The Hunger Within

The bench by the lake was the only thing stopping Mia from plunging herself into the icy depths of the water. Something about the bench had stopped her from progressing any further. She sat upon it, her dress hitched up about her waist and tucked into the loose elastic of her underwear so that her legs could breathe. The scars displayed on them were almost invisible as the moonlight shone down upon her. She held a trembling hand to her lips and took a long drag of the cigarette she had smuggled into this insanely posh hen party using the empty space in her bra. She thought she had been doing okay, that she would have coped at the party with all that... temptation. She had been wrong. She knocked the ash from the butt onto the rocky shoreline of the lake and let out a shaky breath that burst into clouds in the mist of the night.

“I thought you’d be here.” A familiar voice came from behind her.

Mia didn’t move her head much further than to simply acknowledge that she had heard her sister speak. She stared straight out over the lake as she heard the crunch of stone and felt the bench depress slightly beside her.

“I wasn’t just going to leave,” Mia said numbly. She didn’t even try to hide the cigarette in her fingers.

There was a long silence as Audrey shivered on the bench beside her younger sister. Mia knew she was waiting for her to speak, to explain why she had left in such a hurry. Mia knew she probably should explain. After all, Audrey was under enough strain right now, but something stopped her, caught in her throat and choked the words from existence.

“Since when have you smoked?” Audrey said eventually through chattering teeth.

“I don’t,” Mia replied, dropping the butt on the ground and stomping on it.

“Aren’t you cold?” Audrey asked as she looked over her sister with her dress up around her waist. She wasn't in the slightest bit concerned about the cigarette, not after everything. Mia sighed and pulled down her hemline, covering her scarred legs. She knew Audrey didn’t need to see the extent of the damage.

“I’m always cold,” Mia said matter-of-factly.

There was another long pause.

“You should go back in,” Mia said. “Mum’ll be looking for you.”

“Mum can wait,” Audrey replied assertively. “It’s my hen party. If I want to spend it on a bench by a lake with my baby sister, I will.”

“You’re too stubborn for your own good, Aud.” Mia scolded her big sister.

“I learned from the best.” Audrey shot her sister a wicked look that Mia couldn’t help but smirk at.

Another pause.

“Do you want to talk about it?” Audrey asked eventually, looking out over the water and not caging Mia in.

Mia shook her leg in agitation. She wanted nothing less than to talk about it, but after all she’d been through, after all she’d put Audrey through, she felt she owed her an explanation. All it took was her squashing the demons long enough to get the words out. She wished it had gotten any easier in all the time she had been shut away with them.

“Recovery is hard,” Mia said, her voice so quiet that Audrey could have been forgiven for not hearing her.

Audrey, however, missed nothing. She turned her head to Mia, a tendril of her fancy up-do curling about her exhausted face. In the distance, they could both hear the gentle music of the hen party as Audrey’s guests continued about their business without the bride. Audrey ignored it. It wasn’t a priority right now.

Mia’s leg shook so much that it threatened to shake from her hip. She picked at her fingers with her thumbs and focused on the rising moonlight reflected in the lake’s surface before her. If nothing else she was grateful to her sister for giving her the time and space she needed to get her thoughts in order. Audrey was very well practiced at it by now.

“Recovery is hard,” Mia repeated. “Sometimes it’s so hard and all you want to do is run away. Scream. Cry. Yell. Tear yourself apart. Die.” She frowned as the demons came spilling from her mouth. “Nothing is good enough. Nothing you do is good enough. You’re not good enough. You want to do anything you can to make it stop. Make the voices stop, the pain stop, the fear stop.” Her nails dug deeper into the flesh of her fingers as Audrey fought the urge to grab Mia’s hands and stop her. Still Mia addressed the lake and not her sister. “It feels like you’re constantly at war. Like everything and everyone is trying to kill you. It’s not living. It is like trying to take a breath in a room full of smoke. Each breath feels like it will be your last.” She closed her eyes and took a long ragged breath as though to demonstrate. “There is a voice in the back of your head every second of every day. Most days, that voice is all you can hear. It tells you that you have no control. That everything you know and love is out to get you. It tells you that you are losing control.” Her eyes snapped open and filled with the blackness of the sky, all the stars burnt out.

