Author's Note: The italicised lines are lyrics taken from assorted songs. They are not all from the same song, and I just wanted to explain that ahead of time. I will use italics for thoughts in coming chapters, although that should be obvious anyway. I will try to create a plausible story about Cameron and her developing anorexia and struggle with it. I've done plenty of research and am currently struggling with it myself, so I would hope that it would be plausible, as well as in character. I think there is enough in her character overall that could give plausibility to it. After this prologue sort of chapter, there won't be lyrics, most likely.-Aria Ilia-
She was a doctor. She should have known better. She did know better, in all actually. But she couldn't stop herself.
I don't care if it hurts, I wanna have control, I want a perfect body, I want a perfect soul
She was amazed that she'd kept it a secret for so long. It had started back in college. Actually, once again, she knew better. It had been lurking since she was young, but it got its chance to show up in college. And then it had started to eat away at her life. Hah, eat. That was a laugh.
Imperfect cry and scream in ecstasy, so what befalls the flawless, look what I've built, it shines so beautifully, now watch as it destroys me
She could trace it back to her earliest memories. She remembered being three years old, watching her mother sitting at the kitchen table, fingers pressed to her temples. Her mother had a headache. She crept over quietly to touch her mother's shoulder, to wrap her arms around her mother's waist and hug, and hold on. Her mother pushed her away, terse. "Allison, I have a headache. Go watch some television or something." Her mother turned to look at her, her expression sharp.
Cameron had crept away quietly. She'd gone to her room, curled up, and felt the isolation wash over her. She felt alone and rejected and no good, because she couldn't make her mother feel better. That was the first memory she had of it, of the precursor of it, and one of the first memories she had of anything.
Hunger hurts but starving works when it costs too much to love
It had played a part all through her development. She wanted to be loved, she wanted to save people, to care for them, to make them smile, to be a perfect little girl. She was silent a lot of the time, trying to really hear them, not just listen, to see them and hear them and understand them. But her need to love and care and be so perfect was destructive. Simultaneous with those things was an uncertainty, a fear of failure, and because of those two factors, everything she did, she questioned. Every word, every action, every smile or glare or sad expression from another person was taken and analysed, peered between the cracks, found the underlying, hidden message it could hold. She found it, even if it was irrational.
If she tried to tell someone sad to cheer up, because good things will happen to good people, and they smiled at her and said thank you, instead of taking that as it were, at six years old, she instead found it to be them telling her, "Don't be so stupid. You're six years old, what could you know of life?" Their smile was a lie, a false expression to placate her.
It was irrational, but it also was wedged so deeply in her mind that she couldn't help it. It started out weak, and grew. By the time she was 11, she analysed everything, and almost always found the inbetween truth, whether it be actual truth or the lies that only she could find.
You make the sound of laughter and sharpened nails seem softer, and I need you now somehow
By the time she was ten, she was lost in her own head. She had friends, but she was still teased by people. She was shy around boys, and somewhat socially awkward at times. Such a volatile time, that age was. She had done a very stupid thing and decided to cut her hair short, into a pixie cut. She was basing it off her best friend's look. Instead, she looked like a boy. She cried for days when she was teased by even her friends, although most of them were only joking. Most of them.
The next year, it got worse. Her hair was finally growing out, down to about her jaw. She'd found a way of styling it that it was at least somewhat cute. However, puberty had decided to hit that summer, and her breasts had shown up, her period had arrived ((embarrassingly while she was at the beach, lounging around, until her mother had urgently dragged her off to the bathroom and yanked down her bathing suit to discover the red stain upon the fabric)), and she had put on some weight on the hips, the butt, the thighs, the stomach, everywhere, it appeared.
Brian Billick, one of the more popular boys in school, decided to begin to flirt with her. She was eleven, in sixth grade, and in over her head. With sandy brown hair and bright green eyes, she was enamored, even if he was skinny and not at all like the handsome men that her mother longed for on TV. Granted, Cameron herself had no interest in them yet. As it turned out, Brian had just broken up with Laura Hennerson, and Laura was not in a good mood about it. Before the end of the week was through, Cameron was practically the most mocked, unpopular girl in school, and Laura was back with Brian. Vicious lies about Cameron had circulated. Her mother was insane, her father was an alcoholic, Cameron was a dyke, Cameron had tried to kill herself, and Cameron thought that Laura was ugly. All those started by Laura herself led to Cameron being mocked and hated.
In my head the flesh seems thicker, sandpaper tears corrode the filth, and I need you now somehow
Cameron began to turn to food in order to quell her depression. Bad test grade, go home and curl up and eat some Cheetos. Mother or father yell at her, a bowl of ice cream would do the trick. Complete loneliness, feeling stupid and unloved and a failure, and go to your room with potato chips, cookies, some reheated pizza, a soda, and eat until the stomach hurt, and then eat some more until it was all gone.
She gained more weight. At five foot three, she weighed 150 pounds at age 12. When she went for a physical before entering junior high, her pediatrician informed her mother that "although it isn't really too much of an issue and might just be weight gained during puberty, Allison is currently slightly overweight". Her mother had nodded but not been worried, since the doctor hadn't seemed worried. Cameron tried not to worry too much, but the fact that she wore a size ten and any pants that were double digits were, in her opinion, worn by girls who were overweight. Even an eight was dangerous. That was borderline heavy. Six or four was good.
