i'm meaner than my demons

not cool to make me fantasize right now. my clit is inaccessible because fucking shakira shakira is a fake ass bitch!! but it’ll probably be a lot, the kind where you think you’re done and you’re gonna address your responsibilities but you actually just go again. like twenty times.

oh, not my best. pretty lonely and generally shitty. and shakira shakira is still quite broken and she’s on my last nerve because i’d really like to walk and sit like a normal human.

i don’t belong to anyone else

The ambiguity was what made this worse — she couldn’t even make out if it was fucking anger or hurt or disappointment cloaking Pepper’s eyes or if it was all of those things battered together, sculpting something so demanding and so hollow at the same time. Sam’s hurt had been clear last night, she’d up and called her a coward for not telling her and running again, and that felt true now — fitting, because here she was shrouding herself up instead of telling Pepper what she needed to say. ( I’m sorry I didn’t say anything, I’m sorry I can’t look at you in the eye, I’m sorry that you’re hurt, I’m sorry I’m leaving now and I was always too harsh and I never held you the way you wanted me to, I’m sorry your hip was broken and I wasn’t there enough, I’m sorry I never protected you enough. ) “Please don’t make this harder than it already is.” She muttered out, but her voice was heavy and small, she was seconds from crumbling herself. “You need to go back, get some rest.”

Pepper didn’t know how to feel now. Abandoned, stuck, sinking-- everything was hot and stinging and throbbing like that spot under her eye where Clarissa’s fist landed, or an infected cut that she let turn weird colors, or her throat that one time, when the pain medicine wore off. Like when someone she’d wanted to believe in, someone who’d remembered her birthday and even got her a cake, someone who tucked her in at night, someone who really seemed to care took her back because-- why? Was she defective? It never made sense then, and it didn’t make sense now. She fought the lump in her throat. “What, so I don’t get to see you before you leave? You just want me to disappear now, so you can pretend I’m not watching you go? Well, I am!” She ducked her head, choked on the lump. “Stop--! Telling me what to do! I get to talk to you before you leave me, and you can’t stop me!”

“Just the general distaste of being seen by relatives or whatever in such a disorderly state. If I were them I’d avoid my family too. She should be around soon. Therapy hours are almost done anyways. Would you like to wait here?”

“Oh Pepper? Yes, I know Pepper.” It’s the girl who mourned over her dead girlfriend. “She might be in her room. Would you like me to go find her?”

“Well, I’m sorry everyone looking for their child is a problem. Though I am entitled to find my own child. It’s not cheap to fly here, and neither are hotels here. So if this place could get their business in order, I’d appreciate it.”

After her esophagus ripped open, it started, the constant flow of forced speaking. It never helped anything, because, to be fair, she wasn’t really trying. It wasn’t going to make her feel better, or stop hating herself, so what was the point of explaining why she didn’t want to eat? It was almost impossible for her to understand, so why would anyone else? 

Even after she’d almost killed herself, talking to anyone but Gina was weird, difficult, more troubling than helpful. She’d always been a fucking burden, and dumping all the weight of her problems on someone else was fucked up, and probably wouldn’t make them go away. She could keep it locked away, deep down, and little pieces could come up occasionally, for Gina. Telling her things felt good, right, like carrying a heavy backpack and three textbooks and letting someone else take a book or two. 

But Gina’s gone and she feels so alone for the first time since she sat in the pink bathwater by the ocean and stared at the knife. She’s been coasting since then, got a little better, then broke her hip and got a little worse. Now she’s sitting on the edge of her bed crying and hating herself for crying because Gina is better and Heather will be soon and all she can think is that they left her, like everyone else. Like Tess, like every foster parent, like God, like Hanna. She wants to release it all, bleed it out, puke it out, something. She surprises herself when she thinks maybe she could talk it out instead. 

She sits in front of the blonde therapist, somehow talked into a fizzy tea that has something like 6 billion little organisms living in it. Maybe she just offered and her dumb fat mouth said yes before she could stop it. She’ll take two sips, then it’ll get flat and warm and she’ll abandon it. She doesn’t want those extra calories she doesn’t want more pounds they’ve forced too much and ninety-five feels too much like jiggly thighs and standing on the scale in front of everyone and wanting to disappear completely. 

“I’m glad you came to see me. What do you want to talk about?”

“I don’t know. I just want to get some shit out before I decide to cut myself or barf.”

“You made a good decision. Can you explain why cutting or purging is your typical answer to stressors?”

This is already annoying, but she’s trying. “Because. I have to get some of this out. It hurts too much to leave it all in. And I don’t believe in talking shit out.”

“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”

Pepper leans to her left, sticking both feet under her right hip, but doesn’t respond to that. 

“So, what do you want to get out?”

Again, she doesn’t know. 

“Did anything specific upset you?”

“The only two people I love are leaving me here.”

“Let’s talk about that.”

Pepper says Heather is the only real family she has, Karl and Tess are fake and don’t know her, even if they buy her things and try to make her like them. Dallon says that they’re probably desperate for a way in, and she has to help them out a little. Pepper just stares at the desk. Anyway, Heather is what she always needed, someone who stuck up for her and believed in her and cared, who was around just because she wanted to be, not because she had to be or because she was getting paid for it. She was like a cool older sister who thought she was cool, and smart, and pretty, and nobody ever thought that, at least, not in a way that was obvious or made her feel loved. 

