just saw your rafe and reader suffering from ed post and i want to ask… am i the only one who thinks rafe himself suffers from an ed? idk it’s just that he’s rarely shirtless, he’s got the coke addiction, the drinking, i feel like at the very least he’s got some disordered eating going on.
omg no, you are not the only one, i’ve thought about this and wanted to add it to my bpd!rafe au, but you’re sooo spot on with everything, like his whole LIFE is disordered, so why wouldn’t his eating be too?? this boy probably goes days without eating without even realizing it.
first, his addictions. coke is literally an appetite killer, and rafe does lines like they’re oxygen, meaning he’s constantly in a state of fake hungerlessness for hours and his body confuses the high with ‘energy’ so he never notices when he’s starving, and food almost always makes him nauseous unless he’s crashing. alcohol fucks with his appetite too, but in a different way — at first alcohol increases cravings but overtime with heavier use can suppress it and it contains calories that have no nutritional value, leading to malnutrition and being potentially overweight.
there will be days where he drinks hard and ends up binging afterwards. like standing in the kitchen at two am, hoodie half off, hands shaky as he literally stuffs his face like he’s been in hibernation for the past week. and he always HATES himself immediately after, he goes into a restriction spiral for the next day or so — aka punishment mode. he refuses to eat, just running off coke, caffeine, nicotine, anger, and shame.
i also have childhood theories about it. growing up, his household was definitely constantly chaotic — walking on eggshells around rose and ward, watching ward explode and yell and gaslight and manipulate, he was probably always blamed for everything, always waiting to be criticized, always feeling unwanted or ‘too much’ — a child raised in that environment won’t feel safe having meals / eating because they’re too focused on survival. for children, meals are supposed to equal safety, warmth, comfort, being seen and taken care of — not punishment, distance and danger. like think about what kids are usually doing while eating ; playing, dancing, ruining around, giggling, talking about literally anything and everything, experiment with the food, wiggling — they feel SAFE enough to be KIDS.
and if ward forced them to have meals together ‘as a family’ — they probably consisted of nothing but him scolding and lecturing them, borderline trauma dumping about his work and business, etc. so dinner for him becomes a performance, a stage, a trap, because it’s emotionally unsafe.
or if ward was constantly busy with his work, they probably had butlers / nannies or they had to prepare food for themselves most of the time, or were sent up to their rooms to eat, or they just had to eat alone — all which create more discomfort and anxiety around eating.
also his bpd, we often have disordered eating patterns because of emotional dysregulation. so rafe’s hunger follows his mood swings — not his biology — meaning he likely forgets to eat completely / binges impulsively, or drinks / smokes / does coke when he’s dysregulated. and after he splits, same thing — sends him into a punishment / restriction mode ; no food or comfort because he ‘doesn’t deserve it’.
and with the him never taking his shirt off, literally so true. even at the beach he didn’t have his shirt off like?? we’ve seen almost all of them shirtless except rafe and the closest we ever got was with an open button up he had in one scene and the green tank when he was working out. it’s like he only shows skin when he’s unhinged, working out = he’s wired, full of adrenaline, while him and his boys are literally plotting their get back on the pogues. and in the button up scene, he’s spiraling, angry and stressed out about something.
his body dysmorphia isn’t about his weight — but about his body image and how he’s perceived. his fear is probably that ; everyone will see him the way ward sees him, that his body is proof of all the bad things he’s been thru / done, constantly feeling as if he constantly looks wrong and takes up too much space.
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