But still, although she wanted to lose weight, her love affair with food was still there. She started to exercise, but every few days came the retreat into her room with some sort of sweet, a brownie she'd bought from the bakery on her way home, or something else that dulled the pain inside her. She managed to at least regulate her weight, and lost a few pounds, but she still remained in that ten.
Oh, give me a reason to be beautiful, so sick in this body, so sick in this soul She went to her first junior high dance a month into the school year. It was the annual Bonfire Dance, where you arrived at seven, and at ten, everyone went outside behind the school and watched as the bonfire was lit. She went, wearing a red dress that she and her mother had gone shopping for. It was a spaghetti strap dress that fell to just past her knees, with a slit along both sides to about halfway along her thighs. She wore matching red sandals, and hung out with the few friends that she had still managed to retain from Laura's vicious attack the year before.
The dance began, and she hung out with her friends, and she danced with them to some songs, feeling strange in the social situation, and watched as one by one, people, her friends included, began to pair off with their dates or possible romantic interests, and she hung back against the wall, watching as one dance after another went by, couples shyly wrapping their arms around each other and swaying to the music.
She was elated when Rich Abrow came along and asked her to dance. He wasn't the most popular boy around, but he at least was nice enough to her at times. She settled her arms around his neck, and his came to rest low on her hips, almost on her butt. She felt even more uncomfortable, but didn't ask him to stop, because she didn't want to screw up. She should have, because about a minute later, he let out a loud whoop, causing many to turn as he yanked up enough of her dress, the slits aiding him, to reveal her panties.
She screamed and jerked away, and watched as he got pulled out of the gym, and noted the following Monday that he got a suspension for his actions, but it was too late, because now everyone had seen her underwear and she'd been mortified in public. She found out later that Laura had put him up to it. It seemed that Laura's viciousness was never going to end.
I swear, I said, I fit right in, I fight right in your perfect skin, I cannot breathe
She knew that she would never be perfect, but she also knew she couldn't stop trying to be. She stopped flirting with boys, however, because it seemed futile, now that Laura had pretty much secured her as the most mocked girl in school. Sure, a few boys came up to try and grab her ass, and taunt her, but when she asked her best friend to ask as many boys as she could what they thought of her, the general response was, "She's not really that cool, and she doesn't even have tits or anything, so there's no reason why I'd even think about her."
She'd heard about teens who cut because they were upset. Under the lunch table one day, curious, she dug her nail into the back of her hand, ran it back and forth a few times, pulled her hand out, and stared at the red line. Jarred, a boy who generally sat with her and her friends but she didn't care for, due to his judgemental nature, glanced over. "What's that?" He asked. She shrugged. He rolled his eyes. "You're always so depressed, and now there's that welt on your hand. If you start cutting, I hope they find out and throw you in the loony bin."
Her hands slid under the table again and her nail bit into her palm this time, drawing lines across it.
She would graduate to a needle before the end of the week, upset with herself for nearly failing an art test, but it wasn't her fault that she couldn't draw very well. She came home, stole a needle from her mother's sewing basket, and went in her room. She only made one scratch, along her upper arm. She didn't want to draw attention to her wrists. That was too evident. She only scratched the needle across her skin once, and watched as a few droplets of blood welled to the surface. Her mother never asked what it was, and if she had, Cameron would have replied that she got scratched by a tree branch outside during gym class.
They say in the end you'll get better just like them and they steal your heart away
But eventually, her cutting got more frequent. She managed to rip her nail jagged enough to actually create scratches on her upper arm, and her mother saw them. "Who did this?" She asked. Cameron replied that one of her friends had gotten annoyed and attacked Cameron. It made sense, actually. One of her friends was abused by her mother, and it made Cameron feel guilty that she was injuring herself because she was upset, when her friend was getting beaten by her mother on an almost daily basis. And her friend did get annoyed and hit people, attack them. Cameron didn't really like that, but she wanted to help out so she tried to be supportive. "Well, if she does it again, you stop talking to her." Her mother replied.
Cameron slipped up, though. She made five jagged scratches across her wrists one day, completely upset. She wore longsleeve shirts for a couple days, because it was beginning to go from fall to late fall, but one day, in her pjyamas, she stumbled downstairs, and forgot that she was wearing a tank top. Her mother glanced over as Cameron ate her breakfast and grabbed her wrist, causing eggs to fall to the floor. "What the hell is this?" Her mother glared at her. "Why are all these scratches appearing on you lately?"
"The cat did it." Cameron replied defensively. "We were playing and she scratched me." But the lines looked nothing like cat scratches, and her mother continued to glare.
"If I see any more of these cuts, I'm going to put you in a mental hospital." Her mother warned. That had scared Cameron enough to stop. But not for long. She just learned new ways to protect herself. She lasted through junior high, one more year, and then entered high school. She was five foot six now, and 163 pounds. She was supposed to go to the first homecoming dance of her life with a boy named Chris. He wasn't too popular, but he wasn't unpopular either. She'd known him since they were in second grade, and he was nice to her, usually. She was cautious, remembering Rich.
