A/N: This is the final chapter of Bulimia. Second Installment of Nervosa Series, Habits, will be posted this month. It will take place 5 years in the future. The final chapter of Anorexia will be posted shortly - within the next 72 hours. Thank you for your reviews/support/encouragement. I am forever indebted. :)

"If I were you, I would hate me, too," I hear myself say aloud.

The air that fills the house is thick with silence.

I shift in my seated position on the floor and draw in a deep breath, afraid that, soon, all the oxygen will be gone.

Everyday, it's harder and harder to breathe in this house.

And I can feel myself suffocating.

Faintly, I hear the pitter-patter of feet cross the hardwood floor.

The door I've been staring at opens, and I see my mother's face come into view.

"Atem." Her voice cracks under the weight of my name. "I don't hate you."

. "You can't even look at me."

Her eyes tighten, tears pooling at the corners. She opens the door wider and steps out into the hallway. "Atem, I don't know what you want me to do."

I place my hands behind me and, shifting my weight, use them to push myself into a standing position.

"I want you," I beg, "to be angry with me." I put my hands on her shoulders and peer into her eyes.

"I ripped this family apart," I remind both her and myself. "Dad is gone! He left and he's never coming back. You have a gay son. You have to sleep alone every night because of me. You –"

Her hand is like fire against my cheek.

It hurts.

And I find myself wanting more of it.

An almost animal noise bubbles from inside of her, and she falls into my arms, her soft clenched fists raising and falling against my chest.

I hold her tight, listen to her 'why's, her soft cries.

Each one of her blows eases my guilt.

I deserve this, I think to myself.

I need this.

"Mother!" I hear Isis from down the hall. She runs up to us, pulling our mother away and wrapping her arms around her.

I immediately feel cold when my mother is pulled from me.

I feel empty without being the target of her angered pain.

Because it gives me a purpose and, to be honest, I don't know who I am without it.

"What are you doing?" Isis is shaking her slightly. "He's your son." She's reminding her now.

My mother, she's crying. Isis is crying.

I'm crying, I think.

Or maybe just shaking.

I leave them standing in the hallway and stumble to my room, my hands finding the wall and using it to support my unsteady gait.

I close my bedroom door behind me and lock it.

Then, I find a bag, zip it open, and fill it to the brim with clothes from my drawers.

'Oh yes', I think to myself, as I touch my wet, stinging cheek. 'I am crying.'

I am crying for my mother, for my father, for my sister.

I am crying, because I am mourning the loss of my family.

Of the intact family I had.

Not of the broken one I have now.

I am crying because I stopped myself from reaching out to Yuugi today; from finding solace in the one person I've loved for so long out of fear that he could never love me in return; out of fear of him rejecting who I am, such as the way of those I love.

I am crying for being a coward.

For being gay.

I am crying, because of the all the faces I know will haunt me at night.

I am crying, because of all those evenings I held up my hands and pleaded with my father to stop, of all those mornings that I wanted to disappear into oblivion.

I am crying, because I never got to tell Yuugi that I love him.

I pull the strap of my bag over my shoulder in resolve and open my window.

And now I never will.