Hemorrhage.

It was hot – too hot. My shorts stuck to my legs, there was sweat dripping down my back, and every time I walked the back of my knees smacked when the skin separated. The line was long – too long. I didn’t know which set had just ended, but teenagers were as far as the eye could see. Most of them were nice - they said please and thank you and waited patiently as I dug around for their size. Those were the people that made my job worthwhile – they were interested in the cause and some of them even asked questions.

However, on days as hot as this one, in the middle of the Midwest, people got irritable. I couldn’t blame them – I wouldn’t want to stand in line for twenty minutes in a hundred and five degree weather. At the beginning of tour, I convinced myself that they didn’t really mean to take it on me – it was just convenient for them to, because I had to be polite (generally), I was nameless, and they would never see me again.

She was brunette. Her hair was long and straight and perfectly styled. She stood, one hip popped out to the left. She scanned the back of the tent, t-shirts tacked up with their respective letter, and tapped her nails against the table.

I wiped my forehead with the back of my hand and brushed my bangs out of my eyes.

“Can I get a B in an extra small?”

I smiled apologetically. “We don’t carry extra-smalls, sorry.” I said. “You could probably get a small though, because they shrink.”

The brunette looked mildly offended. “It won’t fit.” She said.

I shrugged. They fit me, and we seemed to be about the same size, but it was too hot to argue.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “That’s all I can think of.”

“You guys should really carry extra-smalls.” She glared.

“I’ll tell the ordering crew.”

My intention wasn’t rude – I didn’t mean to sound malicious, but apparently, I did.

“There’s no need to be rude.” She sneered.

Maybe she was expecting an apology, or for me to sew an extra small for her right then and there, but I just continued to look at her. The line behind was getting anxious. You could hear the symphony of signs and rustling of wallets.

I was about to tell her, again, that all she could do was get a small and shrink it, when there were a few excited screams and I felt a hand around my waist.

He whispered hello in my ear, before smiling at the brunette. “What seems to be the problem here, ladies?”

The girl looked stunned for a second, before she resumed her glare at me. Maybe she thought it made her look bad-ass, but it didn’t.

“I was just expressing my concern on how they don’t carry extra-smalls-,”

Someone actually scoffed behind her. I had to hide my smile.

“- and this girl,” she stressed the “girl” part, “was quite rude to me.”

He looked at her and smiled, but I could tell he didn’t really mean it. “Get a small. It’ll shrink.”

This time I smiled triumphantly. The girl looked a little frazzled. She nodded, and I turned and retrieved the shirt. She paid quickly, but hesitated before leaving.

“Can I get a picture?” She asked.

John looked a little reluctant, but nodded anyway. He had to – pictures, signatures, and the occasionally voicemail message were all part of the job description, but he never seemed to mind too much. In fact, most of the tour he had been in a relatively upbeat mood. Garrett and Kennedy blamed me.

“He doesn’t have to leave you for two months like he thought he was going to. He’s fucking ecstatic.” Kennedy had laughed.

I had blushed, but Jared defended me. “Oh, shut up. You’re exactly the same way because Molly’s doing merch and you get to spend extra time canoodling.”

We were even.

When the next girl came up, she blushed and stammered, and I smiled at her, because her nerves were cute. John took a picture with her as well, before Allison came back from lunch and took over for me. John smiled at the girls that booed when he left, and told them that he would be at The Maine merch table around three, if they wanted to get pictures there.

He wasn’t shy about our relationship – I always told him that he should be, because I didn’t like girls disliking me, but he always said that the true fans, the ones he liked meeting, wouldn’t care who his girlfriend was. The second we maneuvered to the front of the table he grabbed my hand, interlacing his fingers with mine. I heard at least five people say, almost simultaneously, “Is that his girlfriend?”

“How’re you?” He asked, walking swiftly towards one of the gates to backstage. It was noon, and he was hungry.

“Hot.” I sighed. “But good. Hungry.”

John smiled. He was happy every time that I expressed that I wanted to eat. It made him overly happy, I thought, but whatever.

“What time do you guys play today?” I asked.

“Seven. We’re late tonight, so maybe you can sneak off from packing up to watch us?” He looked hopeful.

I laughed and nodded. “Yeah. Allison’ll cover for me. Again.”

“Good.”

