Basorexia - J.MAGUIRE

[2.27] smashing

"You cut your hair," she deadpanned the instant she appeared next to James in the hall, having noticed it the second she laid eyes on him.

He stammered, shocked by her sudden appearance. He had been rather confused as to where she had been, given she had not gotten the bus that morning as she had woken up late and been forced to ask her neighbour for a lift - as Cal was not around to do the usual lift. She still could not get used to the feeling of being without those rides to the bus stop and hated waking with the knowledge that they weren't going to occur ever again. "I did. What- what do you think?"

"Looks good," she complemented quickly, the words falling from her mouth before she had a thought to process them beforehand. "I mean tidier, but like, in a grand way."

"Oi Chip!" Michelle yelled, stealing her attention away rather abruptly. Ciara turned her head so quickly that she instantly became dizzy, her eyes spotting with black marks.

"Aye Chelle?"

"Silence, please," Sister Michael called out from the front of the hall and the room slowly drifted into silence, unfinished conversations lingering thick in the air.

Michelle sighed aggravatedly and whispered, "I'll tell you in a bit."

"As you all know, at the beginning of term, the Bishop graciously bestowed a beautiful piece of religious art unto Our Lady Immaculate College: the enchanting Child of Prague," Sister Michael's voice echoed around the hall, a rare grin plastered on her face as she unveiled the statue. 

-

Ciara didn't particularly take a liking to the new English teacher. She seemed a little too uninterested in her job and was awfully mean to some particular students about their poems. Though she did have cracker eyeliner, of course nothing compared to Chip's.

"You want to come to mine and work?" Erin asked as Chip sunk down into her usual seat next to Orla, dumping her bag down next to her feet. "The others are too, on the english work?"

Chip shook her head, trying to remain as unsuspicious as possible as she softly replied, "I have a thing I have to go to, sorry."

"A thing?" Clare questioned instantly, brow furrowing in concern.

Ciara grinned as if to cover up anything heading in the wrong direction of suspicion. "A secret thing."

"Oo mysterious, more drugs Chip?" Michelle laughed, jokingly raising and relaxing her brow.

"Aye of course Chelle," she laughed sarcastically, secretly hoping that someone would change the subject and it would not go any further. Luckily Orla made some sort of comment that changed the subject completely but Ciara could not forget the look in James' eyes when she finally looked up, finding that they were trained onto her and full of great concern.

-

Her session with Rosa began as it usually did, with the common chit chat of therapy sessions. How are you, how has your week been, is there anything you want to share and how has eating been the past few days. "Did you bring your scales?" she asked a good thirty minutes into the session, after Ciara had gone on a tangent about an argument she had with her mother about the way she cooked a certain food and how there was far too much oil.

"Aye, received a weird look on the bus though," Chip chuckled softly as she reached for her bag, pulling out the heavy and clunky metal. She placed it onto the table between them, the sound of it hitting the wood seeming like a drum of fear.

Rosa was pretty quick to catch onto the direction of Chip's gaze and soon asked, "How does looking at that make you feel?"

Ciara swallowed deeply, trying to figure out a way to verbalise what she was feeling inside. Her heart beated rapidly, low sound becoming deafening in her ears. All she could think about was checking how much she had lost/gained in the past few days, she desperately hoped it would be a loss. In fact she needed it to be a loss. "Trapped," she sighed softly, trying her hardest not to focus on the scales.

She suddenly stood and smiled, "Grab the scales, we're going outside." Chip, after a moment of hesitation, did so and followed after her with her scales in hand. They walked out of the office and followed her to a huge field, stopping near the middle where a hammer rested against a tree stump. Glass and fragmented plastic laid all about the stump, sprawled in dozens of different directions. "Do you understand what you're about to do?"

"Aye," Ciara whispered, nerves starting to settle in the depths of her stomach.

"And how does that make you feel?"

"Sick," she mumbled after a moment's hesitation, gaze so heavily fixated on the scales in her arms that she could not even hear the thoughts anymore.

"Would you like to set them down?"

Ciara hesitated yet again then did so, not finding the clunk noise as satisfying as she had done before. She picked up the hammer but it remained slack in her hand, not at all ready to do the damage wanted by her doctor. The scales were just too imperative to her, far too important to break in such a way. She just couldn't bring herself to do it, the thoughts screaming against the action were just all too loud and far too convincing. It was the fuel to the fire of her disorder that constantly burned, without it she would be lost and without the constant reassurance that she was in fact doing a good job. That nagging voice to weigh herself would become unsatisfied and lord knows what would happen then. She was, in short, absolutely shitting it.

"The numbers that you are fed by this machine are a complete lie. A number on a scale should not define how you see yourself for the rest of the day and it's okay if it does right now, that's what we're trying to work on," Rosa paused, allowing time for her to process before she continued, "This is the first step towards allowing your body to heal, Chip. What's the worst thing that's going to happen?"

"I'll lose control over everything and everything will go wrong," Ciara whispered back, anxiousness biting clearly and ever so evidently in her voice. whisper.

"You'll lose track of the numbers, that's all...Nothing else is going to happen."

Chip took a deep inhale, her heart pounding so furiously that she could feel and hear the blood shooting through her vessels. She swung and watched as glass flew up in the air, littering the green grass around the log. A second swing came with a scream of pent up frustration that she had not known to even exist prior to that moment. It was so incredibly relieving, so freeing and was honestly like the best thing she had ever experienced. Like the most perfect song that numbed everything in your head and had bubbles of joy bursting through your system at the drop of the beat.

Once the scales were smashed beyond recognition, Ciara stopped and smiled as she admired her work, brushing hair that had escaped her loose bun at the nape of her neck.

"How'd that feel?"

"Relieving as fuck," she whispered, voice trailing into soft laughter.