When she got to the dance, he was there waiting for her, and she shyly smiled at him, approaching. She wore a pale blue dress with a band of shimmering fake jewels across the waist, and he was dressed in a tuxedo, looking very attractive to her. She'd done her hair in a twist that curved around her neck and fell over one shoulder, and she was wearing a light application of lipstick and lipgloss, a faint shadowing of pale blue powder on her eyelids. He complimented her, told her that she looked really pretty.
Before the dance was over, she felt the courage to ask him out. But he stared at her. "Oh. Uhm. Allison, I only asked you as a friend, and really, because Katie told me that you weren't going to have anyone to go with." Katie was a friend of a friend, not someone she generally talked to, but had said hi to and chatted with a couple times. She knew that Katie and Chris were really good friends. "In fact, I'm kinda hoping that in doing this, maybe she'll like me. I'm sorry."
She shook her head. "No, it's alright." She retreated to the bathroom, cried, and waited for her mother to come pick her up. She went upstairs to her room after the dance, pulled out the needle that she'd hidden, and then lifted her breast up, drew the needle underneath it several times, leaving a red line of blood as she went. She put on her bra and tee-shirt, a pair of pjyama pants, and curled up in her bed.
Fighting for the smallest goal, to get a little self-control
She'd done that a few more times throughout high school, although it had been fairly rare. She did it under her breasts, or on her kneecaps, or thighs, somewhere that wasn't commonly seen. She wondered if her mother ever noticed scratches that she really got by accident, if her mother then wondered if she was cutting herself again. That was what kept her from doing it too often, the fear of being discovered.
But since her outlet for pain had to be channeled in other ways, it began to develop through her weight again. She was still a ten, although even those were getting tight now, and so she began to stop eating as much. She would go several days without eating more than a thousand calories a day, and exercise for hours at a time, and then break down and eat again, wolfing down her beloved snacks and completely ruining her diet. Her inability to do anything but worry about what people were thinking about her at the time, her inability to be perfect and take care of everyone and make them happy only aided in this cycle. But it never got too serious, and usually this only happened every few months for maybe a week, and then it would fade away.
She made it through high school intact, although she strongly suspected that it was only because she did have her parents watching over her, and if she'd done anything too extreme, they would have intervened. She was recovering though, in her issues with being perfect. Sort of. She wanted to be thin, she wanted to be perfect, but she at least was able to stop analysing everything people said. Usually she just thought that they were seeing her and thinking she was fat. She could believe that maybe they thought her a nice girl, just heavy.
She went to college, and gained another ten pounds by the end of the first semester. She was into size twelves now, and she was almost breaking down over it. She came home with an A, two Bs, and two Cs as her final grades. Her parents were upset that she hadn't gotten higher for the two classes with Cs. She'd honestly tried, but the classes were hard. She'd almost had a B in one of them, but the last test was insane.
It got worse when her mother's thyroid began to act up. Even though Cameron knew that the thyroid was what made her testy all the time, the frequent phone calls from her mother yelling at Cameron about anything and everything really got to her, and she began to feel as if she was worthless again, selfish, and of course, fat. She needed to lose that extra weight.
Left selfish and hungry so feed me to pain, escape reality with new pain then let the cycle start again
By the time the end of the semester came, Cameron had lost somewhere around thirty pounds. She was now considered in a healthy weight range, but she was still in a size 8 pants, and even then, sometimes she couldn't get into that. It wasn't good enough. Over the summer, she managed to exercise, but her parents were making her eat three meals a day.
Back in college, she'd reduced her meals to one time a day and had a restriction of no more than 750 calories a day, plus plenty of exercise. She was allowed a small snack at night if she got really hungry, but that was it. She only lost a few more pounds over the summer. She refused to purge. She knew that she wouldn't be able to get away with it, because her parents would find out somehow.
When she got back to college, she began her regime again. But this time, she did start to purge. She dropped to around 130, weight fluctuating slightly above or below, but she was still in the healthy range for her weight. Healthy, yeah, right. If only people knew that she was alternating between eating once a day, obsessively exercising, and then the next day, eating and throwing up, eating an hour later, throwing up, eating and forcing herself to keep it down, even though she'd eaten too much, and then passing out, exhausted.
By the end of college, she'd managed to drop down to 114. That was just barely out of the healthy range for her. She moved into an apartment, began to look for jobs, and eventually ended up working for House. But just because her life was in order on the outside didn't mean anything. She was still in turmoil on the inside. She was falling for House, she was watching people die because she couldn't save them, and she was still completely obsessed with her weight. She managed to maintain her weight for a while, and even gained a few pounds back, because she felt guilty. She was a doctor, and she was the unhealthy one starving herself to be thin while other people were dying. But just because she gained weight didn't mean anything.
She managed to gain some weight back, and in fact, began to look less than sickly thin, which several people had remarked to her one day. She went from wearing size twos to wearing size 6s. But then they started to get tight. And she got scared.
And you're my obsession, I love you to the bones, and Ana wrecks your life