a/n: I'm sososo sorry, I know I'm the absolute complete worst and I said I was going to update this like almost two fucking years ago and I didn't and I'm sorry. And I don't want to make excuses because there really aren't any, it's just, ah. It's been a rough couple years, and I haven't been doing so great. And now that I've been getting bad (again), I'm forcing myself to write this in an attempt to make the voices in my mind shut the hell up for just a little while. I hope it's alright, even though it's a lil bit shorter than the previous chapter. (It's just because I usually really, really, really hate writing Tori. Though to be honest, I started loving the Tori in this story as I wrote her backstory and now I'm mad at myself. Also, as a side note, I'm not completely sure if the weight she is hospitalized at is correct, because I don't really know Victoria's height/weight/BMI, so I'm just realllly guesstimating.) I really, seriously am going to try to update this more now, because I've missed you all so, so dearly, m'lovelies.
"we turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how not to need."
marya hornbacher
- CONFIDENTIAL FILE -
NAME: Vega, Victoria Marie
AGE: 16
DIAGNOSIS: Anorexia Nervosa/Bulimia Nervosa
Tori felt disgusting. She had an awful headache and was nauseous and faint and frail.
But she had lost a pound this week so it was worth it, to her. Besides, she'd felt that way for the past year anyway, and she was used to it and she was fine. (Or, she liked to pretend she was. But truthfully, when she looked in the mirror, still, all she saw was fat, when everyone else saw protruding ribs.)
Her life was a routine of breathe in breathe out ignore the pounding in your head ignore the rumbling of your stomach breathe breathe breathe.
Soon enough, the headache would subside to a dull, almost unnoticeable pressure and her empty stomach would shut up for a little while.
She knew that if you didn't eat for long enough, you stopped being hungry.
"So, Victoria, have you been eating?"
Tori dug her nails into the leather arms of the stiff chair she was seated in and willed her stomach not to make any noise.
"Well, uh, I've been trying to. Not eating for so long and then trying to eat normally again isn't easy," she replied, giving a little (fake, fake, fake) smile.
"I understand, Victoria. But that's why you're here, isn't it? So that you can get help for that," Dr. Munroe told her. Tori nodded, too fast and too frantic.
"Yeah. Yeah I know," she said absentmindedly, looking around the dark, musty room in attempt to avoid eye contact with the therapist.
"Now, I don't want to... upset you, but we've been noticing a little... problem," Dr. Munroe prodded gently. Tori's eyes snapped back to her far too quickly.
"What?" Tori replied, her voice almost wavering, a single thought of they know they know they know racing through her mind.
Dr. Munroe raised an eyebrow and continued, "We've noticed that you and Jadelyn don't seem to get along quite well."
And oh oh oh you're safe you're safe you're safe. Internally, confetti was falling and a perfect-bodied her was smiling with sunken eyes.
"Oh, um, yeah, I guess not. I don't know. Maybe it's just because of Jade's..." Tori said offhandedly, struggling to find the right word, and then finally settled on, "disorder."
"It's because Jadelyn is crazy, Victoria. She's a sociopath. I'd advise you to ignore her, alright? And if she does anything that makes you uncomfortable, let us know right away and we'll take care of her. Or well, I mean, the problem. We'll resolve the problem," Dr. Munroe said, her voice coming out sincere, but an underlying hint of animosity surrounded the words and Tori shifted, uneasy.
"Yeah, okay, I will," Tori replied, looking down.
"It was nice talking to you today, Victoria. Thank you for cooperating. I really think that you're starting to get better." When Tori glanced up, the therapist was blinking at her, a peculiar smile gracing her sharp features.
Tori lifted her lips up into a half-grimace, half-smile and waved goodbye as she walked out of the office, hoping that Dr. Munroe hadn't seen through her so, so, so, phony words. Her nasty, black lies.
But no, no, no, shut up they're not lies.
She thought that maybe, just maybe maybe maybe, if she kept saying that she was getting better, she actually would.
Tori didn't know when she started hating herself and skipping meals and getting a sick pleasure from the feeling of vomit rising up her throat.
(Except that she did.)
She wasn't a particularly heavy child, and she grew up in a fairly average home (but not really).
Her dad was an LA cop who brought his work home with him (and cried and drank himself away in the garage most nights), and her mom stayed at home and took care of the kids (and cheated on her dad nearly every day).
Tori and Trina heard their dad's sobs and drunken rage (taken out only on himself) and heard the creak bump creak bump creak bump of their mother fucking men who were not their father and they would lay on Trina's bed holding each other tight, tight, tight because if they let go then it was all real and if they didn't have each other then their rotting minds would destroy them.
/
Once, when she was ten, she heard her mother throw up in the bathroom even though she was not sick, and when her mother opened the door to a wide-eyed Tori, she looked at her with sad, unsurprised eyes.
"Are you okay, mommy?" she had squeaked.
And her mother had smiled, tight-lipped with no emotion, and lightly traced the tiny, tiny, tiny, almost nonexistent pudge on Tori's stomach and whispered, "When you want to be skinny so badly, you'll do anything, baby."
/
She started dating Gerold Arnpeg when she was fourteen and everything was better, brighter, happier.
Instead of worried, worried, worried, she was happy, happy, happy.
Instead of her holding Trina tight, tight, tight, Gerold held her, strong and safe and warm, and she thought: This is what home is.
She was so absorbed in him and their love that she didn't notice that something was off about their relationship.
She didn't notice that he threw wrong and vile offhand comments at her like, "Are you really gonna eat that much for lunch, babe?" and "Your jeans look a little tight, Tor." and "You look great today, babe, have you lost weight?"
