NOTE: This chapter is written in the first-person from Angela's perspective. Be warned that there may be some triggering content.

~ chapter six ~

…and the worst part is, my mother was the one who verbally abused me so much.

I think it had something to do with the fact that my father abandoned us when I was two years old, but I still don't think it's an excuse to abuse people. Normally, someone leaving you like that is something to get over. But who am I to judge? I was two, for christsakes.

I relate to your son, but I never really had the desire to see my father. Why would I want to see a man who wanted nothing to do with me?

That being said, I never had a solid father figure, but I didn't grow up to have daddy issues like some of these other girls do. I was always convinced my mother had those issues. Growing up, she would bring men home and the next morning, they were gone. Sometimes she'd bag a repairman with homemade chocolate chip cookies or bring regulars home from the diner she worked at. I wouldn't be surprised if the majority of tips she earned waitressing were gratuities from the good head she gave the night before.

My childhood was pretty boring up until the age of eight. I had trouble making friends in school. Many of the parents of the other kids didn't want them around me because of my mother and her whorish behavior. Oh yeah, she didn't pay attention to me, at least barely a healthy amount per se. Even at the dinner table, she would say one-word answers to questions or tell me to shut up and eat my food.

Eventually, things became ironic—apparently I had been eating too much when she did that. I was ten or fifteen pounds overweight, naturally.

"Stop stuffing your face," she'd tell me.

But what was I going to say? She barely ever expressed any interest in talking to me, asking about my day at school and how people often refused to acknowledge my existence. If anything, she was verbally abusive and denied it, calling me stupid names that were hurtful and targeted my chubbiness. It isn't like I had grandparents who were alive who would be there to confide in about the problems I had fitting in and functioning on a daily basis.

We did have a neighbor, though—her name was Jerilyn Beard. She was the reason I aspired to become a model.

My mother didn't really pay attention to what I did as a child, but it wasn't like I did anything wrong. I was not a trouble kid. Therefore, I went to her house all the time after I had gotten to know her. This woman was very attractive and older than my mom by ten or twenty years or so, and she was the most eccentric person I had ever met at that point. She was divorced and had two grown children, one in college and another who was married. She was retired, so she spent her days doing whatever she felt like doing, even if it meant entertaining her son's friends by smoking weed with them. Yeah, she tried way too hard to be young again. I didn't realize this until later when I picked up weed and cigarettes myself.

She was about fifty-something when I met her; a wrinkled face with brassy blonde curls and light brown eyes that were calm and collected. Her style of dress was way beyond me; I didn't really like her fashion sense but she had a tendency to wear furs and satin. She wasn't even rich, either, which I found odd.

As we became friends, she would talk about these experiences she had with modelling. I was also convinced she was a narcissist. She had a photo of herself from her modelling days in each room of her house. She was very beautiful when she was young, and if I remember correctly, she had her career during the disco era. Seeing her in these photo shoot stills modelling formal wear, lingerie, swimwear, casuals, and even hairstyles during her career stretch into the early-80s really set a fire in me that has not gone out no matter how much I tried. I think the fire hurt me, though.

I became obsessed with the fashion world, reading my mother's issues of Vogue and Elle magazines and the occasional Cosmopolitan while waiting for my mom's hair to be done at her weekly trips to the salon. Here I was, sitting in the waiting area, plain-faced and chubby, dressed in thrift-store garb looking at beautiful women who were at least five-ten and weighed ninety pounds each.

My obsession was officially taken to the next level when I was twelve or so, after years of tiring my eyes out by ingraining the images of the "perfect body" in my head. I wanted to emulate Gisele Bündchen, Kate Moss, and all these other great models.

I wanted to be them.

I wanted to be them so badly.

So when I was twelve, as I said, my obsession escalated—I had begun to binge.

Whenever my mother told me to shut up and eat at dinner, I gladly took way more than my normal portions on purpose, scarfing it down as though I hadn't eaten in days.

Well, to be honest, there were some days where I would not eat at all. But for the most part it was a brutal cycle of binging and purging.

Binge.

Purge.

Binge.

