out my stomach and bending over to create rolls and screaming unwanted/hated/unloved/alone. I crawl back to the double doors that shelter my closet. I'm curled up on the floor, under clothes that fit back then, but will never now. Mother is such a hypocrite, always talking about getting 'better' and yelling at me that mother never slept at night anymore, but now that I'm 'normal', mother can't help remember when I was thinner. Mother liked me better then, secretly beamed when people commented on my weight drop.
I love climbing trees, always have. Hanging upside down and feeling the blood rush, nothing compared. I actually feel sort of strong, pulling myself up and pushing and getting somewhere, not being so grounded anymore and bound by the increased gravity my weight brings on. I don't even realize I'm up this high or what prompted this, but I'm picking little pieces of bark off the tree. My fingernails are tearing because the bark's so hard and I'm kind of killing the tree, but we understand each other. We can both be in pain. We can be silent observers, weathering humanity a little. It's sheltering, hiding me; I'm ridding it of mass. I wish I could do the same to myself.
But I can be rid of these pills. Masquerading as anti-depressants when they just depress the real me that wants to rage and control. I shouldn't, shouldn't, really, really shouldn't, and then the bottle is being flung and they are dissolving in the toilet, the pink bleeding everywhere and dirtying the water. I flush and suddenly there's red in there too from my nails.
It's dark now and I can't see anything. Mother hasn't called or anything. It would be so easy to really run away. But I'm in pajamas and if I run away I will be prepared to never return to that abusing shell. I know I can find my way down, my body just knows where all the branches are, is tugged towards them. It's the noises I hear that make me start. Admitting they make me nervous alludes to fear of death, of hurt, but really I would rather those things happen at my hands, or hers, not some rapist or diseased dog.
There's nothing here for me is being carved into the carpet by my fingers, no nails remaining. I am kneeling now, head bowed like I'm praying when really I'm just lost and confused. Delirious. I hear a shift then. I know about movement, I know the sounds made by each placement of weight on my floor. But I can't bring myself to care. My back is bare and displayed and I wish each spike of my spine was visible, that something on the outside could represent how starved and uncaring and broken and wrong I was inside. Someone is tracing my spine anyways and it's not mother. I'm not... it's her.
The sun was all sorts of pinks of purples that barely shed through the green veil around me. I'm remembering how she seeped through all the little cracks anyways, always forgave, and always just knew. I would reveal something, so scared and nervous and shy and thinking she would leave, finally just tire and abandon me, but she would just smile, maybe laugh. She knew me, everything, and still didn't love me back. I transferred schools in the desperate hope that she would realize how different I was, how no one could care like I did. Instead I was the one that ended up breaking, shattering brittle bones against the pavement of the rich and worthy, an intruder with a sinned love for a middle-class.
What are you doing here. It's almost a rasp, there's no accusation, not even curiosity. I'm too busy thinking back to night where I howled at the moon, at God, where is she, where is she, I need to feel, I need her, oh God I need her.
She just continues drawing on my back. My skin ripples under her touch. She creates mountains and leaves flames in her wake. I almost feel embarrassed, too disgusting to be this raw and uncovered. But there's so much I have told her over five hour phone calls and disjointed online chats that I think she needs to really see this. See what she did to me, if she has connected the dots yet, action to self-inflicted consequence.
I block myself with a door and slide on a sports bra. I kneel in front of her. If she let me, I would worship her. I kind of do already, raising her to some larger-than-life symbol that has come to represent everything and absolutely nothing of any real meaning. She makes to touch my stomach, but seems to notice the difference between the flames she's created and the angered screaming that has ravaged my fat, flesh.
I don't know what I expected. I thought skin and bones. But you, right now, I don't know, you look… fine, but not that, that's not right. Strong almost. I want to yell and scream at her. I never could and maybe that's why I kind of know we'll never work. I can never tell her what I really think; I can't risk scaring her or hurting her or making it seem like I'm not really me, just a pill, just a faux-friend. She'll think my actions, my feeling, are lies. I settle for staring at her. God, I missed her eyes, brown and white flecks that make me think of crystal shattering and splintering, freeing itself to allow its beauty to actualize.
I don't know why she hasn't run. No one has seen me like this, seen the mess I'm capable of becoming. I don't know what mess I'm capable of becoming. I feel like there's blood everywhere and we're choking on it and I'm staining her, staining her purity and dragging her down to the bottom to drown with me.
I'm 'better' now. My lip is quirked and I feel like this is the moment when the hero is about to die and there's a line of blood trickling from his lips and there should be some sort of tears but instead she is just leaning down with hair tucked behind her ears and it's like the sky is coming to encompass me.
It's 'cuz I'm here. She isn't asking why or how or taking control. She's just looking at me and it's almost as though she actually knows what I tried to do, my stupid, self-destructing and pathetic plea for attention. Her hair is tangling with mine and I realize I'm tracing the veins on the back of her hands before claiming her palms and digits in my own. She is that hand catching me as I tumble down into an abyss, calmly stating she'll never release me. But I'm too heavy now and if I were just lighter and smaller I'd be more deserving of any kind of exertion.
She kneels down so our knees are touching and moves so our foreheads are mimicking. She breathes and I just keep inhaling and inhaling, inflating as though all the calories I've consumed weren't as filling. This is a need, a different kind of body and blood. I don't want to close my eyes and salt finally liquidizes in trails from trying to keep from blinking. That's the reason I present myself.
I want this to be reality so badly, that Rachel is really here with Quinn unless I really fell from that great height. This suspension cannot be all that stable, perched on the tip as though it's a precipice and the sky will react with me as an equal force instead of me just slicing through the clouds and falling in arcs resulting in reconciliation with the ground where we are sitting, perched almost, like opposites that just need to remember how to express and interact. There is love and confusion and love and misunderstanding and love and a wish to know why any of this was initialized. Our pulses are beating in rhythm, I wonder if they're echoing our old vocal harmonies, but the fall is not as hard as I imagined and we rest together, so stretched that we've fit ourselves around the world until we just meet at the other edge.
Maybe, maybe, so much potential. Fill me, love me, etch me, mold me, back into a human.
I love you.