𝒓𝒉𝒚𝒔
The second day of having my own mother in the room while I'm dancing is almost worse. Sure, it's not sobbing and gasping for air outside of the studio, but emotions are boiling inside of me. It's only been a fucking day. How long can I keep this up? Put a smile on my face and take her stupid corrections?
I wonder if anyone can tell. Before, it'd been a relief that I took after my mom more appearance-wise than my dad. Now, both of them are equally bad. I don't want either of them. Or, well, I do, but I don't want to want either of them, I don't want to need either of them to not be as fucked up as I am now.
For breakfast, I drank a diet coke and took Adderall. Dinner yesterday, nothing, lunch yesterday, nothing. It's been a while since I fasted, and especially when my last meal was 130 calories 29 hours ago, and I slept for maybe an hour, I'd expect myself to be on the verge of collapsing now. But the best fuel isn't food or sleep, it's revenge, and I want her to see the damage she did to me.
So far, she doesn't care. I glance at her in the mirror, wandering around and shouting corrections that make no fucking sense.
Maybe I'm just being petty, but I'm pretty sure I have the right to be petty.
It's weird, how you don't notice certain people mean a lot to you until they're not there anymore. Of course I knew I'd miss Connor and Aiden and Eli and everyone else, but I rarely met my grandparents or my uncle, Owen, so I thought that if I did miss them, it wouldn't ache, but it does. The most surprising one, though, is Levi.
I liked Levi. With the other dance instructors being mediocre at best, Levi taught me practically everything I know about dance. He spent 18 years, not only teaching me dance but teaching me to be a better person, to damage control when it came to my eating disorder. Sure, he was harsh sometimes, but he's the closest I've ever got to a real parent figure.
Well, Owen too, in a way. He wasn't there five or six days a week though, and he didn't ask when he noticed something was off. Back then I appreciated that. In hindsight, I appreciate Levi asking more. I never wanted to speak about it. Levi always managed to get it out of me anyway.
Catherine, mom, the stranger walking around the room, whatever you want to call her, says something about good work and break. I barely hear any of it. I barely realise I'm standing still and the music's stopped. My ears are ringing and my vision's spotty.
These are the things Levi would notice. This is when he'd give the others a water break and pull me aside and tell me to go home. I'd say I was fine and he'd tell me to eat something or he wouldn't let me dance more for the day.
That's the type of thing a parent would do, right?
I feel pretty damn incompetent, not knowing what a parent does and doesn't do, but it's not like that's my fault. If I went off my own experiences, parents would be people who yelled and hit you and pretended you were a ghost.
"Rhys." Noah touches my shoulder and I flinch. Fucking Noah, apparently thinking it's a good idea to come up from behind when he knows I have this problem.
He leans over my shoulder, whispering, "It's just me. You look fine. Hell, you look great, hot, whatever the fuck, so let's go eat something."
I realise I've been standing here like an idiot, staring at myself in the mirror. Really, I didn't even look at my body. Now that he mentioned it, I am. And I don't look great at fucking all.
Somehow I look bloated. Despite the fasting, I look fucking bloated and fat which is not what I'm trying to do at all. This isn't enough. I need hipbones and a spine that sticks out in tight clothing, I need collarbones I can stack coins in, I need a thigh gap big enough to fit a third leg. I want it all. I need it all.
