The hall of fame (and other bodily functions)

Ok so it has ben a good long while! Almsot a month but i am so close to them finish line there is no way i can give up on Mi's story now. Hoep the chapter is OK and hope you all enjoy.

The hall of fame (and other bodily functions)

I was the rain beating up against the window of sunshine that woke me up the next day. Yet another reminder of how truly stupid and redundant the names for all of the rooms were. Needless to say there wasn’t one called pissing it down or hell on earth, neither had the room tranquillity been renamed death as I had previously suggested to one of the staff who gave me a good telling off.  

With a sigh I pulled myself to a seating position and swore at the rain for waking me up early. Something about apple gate house just seemed to have bad luck with the weather, it didn’t feel all that long ago that the sun dancing over my face had done the same thing but the raging summer had defiantly packed its bags now, Christmas was coming and all the things that went with it. The happiness, the belief that for one day there could be peace on earth  and of course we were all told to spare a thought for those who were less fortunate, people  in third world countries, the children dying from dirty water and the mother who can’t get to a hospital. Children under our vary noses that were hurt at the hands of abusive parents but in reality no one really ever thought of any of that. Fairy lights had a habit of camouflaging pain, or at least as humans we all knew when a fake smile had to be applied in a double layer. Even my mother would try at Christmas. Would buy luxury food and some presents and even for a few minutes thought Jesus was going to be her savour before she found that vodka tasted sweeter and took less belief.

Sighing to myself and trying to tell myself that things could change I wrapped my bright pink Hello kitty dressing gown that Esmee had bought me from my DLA money around me, scribbled a note to the staff the I had gotten up early so was going to steal a shower so they didn’t freak out when they came to wake me up and found I wasn’t there, then made my way to the bathroom.

The second floor bathroom coincidently also contained the guest book, or more accurately the guest wall.  For some reason in this most unlikely of places staff had dedicated one of the sunshine yellow walls as a mural of past “gaters” to sign their names with permanent marker when they left and if they wished to write something small and positive or inspirational about their recovery it was welcomed. It was the wall of fame for the ones who survived. If you managed to have your name written on it, it meant your psychiatrist had signed on the dotted line and you had your ticket out of there.  If you had failed, if you left in a hurry … or in a casket, your name was erased from the buildings memory. Suicides were not rewarded, not even if before the last brutal act you had been fighting the losing battle for years. You would be denied the tiny place on the sunshine walls of the second floor bathroom. There was where you could be immortalised for a life time if you were good and strong but let’s face it, it was hardly Hollywood’s walk of fame. If you earned a place on that wall, you were still in the gutter.

The chair

Mi

I wanted to scream out loud. Normally I tried to be quite even when I was in the most pain but I was failing and even that wasn’t enough. My lungs swelled against my rib cage with the agony it couldn’t contain and even though I sobbed loudly it wasn’t enough to show the agony I was really feeling. This pain made the agony of an Ibuprofen overdose seem like a holiday. Liz’s words where words were eroding me from the inside out and I wanted to scream in protest to the burning.

The bedroom door was knocked on twice before it was opened and Esmee and Emmet walked in one heading to the left and the other to the right so they could both have a go at containing me or murdering me, whatever was closer to their hearts right then. I wouldn’t have blamed them for the choice to kill. I had not seen the damage I could have been casing to the little ones until it was too late but by then the damage was done and I had infuriated the grandparents and worse, the mother and farther.

The instinct was to apologize act like the five letter word made it all go away and the situation would be changed but the word in reality made no difference, did not change the effect of the actions or excuse what had been done and I could not speak anyway as I knew any attempt to make myself vocal would just result in the screaming. 

“No one’s angry with you darling,” Esmee said first as she came at me from towards the right, “and there’s no need to be so upset, my mum spoke out of turn and we have told her of it. You didn’t hurt Mia, she’s completely fine and you were doing so well.”