The line for catering was already forming, so we stood behind two guys from Valencia and waited. It was still a little weird, eating with a bunch of people in bands that I really liked, and having conversations with people that I’d only seen pictures of on Tumblr.

Warped Tour was fun, though. Really fun. I never thought that I would spend two months of my life living out of a van and selling t-shirts, but it was an experience that I was enjoying. I got the internship with To Write Love on Her Arms two months after I got out of treatment, and I moved to Florida to fulfill the six weeks. It was a life changing experience – we designed t-shirts, answered fan mail, and some of us even went to conferences with Jamie. I shared my story once, at a university in Maryland, when one of the girls asked if anorexia could be considered self-harm. After the internship, I wasn’t offered a job immediately. I went home, spent a little time sprucing up my resume, before I got a call wondering if I’d like to be part of the TWLOHA crew, starting immediately. In the beginning, I was just writing inspirational tidbits for the website and answering phone calls, but one of the people that was supposed to sell on Warped Tour couldn’t make it, so I was asked.

I made friends here – Allison, who was a fellow TWLOHA member, Sam, who kept Garrett in check and kissed him occasionally, and Emily, who originally from Britain and was the tattoo apprentice for the on-tour tattoo artist. Of course there was also Molly, who was probably my best friend, but she was pretty busy, between selling The Maine merch and stealing Kenny off for some “secret” make-out sessions.

John pulled me out of my thoughts, pulling me closer to him. I pouted.

“It’s hot; I don’t need your body heat!”

John shrugged, because he really didn’t care, before leaning down and kissing me. Even now,
four months into the relationship, it felt weird kissing him. There were still sparks, and I still got
a little dazed afterwards, but it was a good kind of confusion. It kept things exciting.

Everything had taken a lot of time. The first thing that I did, after cuddling the cat that I had almost forgotten about and unpacking, was call Pat. I was afraid of doing it in person, because he probably would tell John that I was back.

He had answered the phone, most likely not recognizing my home phone number.

“Pat?” It was stupid, since I knew it was him, but whatever.

“Yeah, who’s this?”

“It’s Emilie.”

“Emilie? I thought you had…”

“Yeah. Look, Pat, I need to ask you a question really quick.”

He seemed hesitant, like maybe he thought I was going to ask him to off himself or tell John something vital about my well-being. I doubted that he was expecting it.

“…Sure, go ahead.”

I took a deep breath in. “Why did you send me those text messages?”

I could literally hear his sharp intake of breath. “W-what?” He stuttered. “What text messages?”

“Pat, I’m not stupid. I’m really not. I’m not mad at you, or anything. I’d just like to know why.”

It was silent for several seconds, and I thought that maybe he was going to hang up on me, or deny it again.

“I was mad at you.” He admitted. “When you left, you really messed with John. He was in a horrible mood – a real dick – for the longest time, and he took it out a lot on me, I guess, so I got mad at you.”

“Okay.” I said. I didn’t have a response. I wasn’t going to react to anything he said – I wasn’t allowing myself to get angry, upset, irritated, or sad. All negative emotions were blocked. I only wanted an explanation, which I got.

I was about to say goodbye, but he continued talking.

“I didn’t mean them, Emilie. I just wanted to you to get better, and I thought maybe that way would help. I didn’t want them to affect you.”

“Thank you.” I said. “Goodbye.”

He took a breath in, but I hung up before he could say anything else. I got what I wanted, and that was enough.

There was still tension between the two of us today, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been at first. John was pissed, I guess, and had yelled and screamed at Pat the day after I told him in the airport. Pat took it, apologized, and all was right between them again.

I had forgiven Pat a long time ago, because even though he hadn’t done it with the right intentions, he was still Pat, and you couldn’t be mad at him for too long.

John had taken longer to forgive. I know that he wasn’t directly to blame for my anorexia – it was the first realization I made at the clinic – but it still took some time for me to let go of all of the negative feelings.

Four days after I got back, I texted John and I asked him if he wanted to meet with me somewhere. I was expecting him to say no – expecting that I was going to have to stand outside of his window and yell at him that way, but he agreed, and we were set to meet Sunday, the day before New Year’s, at a park.

The conversation was personal – really personal. We talked about that day at lunch, about the clinic, about him being so angry about taking the blame. He admitted that he wasn’t mad at me for blaming it on him – he could see how his words could be taken that way – but he was mad at himself for never figuring it out, and apparently, never having the guts to tell me that I was beautiful, even though, he says, he always thought that I was, even that day in sophomore year.

