Chapter 237 : Nothing changes regardless

 

  The next morning I woke up to find myself in Dream, with the same light dancing over my face and the same noises from the little corridor that I had walked up a thousand times. The room was a little different now of course and I smiled as I looked around at the puppies and kittens that where not residing on my walls but my hips still hurt the same like they did every morning from where they had rubbed on the corners of the mattress. Downstairs the familiar clangs and smashes of plates and cutlery could be heard from members of staff setting up the breakfast table. I didn’t know what I was expecting really. Esmee had made it quite clear that nothing would change overnight but I had so wanted it to.

 I sighed feeling cranky from my broken night’s sleep of nightmares as I heaved my heavy body out of the bed and pulled back the curtains. At this time of the morning and at night was when I hated the Unit the most. These were the times when the car park was empty and the lights where off in the out patients building next door. At night was when the  amber security lights blinked from on top of the gates the brightest, suggesting something scary lurked inside. In the mornings the birds sang from the tree tops before speeding their wings and flying away over the fences and alarms that kept the rest of us trapped inside like brutal dogs in a cage. Too dangerous to mix with the “real” people in the “real” world.

 I wrapped myself up tight in my dressing gown groaning at the lack of belt to keep me warmer and glanced in the mirror at my face. How I hated that face.  My tube had moved in the night and I had been bleeding from that nostril so I now had a scummy dried layer of blood down to my bottom lip. My Hair had taking a battering from the tossing and turnings of my nightmares and of course I still had the white scar to remind me that not all nightmares where just confined to when I slept. That face could have gone away and never came back for all that I cared; it held nothing but pain for me.

 Frustrated with my reflection I yanked the tube back over my ear and smoothed down the tape to the side of my face. It didn’t do much good though, one of the nurses would have to sort it out properly after breakfast which might or might not involve putting in a new one altogether. I had gone through no less than four NG tubes being pushed down my throat whilst in the unit. Bella told me I was on my last chances. Next time it would be a trip to the hospital where I would be put to sleep and wake up with a tube coming from my tummy. I shivered but pushed it aside. It would be OK, they wouldn’t do that to me. They were making me fat enough as it was.

 I yanked my fingers through my hair, pulling out a fair amount into my hands. There was a time when that would have been blamed on malnutrition but that wasn’t the case now. It was painfully obvious that I was getting fatter; everything had got bigger in the mirror. Even my fat had blubber stuck to it now. There was nothing malnourished or shiny about me anymore. I was messy and bunged up.  The hair I had pulled out had been due to brute force; I had never really liked it anyway. Lies.

 “Ugly fat bitch.” I moaned licking my finger and scraping at the dried blood on my face.

“Ugly, fat, dumb, stupid bitch.” I spat at my reflection once more before reaching out my hand and clawing the reflection in front of me hoping that somehow I would actually claw at my face. No nothing changed regardless of little victories. I was still fat, dumb Ugly Mi.

Chapter 236: what dreams are made of

 Esmee took me back to the enclosed space that was the unit about an hour after she told me about my victory and I scampered up the stairs into my room without trying to see the rest of the unit around me. I had no real want to go back into the cell that had become my room but at least it was secure in there and if I was super quite it would be a while before anyone knew that I was back and wanted to know why I had been away in the first place, however when I entered dream I was almost weakened to my knees.

It was different in there from when I left. Apart from the pair of off white slippers I had left in the middle of the floor and my cordless dressing gown draped over the end of my bed I had left it with no personality or character. The room was as clean and as numb as I felt, like a ghost and not a teenager had been haunting in there for the last four months, now it was a room different and alive in so many ways it actually made me breathless to witness it.