Purge.

It went on and on. I hated throwing up, but if this was a way to pretend I was eating while staying skinny at the same time, I didn't care. It was an addiction. It was eating me alive from the inside out. No one knew about it, not even Jerilyn.

When I saw that it didn't really do much at first, it drove me to want to binge and purge even more. Again, there were some days where I wouldn't eat at all and just skip meals. My mother didn't give enough of a shit to question why I had brought a toothbrush in the bathroom all the time. She just went about her business, either working long hours at the diner or entertaining men at our house.

Looking back, I can remember now just staring at myself in the mirror, constantly weighing myself on the scale to see if my efforts were making any changes at all. At most, in one week, I lost fifteen pounds, but it still wasn't enough. I kept doing what I was doing. I was out of control.

But when Jerilyn died, I was thirteen—I had gotten much worse.

She had died of a stroke, and I had met her children at the wake and funeral. Everyone in our part of Portsmouth had gone to pay their respects. She looked beautiful laying there, but it created an even bigger void which I had the urge to fill.

Yes, by binging.

I had gotten money from my mom to get three whole boxes of Twinkies. I sat in my room, crying as I stuffed my face with them, Twinkie after Twinkie, reflecting on all the memories I had shared with my neighbor and friend. From the time she gave my first cigarette at age ten to taking me out to eat at McDonalds from time to time just to catch up, everything we shared flashed before me. I barely even got past two and a half boxes. I felt the urge to puke without even gagging myself with the toothbrush.

I ran to the bathroom, but I didn't make it to the toilet in time. I collapsed and threw up in the bathtub. My mom wasn't home. She was out that night. I had to clean it up.

This cycle went on for years. It wasn't just a phase. It consumed my life. I didn't want to die; I wanted to be perfect. Cigarettes I had quit on and off with, but bulimia is no joke. At the time, I felt like I was doing myself a justice, paving the way for my future modelling career. It seemed to pay off in other departments, because by the time I was fifteen, I had lost my virginity and had three boyfriends. No one paid attention to me before I began my compulsive behaviors.

One of my boyfriends, the last I had, complained about my behaviors and went to the guidance counselor and told her everything; my binging, my purging, how whenever he kissed me he tasted the raunchiness of vomit and stomach acid, how my cheeks were puffy without explanation, how I was obsessed with modelling and stuck in my daydreams of runways and magazine covers.

I was sixteen, then. I wanted to choke him, but I didn't—I was dragged down into her office after school one day and I looked at her with such distrust and suspicion as she talked to me.

"Angela, you can't live your life like this. It isn't healthy to make yourself throw up after eating huge meals," she had said.

"I'm going to kill him," I had said—I was angry that he would betray me like that. "I-I don't have a problem, Miss Rossman. He's lying."

"If he's lying, then why do these text messages say otherwise?"

"What?"

"Let's see…"

She began to read them from his phone, which he had freely given her, and I felt so hurt. Later I was thankful, because it was for my own good.

"He says, 'babe, let's go grab a bite to eat. I'm hungry.' You say, 'are you nuts? I'm on a diet.' Then he turns around with, 'you need to eat. when did you last have a meal?'. Then you, Angela, you said, 'none of your business. I don't have to tell you shit.'"

"I never said that." I was in so much denial that it killed me.

"It says it right here, Angela. Why are you doing this to yourself?" she asked me. "Does your mother know—"

I got up and took a massive fit. I was tired of hearing about my mother.

"STOP IT!" I screamed. "Don't mention her!"

There was a brief silence, but then I sat back down again and crossed my legs. I sighed, trying to hold back tears before breaking down right in front of the guidance counselor. She got up from her desk and locked the door to her office, patting my back and sitting next to me.

"Hey, it's okay…I'm going to help you…" I heard her, my wails cutting off her speech.

I couldn't take it anymore. My self-esteem was so low and I was already digging myself an even deeper hole. I finally admitted to having a problem, and the minute she tried to dial my mother's number, I glared at her.

"Don't even bother," I said. "Send me to an institution. I don't want to go back there."

"Why not?"

