IX: Made of Glass

"An eating disorder is a very jealous and abusive partner. It requires a lot of devotion in the extent that you have to devote yourself to tending to the anorexia. There's not a lot of time left over for life."

Doug Bunnell

3 March 2010

You. Are. Dying.

I can feel Spencer staring at me. He's been doing this, ever since I came home and I fainted. When I go to bed, when he thinks I've fallen asleep – he comes in my room and he watches me, sitting sometimes in a chair, sometimes on the bed with me. At first, he cried, but now he doesn't even cry. He just stares, and sometimes I see him and his eyes are so sad. Like his whole world is falling apart, collapsing around him. Like when I fell, I took the whole world with me.

Spencer holds me, cradling me in his arms and stroking my hair. I wish he would stop. I wish he would go away and leave me alone in my anorexic misery, leave me to just die and fall apart. Because I've realized a few things over the last few days, and I'm not sure that I want to live anymore. It all just seems so . . . exhausting.

When I fainted, I was only out for a few minutes. It was just the stress of everything that caused me to faint. It wasn't that big a deal. It didn't have to be that big a deal. But everyone was so worried, and Spencer insisted that we drive to the ER. I tried to sleep on the way there, but every time I closed my eyes he would freak out, panic and warn me not to do that, he thought I was dying every time I did.

Of course, it took hours for a doctor to see us. I wasn't vomiting or bleeding, and I was breathing. Who cared about a stupid teenage girl who apparently had nothing wrong with her? It was torture just sitting there for hours on end. I was so tired, and my emotions so jumbled up. I couldn't even say how I felt, except that I knew I wanted to start crying and I couldn't cry for some reason.

My phone rang. It rang, and rang, and rang. Jack kept calling and calling, and then Sam and Freddie too. I almost turned off the phone, but I liked the growing collection of missed calls and the text messages, the way the little yellow envelope blinked on my phone's screen. Worry. Suffer – Gods knows I have, I thought darkly. Spencer took no notice, completely wrapped up in attempting to fill out the paper work. I glared at him, and after a few minutes of his not noticing I got frustrated and just left. If he was worried, he could call me too.

I slipped into the bathroom, and ran some paper towels under warm water. I took off my jeans, and gently washed myself, cleaning the sticky white liquids from where they had dried on my thighs. I dried off, flushing the whole wad down the toilet before leaving the stall to wash my hands.

Glancing in the mirror, I was struck by how I looked. My cheeks were sunken. There were dark circles under my eyes. My hair was thin, and dull. My skin was sallow, and I looked exhausted. As though at any moment, I was going to just fall to pieces. As if was a paperdoll, or I was made of glass. And then there seemed to be a certain sadness to my features, like I had been crying for hours.

"You look like shit," I said to my reflection. My reflection blinked, and I sighed, my shoulders sagging. My clothes were loose, almost falling off me. I had been putting off buying new clothes, thinking to myself I would buy clothes when I was thinner, rather than spend money on every in-between size I hit.

"Carly!" Before I knew what was happening Spencer slapped me across the face. I gasped and stumbled backwards, staring at him and the look of horror on his face. "Don't walk away from me," he ordered. "You could have fainted again. No one would know who you were," he hissed. He frowned, and held the side of my face, trying to digest what had just happened. "And what were you doing in there? Have you been throwing up?" he demanded. Without waiting for my response, he grabbed me and leaned down to smell by breath. "You don't smell like vomit."
"Get off of me!" I shrieked, snapping out of it and pulling away from him. "I can't believe you hit me!" I yelled. This earned us several stares, and Spencer frowned.

"I can't believe you're killing yourself," he replied, voice low and angry. I barked a laugh, enjoying the way he flinched.

"I can't believe it took you all this time to notice." Could I have wounded him more deeply? The look on his face! Like I had stabbed him through the stomach, like I had burned his most prized possessions. Like I was Snowden, and he was Yossarian, and he was watching all my guts and the stewed tomatoes come screaming out of my armpit when he'd thought, if I only fix the leg it will all be alright. And I was here to tell him that it wouldn't be, because man is matter, and ripeness was all. And as for my matter, I was too much.