 Emmet got to me on the left as I looked at Esmee and touched my shoulder gently. I moved away jerking backwards out of his grip and tripping over my own feet so I landed in pile of arms and legs on the ground, pain pulling up one of my wrists as the carpet burnt the flesh. That was all that was needed to make it too much to bear and even though it barely hurt at all compared to some tumbles I took the screaming chocked up from my locked lungs and got released into the world in a howl that I tried to muffle with one of my fists at the same time as frantic tears dampened my cheeks and made my eyes sting. My insides felt like they were going to explode my lungs burst open and my pulsing heart break in half, flooding me with my own blood and allowing me to drown.

Both Esmee and Emmet were beside me in seconds now Hands embracing me from all directions, two locked around the side of me head like a vice the others examining limbs. “Where are you hurt honey wears the pain?” Esmee asked tentatively bending my joints to try and provoke a reaction. They would never find the pain that way. They could look for days, even crawl under the skin and examine the organs and there would be no sign. Physically I was normal almost complete. When I hadn’t been eating there had been damage but even little bits of that were reversing now. There was no pain so why did I want to scream, why would the tears not go away.

“I’m not hurt, it didn’t hurt me,” I squeaked, trying to scramble away from the holds of hands. For a start they shouldn’t have been trying to help me it didn’t happen in the normal laws of the universe. Someone didn’t hurt two peoples young and get away with it, they most certainly were not kind and gentle towards them. They did not care if the attacker got hurt, so where was their violence?

“So there’s no back or neck pain? All limbs are intact and in fully working order and you didn’t hit your head?” Emmet tried to confirm “So why did you scream? It’s OK to be injured; it’s not OK to be injured and to hide it.”

“I’m not injured, I’m hurting!” I yelled struggling free of the hands that held my head still and rolling up into the smallest ball I could manage. It was bigger than it used to be. The extra weight that was now packed onto my bones stopped such convenient rolling up. I was more than conscious to the space I was taking up in the world, in the room, in this precious family’s life.

“That’s Ok we can deal with that too, you just tell us what to do. You obviously don’t want us to touch you right now.” That wasn’t true; being held in their arms had always made me feel better and worse all at the same time. It caused the most glorious pain to shoot around my body. Before them it felt like I had always been alone. Even When Arabella was alive I tried to hide my pain for her, the scars and the tears belonged to me alone and then they were here. Emmet sat gently on the edge of my bed six month before and almost instantly I mind opened to him. He had understood me and looked after me more in those few seconds then I had ever known before. He had held me up and supported me there even when I was on my knees screaming, even when I had slipped away,

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry,” I sobbed. What else was there to say? How I could I tell him that I needed him when there was nothing that I could ever do to deserve him. I couldn’t even choke down a bowl of soup for him or make what should have been one of the best days of my life, the first and day of something shiny and brilliant go well. All they wanted was my recovery. For me to walk in the world without all the shit that came with me and I couldn’t even start to give it to them.

“I try; I really try all of the time, to stand up to do the right thing, to be better. To be good for you, to be something that you can be proud of, to be something worth keeping and I always fail and I am so sorry. You must really hate me by now.”

“Well that’s not true, and we can’t always stand up all of the time,” Emmet confirmed getting to his knees, putting both his arms in under my ball and hosting me clean into the air before going over and sitting in the rocking chair. My legs draped over his and the side of my face buried into his chest just under his chin. Slowly he made the seat swing backwards and forwards and any thoughts I had of trying to scramble off of his lap went away. The smooth rocking and his arms around mine soothing me from the inside out. I could never deserve Emmet or Esmee but I was not perfect or strong enough to deny them when they tried to help me. My soul cried out for it.

“I’m sixteen not six you know. You haven’t got to do this,” I half moaned to Emmet even though I griped onto the fabric of his shirt so tightly he probably couldn’t have put me down if he wanted to. To let him go would have been the best thing. To be able with conviction to send them booth away so they could enjoy their life without me but even though it was the  kindest thing I could do, they weren’t going to leave without a fight, and I didn’t have the strength that was needed to destroy myself by watching them leave if they didn’t’ really want to. Somehow we had got hopelessly stuck.

