A/N: The last chapters of this story are all going to be long. I'd split them up, but I wanted to do it this way. Once I have an idea, I can't not do it. So, anyway, I hope this isn't too long, and I hope that I haven't lost many of you (because I feel as though I have lost some) and I hope you enjoy and have a wonderful day.
Week one
Recovery is undoubtedly the hardest thing you've ever done. Which is an odd thing to admit considering some of the terrible positions you've been in throughout your life.
You've established the people who don't like you by your second day in the place, and you find that the people who don't like you are the girls recovering from eating disorders. There's only two of them who have bothered to talk to you and had seemed nice enough. They told you that the reason the other girls don't like you is that you're new. They say that it's like high school, everyone has cliques.
The nice girls, Holly and Gabi, are part of the group who actually want to get better.
Then there's the group of girls who are recovering from addiction, most of them have made it abundantly clear that they do not like the ED recovery girls because their problems are less trivial, apparently. The most dominant girl in that group, Becka, seems to think that eating disorders are purely artificial, that every one of you have landed yourselves here just because you want to fit into smaller jeans.
Rita constantly has to remind them that starving is just as addictive as drugs.
For the most part, you've been relatively quiet around everyone. Your roommate, Cole, is probably the most decent person you've met since you got here. He tells you that he can't wait to get out of here, that he'll be happy once he's in an LGBT home that isn't filled to the brim with people who insist on calling him she and her and telling him that who he is isn't good enough for them.
He also explains that the reason the ED girls stick to themselves is that they teach each other ways of tricking the system and that you should stay clear of that stuff if you ever want to get out of here.
By the end of week one you notice this place for what it really is; a feeding place for the socially unacceptable mentally ill. Cole says that what he really hates is the fact that, once they've decided you're well enough, they toss you back out to fend for yourself. Half the time the people aren't really beter, and that's why you've to stay away from the girls who trick the recovery system. The only way to really get out of here and make your life any better is to comply with the rules.
When you'd called stef the night they found you, you'd been thinking recovery would be going home and healing with your family.
You'd been hoping that recovery would be taking some medication and learning how to eat again.
But being face to face with recovery has made you realise that it's both the saviour and the devil all at once.
And It's terrifying.
Recovery is like an angel with a menacing grin, one person had said on an online blog, it's there all white and glowing and louring you in, but the closer you get to it, the further it moves away. When you see recovery, when you see the face of recovery, from a distance...she's luminescent, radiant, beautiful. But when you see recovery up close, the real face of recovery, her teeth are yellow and decaying, her thoughts are both get bigger and stronger and get smaller and stronger at the same time.
You realise, now, how your mind associates the word strong to numbers and sizes instead of abilities and knowledge.
Everything seems to be associated to your body nowadays.
It's clear that you've let your mind slip. It's clear that you've let rationality run through the cracks in your brain and fade away. You can remember a time when a meal was a meal, and weighing yourself was something doctors did on a yearly basis. You remember a time when you looked at yourself and, while you always noticed the underlaying sadness and fear, you never noticed the lumps and bumps.
You remember a time when you were at least a little sane.
You read a book once, by a man named Tim Burton, in which he told the stories of misfits and oddballs, mummy boys and pin cushion queens and you'd thought it was so strange that his mind could come up with these ideas.
You remember feeling like pin cushion queen. When people come closer, when they wrap their arms around you, the pins only stick in further.
Mummy boy was mistaken for a piñata and broken open at a mexican boys birthday party.
Tim Burton wrote poems and movies and short stories about monsters and children that nobody wanted, and people call Tim Burton crazy because Gosh, there's no such thing as a boy made entirely of kitchen appliances but there are children who might as well be.
Like you are. Were.
He once said that one persons craziness is another persons reality and the quote always sticks with you because, to some people, not eating for whatever reasons might be a strange concept, it even had been to you before this had started, but now it's just part of your life, part of you.
