Lovelanguage: Baking

Chapter 1 - Baking the Worries away

Bullying is the worst; I wouldn't wish it upon my worst enemy, not even the people that bullied me to the point of destroying my life. I used to be happy, but having everything about me ridiculed has ripped out my soul and left me with no self confidence, no remaining social skills and no friends.

This was not the best state to be in when meeting new people, but Julie was clinging to the hope that people would be more mature and kinder in college. However the universe was not kind to her once again as she had gotten sick during the first week that was all about meeting, bonding and getting to know these new people who had decided to study History aswell, so now she's going to have to intrude on preestablished groups... Julie couldn't think of anything worse.

It's the evening before her first lecture, she was pacing back and forth in the free space in her tiny new apartment, rubbing her knuckles together and shaking her hands, in an attempt to shake off the panic she felt building up. And eventhough her brain usually failed her, while she was feeling anxious, this time it came up with a genius plan. About two years ago she had hyperfocused on baking, creating own recipes and trying to create her personal baking book. It was already 4am, she hadn't been able to sleep in her current emotional state yet and she doubted she's going to be able to do so in the near future and she has to leave at 8am to take the train to be an adequate 20 Minutes early for her 9am lecture, so she has 4 hours to bake, pour her heart and soul into it and create the best tasting and smelling cookies and cupcakes she could possibly produce.

She chose cookies and cupcakes, because they were easy to share as she was hoping that even if she failed to connect with anyone during her first lecture, as soon as she'd open her box with wonderfully smelling baked goods, there would be people around her naturally drawn to the food, having to approach her to ask for some instead of her having to do this scary action.

Getting into the baking routine and following her orderly notes took her mind off things and she started to feel better. She was probably baking way too much, especially as she didn't plan to eat any of it herself, since she still struggled to eat in front of people, especially people she didn't know yet. During her painful school years that only lay a few months behind her now; she became very scared to eat, because she learned that every single roll her body might form, was a target on her back that she needed to avoid at any cost. She since has overcome the worst part of her eating disorder, has a regular eating schedule and was almost at a healthy weight, but a lot of her insecurities still persisted.

While baking Julie got deeper and deeper into her thoughts, how weird those things were that those "normal" people around her were judging people, or rather were judging beauty on. Those people gossiping about other people's weight, their clothes, if they had dimples or acne. In Julies eyes beauty was determined through someone's facial features, the way they smile, the way the sun reflects off their hair, skin and tears if they cry... those moments when she looks at someone and really wants to draw them to capture their face and their expression forever, but her perception of the world had always been different from everyone around her. She was what people called "weird" and she accepted it, there was a time when she had been proud of being different, but now that it had caused her so many problems, it was just something about herself that she knew and accepted.

She had just put the batch of white chocolate and raspberry cookies into the oven, she felt proud of herself and they looked and smelled incredible already. She went over to put lines of chocolate sauce over the frosting of the hazelnut vanilla cupcakes when her eyes wandered towards the clock and she froze. She only had 30 Minutes left to do her Make-Up for the best possible first impression. Thankfully she had already picked out the clothes she wanted to wear today. She scrambled and ran over to the mirror to make her face look as nice as possible, using the things she learned from portrait painting. The person looking back at Julie in the mirror could be considered beautiful, with long, wavy, light brown hair, nice naturally relatively full lips and dark blue, slightly hooded eyes. But apparently those looks weren't enough to make anyone she ever likes, like her back. Maybe that was because they take confidence into account when judging someone's looks. Or maybe nobody liked her back, because she was too easy to pick on by the bullies and that scared away anyone who might like her, to prevent them from becoming a target aswell or maybe there was something wrong that she wasn't seeing herself, it wouldn't surprise her.

She put her cookies and cupcakes into her bag, put in her headphones and took a deep breath while stepping out of the apartment. Thanks to her preparations she knew exactly which train in which direction to take, but because something working out for once would be too much to ask for, the train didn't show up and the digital sign that's supposed to show when the next train was going to come had a graffiti sprayed over it, that made it impossible to read. So her plan to arrive early, so that the room was relatively empty upon her arrival and someone might sit down next to her had failed. She focused really hard to calm herself down and accept that this is just the way it is now and she was very proud of herself for managing to do so.

After 13 Minutes of delay the train arrived and after a short walk over the campus she found the room number she knew from her lecture plan. There was already audible murmuring coming from the room and her heart was beating against her chest while she forced herself to touch the door handle.