“It doesn’t matter how old you are, rocking is proven to help. It’s comforting and it calms you down.  Hence why you have a nursing chair in your room Mi. What did you thing we were expecting you to look after Mia?”

“I don’t think it’s the chair Emmet,” I whispered, my voice still thick from the tears that were left over in my throat. The stubborn one that were darker and never got out to see the world. “I think it’s who’s in the chair with me.”

people not diagnosis

UGH... i used to be able to write so much better then this. sorry people, i'm trying my best

People not diagnosis

 “Well I hate to butt in but I think that’s enough for one day, maybe you should hit the road Liz before you say something that you really regret.” Emmet said reacting in my absence of a comeback to her. I had nothing. There was nothing. Her words had left me empty. She probably hadn’t known that she hurt me, she probably didn’t even realise what she had said but my mother had always managed to do this to me. Left me breathless floored me with her words but the worst thing was she normally blamed me. I had been diagnosed with BPD what felt like a life time ago but once the initials were mentioned, once on paper they were put beside your name, they never really went away. Even now people used the three initials against me and my mum was one of the worse culprits. She used her words without thinking and then blamed me when they hurt by saying it was my personality disorder talking for me clouding the way things looked inside my mind but maybe it wasn’t that. Maybe it was just the fact that I had spent my entire life trying to be good for my mum and dad, trying to make them proud of me and she had just confirmed that for a huge part of it, in the times when I had needed them the most. I was nothing but a huge disappointment to her. Maybe in those times I was allowed to me heartbroken, Maybe it wasn’t just an age old diagnosis of three letters controlling me, after all if it was now and they were accessing me they would quickly find I had very few of the characteristics Of borderline personality disorder. Why did I always have to be BPD girl? I was Esmee not a box with a name on it.

“I haven’t said anything; I don’t understand why everyone is ganging up on me.”

“Then listen,” I shouted angrily spinning around to turn to my mother, “listen to what you done to her, she two floors up and I can hear her crying!” I shouted my numbness turning hot. I may have disappointed her but I was a bigger person because of my illness, I understood the pain and the fight that went with overcoming an eating disorder and it was now my job to protect my little sister who was going through the same thing. “Anorexia is not a choice, it’s not a diet or a fad or phase people go through. It’s a disease and you have no right to judge unless you are also willing to judge someone with cancer. I was lost to it. Locked somewhere deep inside of it and I couldn’t get out. The worse thing was I didn’t even know that it was killing me.” I sighed turning away from the table and towards the door so I could go and check on Mi even though Emmet squeezed my shoulder to stop me.

“I know you’re disappointed in me,” I whispered with my back still turned away from my mother worried that if I looked at her I might have actually cried. “Sometimes I am disappointed in myself. Sometimes I don’t even know whether I am coming or going but I try my best and with Mi moving here, maybe you should try a bit harder too.”

(Esmee) Loved you better

Loved you better

Esmee

“What the hell mum?” I screamed rounding myself in on her position throwing my arms in the air in my annoyance at the same time as Emmet came around to stand at my side. “What the hell do you think you were doing? I told you to shut up in the nicest way possible. I gave you an excuse to leave the table but you decided to keep on pushing the situation! What the bloody hell did you think it was going to achieve? I almost screamed my blood boiling inside my veins from my annoyance. I loved my mother but at that moment I hated what she had become. Her encouragement to try and make Mia eat was nothing more than unjustifiable black mail and she had used a baby to make her point, a tiny human that couldn’t speak for herself and she turned her into a weapon to destroy. She put Crystals petty remarks to shame  and in the proses she had sent one of the most precious people in the world to me run from the room in floods of tears is she was anyone else her cruelty would have been unforgivable.

