Castles crumbling (Taylor Swift's little sister)

Till it hurts or bleeds (sh)

TW: this one shot mentions and describes self harming. I tried not to be so explicit. I actually added some personal details of my story. Please don't hesitate and leave me your requests!

It was too much. Recovering after this relapse was too much. Dealing with the guilt after eating and not exercising was too much. Trying to keep everyone happy was too much. Everything was too much. Everything was becoming unbearable. You didn't know how to deal with this and not fall into old habits. You were going weekly to therapy, following your meal plan, resting, trying to take care of yourself; but still, sometimes, late in the night, you felt so lonely and empty, yet so guilty and anxious. One night you had a fight with your mom because of food at dinner. Your mom got so frustrated that she left the table without finishing her dinner and left you with Taylor to finish yours. You ate everything and even though Taylor tried distracting you, after the 30 minutes you needed to rest after eating, you said you wanted to be alone and went to your bedroom. You didn't know if you really wanted to be alone, but the anxiety was increasing and you knew that you didn't want to be mean and hurt Taylor, which was what was going to happen. Your sister hesitated, but ended up agreeing and let you go to your room.

You were feeling guilty because of the fight with your mom, but you were also feeling guilty because of the food you had eaten. You didn't know what to do but you knew that you needed to feel something different right now. After pacing in your room for some minutes you looked at your desk and saw some scissors inside a pencil holder. Without thinking much, you grabbed them and cut the skin on your forearm as it was folded paper: you pinched your skin with the blades of the scissors. It hurt like hell, the blood tinted the blades, and you ran to the bathroom to clean the blades and your wound with water, but when you got to the sink and were about to open the tap, you closed the door, opened the scissors and used them as if they were a blade. You made three cuts. Suddenly you realized what you had done and placed your arm under the tap and let the water touch your cuts. It stung so badly, it burned for a while and then the cold water felt nice on the wounds. The only cut that kept bleeding was the first one, so you grabbed some gauze from your first aid kit that was in the cabinet under the sink and pressed it against your forearm for some minutes until the red liquid stopped coming out. You brushed your teeth, put on your pajamas and went to bed slightly shocked by what happened.

At the next day you completely forgot about the incident and walked directly to the bathroom to shower and get ready for school. You were half asleep and didn't notice the cuts in your arm until the hot water touched your skin. Your arm burnt and you registered that the burning sensation came from the fresh wounds, they looked clean, and you carried on with your morning routine as you'd normally do. When you came downstairs to have breakfast your mom was evidently still bothered from the fight yesterday, so she made sure that you were ready and as soon as you appeared, she left upstairs and left you with Taylor to eat, again.

- "Hey baby, how did you sleep?" Taylor asked taking a sip of her coffee still in her pajamas.

- "Good, thank you" you said taking a small bit of your eggs.

- "Do you want to talk about what happened with mom?"

- "There's not much to talk about. You saw what happened, I was cutting the chicken into tiny pieces, she pointed out and said it was disordered behavior, I kept doing it, she told me again to stop doing it, I ignored her, she got mad and screamed that she couldn't do this anymore and left the table" you shrugged.

Taylor extended her hand over the table to reach your hand, but she touched your arm instead. You flinched and grabbed her hand immediately instead of pulling away to avoid suspicious. Taylor noticed but didn't give it a second thought and concentrated on the fight with your mom.