Castles crumbling (Taylor Swift's little sister)

Chapter 29

The rest of the day was bittersweet. You felt good about avoiding the hospital but also felt like you were losing control. You had an individual appointment with Dr. Pine, your psychologist, it was still difficult for you to open up, but you remembered Taylor's words and decided to tell him about your thoughts related to the hopelessness you felt. He listened mindfully and you talked to him about Taylor's strategy of fighting back with logic the thoughts and feelings your brain convinced you of. He thought it was a good strategy and gave you some tips for identifying when your thoughts and feelings were actually yours, and when they were from the eating disorder; he gave you some tips to tell them apart. He also gave you one homework: to challenge a fear-food you hadn't eaten in a long time. He was proud of the improvements from last week, but he thought that you were following the meal plan while relying on safe foods mostly. He was right, though, but you didn't feel quite ready to challenge fear foods yet. You decided not to tell your mom or Taylor for now about that homework, but it turned out that Dr. Pine emailed your mom telling her about it.

When she picked you up, she asked you if you had any homework to do, which you denied, because you had done all your homework during the weekend. You always did your homework in the weekend, at least the homework you knew about the week before; that way, if you got more homework to do during the weekdays, it wouldn't pile up. She then asked if you could come with her to the mall to buy something for her friend and you accepted. However, when she was driving, she drove somewhere else, when you got off the car after she pulled up, your mom guided you to what (used to be) your favorite Italian restaurant, you looked through the window and saw Taylor sitting down with some sunglasses on, chatting with Tree. You were so confused.

- "What's happening?" You asked your mom.

- "Taylor won an award for the videoclip she was working on a few weeks ago, remember?" Andrea said.

- "Yeah..." you replied.

- "Well, we thought that it would be cool to celebrate. It's the three of us, Tree, and Blake. Taylor suggested this restaurant as it's your favorite Italian restaurant. What do you think?"

You were damn scared, but you needed to keep this to yourself. It was Taylor's night. You didn't want to keep stealing all the attention. You had to behave.

- "Great idea! Let's congratulate Tay" you said as anxiety was increasing.

You greeted Taylor and Tree, congratulated Taylor and sat down. After about 10 minutes Blake arrived and greeted you all. It was a round table, and you were sitting between Blake and Tree. They were all having so much fun, but all you wanted to do was disappear: you felt huge with the weight gain, you also ate everything at lunch and didn't rely on supplements for the first time since you entered the outpatient program at the treatment center, plus the afternoon snack supplement bloated you so much, you felt like you were going to tear apart your uniform. You felt extremely guilty for being so selfish, but you couldn't think of anything else than how huge you were feeling. You read the menu over and over and didn't know what to order, Tree noticed and whispered to your ear:

- "I know that this must be difficult for you. Would it be easier if I choose what to order for you?"

You shook your head immediately. - "No, but I could have the same as you are having" you whispered back, determined to not ruin Tay's night.

Tree agreed and replied - "Don't worry, I'm sure that you like what I was thinking of ordering for me".

You smiled and checked that your fingers still fitted around your wrists. The waitress came to take everyone's orders and Andrea realized that she didn't ask you what you were going to eat, but Tree saw Andrea's worried face and quickly said - "I've got it covered, don't worry".