The posters that I had bought on my birthday shopping trip had now been hung with blue tack against the walls. On the little storage shelf my music player had been set up and the four shiny new books that I had bought where lined up on the shelf with my older well-loved books next to them. The old wardrobe was the same but inside folded neatly on the shelf’s and hung on plastic hangers my new cloths where left proudly.  A duvet was now laid across my bed supporting the spotty duvet cover and a kitten fleece blanket folded at the end instead of the generic itchy hospital blanket. Above the bed was a picture that I hadn’t bought which stated the words “You are braver then you believe, stronger then you seem and smarter than you think.” (Winnie the pooh quote)

 

My eyes filled with tears before I could stop them as my heart pounded inside of my chest loudly. It was nothing that special in reality but to me it was the most beautiful amazing sight that I had ever come across and it had been done for me, even in my absence I had been thought about. A spot that was alive and meant something for some reason that I couldn’t explain had been created in the world for me. I had never had anywhere that I fitted until then and suddenly it had arrived.  It may have been in the cell type ward of a psychiatric unit but it was there.

“Do you like what we did then?” Esmee asked gently knocking on the already ajar door before walking into my room.

“It’s perfect,” I shuddered through my teeth as I turned to look at her, two tears leaking from my eyes. “It’s beautiful. I have never had a place like this planed out for me in the world. Do I deserve this?”

“No you don’t. You deserve so much more than this, but it was the best that we could do whit what we were given, so I think we did a good job.”

“It’s amazing, I love everything about it. I don’t recognize this picture though I said pointing to the one above my bed. It’s amazing and beautiful. It looks handmade though, why would anyone waste their time making me something as perfect as this?”

“It’s a birthday present from the unit. Anybody who could did something to it. Bella, Summer and Connor put in most of the work. A.J colored a lot of the background. Jack colored that little butterfly. He tried to do more but found it too much but you know what it’s like. Mark tried to draw Tigger but even he admitted that it wasn’t so good so we sort of turned it into a fat cat.  Ellie, Echo and I did most of the lettering and Jean and her husband made the frame for it. There isn’t any glass in there though so you will have to be gentle with it. The quote is from Winnie the pooh.

I knew it was a dramatic action when I did it but I couldn’t keep my body standing any longer as I landed in a heap on my bed, pulling my knees up to my chest and holding them there. It was times like that that I hated my extra weight the most. I could still get small when I tried to get into my ball but whether anyone else could see it or not to me I felt I took up twice as much space in the world, even more so when I wanted to hide the most.

“All this is really hard for you to except isn’t it, that there are people out there that want to do nice things for you?”

“I don’t deserve anything nice. I destroy everything and everyone that comes anywhere near me. No one has ever wanted me. No one has ever cared enough to do anything for me. I don’t understand this,” I moaned trying to make my ball tighter even though I turned my head onto the side so I could look at Esmee out of one eye even though the tears still crept down over the side of my face.

“Mi, just because people have never treated you right it doesn’t mean that you’re the bad person.” Esmee smiled as she leant over and wiped the tears off of my cheek with her thumb. “I have never met anyone like you. You have changed me into a better person then I was. You touch people and they want to do nice things for you. I know that your opinion on yourself won’t change overnight and accepting this will be hard but I hope that for the sake of people who like you. You will except this room and the picture and be happy that it’s here. You think you could try that?”

“I’m sorry; yes of course I sound so un-grateful. It is amazing, I love this room. I never had something so nice done for me.”

“Well you are on fire today. Two little victories in one day; that’s impressive.”

“You seem to be forgetting the nebulizer, the restraint, the need for heavy sedation, the fractured wrist and my most recant brake down,” I smiled wiping my tears from my eyes with the side of my hand before hissing as the pain splintered up through my wrist.

“Be gentile,” Esmee instructed in a friendly tone taking my wrist gently into hers and lowering it into my lap. “Yes those things sucked what you mentioned and that wrist is going to hurt like hell for a few weeks but it doesn’t take away from the achievements you have made. I know it sounds weird but sometimes you have to take a few steps backwards to go forwards.”

Esmee tapped the top of my leg gently and got to her feet with a smile before going over to my wardrobe and throwing over a pair of pajamas that landed on my bed. “They are going to be calling time in the lounge soon anyway and you look shattered. Try and some sleep, Emmet and I are back tomorrow on early’s so we will both be here when you wake up Ok. You did well today honey you should be very proud of yourself.   