I told him how I felt – god, that took so long, because I stumbled and stammered, but I had to admit that I always had a crush on him. He didn’t tell me that he reciprocated the feelings. He gave me a hug, and a kiss on the forehead, and I walked away feeling better about things – about my life, about the way I was handling things.

I figured that I was just going to have to deal with John not feeling the same way, and in all honestly, at that time, it wasn’t a big deal. I had more important things to worry about. It came as a surprise when he came over a few days after and asked me out when I opened the door. No flowers, no sweet gifts, no big surprise.

The date was mildly awkward at first, but the movie we saw was funny, and the conversation came from there. He asked me on five dates and I had dinner with his mom before he asked me to be his girlfriend.

When I left for the internship, he called me just about every day, and we kept things light, funny. I missed him, a lot, but I could handle it.

Now things were still light and funny, but there was an added layer of something to it. It felt real now, like a real relationship. When I got coffee, I got him one too. If he got to catering before me, he would grab me a plate of food. He would hold my stuff when I went to the bathroom and he bought me tampons once from a Circle K in Texas. I knew what he ate at In ‘N Out Burger, and he knew which shirt I was referring to when I asked him to get me “the yellow one”.

We were in a real relationship. We had fights, occasionally (once about food, the other because of something he said), but so far, they weren’t too bad, and we made up every time. When people asked him if he had a girlfriend, he said yes, and he even mentioned me to a few friends of his. There was a picture of me as the background on his phone, and he defended me that one time one of the techies said something rude about my attitude. (At the beginning of tour I was standoffish to a lot of people, because I wasn’t used to seeing so many people daily.)

It was nice, having him constantly by my side. I felt needed, appreciated, and loved, in the right way, which was something that took me a while to get used to.

I kissed John back, not caring that there was probably someone staring at us in disgust (mock or real) and thinking about telling us to get a room. We both pulled away with a smile and moved up in the catering line. We got our paper plates and plastic utensils, and we loaded our plates with an assortment of goodies. The catering staff was amazing, because it seemed hard to make good food in bulk.

We found the edge of one of the plastic picnic tables, and we sat across from each other. John ate in a very typical boy fashion – fast, shoveling it in without really tasting it. I cut my food up, separated it, and then ate one thing at a time. I ate quicker than I used to – in the beginning, it took me as long as an hour to eat a sandwich. I was getting better.

John grabbed two waters from the bin and we both drank them quickly. There were several rules to Warped Tour:

1) Sunscreen.
2) Water. Lots of it. Several times a day.
3) Sunglasses.

Those, out of everything else, were the most important. It was all about keeping hydrated and healthy.

I was almost done eating when Molly and Kennedy appeared, holding hands and talking animatedly about something or another. From what Molly told me, she was giving Kennedy another chance. But that was it. If he fucked it up this time, she was done. I could understand why she was protecting herself, because she really had been hurt the first time. I was glad that they were back together – they were good for each other. Molly liked his company, and he liked hers. Their relationship was different now – they were happier. It wasn’t all about teen angst or doing things because she was the closest available girl. I think he did things now because he loved her.

I was glad that they made up, because that meant that Molly was on tour, and I needed her around. Sam, Molly, and myself were quite an odd group, but we spent a lot of time together, often declaring days where we only hung out together, no boyfriends allowed. There was a certain friendship on tour, and I was glad to be a part of it.

Life was different now. Life was good now. Though not everything was perfect, I was happy with the way things were going. I liked my job, my friends, and my boyfriend. Most importantly, I liked who I was, and who I was becoming.

I was a different girl than before. I wasn’t as meek. I still had the occasional spout of unexpected shyness, but I was learning how to express my thoughts without hesitating, and I was starting to make jokes around people and become comfortable in my own skin.

I was Emilie. I wasn’t Emilie, Who Has an Eating Disorder, or Emilie, John O’Callaghan’s Girlfriend. I was just Emilie, and I had my own opinions and experiences.

I learned from my anorexia. I learned from my story. I learned, through a series of trials and tribulations, and a lot of error, what it felt like to overcome something as life-altering as hating myself and what I looked like.

I was okay now. I was even better than okay.

I was happy.

And I was alive right now, because a year ago, if I had kept with the same habits, I might now have been.