Everything Gets Better

13

Warnings:
-Mentions eating disorder behaviour (overexercising/starving/skipping insulin/binging)
-Attempt to purge (self-induced vomiting)
-Mentions emotional abuse

Sapnap's POV

After an awkward silence of five minutes, I couldn't calm the restlessness in my body anymore. I knew Dream threw up his food which made me so jealous and "fake". I never threw up my food, that was definitely the reason I was way fatter than Dream was... I wanted to be like him and had to get thinner too.

After eating a salad in the cantina, I felt pretty decent about it since I was very hungry and only ate a small salad instead of bingeing. However, I felt so guilty about it after I realised Dream wasn't eating and just threw it up. I allowed myself to get a salad because Dream was eating as well, but he just faked it...

I was feeling so restless and guilty that I stood up, turning to the door. Dream looked up at me, trying to say something. He didn't know what to say either since he was afraid I was mad at him.

'I'm going to use the bathroom, are you alright?' I asked, acting as normal as I could to make it seem like nothing was wrong between us.

'Oh... yeah. Are you mad at me, Sap?'

'I'm not, dude,' I answered. I wasn't mad at him, I was just jealous and felt extremely guilty about eating the salad. I needed to throw it up too because I didn't want to eat more than Dream. I injected my insulin for once because I thought Dream was eating as well. I only allowed myself to eat when he did and when I binged, I skipped my insulin.

I ran to the hospital's bathroom and locked myself into a fully enclosed stall, glad that no one would be able to hear me in here. I hated throwing up, I tried to before and it never worked out... Next to that, I got so terrified I would choke for some reason.

However, I really wanted to do it anyway. I didn't want to eat anything anymore, I just wanted to lose weight and prove all my haters wrong. I hated showing myself to anyone after being body-shamed about a thousand times in my streams, on Twitter and through DMs...

After a rough childhood with parents who never thought I was good enough, constantly pushed me to do better and screamed at me that I wouldn't get anywhere in life and was a failure, I started to do anything to promise myself I would never be seen as a pussy again.

At first, I was very focused on good grades, but that changed to extremely perfect videos which took me hours to edit. When people started body-shaming me, I decided to lose a bit of weight in a healthy way.

When I realised I didn't end up losing anything and just stayed at the same weight, I decided to give up and tried to be happy with myself. I moved in with Dream who was extremely focused on food all day. He didn't eat much at dinner, but still way more than he did yesterday.

I started comparing myself to him and convinced myself that I was overweight and had to lose weight. I began to measure his meals and put the exact same amount on my plate. We started exercising together, but it started getting more and more.

Eventually, we constantly had a competition going on. When he ate less, so did I. When he exercised more, so did I. We didn't even talk about it once, but both of us wanted to eat less than the other and exercise more. I wished I knew why we ever started with this, but I knew I wouldn't suddenly get out of it anymore.

I was constantly jealous of Dream. He didn't binge like it did... I was almost a hundred percent sure of that. Luckily, I had a technique to lose weight which he didn't have, not using my insulin. Honestly, I knew my life was genuinely threatened to be over if I continued this way, but I figured it wasn't that bad anyway...

I wasn't underweight, my blood counts were fine next to my blood sugar and the ketones in my urine when I refused to take my insulin. I hated myself for being jealous of Dream. I really wanted to be in the hospital, having a way too low calorie count...

I breathed out and sat on my knees in front of the toilet. I genuinely had no idea how this worked, I never managed to throw up when I tried to do this and it scared me a lot. I did regularly throw up when I didn't take my insulin because my blood was completely full with glucose that turned into ketones.

⚠️ Attempt to purge (self-induced vomiting)

My hands were shaking really badly when I lifted them up to my face. I felt disgusted when I put my fingers into my mouth, nothing happening. My fingers were covered in saliva and I pulled them away again, sighing deeply. Was this actually what Dream did sometimes?

I pushed my fingers back into my throat, as deep as I could in the hope I would at least gag or throw something up. However, nothing happened and I angrily stood up, pushing my back against the wall.

⚠️ Over

'I hate myself... I'm such a failure,' I whispered. 'I can't even throw up, I can't starve. I can't do anything right.'

I started sobbing within seconds after I stood up and slid back down against the wall, curling up like a ball on the floor. I wrapped my arms around my lifted knees and hitched my breath, feeling like such a failure that I genuinely just wanted to hurt myself or put myself into a bad situation to punish myself...

Tears rolled down my face. I hated myself so much for taking insulin and a salad that I didn't know how I would be able to deal with this guilt inside. I was a failure like my parents told me, I was fat like my haters told me. I needed to lose weight, but I was just a pussy and couldn't do anything right.

I lifted myself up and furiously slammed my hand against the stone wall, opening the door after that. With red eyes from the tears, I washed my hands at the public sink and left to go to Dream's room again.

I walked in, hiding my face while I sat down. Dream looked up and immediately saw my red eyes. 'Are you alright? What happened?'

'Nothing... I would rather not talk about it,' I mumbled. 'Are you allowed to leave soon?'

'Yeah, in an hour,' he replied. 'Dude, let's scroll through some funny TikTok videos to cheer us both up.'

'Alright...' I answered quietly, glad he didn't force me to talk.

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