Chapter 235 : How to be saved

 

This time, I'll be sailing
No more bailing boats for me
I'll be out here on the sea
Just my confidence and me

And I'll be awful sometimes
Weakened to my knees
But I'll learn to get by
On the little victories

Little victories

Matt Nathanson

 

“I am not judging you. Are you crazy?” I sighed twisting around so I could look at Esmee again. “I don’t care if you are scared and you could tell me anything about you and I would not judge you for it because you are amazing. You are more than amazing but I know what it means to have these scars Esmee. I know how each one felt and I don’t just mean the metal going through your skin. It takes something screwed inside to resort to this pain. I can read every scare and I can feel every feeling that has ever gone with them.”

 

I stopped and yanked up Esmee’s sleeves before grabbing the small torch out of her pocket that she had bought with her. I directed the beam over the scars. They took me aback. They were worse than I thought they were going to be, or at the very least worse then I hoped they were going to be. They were old scars now as she had promised but they had once been bad cuts and half of them had never seen the stitches that they had so clearly needed. I had only been able to feel the worse ones through the fabric on her top but there were a lot one then that. Purple and red scars scared the already scared skin until they had made her arms unrecognizable and dead. I swallowed hard. How had they let someone so precious get like this?

 

That one there,” I said pointing to a smaller yet raised scar on the crease of her wrist. “Doesn’t look as bad as the rest of them but I bet it bleed like hell and hurt a whole lot more as it was healing then that big fat one over there.” I rested my fingers across the wide purple and blue scar that had caught my eye.  “ these kinds of scars hardly  hurt at the time because you are so numb inside you can’t even feel metal under your skin. I bet you can’t even remember it bleeding that much. Probably because the first thing you really remember about it is waking up at the hospital with an arm full of internal and external stitches and a doctor at the end of your bed… These little white ones look harmless enough compared to the others. Every human being on planet earth must own a few of these but these aren’t made in little numbers. These scares are frenzied, made in short stabbing motions with the very tip of the blade and made in bulk. A hundred of these little buggers in one go would be nothing because your mind has lost all rhyme and reason. It feels like your skin is itching on the surface and only the cutting reaches it. When I am cutting these are the ones that scare me the most, because I’m not sure I will ever be able to stop. You cover both your arms first. Tiny little beads of blood forming on the surfaces of each wound but it isn’t enough so you do your legs then your stomach until there is no more skin and you are so sore all over it feels like someone has rubbed you up and down a large cheese greater. You will need no stitches but your body is just as broken.” I tried to catch my breath before I moved the torch with a shaking hand over to a group of six perfectly neat parallel cuts that got deeper and deeper the father they got down her arm. “These cuts here… well these…” My voice broke into sob. They all had one thing in common that broke my heart into bits. She had made them all in her desperation. She had felt the pain.

 

“Mi… it’s OK, I understand,” Esmee said softly before pulling down her sleeves and taking me in close with her arms again. I expected her to feel different somehow. I expected to almost feel what she had felt run through me with just one touch. I almost thought her grip would seem weaker, or her arms would be cold and dead but she was no different. She was still warm in spite of her cracks and still strong enough to hold me up as well as herself. She may have had the arms of a cutter but her soul was rising above to become bigger than her demons.

 

“You don’t seem like a cutter, you don’t seem so week and under a spell but your arms tell me a different story.”

 “That’s because I am not a cutter. I am not BPD, anorexic or depressed. I am not EDONS or bulimic or bipolar or psychotic.”

 “So what are you then?”

 “I’m Esmee. I am about five foot on a good day and I am married to the most amazing husband who is a giant I must add. It isn’t important and it makes no difference to who I am, but I weigh about 115lbs and to anyone who thinks that makes any difference to me as a person can go to hell because my self-worth cannot be registered on a scale. I am a senior psychiatric nurse. I am a foster career.  I have a daughter called Amelia Honey Bear and four angels somewhere up there looking down on us.” Esmee stopped suddenly her face contorting slightly as her chest heaved up twice like she was about to be sick before it settled somewhat, I also knew if I was to shine the torch at her face the beams would bounce off of the tears in her eyes.

 "It’s Ok,” I whispered. “I get like that too. Every time it pops into my head, even if it’s just by mistake I get a few seconds of not knowing weather I am going to cry scream or throw up and then it subsides a little bit just leaving you slightly breathless.