She says Gina is like other-kind-of-family, like they might end up sharing a last name someday kind of family. She didn’t think it would ever happen again because Hanna was the first one to love her, ever, at all, the first person to say you are worth my time and money and effort I want you to be alive I love you and she was suddenly gone and she never said it back. So she spent three years trying to make up for it, nightly visits and occasional brushes with death the closest she got, then she said Hanna I’m coming and Hanna said NO! and made her stay because Gina’s mom killed herself and what the hell was she going to do if she did, too? And Gina won over Hanna, and no one had ever done that before. And she went back, left the knife in the hotel room and let them take her back. Because she loved her. She let her talk and she listened and smiled wide and didn’t judge but she pushed because she fucking cared. She loved her, and-- she loved her back. And this time she said it. And everything was good. 

“So, you just told me how much both of these people love you. And how you love them.” 

“And?”

“So, why do you feel abandoned? You said the note promised you’d see each other again, and I’m sure Heather feels the same way.”

“I’m just tired of people leaving me! They’ll get out there and realize they don’t want me. And I’m never fucking getting out, I’ll die in here.”

Of course, she asks why she thinks that. Because Tess dumped her and decided she didn’t need her anyway and left her there until she was seventeen and too fucked up to feel anything but bitterness. And everyone she lived with for sixteen years just said fuck this and sent her back, over and over, return to sender. ( We don’t want this one. She’s not good enough. ) And God obviously hated her, because what the hell did she do to deserve all this crap? 

Dallon slides her notepad over to let her make a list.

ALL THE CRAP GOD GAVE ME - pepper chase 1. a shitty body 2. a fucked up brain 3. a mom who threw me away 4. a brother who apparently did not ask about why i was thrown away enough to instill guilt before i was fucking seventeen 5. self loathing 6. a dead girlfriend 7. no spiritual guidance. seriously. no fuckin leads man 8. stretch marks 9. sadness 10. nothing good to offer the world #worthless trash

By now, she’s crying, digging tissues into her eyes. “And then, like, even she left me, so, fuck me I guess.” The words slip out before she knows what she’s saying. 

Dallon says Hanna didn’t get to choose. Pepper knows that. But everyone else did, so why did they leave? They didn’t care. Dallon reminds her that Gina and Heather care. And they have no reason to change their minds about her. “They know just about everything, don’t they?” She nods. “So what would make them decide they’re out, suddenly?” She doesn’t know. “They won’t,” She answers for her. “You just tell yourself bad things are going to happen so you won’t be disappointed by anyone. And you don’t expect anything from yourself because you think you’ll let yourself down, too.” 

“Do you trust them?”

“Of course.”

“Then, trust them.”

Dallon looks at the list.

“Why do you hate your body?”

“It’s ugly.”

“When did you decide that?”

“A long time ago.”

“When did you start acting on it?”

“2013. I wanted people to like me.”

“You wanted to like yourself?”

No answer.

“So, if it hasn’t helped so far, what makes it hard to give it up?”

She says she’s scared. Of what? It’s hard to answer. 

Falling apart. 

Dallon says she needed to be in control, after years of watching everyone else move her around and put her in the trash and leave her behind. She says she can take control of her life completely now, not just this tiny part of it. She says actually, the hateful alt-Pepper in her head is controlling her now, making her go further than she ever wanted to. And she can stop her.

Pepper says she doesn’t know how.

“Yes, you do.”

She must not understand how it all works. No, she doesn’t know how. If she did, she would be better by now--

“You came here today. You won today. You can win again.”

She says a lot of other stuff, but that sticks.

I am writing to you from the front reception, I haven’t seen this place since I arrived. I was about to find you when a nurse came and told me to pack up my things. I’m being discharged to and will return to my father’s. He’s outside in his car and granted me enough time to write you. I wanted to thank you for the birthday presents. I’m wearing the sweater and I will cherish this so called shit until I can see you again. Please take your time, but remember to be strong. You deserve the candy more than I do, so I left them in the box and slid it under Heather’s bed. When you find your way out, you can stay with us until we find a place to live.

I love you so fucking much and will redeem this coupon as soon as you’re out. - Gina

Pepper had to read the note a few times before it sunk in. She was really fucking gone, and Heather was leaving and there was no way she was getting out soon, even with the pounds they’d piled on-- ninety-five was suffocating and made her cry. Her body was heavy on the crutches and her bones were disappearing and there were places to pinch if you searched-- but she still gagged halfway through a tray and had made a trip to the toilet too recently. Everyone was leaving, and she was stuck, like always. She could hardly focus on her words of reassurance, and dropped her head into her hands. There were many possibilities for the next step: a) stab her knitting needles into her sausage arms b) eat all the candy under Heather’s bed and throw it up c) cry and refuse to get out of bed until Jordan and Heather Greene arrived to force her or-- d) talk to someone. Willingly. ( ??? ) Like, the therapist with the long blonde hair and hippie bacteria tea. And a, b, and c felt like the easiest options, the safest (when is d ever the right answer?) but she chose d. “You’re okay,” It was an odd voice, over and over, going down the hall. The one that said you’re ugly stupid fat gross no one loves you couldn’t break through, for once, if she breathed, whispered “you’re okay,” and kept walking.