The Runt of the Litter

Beautiful

Note: I wrote this a very very long time ago and just recently started publishing newer chapters/stories. I think this part is some of my lesser writing but I don't want to take it down because it was the first thing I ever got the courage to publish and I was proud of it at one time. If you don't like it, though, maybe consider reading the next one because my writing has changed a lot. Thanks, people for even opening this.

Beautiful

She stared into the bathroom mirror that had years ago lost its shine. She looked at her eyes, green and dulled by the day's hurts. She looked at her nose, small, round, like her mother's. She looked at her cheeks, chubby, childish, spattered with freckles that only added to her youthfulness. She looked at her mouth, lips pale, teeth crooked. She looked at her hair, falling in messy curls over her shoulders. Maybe she should cut it, take away its messy, untamed nature. She stared at the face looking back at her. She criticized every detail the same way they had. She detested the girl in the mirror for being too imperfect, for being herself.

She looked down at herself. Not thin enough, they'd said, but no one had ever said that before. Was she really overweight or were they just trying to hurt her more? Too short, they'd called her. But that had never mattered before. Was 5' 5" really that short? She'd never thought so. Her feet were too small, they'd mocked. But why did it matter? She looked at herself and hated her feet, her height, her weight. Everything.

She wanted to fix herself but what was she supposed to do? We don't carve ourselves out of clay. We don't decide to have freckles or curly blonde hair or small feet. We don't choose to be five feet five inches tall. We don't create our own bodies. We can't change them. But we can hate them. We can hate ourselves for them. And Anna did.

But only because they had first.

They had hated her from the moment they saw her and it hurt like hell because she hadn't been treated that way since she was six years old. It brought her back to that childlike vulnerability, made her wish to disappear, made her feel small and naive like she had when she was a little girl. She'd never been so viciously attacked. She'd never cried because someone made her feel so bad about her appearance of all things. She'd always lived in a world where appearances were unimportant. Until today. It made her feel weak to cry over those words, to cry over something that she'd been taught didn't matter. One more reason to hate herself.

She wanted someone to tell her that she wasn't as ugly as she felt. She wanted someone to love her because she couldn't find it in her to love herself right now. She just wanted someone who cared. But there was no one. Her brothers were still gone, working a case.

She could feel the tears rising again. She curled her hands into fists and roughly rubbed her eyes. She didn't get to cry. Not again. She was already too stupid, slutty, ugly, too short, too fat, snobby... worthless. That was what they'd said anyway. Every day. She wasn't going to be weak too. But the thought of everything that made her a loser made the tears well again.

She'd always been a tough kid. She'd spent her whole life dealing with loss, family problems, and physical pain. Mom. Dad. All the times she'd been injured on hunts or seen her friends and family injured. She'd seen blood pool around her own body. She'd come close to death countless times in her fifteen years of life.

But she'd never felt like this.

Like a disappointment. Like she wasn't worth it. Like she was an inconvenience to everyone. Like she had to fix herself.

She was angry and scared and sad and hurt and confused and she didn't even know what she was doing when she knelt in front of the toilet, stuck two fingers down her throat and threw up. She flushed the toilet, silently hoping the smell wouldn't linger.