 “You are too old for your years,” Esmee moaned as she came over to me and took my hand into hers. “you know feelings and have experiences things that knock grown men and woman to their knees and it isn’t fair, and neither is me telling you half a story. On most days of the year I am the woman above. I don’t care about my weight, I don’t cut myself, I don’t make myself sick and I defiantly don’t think about swallowing a bottle of pills. I function as a normal healthy happy woman in society but there are days when it feels like I can’t get out of bed, damn it there are days when I don’t get out of bed. There are days when I have no energy to put food down for the cat or even prepare a meal for my own daughter. There are times when I look in the mirror and I want to sob because I hate the person staring back at me. There are days when I don’t shower or eat or get changed and i pretty much constantly blame myself for the death of my four unborn children. I can cry a lot and when that doesn’t work I will cut myself and my own husband will have to bandage me up. I am not perfect.”

 “You are,” I butted in at an almost shout before lowering my voice, “Perfect I mean. You are everything that I want to be, even with your crap days.”

 “First things first I am not perfect but that isn’t an insult, that’s good. No one is perfect and hell I don’t want to strive for it. When I was striving for perfect I was 64lb. I wasn’t perfect. I was anorexic, I was a cutter I was bulimic and I was depressed in every sense of the word. The only thing I wasn’t was Esmee. Not perfect is good. Flaws and bad habits are what make us fucking human!” Esmee exclaimed her voice echoing around the beach and out over the sea. It sounded playful and happy even with the swearing. It was the kind of sound that Disney princess’s made when they wanted the wildlife to help them out with the laundry.

 “The world doesn’t need perfect people. It needs good people that will fight and try for what they want and what they believe in. It needs people like you, alive and well and giving something to it that only you can, but the shit thing is it won’t prove that too you. It won’t even make your life easy while you try and work out how to survive.  I wish I could save you. I wish I could promise that tomorrow will be so much better, that food won’t repulse you and you won’t want to cut but it doesn’t work like that. No matter how hard I try, I can’t save you. Emmet can’t save you, that bloody unit with all its locks and alarms and staff following you into the bathroom can’t save you. You can only save yourself. It took years for me to win one battle with self-harm. It took nights of sobbing, rocking and bending over a bucket on hands and knees while puking my guts up every few seconds.  Then guess what at the end of all of that, I mostly still cut myself anyway, but one day I didn’t, and I claimed that little victory. The first time I threw the pills away was a little victory. I went out and I bought more the day after and I ended up in A&E but no one could take away the fact that I threw the first bunch away. That’s what it’s all about Mi, in every part of recovery, the little victories, because when you shove them all together, in the end you realize it’s just a victory. You can let this kill you, or you can try. You can fight.” 

 “I’ll fight.” I whispered, somehow the strength from Esmee flowed through her and into me melting some more of the ice that was constantly blocking my veins.

 “That’s a good choice, that’s a great choice” Esmee smiled leaning over and kissing me gently on the forehead, “and Mi, this moment right here, this moment of strength even if it goes tomorrow or in a few moments, Is one of those little victories.”

Chapter 234 : Judgment

“I was admitted to Apple gate house at the age 16 and put directly on bed rest.  I was put into room three, it’s now known as dream. I was admitted because my weight had dropped to 64lbs and my organs were beginning to shut down. I had infections in my hip bones where clothes rubbed the skin away and about forty odd stitches in my arms that I added to nearly every day. I was going to die; hell back then I wanted to die.

 It sounded so impossible, just an insane idea that Esmee had been as anorexic as to claim a place in the same room where I now lived. It seemed so wrong to think of her opening her own skin to feed an addiction of blood. Esmee deserved better and should have had it. At sixteen she should have been prom queen with handsome boys falling at her feet. She should have got all A’s and won at her chosen sport as her proud parents watched her with tissues in their pockets. She should have left school with all her GCSE’s and got the job of her dreams before Emmet had come riding on the back of a white horse and stole her heart as they rode into the sunset happily ever after.