You look over at the on call nurse sitting at the corner of the rec room after you shake yourself out of your revery and watch as she flicks through the pages of The perks of being a wallflower and taps an uneven rhythm with her foot on the floor. You wonder if there's any part of her that might seem crazy to other people. Does she collect weird things? Have weird habits? Are nurses allowed to be even the tiniest bit insane?
Isn't everyone a little crazy in their own way?
That's one of the things you dislike the least, the people in charge look down on the people they are taking care of like they are a burden, like they are in their way, like they are imposing. Maybe not Rita so much, but the rest of them act like they're on a high horse, like they're the most sane people in the whole world.
And then you get doctors like Doctor Lockhart.
And that's another thing you don't like about this place. Doctor Lockhart.
Most of the girls refer to her as The bitch, and the adults refer to her as Mother Theresa.
You don't really refer to her as anything, all you know is that you'd rather be talking to a tree.
She's the kind of pretty that doesn't need any effort. Most of the time she looks like she's just dabbed on some lip gloss and headed out the door. Her hair is always in a prestine bun and she's always wearing these sharp pant suits that look like they cost more than your...the fosters...house.
It's not like she isn't kind, she really is. She has a warm smile and a polite hand shake and she's always interested in what you have to say, if you say anything at all, and you think that maybe that is the problem. Because she asks questions that you've been avoiding your whole life and it makes your blood boil sometimes.
On your sixth night in Girls United, you get your first therapy session with her.
"So, Callie, tell me a little about yourself."
You're sitting on a deep red leather sofa, picking at a loose thread on the arm, when she speaks up. You don't bother to look up when you shrug.
"Do you have a favourite movie? Song?"
You shrug again.
"Callie, I'm just going to get this out of the way right now. I know that you think you're here to eat and go home. I know that you think that gaining weight is the most important aspect of your stay in Girls United. The thing is, Callie, it's not. You can't ever physically heal, not really, if you aren't willing to mentally heal. The only way that will work is if you cooperate in these sessions. Understand?"
You sigh and nod your head. "sure."
"So, let's start again. What's your favourite song?"
...
"Play it again!"
an eight year old Jude is jumping up and down at the foot of your bed with a huge grin on his face when you click the button on the CD player. "Cal, Cal, play it again!"
You smile and press play, and he leaps up onto your bed so that you can both dance.
"mayyyybeeeeeee, you're gonna be the one who saaaaveesss meeeeee."
You feel bad for rumaging through your foster brother's CD collection, but it's been a while since you had a good dance party with your brother. He needs it, both of you do.
"and afteraallll, you're my wanderwalllllllllll"
...
"I dunno," You say. "I don't have a favourite song. I like a lot of different music."
"Like?"
"uh...my mom used to listen to old stuff a lot and I guess I sorta ended up loving all that stuff. The Smiths, Johnny Cash, The Beatles, Joni Mitchell. Stuff like that."
Doctor Lockhart nods and smiles. "I was a Carpenters girl, myself. It's nice that you like the music your mom liked."
"She played that stuff a lot, I suppose I never really had the option to love anything else when she was around."
"It's nice to pass music taste through generations. What was she like?"
"Who? My mom? uh...nice, I guess."
Doctor Lockhart raises an eyebrow like she doesn't buy your response. "Just nice?"
...
"momma?"
You're four and you're sitting next to your mom in her bed reading a book. You look up to see her face and she smiles.
"Yeah?"
"When the baby comes...where is he gonna sleep?"
Your mom glances at her huge belly. "in your room when he gets a little bigger."
You nod and look back at the book, contemplating her answer before you look back up at her. "momma?"
"Yeah?"
"You wont forget about me when he comes...will you?"
Your mom puts down the book she's been reading and wraps her arm around your shoulder. "Callie, baby, I would never forget about you. You're my little princess, baby."
"Even when you have a new baby to love?"
Your mom nods and smiles. "even if I had a million babies to love."
...
You glance at Doctor Lockhart and smile. "She was amazing."
week two
It takes you a while to get used to the group therapy and the scheduled meal times, but soon enough you start to do things like you're supposed to, and it makes the prospect of recovery a little easier.
