These Demons

Chapter Six

I don't know how much time passes. It might only be a couple seconds, a few minutes or even hours, and when I regain my senses, I feel more helpless than I ever have in my entire life. A wave of sadness practically overruns me and leaves me behind more powerless than I can bear.
Zoe keeps repeating that it's okay, but it's not. Nothing is okay anymore. I don't know when it happened, but I've really gone downhill. I'm such a hypocrite. Writing songs for lonely kids about staying strong and being yourself, and yet here I am fucking everything up.

"You're not fucking everything up. You're sick, but you can get help," I hear Zoe say and then the realization that I just said all of this out loud hits me like a train.
My knees are weak, but that doesn't stop me from jumping to my feet.
"You shouldn't be here," I tell her, my voice still shaky, but strong enough to make my point clear. "None of this is your business. I didn't even want you to hear this. Or to be here in the first place," I add.

"You can't always shut everyone out."

"Yes, I can."

"And look where it got you, darling."

Angrily, I narrow my eyes at her. "Get out."

"And let you ruin yourself?"

"What do you want, for god's sake?" I yell at her, frustrated because she never does what I want her to. She keeps showing up bugging me about nonsense and I never know where she's exactly going with it except annoying me.

"I know that you have an eating disorder."

My movements freeze. "No, I don't."

"Oh, come on, Andy. I saw it the first time I met you. You starve, you purge and your body image is insanely distorted."

"Bullshit," I mutter under my breath and shake my head. "You don't know anything."

"You think I didn't see it? Your face when you return from bathrooms, your tension when you're around food, your low weight and weird behavior? You can..."

"Shut up!" I hiss.

"I can't help you myself, but I know who can. There is a great treatment center in town where they can..."

While she talks, my tension starts to rise and my blood begins to boil, and when I hear the term treatment center, I finally snap.

"Get the hell out of here!" I scream at her and when she flinches, I'm almost sorry.
She just stands there, not moving a muscle, and I get dangerously close to her, but not in a friendly way. "If you don't fucking leave right now, then..."

"Then what? You'll punch me?" she whispers, our faces only inches apart.
"You wouldn't dare."
She leans in and I swear our noses almost touch when I hear myself whisper back, "Don't be sure about that."
The hurt that suddenly manifests in her facial expressions touches something within me, but I push it away like I push everything away lately. Pressing her full lips together, she spins on her heel and leaves without saying another word, and the weirdest thing is that, despite being the one who wanted her to leave, I'm not even sure if her departure is a good or a bad thing anymore.

The next hours I spend without keeping track of time, but with cigarettes between my lips, hunger pains in my stomach and acid in my throat.
The sadness in my head is so heavy that I can barely think and I have no idea how to even handle it, so I just stay where I am with the tears stinging in my eyes that never, ever fall.
At moments like this one, I sometimes wish they did.
Maybe they would relieve me, at least a little.