"Because she won't answer," I sobbed. "She's never home."

She still dialed, and I plopped into the chair until she got off the phone. I heard the most shocking statement ever just then.

"She's coming to pick you up. You're going home for the day."

My mom was surprisingly quick to get to the school. I didn't shed another tear, but I overheard everything my guidance counselor was telling her when she told me to step out of the room. I sat outside, seeing a few of the more popular girls snickering at me as I sat there; the urge to go over and punch them in the face and rip every blonde hair out of their heads was controlled by the sound of their voices in the office.

"Mrs. Saxon, your daughter has an eating disorder. I am not a doctor, but I know one when I see one," she explained to my mother, who returned with shock.

"She eats like a pig. How the hell is that possible?"

"Please, Mrs. Saxon," the guidance counselor said in response to her hurtful, indirect comment about me. "I know a psychologist right here in Portsmouth who can help her. I can write to him and set up a consultation with him."

"I can't afford that," my mother said. "C'mon, are you trying to bleed me bone dry?"

"No, but I do urge that she seek help. For her sake and yours, Mrs. Saxon," the counselor answered. "Look at these text messages her boyfriend has been sending her. He's concerned as well."

I peeked into the room and saw my mom take my boyfriend's phone, scrolling through the texts with the help of the up-down buttons. I felt my knees turn to jelly, my stomach burn intensely—I really felt like throwing up right then and there. I hadn't eaten the entire day, either, and puking up stomach acid and bile was no fun.

"Mrs. Saxon, this is serious," I heard Miss Rossman say again.

"I can't believe this. Goddamn it," my mother grunted.

"You mean to tell me you have not noticed any changes in your daughter's eating habits?"

"I haven't noticed."

So she had the guts to admit it and be honest. I remember her taking me to the hospital the next day, but before that, she made an appointment for later that week to see the psychologist Miss Rossman recommended.

First was the hospital, though. I was in the emergency room for three hours before being examined by a physician. I didn't want my mom in the room with me, so she just waited downstairs. She found four things wrong with me from the binging and purging aside from being underweight—my teeth were slightly decayed in the back of them, my glands were a bit swollen, esophageal inflammation from all the vomiting, and for the entire time, I gradually began to develop these weird callouses on my hands.

My mother was shocked to learn my diagnosis with bulimia, but even more shocked that I needed to be in the hospital for a week. I got two weeks of excused absence from school, though, which at the time was a plus. Catching up with homework was tough. I also had visited my psychologist, who would ask me the most obvious questions about my eating habits.

All in all, it took me a good four months to resist the urge to vomit everything I tried to eat, and another year and a half to eat right again. I was advised to start small, with crackers and jam in the morning and eat larger meals at lunch and dinner. Whenever I went to the bathroom, my mother tried to stop me. At least she gave some shit about me and my well-being for once.

My recovery brought us closer, actually, and for the rest of high school I was normal, so to speak. I had gotten a job to make my own money. My mother and I talked more, and I continued to see the same boy who got me help until the middle of my senior year. I graduated the tenth in my class of 460, and while everyone was going to college in Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, New York, or the University of New Hampshire right at home, I was still working my ass off as a waitress. My mother was proud but to say the least, I knew she was guilty for not being there much my whole life growing up.

Nowadays, I am lucky I get a call every three months from her. She checks in with me to see how I am. I never call her, though, for obvious reasons. She remained busy a lot even as I went through my recovery. She wasn't verbally abusive anymore, but even though she was before, I could never treat her like your son treated you just now.

Why? Because unlike some people, I am grateful for what I am given. My mother may not have been the best, but it is because of her that I am here.

~ a/n ~

So this was a pretty loaded part of the story. At least you know more about Angela. It isn't as detailed and explicit as some of the background stories of my other characters, but I tried to do that on purpose because this kind of thing CAN be triggering. Trust me, I know.

Another thing, did anyone imagine the physical description of Angela's neighbor/friend? Who do you think she could be? *dun dun dun*

As always, I encourage that you leave a Review, Favorite and Follow!

Thank you and stay tuned!