Tori just smiled and nodded and pushed away her half-eaten lunch and skipped dinner once or twice a week, because maybe she was hungry and maybe her head hurt but nothing he said wasn't true, and he was just saying it because he loved her, and she loved him so, so, so much and she wanted to keep him happy because she didn't want to lose him.
And then suddenly and all at once, Tori was not enough.
The day after her sixteenth birthday, Gerold Arnpeg broke up with her for Suzy McCallen, who was everything she was not.
Suzy McCallen was blonde and exotic and lovely, with model-like features and freckles and curves in all the right places, and she was thin, thin, thin.
Tori sat in front of her mirror naked and cried and cried and cried until snot came out of her nose and her eyes were red and puffy and pulled at all of the places on her body that were not thin enough.
She thought that maybe if she was skinny enough that it would make her lovely enough for him to love her again.
She tried dieting but it wasn't quick enough because Gerold and Suzy were fucking now, and Tori needed to be skinnier right-fucking-now because this was what dying felt like.
She thought back to that conversation with her mother years ago and how she didn't understand then, but now, now she understood perfectly.
Tori started skipping every meal, and barely eating at the meals she couldn't. And when she did eat, half an hour later she would excuse herself and sneak away to the bathroom where she would stick her fingers down her throat over and over and over again until nothing but bile came up, and then she'd throw that up too.
Trina watched Tori with tired, concerned, betrayed eyes, but she never said anything because she was exhausted and angry and messed-the-fuck-up but even now, she still wishes she had.
/
Tori looked down at the scale, the red 81.6 glaring up at her.
Just four more pounds, she thought, ignoring the aching in her bones and the fact that she could never seem to get warm. Gerold still looked at her with disgust, so that meant she wasn't thin enough, not yet. Almost. Four more four more four more and then she would be thin and lovely and beautiful enough and he would want her, not Suzy.
She hadn't eaten anything in six days and she was fine, really. As she passed by Gerold at his locker (without Suzy, for once) she smiled at him and it felt hollow, even to her. And then suddenly, in mere seconds, everything came crashing down and she felt like she was floating and she stopped walking and frowned and tried to rapidly blink the feeling away.
Everything went dark and she couldn't see Gerold anymore, but she felt his arms wrap around her and heard his voice frantically calling her name. It sounded faraway and distorted, but in that moment, she felt so goddamn lovely.
/
She woke up to bright, white everything and needles in her arms and a teary-eyed, drained-looking Trina loosely holding her hand.
Tori coughed and Trina sluggishly turned her head towards her. She squeezed her hand and said airily, "They're sending you away, Tor."
"Wh- why?" Tori's voice came out hoarse and low.
Trina gave her an incredulous look. "You almost died, Tori!" She shook her head and incoherently mumbled, "Fucking eighty-one pounds, I should've..."
Tori sighed out an incomplete, "I didn't- I didn't mean to... I didn't wanna..."
She didn't want to die, she just wanted to be happy.
When Tori fell asleep that night, she saw Gerold and all she wanted to do was reach out and wrap her arms around him tight and cry into his neck and whisper in his ear all the things she wanted to feel.
But she couldn't.
It hurt her to even say his name. It tasted like sadness and bile and sounded quiet and desolate.
But no one noticed. Not even him.
And all of a sudden, she heard someone screaming. She thought it was in her dream, that she was reliving that horrid day again, but when her eyes fluttered open, she saw that it was Trina. Another nightmare.
Tori's eyelids felt heavy, and she couldn't deal with Trina, not right now, not tonight.
But then she felt strange for some reason, and she realized that she actually felt full. They'd been monitoring her today, so she had eaten three entire meals.
Her eyes snapped open, every trace of tiredness immediately gone. She jumped up out of her bed, her hands clutching her stomach, and she ran out of the room and into the bathroom. She lifted up her shirt in front of the mirror and her eyes widened in horror. Everywhere she looked there was fat, fat, fat.
She didn't see the dip where her completely flat stomach hollowed in under her ribs and she didn't see how skeletal her legs had become.
"No!" she screamed. "No, this can't be happening! Everything I've worked for, nonono." She blinked back tears. "Oh god," she moaned, "No, I need to be lovely, I need to be beautiful, I need to be enough, oh god, he's not gonna love me, oh god."
She ran over to the toilet and everything she had eaten that day came spilling out of her mouth. She vomited over and over and over until she was too weak to anymore. Then she stood up and smoothed out her shirt over her (newly flat stomach), and then turned to walk out. She stopped in her tracks when she saw none other than Jade-fucking-West standing in the middle of the bathroom in her pajamas, watching her, her head tilted and her icy eyes curious.
She had on a black tank top and Tori noticed jagged red fingernail marks and deep scratches littering her arms.
"Your arms..." Tori started faintly, but the words died in her mouth. Jade just ignored her and walked over to the toilet that Tori had just puked in. She flushed it, and then faced Tori.
"I won't tell if you don't," Jade whispered, her blue eyes bright and alive and mischievous.
"No, I- I won't tell," Tori stuttered. Then Jade smirked at Tori, as usual, turned on her heel, and walked out. But as she walked out, Tori noticed that Jade's fingers were crossed behind her back. A false promise; it was a lie, a lie, a lie.
She slumped down the wall in defeat, realizing that Jade had gotten her just where she'd wanted her. Jade had gotten inside of her head now, and Tori couldn't do a damn thing about it. Her voice rang through Tori's ears, saying, "Too damn bad, so damn sad, Victoria."
Tori crawled back to the toilet, pushed two fingers as far back into her throat as she could, and threw up blood.