(Mi) Soup isn't easy

Soup isn’t easy

Mi

It should have been easy but nothing about the bowl of orange liquid that sat on the table in front of me was easy. In the unit soup had become one of the most straight forward meals for me to eat I could almost trick myself that it was pure and simple like water, that there was nothing in there to make me less pure. It should have been easy but I wanted to scream. I wanted to push the bowl onto the floor and go and hide back in what they said was my new room. Asleep under the warm covers was a place where I was OK.  Under the sea of the crushed purple for a while I had felt nothing.

Slowly I turned the spoon around and around in the orange sea that was contained to the bowl. The steam that had risen from the top in graceful clouds had long since gone and if it hadn’t been for my aimless staring a skin would have formed over the top creating a scar. I didn’t want to eat. I could not eat and no words or actions could make it better or make it easier for me to force the food down my throat. I was spoiling everything, I was infuriating but I was pure.

“Come one Mi,” Liz encouraged again for the second time making Esmee snap her eyes back up to meet her gaze her eyes going darker. The first time she had opened her mouth she had told her to leave me to it, that I would get it down me when I could. The trouble is Esmee was wrong, I couldn’t manage the most simplest of food when I was in this wrong place.  The other three had all finished their food and I was holing everyone up. I had eaten five agonising mouthfuls and half a slice of wholemeal bread about fifty calories and nowhere need enough to be classed as acceptable.

“Come on Mi it’s just a bit of soup,” Liz said again clapping her hands in a hurried fashion the sound slicing through the tomato soup clouds that hung in the air over everyone trying to send them to sleep. Esmee looked up again shooting another burning gaze in her mother’s direction. Her lips where in a tight line and her eyebrows were raised somewhere in the back of her throat I heard her hiss as she pressed her hand into mine again and squeezed it under the table. Apparently I could even brake down the mother and daughter bond and I didn’t even live with them yet.

“I mean it must be cold by now so it won’t…” Liz carried on turning away from Esmee’s gaze and boring her eyes into the side of my face again as I looked down at the soup and gently licked at the side of the metallic spoon allowing the Luke warm liquid to spill over my alive taste buds and set them on fire for a few seconds before swallowing with a gulp.

“Mum, why don’t you take Mi upstairs and put her down for a nap.” Esmee suggested cutting her mother off mid-sentence her eyes still smouldering as she stared across the table and shook her head ever so slightly in warning. Liz ignored her, her face somewhere between confusion and   anger.

“We’re not going anywhere. Mi needs to eat her soup which is in consideration to some tasks is very easy and until she does it Mia is going to have to put up with being tired and unhappy. It’s down to you Mi.”

Pain grabbed at my body from all sides as the words slashed at my skin like razors and blistered the flesh like acid heading towards the centre were it could corrode what was left of my heart. I could have hurt all of them. I was hurting all of them and the pain I felt for it was only skin deep but to hurt a baby a child of just two years because I couldn’t preform a simple task was too much. I was evil/bad/nasty/stupid/greedy/fat. I was sorry; sorry for everything

“I’m sorry I can’t do this.” I whimpered as I pulled my free had out of Esmee and pushed my chair back over the neatly tiled floor. “I’m so sorry, I ruin everything. I break everyone but to hurt a baby. How can I hurt a baby?” I whined the tears spilling out over my eyes and down my cheeks before I could stop them. I had no right to feel sorry for myself after what I had done but I couldn’t help it. I was falling apart from the burning.

“Mi its fine, Mia’s fine,” Emmet said softly slipping his body out of his sleep at the same time as Esmee’s, “You haven’t hurt a baby you have done nothing wrong.”

“How could you do it Mia? She is just a little girl and she trusted you, she loves the ground that you walk the whole family trusted and loved you and took you into their home and then you hurt their little baby. How low can you go Mia? You are a bad person. You ruin everything an now you’ve hurt a baby”

“I didn’t mean to hurt her,” I cried backing towards the door of the kitchen, “I am so sorry,” I cried before spinning around and taking off back up the stairs desperate to get away.