Troubled Souls // 5SOS

III ∞ Paragraph

• Beth •

It's incredibly hot outside today, so I run inside quickly to get back into an air-conditioned environment.

"Beth, thank goodness," Sophie says as soon as I come in. "We thought you were going to be late!"

"No worries, I'm here," I reply with a chuckle.

I take the last remaining seat next to Michael. He quickly opens his notebook and scribbles "Hey, Beth!"

He passes it to me so that I can write a response. "Hey, Michael! How are you?" I write in reply. My handwriting is pretty messy, but it looks neat compared to his.

"I'm pretty good," he writes back. "How are you?"

"I'm good!"

Sophie clears her throat. "Michael, Beth, could we have your attention, please?" She asks.

"Yeah, sorry," I reply, passing Michael's book back to him. He looks down at his lap but smirks a little.

We go around the circle, sharing our happy/sad/angry moments of the week without anything particularly worth mentioning. Well, Luke said that nothing ever makes him happy, but I think any of us could have figured that out on our own. I won't lie, Luke is a huge pain in the ass. I mean, I'm sure he's going through a rough patch just like the rest of us but is it really that hard to just pretend to have some respect for other people's feelings?

"Alright," Sophie says. "Does anyone want to start with their paragraphs or should we just go around the circle?"

She waits for a moment and no one offers. No one really wants to be the first person to bare their soul. We start with Calum since he's the first person to Sophie's left.

Calum reaches into the pocket of his grey sweatshirt and pulls out a small, folded piece of paper. He unfolds it slowly and clears his throat.

"When people first find out about my disorder, they're often pretty surprised. After all, when you hear about cases of anorexia, they're usually about teenaged girls who are unhappy with the way they look. It doesn't actually register in people's minds that boys can be unhappy with their appearances just as easily as girls can.

"When you have anorexia, it often begins with looking in the mirror or stepping on the scale and being so unhappy with what you see that you feel the need to starve yourself. Some part of your mind might know that there's nothing truly wrong — I know I felt that sometimes — but it's just not strong enough to make you stop. No matter how much weight you lose while starving yourself, you're never happy with what you see. You just have to keep pushing yourself until your body can't take it anymore. That's how my parents found out about it; I passed out after not having eaten anything for a few days and they found me in my room. They knew then that I had to get help. Going to therapy definitely does help after a while, but I don't think I'll ever be able to forget how it felt to be so unhappy with the way I looked that I felt the need to do something like that to myself. It's not something that you can forget easily."

Sophie nods slowly, letting the silence after his speech sink in for a few moments. "Thank you for sharing, Calum," she finally says, her voice gentle and quiet.

She turns to Ashton, who's sitting next to Calum. "Ashton, would you feel comfortable going next?"

Ashton nods. He reaches into the pocket of his jeans and pulls out a slightly crumpled piece of loose leaf paper.