“I was simply trying to move the situation on a bit we had all been sitting around the table for ages and Mi had to eat her soup and your approach of sitting there and mollycoddling wasn’t getting the job done. I thought I would try the tough love approach.” My mother said trying to justify her cruel words like they were OK. Like her approach hadn’t caused any problems, like Mi hadn’t ran from the room crying but had downed her soup and claimed that she would never have any more problems with food again because someone had told her that her problems were stupid.

“Tough love doesn’t work,” I said exasperated trying to stop myself from shouting. My anger wouldn’t make her listen. Raised voices would make something inside of her shut down like it always had. I could never get her to listen when I raised my voice even when I was a teenager and shouting all the feelings I couldn’t understand at her because they were bubbling somewhere under the surface of my scared skin and burning me from the inside out would she try and comprehend that some feeling were too big to be whispered. Some had to be shouted and screamed about before they caused you to bleed out.

“Love works mum.” I said firmly pulling away from Emmet and sitting down on the chair Mi had been sat on so I could try and look into her eyes. There had to be a way to drive my point home. A way to make my mum see that anorexia was so much more than a phase. She had some wisdom as she had seen it devour me so fully but years had passed since she saw anorexic Esmee, since she saw an Esmee that was so under control by a part of her that she called Amy and years made memories blurry in anyone’s memory.

“Pure love works, a pure loving understanding of the way an anorexic mind works is what works. Gentle loving guidance and encouragement is what helps. Mi needs someone to fight on her side. To stand up beside her and fight whatever demon lies in that bowl of soup not someone to tell her that it should be easy and to just get on with it and to make up some crap that she is in some way hurting another person because she herself is being tortured is just cruel. You were just cruel mum.” I moaned trying to take a deep breath to calm my racing pules and erratic breathing even though in reality I wanted to scream. I wanted to cry out. I wanted to tell her that the words she used had sliced over my skin as well, that the task she called easy had pushed me to the very edge of my resolve and I almost hadn’t made it either. I had almost lost a fight to orange despair.  

“Well that’s a load of rubbish isn’t it, all this about pure love. Love doesn’t mean a thing in this situation. I couldn’t have loved you anymore. They gave you to me so tiny and new and said that I could take you home and I felt nothing but love for you more love than any other parent in the world. So imaging my upset and disappointment when every other person’s child was heading off to college and I had to section mine into the new state of the art psyceatric home because she was damn set on starving herself to death. I damn sure loved you enough Esmee, I damn sure loved you enough. You had everything you ever wanted. We protected you from everything. Nurtured every interest, praised you hugged you, talked to you, spoilt you and you repaid us by starving yourself, cutting your skin and trying to end your life without so much as a thought about us. So I am damn well sure it’s not about love, because I love you. I will always love you more than you can ever know and I am proud of what you become but even though I try to understand, I will never be anything other than disappointed in what you did to yourself because I loved you better than that.”

(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.

(Esmee) Silly nonsense

Either my self esteme is shot or i am now completly talentless. I miss when i could bring Esmee to life properly. She is just so important for me to be missing up like this. Alas i can do no better.
Sorry bad chapter ahead...

Silly nonsense

“She’s soundo,” I smiled a few moments later after I took enough deep breaths to look back at my mother again. She didn’t sleep at all last night best let her get some now.”

“What about her snack? She shouldn’t skip her food should she? “After you got out of that place skipping food time really used to freak you out.” My mother said gently moving off of the bed next to Mi and getting to her feet before she very gently pulled the cover up over Mi’s body and tucked them in under her chin like she would still do to me if she had half the chance. She had met Mi for about two hours and something inside her had sparked like it had inside of me the first time I met her. On the surface it seemed obvious that Mi was nothing important. For my mother Emmet and myself it was like somehow we had discovered one of the most important people in the world and we were her protectors.