"Carly," he whispered, tears falling down his face when he blinked. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry," he said, trying to hug me. I screamed and pulled away, the fury building in me like a nuclear reaction.

"I don't want your apologies!" I shrieked, my hands balled in fists at my sides. "I hate you! I hate you! I hate Mom for leaving, and Dad! I hate everyone! Why does everyone leave me?" I cried, my body shaking. "God dammit, everyone leaves me all alone, and God, it's awful. So I sit by myself and it's awful, and I hurt so much, and I don't know how to stop hurting. So just – just – just – argh!" I growled, throwing my hands in the air.

The exclamation took everything out of me. I grabbed my chest, and as icy cold horrible realization dawned on me. I dropped to my knees, my breath coming in short spurts. I wanted to scream, but I couldn't get enough air to do it.

"Carly! Oh my god, doctor!" Spencer screamed. "Someone help us! Someone help her!" he shouted, looking around desperately. I felt strong hands picking me up and I began to cry, absolutely terrified.

"Honey, just stay with me," the nurse said as I was placed on a bed. She pulled my shirt up and yanked my bra down, attaching wire to my breast. I cried harder, unable to catch my breath. Oh god, I was dying. I was having a heart attack because I was fucked up, and worse than that I was an idiot.

"It's okay, it's okay," Spencer kept saying. I wanted to slap because it wasn't okay at all and I expected that at any moment I was going to see white lights coming towards and great glowing hands. Unless I saw licks of red flame, because I remembered being told in Sunday School that you go to Hell if you commit suicide. Would this count as a suicide? I had done it to myself, after all.

"She's going to be just fine now," the nurse reported, reading the graphs on the screen. "Her heart beat got a little irregular there, but she's going to be okay. It was probably from the emotional outburst," she said.

"She's – she's anorexic," Spencer said quietly. "She's doing this to herself. Do something to her," he pleaded. "She collapsed today." The nurse regarded me coolly, and I started back.

"Honey, do you want to get better?" she asked me.

"I'm fat. I need to lose ten pounds," I replied. She sighed heavily, then shrugged at Spencer.

"There's nothing more we can do," she said. Spencer balked, opening and shutting his mouth several times before he finally could form words.

"What the fuck, there's nothing more you can do?" he screamed, his whole body shaking with his fury. "Fuck you, do something! She almost had a heart attack!"

"I can't make her do anything. I can only treat her if she has a heart attack," she said. "Would you like some brochures for eating disorder clinics?"

"I – yeah," he said, defeated. We left with a pile of brochures in Spencer's hands, and me properly terrified.

And yet not.

I don't even try to hide I anymore. I don't eat, and everyone glares at me, but they can't do anything about it. We certainly don't have the money to send me to an eating disorders clinic. And Spencer doesn't have insurance since he doesn't have a real job, so that's out. There's some talk of whether I can use Dad's, but Spencer's having a hard time sorting through all the nuances.

It doesn't matter, though, because they'll never be able to make me go. And even if I go, the insurance will eventually run out, and I won't have to eat. They can't make me. After I've worked so hard to make so little of myself, they won't make me big again and take everything away from me. I will NEVER let that happen.

As hard as I work, don't I deserve a break? Don't a deserve to finally get a little happiness in my life? Who will love me if I'm not beautiful, if I'm not skinny? Certainly Ana won't anymore. And if Ana leaves, if I'm okay, then they'll all leave, and I couldn't handle that.

So after Spencer goes to bed, I sneak out, and walk the empty, lonely streets. And I go to Jack's house, and he lets me in without speaking. We have sex in his bed, and he tells me that I'm dying. And I think, god, isn't that a wonderful thing?

Author's Notes: Not as long as I would have liked, but it had been a while, so I wanted to give you guys something. More of a filler than anything, but I hope you guys enjoy it anyway!