 “You say that you can’t get better, I’m just trying to show you that you can,” Esmee said softly as my eyes stared out into the black sea my body hurting for her. I wanted to change what happened, fix it so she had never hurt.

 “Are you scarred?” The question left my lips before I had time to pull it back in, but for some reason it mattered. Esmee had never worn short sleeves all through the summer and I had always just assumed that underneath those sleeves, healthy pale skin covered her arms but was she hiding something bigger? Did they look like a map of lost battles?  Did they look like mine?

 “You think I like wearing sleeves that hook over my thumbs in the middle of summer?”

 I felt for her arm under the blanket and traced my fingers over the fabric pressing down concentrating on the skin underneath and sure enough the bumps and pits where there. Not the smooth perfect skin like she should have had but Scar tissue. Numb white patches of skin starved of feelings and color. Her arms where nothing like the glorious bright and determined women I had always seen her as, my Esmee didn’t cut to survive. She just did.

 

“I can feel them through your Jumper,” I confirmed swallowing heard as a pain stabbed me somewhere in the stomach. I wanted a reason why she would do this. I wanted to ask her, but inside I knew in reality there was never a reason for self-harm. She like me just had too and there was nothing else to say about it, however she must have been in pain - Intolerable pain. My body stiffened as my tummy gave a warning sign that it was about to reject whatever was inside of it. I could live with Esmee’s scars, but not with her pain.

“It’s all right Mi. I’m not like I used to be.”

 

“You don’t do it anymore?”


Esmee went silent for a few minutes as she stared out over the waves and tried to work out weather to tell me the truth or to lie. Her silence in reality said it all. She wouldn’t have hesitated to tell me if she had stopped.

 “I try really hard not to and …” Esmee stopped again a sigh escaping from her lips as she pulled herself closer to me and took one of my hands in both of hers under the blankets. “I was going to lie to you then, I was going to tell you that I was fine, but you deserve more than that. I honestly went nearly three years without hurting myself, but, the day we took you out for your birthday, I cut myself that night and to be even more honest there were times in those three years where I nearly gave in as well.”  

 

I had almost wished she had lied. It was a terrible thing to think but it was true. It wasn’t for my benefit that my whole body prayed that she had stopped it was for her. I knew that the cuts on her where nothing to what happened to you from the inside out when the fever set in. I knew exactly what then need to cut was like and I had never once fort not to do it. I know what it was like to have your body stuck somewhere twisted halfway between being dead and being alive. To have ghosts in your lungs and too much blood to fit in your over spilling veins. To think of Esmee experiencing just half of that torture made my body go cold all over.

 

“You should take me back now Esmee, you should take me back to the unit and you should go home.”  I finally confirmed to her after I found no comforting words to say. She was not meant to feel pain and I sure as hell couldn’t make it any better. I got to my feet and started running away from her in the opposite direction from her car even though I told her to take me home. The unit wasn’t really where I wanted to be. The moon lit sea was calling me to play with it. If I swam for a while, in the end I could swim for eternity. Maybe if I even tried hard enough I could take Esmee’s torture with me too.

 

“Mi where are you going, the cars the other way and you know that.” Esmee called behind me sighing deeply and for a moment I considered stopping but still the waves called…

 

“Mi please don’t make me chase you down. I will if I have to but I don’t want to,” Esmee called again.  A big part of me wanted to stop. Her voice was almost as sweet sounding as the crashing waves but I wasn’t sure if I did go back how I was going to look into her eyes and not see torture in them.

 Esmee caught up to me without much trouble after a few more seconds of running and hooked her arms around mine holding me still. I didn’t fight against her. Out of the sea or her I hadn’t really cared who won the fight I just couldn’t stay where I was.

 

“I understand why I’m not meant to tell patients a little more clearly now. They will judge you as well as the rest of the world.”

Chapter 233 : Multiple organ failure

 

It took about Twenty minutes to get to the beach and time we got there as expected it was completely dark. Esmee pulled up into a car parking space that overlooked the sea which could be heard before it was seen because of the blackness. Even so, I had to restrain myself so I didn’t follow my heart that had already leapt out of the car and was now somewhere drifting half way over the ocean.