“She had missed it anyway. I was pushing it really late when I mentioned it to her. I should have made her had it at the unit before she came but I didn’t know what was best. I made a mistake and I will e the one to do the paper work for it. I will make sure she wakes up for lunch which is in less than an hour anyway. I’m going to make it up for all of us, It’s only some soup and bread but it will still be hard for her and it will be a lot easier on her if we are all eating, I smiled at my mum which she returned.” Her lips turned up at the very corners as she came over to me and put her hand on my shoulder, leading me to the door in Mi’s room.

“I’m sorry kitten I will never get it,” My mum smiled even though there was a sort of sad tone in her voice.

“Get what?”

“How Eating a bowl of soup could be so hard. It’s just eating kitten, everybody in the world does it. There should be no moral issue involved. It just is. I’m just glad you got all that silly nonsense out of your head a long time ago.”

Silly nonsense…

(Esmee) Fruad

So here is another update. Please be gentl with me as i am still fragile. I hope that it is OK I'm sure it's pretty crappy but best I can spew out. It's taken two days to write so ugh. Comments please.

Fraud

Esmee

“Hi guys, its Esmee.” I said gently knocking on Mi’s door after I had managed to get past Emmet in the kitchen below. Emmet said I was worrying too much, that after years and years of looking after me my mother would easily be able to look after Mi but she was new here and confused and liable to freak out and even though I loved my mum and she was amazing with me there had been times when she also hurt me as well. My mother couldn’t understand always.

“Hello kitten,” Mum whispered gently as I walked into the room and smiled at the sight that greeted me from the bed. Mi was curled up next to my mum her eyelids flickering softly as my mother gently smoothed through the ends of her hair. It was perfect; she should have always been there. I could have looked after her if I had been given the chance, I had known she was there I would have saved her from the hell that they had put her through but she slipped away like smoke and mist and my sister had gotten lost.

“She must like you.” I smiled trying to push away the bad feelings that bubbled up inside of me. I may not have been there for her then but I was now and I would protect her forever. I loved her like any part of my family and I wouldn’t hide it from myself anymore. I was allowed to become too close to my own sister. I was allowed to love her.

 “It took her weeks, months even before she trusted us enough to be vulnerable with us.” I clarified noticing my mum’s confused look.

“I just told her that I was a part of you that seemed to calm her down somewhat.”  My mum smiled “you best write it down though that she has been making herself sick, I don’t want to be the one to tell on her or delay her discharge from that place but I take it that isn’t something that can be ignored what with her eating disorder.”

“She still finds it hard and all of this is just insane for her.  A bit of vomiting is the least of our worries. Three months ago I was pulling her out of bath tubs and breaking her ribs with my bare hands, breathing my life into her.” I moaned the image still ingrained somewhere in the back of my head. I had performed CPR a million times before when I worked for the briefest of times in A &E and each one was shaken off with the help of cup of dishwater tea. Mi’s stayed forever. At the time it brought me to my knees and I had no idea why now the flash backs haunted me somewhere in my subconscious. I could still remember every brake.

“You saved her life Esmee. Makes you a hero right?”

“A hero,” I laughed biting on the bottom of my lip as unexpected tears threated the surfaces of my eyes. She believed in the TV programs. She loved ER and grey’s anatomy and saw me in those roles where the odds were defied nearly all of the time and an injection could restart a heart. An A&E was nothing like that. Doctors called time of death all of the time in one room while drunk people and hypochondriacs littered Minors and complained they had been waiting more than a few minutes. Most cardiac arrests didn’t survive. The ones that did were nothing short of divine miracles and my hands beating them up for those moments when they were dying had nothing to do about it. Bella’s recant death proved that.  

“No I’m not a hero mum; I’m just a nurse and a sister. I just want to do right by her. Show her that there is some hope out there that she can recover.”

“Well she has the best role middle hast she? I mean look at you” My mother smiled her eyes l lighting up as she looked over in my direction her face full of adoration for all the problems I had overcome. I had to look away and discreetly catch tears on in my hands. Yeah I was fine. I was a fraud.