Imperfect

I hung out with my friends through rest period and lunch. Laine came over during lunch and sat with us. She introduced herself to everyone, but stayed near me. I had a feeling she was nervous.
Aven sat at my other side, picking at his food. Not that I blamed him. It was this awful type of bean stew that looked like flies were in it.
I looked over at the anorexic table with a bit of jealousy. Their food was delicious, specially prepared so they would want to eat it.
I’ve never wanted to be anorexic before, but damn their food smelled good. I went to Design with a rather empty stomach.

It started to be a bad day in Design. I couldn’t quite put my concert together with the money I was given, and I was so sick of seeing the ‘Overspent’ warning pop up on my screen. I didn’t let it show, but I left steaming.
Snack was peanuts, which I hate, so I was hungry too. The sounds of people crunching happily away around me were enough to make my hands shake, my teeth clench. And then we had to do a group activity.
None of my friends were in my group, so I stood nervously alone, especially when that girl Melanie was called over. She gave me a sneer that told me she still disliked me.
We had to help each other across some balance beams for the activity, to encourage team work or something. I was doing okay until I reached Melanie.
She smirked at me, holding my arm and leaning close to whisper, “Stupid pussy bitch,” before she gave me enough of a push to send me crashing to the hard wood floor, bruising my knees and elbows.

I ducked my head, willing myself not to cry in front of everyone. Vicky hurried over and helped me up, while Melanie was scolded and taken out of the game.
I was given an ice pack and told to sit down until next period. Melanie watched me with angry eyes.
Aven came over during that rest period, looking angry. I thought it was at me, but when he looked over at Melanie I realized he was pissed at her. “She’s just a stupid bitch. She can’t hurt you.”
I was thinking otherwise, making myself nervous. She wanted to hurt me, she already had, and I had the bruises to show it. But Aven was close by me, his hand comfortably on my knee, so I managed to relax slightly.

During Self-Reflection the worries came back, sending tendrils of fear through my stomach until I felt sick. I couldn’t even write, although I was sitting next to Aven on the couch again.
He was focused on his lyrics though, and I didn’t want to interrupt him. It seemed that Laine had joined our group, cause she sat by my feet, blonde head nodding as she wrote.
I doodled absentmindedly for the rest of the time, and it wasn’t until the bell rang that I realized what I had created- a monster with a mouth of fangs threatening to devour a curled up person. Me. It only made my stomach churn more.
I ate dinner without thinking much, although it felt good to fill up my stomach a bit. I wasn’t able to eat much though, because I was still nervous. That’s bad, because I can’t think right when I’m hungry, I lose control.

During group therapy everything just spiked and got worse. This one girl, Rebecca, told us how her family had forced her in here and forgotten about her, erased everything they could about her life.
She was in a lawsuit against them to get her birth certificate back, her passport, to regain the money they’d drained from her bank account.
It only gave me a new thing to worry about, my family doing their best to make me disappear, shred up everything I’ve ever written on, steal all my money, try to make me as far from them as possible.
My knees started bouncing and my hands shook. I was so thankful when the bell rang and I could go through the easy steps of getting ready for bed.