 I whimpered quietly under my breath as the car I was in suddenly felt a lot smaller compared to the vastness that was just outside the steel door. I could run away, I wanted to run away and then I could swim until the waves took me under, until I saw Arabella’s face again smiling in front of me. Drowning seemed like a painful way to go, but it would have been worth it. I would never see her face again without consenting to feel some pain.

 “We could get out if you wanted to,” Esmee offered. “I mean it will be cold and everything but I have got a whole mountain of blankets in the boot that will be good at keeping us warm. We could go and sit down on the beach, for a little while anyway.”

 I was out of the car before Esmee had finished talking, my body braced up against the chilling breeze that made goose pimples rise over my skin and my teeth chatter together in a protest until it was almost painful but I didn’t care. The pain almost helped. Pain I could deal with.

 

“Come on sweet,” Esmee said wrapping one of the thickly woven blankets she had retrieved from the boot over my shoulders before pulling one over hers and heading down to the steps that lead to the beach while holding onto me with one hand to make sure I didn’t fall.

 

Esmee spread one of the blankets down on the ground when she had found a good spot and gestured for me to sit which I did. She sat down next to me resting her weight back on her hands so she could look up at the glistening stars and moon above which sent a dim sliver glow across the whole beach as the moon played upon the surface of the ocean. I on the other had chosen to sit in my usual ball with my chin wrested against my knees, wishing my spirit to escape while it had the choice. There had been a fleeting moment when I almost chose to snuggle close to her, so I could feel the warmth of her skin next to my freezing exterior but I had pushed it away as a bad idea. In a ball - defenses up to the world - still felt like where I belonged the most.

 

“It’s stupid,” I moaned eventually more to myself than Esmee. “No matter how hard I try to run, no matter how big or beautiful a place is, it is never big enough for me or vast enough for me to feel better.  I keep thinking that these places will be slightly easier for me to breathe in. that when I am away from everything the crushing feeling inside my chest will go away… but it doesn’t. How the hell can I live with that inside with me all the time? How the hell can I just live when the only thing that makes me feel better is metal under my skin?” I moaned two tears dripping out from under my eyes. “The thing is I could make the pain go away. If I just swam into that ocean and never looked back, I could forget everything that I feel. There will be no fairy tale ending waiting over that ocean, but I swear I should at least go looking for it.”

 

“It does get better,” Esmee said firmly pulling herself upright so she was sat up next to me. I should have known that she would have been listening to every word I said. “I know it seems imposable now but it does get easier and this big black thing you call life can be worth living.” Esmee sighed; taking hold of one of my hands under the blanket. I admired her courage. I admired her strength and I knew she had been in pain too. The number twenty three still resounded in my head every time I looked too deep into her eyes. She had a past, but even so it gave me no hope. Just because she had tried to kill herself didn’t mean she cut her skin and enjoyed it. It didn’t mean she went to war everyday with the food that was put in front of her. Esmee had hope; she had only ever been screwed up in one way. It was like her kidney had given out. A Doctor could fix that with stitches and medicines however was in multiple organ failure. There was no chance then. I would not make it out alive. Weather it was then or in a few years’ time, I would die eventually from it.

 “I know you survived Esmee, but that doesn’t mean it gets better for all of us,” I groaned softly as wave after salty wave crashed into the beach around me sending a refreshing mist over my face that tasted like tears. “You’re lovely, lovely women,” I whispered gently. My tears began to mix with the mist then and as an instinct to find my soul some comfort I moved my body closer to Esmee’s under the blanket wrapping my arms around one of hers and wresting my head up against her shoulder. “You’re lovely and that is why you have no idea why I can’t be saved. I mean if the suicide attempts don’t kill me the self-harm will…”

 “And the anorexia is more likely to kill you then all of it put together.” Esmee confirmed chirping in to my thoughts in a matter of fact way, so I was a little taken aback.

 

“You see there’s no hope,” I moaned.

“I didn’t say that.”

 “Then tell me one person you know Esmee that self-harms like me, and beats down all the voices and shit inside them that says eating is bad every day so they don’t starve to death. Tell me one person who has done or is doing all of that and is living a normal, happy life that they enjoy and want to live.”