“So you start to count calories.” She concluded, looking back at the lake. “You start to punish yourself to satisfy the demons in your head. Suddenly, food is the enemy. The mirror is the enemy. Your own skin is the enemy and everything inside it. Sometimes you know that the voice isn’t real, but even then you start to doubt yourself. It is exhausting. It’s an uphill battle and you don’t have a weapon. There is nothing to cling on to, and every step forward is three steps back. It’s like you’ve been swimming in choppy water for hours, and every time you think you’re about to find the shore, it moves further away.” She watched the water at the edge of the lake ebb and flow. “You’re constantly exhausted and struggling for air and for energy. Sometimes there is respite. Just a small moment when everything feels like it’s truly going to be okay.” Mia offered Audrey the smallest of smiles, ignoring Audrey’s expression of horror, and the tears staining her cheeks as she listened to her sister. “And then suddenly, you’re drowning all over again. You have to fight all over again.” Mia’s own tears began to flow as she looked back at the lake as clarity filled her head and she could see the stars in the water.

“Then you remember the people who love you. The people who fought almost as hard as you did to keep you here. Alive. On this earth to fight another day. The people who cried with you; stayed up all night with you; picked up all of the pieces of your broken being and slotted them back into place - held them together with Pritt-stick and... Ed Sheeran.” She smiled at Audrey, a genuine smile through the tears. “The people who sacrificed so much just to support and love you. The people who couldn’t live without you. You remember to fight.” She looked out over the lake this time, taking in the world around her in the gathering darkness of the night. “You remember to keep one eye on the horizon, on the sun that will surely rise sometime soon. It has to rise sometime soon. You remember that you can’t have a rainbow without rain... And you fight back. You fight back so hard it hurts. Everything hurts. But it’s a good hurt, in the end. It’s a hurt that keeps you fighting, every day. Every hour. It’s a hurt that makes you want to prove them wrong. Prove it wrong. That illness. The one that consumed you for so long. You stop, and you tell it to get lost. You are in charge of your life. Nobody else. You. You, and not your illness.”

“Mia...” Audrey breathed, reaching out and taking her sister's hand in both of hers. Her fingers were like ice as she clutched them. “I...”

“I’m okay, Audrey, really.” Mia looked to her and smiled warmly, wiping the tears from her own cheeks. “At least I’m getting there.” She sighed. “When I left the hospital I thought I would never be able to be ‘normal’. I thought that they’d made a mistake and I was so scared of what I might do now I was out in the wide world, surrounded by food and...” She tailed off, panic flashing in her eyes. She blinked it away determinedly. “I’m allowed to be on my own for the first time in over a year, allowed to shower by myself or go to the bathroom without someone right outside the door listening to make sure I’m not throwing my guts up. What’s left of them, anyway.” She put a hand on her flat stomach as though it was not hers. Audrey clutched her fingers tighter. “I’m allowed to make decisions about what I want to do, whether I want to see people outside of three specific hours a day, and do you know what, Audrey? I do.” She scooted across the bench and put her hands on her sister’s arms in order to get the message across.

“I mean. That’s what it’s all about, right? That wasn’t living, this is. I’m determined to live. There’s still stuff going on in my head. But I’m getting better. I know I am. I can feel it. The demons aren’t as loud, they don’t make my decisions.” Mia nodded reassuringly. “It’s because of you, Audrey. I got better for you, and Sonny, and mum. Seeing you so happy has made me want that too.” She slid her arms around her sister’s neck and held her tightly. “You’re my reason to keep going and I won’t give that up. You never gave up on me.” 

“I never will,” Audrey replied through her broken voice as she fought her tears and held her baby sister close.

The last eighteen months had been a nightmare for them all but now... now things might change. When the sun rose tomorrow morning it would be a new chapter for them all and that, if nothing else, was worth holding on to.