Never Been Fixed (Demi Lovato)

Chapter 17

NOTE: I just realized that Demi is in Vancouver while her family SHOULD be in Texas, so if you think about it it makes no since that Maddie is in Vancouver, so let's pretend Demi was in Texas all along. I'll edit the previous chapters later when I have time to make it seem like Demi has been in Texas from the beginning of the story.

MADDIE'S POV

I stomped upstairs and slammed my bedroom door. I went to my iPod dock and put on my darkest, loudest screamo album, mashing the volume button until it was blasting loud enough to drown out any sounds coming from my room. I couldn't risk anyone hearing me.

I stepped into my washroom and pulled the sliding door closed, pausing to quickly lock it as I sank down the wall until I was lying down on the cold tiles of my personal bathroom. I can't believe Demi found out about me. This wasn't supposed to happen, ever. Not just with Demi, but with anyone. Nobody was ever supposed to find out, but now my whole family knew. It wasn't that I thought they would be mad that I cut. Like, I knew they'd be a little angry initially, of course, but they'd get over that.

No, the reason I didn't want anyone to know was because now there was no turning back. I would forever be labelled as fucked up and depressed, no matter how much I healed, because of this one little thing. I mean, now I can't stop cutting (not that I want to anyways), because if I do stop, then everybody will think I was just doing it for attention, which isn't true. They'll never take me seriously again. See my dilemma? Before, when it was only my secret, it wasn't official. Most of the time, I could pretend it wasn't there, except when I needed it. I knew that if I ever outgrew cutting somehow, or got over it or just somehow managed to stop, I could just forget about it and move on with my life. Now, it's real. People know about it and there's no denying I'm messed up. I'm totally and completely committed for the rest of my life to whatever consequences come of my sick ways, and that thought sucks balls.

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Ugh. I pried open a loose piece of wood from the back of one of the bathroom cupboards, reaching into the little hole and pulling out a shiny piece of metal. This may not be my usual bedroom (my normal one was back at my family's house where I lived, this one was just where I stayed while I was at Demi's), but I still kept it stocked with everything I might need, from blades to laxatives to hundreds of bandages.

Pulling off my shirt, I examined my stomach. Rolls of skin spilled out over the waistband of my jeans, my fat folding over itself to create ripples on my stomach. Disgusting. I pulled my pants and underclothes off too until I was left just with my abundance of bracelets on my wrists and key necklace (it unlocked my diary so of course I never took it off) around my neck, and then I clambered into the bath. I waited until the tub was filled to the top of my ankles, and then grabbed my blade from the side of the bath.

I slid my blade horizontally along my front, watching blood bead as soon as the razor went over it. I did another horizontal cut, and then a vertical one. They were light and thin at first, but I slowly started to press harder and faster with each movement of the blade until I was furiously slashing at my skin, each wound bleeding more violently than the last. Soon, the bath water around me was dyed rusty red and I had no bare skin on my stomach left, so I stopped to examine my handiwork. F-A-T, I had carved into my skin, multiple parallel red lines making up each stroke of a letter. It wasn't a new creation; I had traced over these lines many times before, renewing them every time they began to fade, a constant reminder of my most despised trait.

I then began to work on my arms, crisscrossing lines up and down all over both wrists until I started to feel lightheaded. At that point, I chucked the blade out of the tub to stop myself from doing any more damage, and closed my eyes, fully aware that I was in a tub full of water. Maybe when I woke up, I wouldn't be in the bath anymore, and instead up in the clouds with my oldest sister, Dallas. Nobody talked about Dallas anymore. It brought back too many painful memories, which was why I didn't tell Robyn about her. I still remember the day I found her, just hours after Demi went into treatment, lying in her bed with an empty bottle of pills in one hand and an equally empty bottle of vodka in the other, a note lying on her chest.