So after writing that last chapter, I wanted to do one from B's view for some of that stuff. I guess you could think this chapter is a bit intense. It took a while to get it worked out to what I wanted to write next for these two and I still don't quite know so for now, I really just want to get this written.
Trigger warning: mentions of self harm and suicide.
EDIT NOTE: I actually wrote this a few weeks ago and never posted it. Gonna post it now, haven't re-read it at all so not sure how it's gonna go over but I owe you guys an update.
When Beca was a little girl and everyone was still calling her Rebecca, she'd thrown tantrums until they would stop. She's kick and scream that her name was Beca, that Rebecca wasn't her, not really. No one in her family really understood, most of them simply guessing it was just a phase her little brain was processing, but they gave in after a few choice crying sessions. Now that she'd won, Beca was happier, was a good kid until she reached age 13.
When she started to hit her teens, Beca started wondering again. All her life she'd had doubts, wondered about her body, hated certain things about herself. To have a ten year old frowning in the mirror, tracing over features and hating things about what they see. was heartbreaking but it was a life Beca knew all too well. She didn't have many friends, always pushing away so they wouldn't know how deeply rooted her pain and confusion were. What few friends she did have only knew the surface of her. Beneath the smiles and the quirks, she wasn't who they thought she was. Her darkness hit the hardest when puberty started. Her chest started to develop, body softening and shifting in ways she wasn't prepared for. As a kid, she was a tomboy, running around in the woods when she wasn't singing or messing around with her instruments. She'd gotten a little muscle, her fingers had calluses, and even as a child she had a sharp way about her that seemed to simply soften around the edges.
Her younger years kept the hate at bay, the only real feminine thing about her was her hair until she got older. When she developed, body losing it's easy gender neutrality to going to identified as simply female by her peers. No matter how hard she worked to look the way she wanted, there was always a low boiling hate towards herself, a thin line she was trailing between happiness and depression her entire life.
Her first major breakdown came when she got her first period.
Coming home after feeling increasingly sick at school wasn't the best feeling in the world but at least she was home. Beca remembered how a feeling of serenity settled in her only to rush out moments later. It was really the last time she felt like that, that calm in her soul that seemed to quite everything. She could remember going upstairs into her bathroom, getting undressed to take a quick shower to try to feel better, and she vividly remembered screaming when she saw the small red patch in her underwear.
Her school was big on preparing it's students for everything, her parents explaining everything as well, so she knew what was happening. It wasn't the blood that made her scream, it wasn't the fact that she'd started her period, and it wasn't even the fact that she'd ruined a favorite pair of underwear and was currently bleeding down her leg slightly.
No, she screamed because from then on people would see her as a woman. Her body had basically thrown up a big middle finger and told her that she was going to be a fucking woman and she was going to have to deal with it. She screamed because she was no longer able to try to be as gender neutral as possible. In her mind, no matter how much she looked like a boy, no matter how much she changed her looks, her body would betray her each month. Her body would be the one to give her away and in her mind, in that moment, her heart shattered in her chest. That thin line she walked on so well snapped and she fell, deep into the darkness.
The first night of her fall into the worlds definition of becoming a woman was also the first night she pressed a blade into her skin. Her parents were working a lot, making it easy for her to hide it all, and she simply mentioned that it had started to her mother when she received a box of tampons and a box of pads for her choosing. That was all and then her parents dropped it, her mom simply saying to tell them when she needed more. They didn't ask about the way she favored her leg, didn't ask about the bandages in the trash can, didn't seem to notice the pain in her eyes as she thanked them for the help before going back to her room.
Thats how it went, month after month, each day sinking her deeper into a pool of depression that boiled over with a hate for her own body. Then the morning of her fifteenth birthday, she slit her wrists and hoped to die. If her mother hadn't come home early to make her dinner, she would have bled out.
The second attempt was right before graduation. After the therapy, the terms she'd been given, even getting some people to call her Bec, couldn't keep her from trying to die that day. Her parents fighting finally became an all out war when they tried to fight over what would happen to Beca, money was discussed even though they were more than well off, and they forever threw Rebecca around thinking she couldn't hear them. That or they simply didn't care at that point. She'd tossed back too many pills and chased it with some Jack Daniel's.
One too many shots of whiskey was all that kept her from slipping away, puking up her guts being enough to keep her heart from stopping.
Now as she stood in her apartment that she shared with Chloe, staring at her body with a disgust she never could seem to fully shake, her eyes went over each and every scar she placed upon her own skin. She was smarter now, understood the world a little more. Her body was her own, it didn't matter how the world saw her sex, it didn't matter that she bled every month. Beca was Bec and she was B. She was the person she was. The acceptance of that didn't mean she loved herself anymore. Learning how to see yourself in the world, how things can work for you, how to make it better doesn't take away a deep seeded hate like hers. She knew long before that she never felt good enough, never felt like she fit in her body or in the world. Knowing who she was just meant she hated things a little differently.
Her hands shook as she fitted her binder around her chest, watching the change in her body with a slight frown. This was the third time she did this, each time wrecking her even more.
There's a sort of buzzing in her ears, drowning out the rest of the world. She knows Chloe will be home soon, knows she should figure herself out but it's just not right. She doesn't feel right, he doesn't feel right, and they never worked in B's eyes. Sighing, her head settled on she and tears sprung up. Was it she because that's how she was raised or was it because even when she felt more feminine, she still hated everything about herself.
She stood, simply watching herself, changing her clothes until she crumbled. Somewhere in the middle she heard Chloe's voice, shattering through the could she had around her. Flinching at first, Beca has settled once she felt a warm hand side onto her cheek. It was then, with her words and the allowance of another breakdown that Beca really knew. She wasn't okay, not by a long shot, but each day spent with Chloe made it that much better.
That damn redhead stole her heart before she even realized she had a heart still beating in her chest enough to steal. Beca loved her and in knowing she was loved, in knowing Chloe would be there, she thought that maybe one day she could come to love herself. Until then, it was simply one minute at a time. One breakdown at a time. One step at a time with Chloe by her side.