You talk to Doctor Lockhart about your mom and yourself, but you haven't said anything about Jude or the Fosters yet because the guilt still hurts and the aftermath still confuses you. They promised they'd stick by, but you're not entirely sure that they'll be able to with your running away and violating probation.
The thing about this place is that people don't hold back on their opinions, and you find that out at the very end of week two.
You're at group therapy and everyone is chatting back and forth about their addiction and what triggers it and their home lives when Rita directs the conversation towards you.
"What about you, Callie. You haven't talked much since we started these sessions. Tell us a bit about yourself."
One of the girls laughs and shakes your head and you look towards her, she's one of the girls who got transferred here from Juvie and she's made it clear since the moment you got here that she doesn't like you.
"Kiara, do you have a problem?" Rita asks.
The girl smirks and shrugs her shoulders. "Yeah, I got a problem."
"Care to talk about it?"
"Sure. It's her." She looks towards you and rolls her eyes. "I bet that girl has a perfect life, I bet nothing has ever gone wrong. Lemme guess, mommy and daddy don't spend enough time with you cause they're too busy working hard to pay for your fancy private education so you starved yourself for attention. I bet it was real hard when they told you that they'd have to send their crazy little baby into a psych facility."
"That's enough, Kiara." Rita warns.
But the girl looks towards you and leans in a little closer. "Shocked that I figured you out so easy? I am so sick of girls like you comin' in here and actin' all sad and picked on, not wantin' to face that fact that all you are is a spoiled little brat. You girls act like you're victims, like you've ever had any semblance of a hard life...it's bullshit."
"shut up." you mumble.
"Can't handle the truth."
The real problem with this place, you realise, is that everyone thinks that their problems are worse than everyone elses.
Girls starve and puke and they think that's worse because they're not good enough. Girls cut and burn and they think thats worse because it hurts, but it doesn't hurt enough. Girls take drugs and drink and they think that's worse because being at home sucks, and being on the streets sucks even more. You have bipolar girls fighting with depressed girls, fighting with schizophrenic girls and no one says out loud that the reason is because they all think they have it the very worst.
They all want to prove that they are the deepest down in the pit of people that are mad and sad and angry and starving and cutting and dying.
They just say that it's because they think they're better.
You stand up and walk away.
You hate it here.
You thought it'd be easy. You thought it would be a matter of eating what you are supposed to eat, talking about your mom and then going home. You thought it would be simple, you thought it'd be quick.
But really, it's impossible. The people are impossible, the meals are impossible, the therapy is impossible. You hate it.
You're not supposed to be this girl, you're not. You've been dealt a really shitty hand, but you've never complained about it. You've never made anyone else pity you, you've never looked for attention to make the pain of it all go away. You are not supposed to be this person.
Eating is supposed to be easy, just like waking up in the morning and smiling along with your family. This is supposed to be natural.
But instead you spend all of your time telling yourself that you don't deserve the things people are giving you. You tell yourself that you are not worthy of love, or hope, or dreams, and that Jude is worthy of a million times more than that. You tell yourself that you are not important and you lead yourself to this.
Because you made this happen. You stopped eating. You ran away. You nearly killed yoruself.
And it was you who almost enjoyed it.
And now you're here. Now you're forcing food down your throat while tears run down your cheeks. Your life is eat, chew, swallow, eat, talk, chew, talk, swallow, open up, eat, smile, eat, eat eat eateateat.
Food is life.
Or so, they say that food gives you life. And that should be easy enough to understand. Because, now, you do want to live. You're not 100% sure of it, maybe just 40, but that's 40% more sure than you were a week ago.
You just want to get through this first.
A/N: I think that things need to get worse before they get better. I didn't want to just make callie go into this place and BAM healed, that's not how it works in real life. So the next chapter is going to be a tough one for Callie, but it'll also be the most important one and the one that will lead up to the final three chapters that'll be a little less...angsty as the previous ones.