Therapy has never been her favorite thing to do. Not even her like, thirtieth favorite. It’s pretty far down. So far down that it reaches into the least-favorite end of the spectrum.
After her esophagus ripped open, it started, the constant flow of forced speaking. It never helped anything, because, to be fair, she wasn’t really trying. It wasn’t going to make her feel better, or stop hating herself, so what was the point of explaining why she didn’t want to eat? It was almost impossible for her to understand, so why would anyone else?
Even after she’d almost killed herself, talking to anyone but Gina was weird, difficult, more troubling than helpful. She’d always been a fucking burden, and dumping all the weight of her problems on someone else was fucked up, and probably wouldn’t make them go away. She could keep it locked away, deep down, and little pieces could come up occasionally, for Gina. Telling her things felt good, right, like carrying a heavy backpack and three textbooks and letting someone else take a book or two.
But Gina’s gone and she feels so alone for the first time since she sat in the pink bathwater by the ocean and stared at the knife. She’s been coasting since then, got a little better, then broke her hip and got a little worse. Now she’s sitting on the edge of her bed crying and hating herself for crying because Gina is better and Heather will be soon and all she can think is that they left her, like everyone else. Like Tess, like every foster parent, like God, like Hanna. She wants to release it all, bleed it out, puke it out, something. She surprises herself when she thinks maybe she could talk it out instead.
She sits in front of the blonde therapist, somehow talked into a fizzy tea that has something like 6 billion little organisms living in it. Maybe she just offered and her dumb fat mouth said yes before she could stop it. She’ll take two sips, then it’ll get flat and warm and she’ll abandon it. She doesn’t want those extra calories she doesn’t want more pounds they’ve forced too much and ninety-five feels too much like jiggly thighs and standing on the scale in front of everyone and wanting to disappear completely.
“I’m glad you came to see me. What do you want to talk about?”
“I don’t know. I just want to get some shit out before I decide to cut myself or barf.”
“You made a good decision. Can you explain why cutting or purging is your typical answer to stressors?”
This is already annoying, but she’s trying. “Because. I have to get some of this out. It hurts too much to leave it all in. And I don’t believe in talking shit out.”
“Well, you’re here, aren’t you?”
Pepper leans to her left, sticking both feet under her right hip, but doesn’t respond to that.
“So, what do you want to get out?”
“Did anything specific upset you?”
“The only two people I love are leaving me here.”
Pepper says Heather is the only real family she has, Karl and Tess are fake and don’t know her, even if they buy her things and try to make her like them. Dallon says that they’re probably desperate for a way in, and she has to help them out a little. Pepper just stares at the desk. Anyway, Heather is what she always needed, someone who stuck up for her and believed in her and cared, who was around just because she wanted to be, not because she had to be or because she was getting paid for it. She was like a cool older sister who thought she was cool, and smart, and pretty, and nobody ever thought that, at least, not in a way that was obvious or made her feel loved.
She says Gina is like other-kind-of-family, like they might end up sharing a last name someday kind of family. She didn’t think it would ever happen again because Hanna was the first one to love her, ever, at all, the first person to say you are worth my time and money and effort I want you to be alive I love you and she was suddenly gone and she never said it back. So she spent three years trying to make up for it, nightly visits and occasional brushes with death the closest she got, then she said Hanna I’m coming and Hanna said NO! and made her stay because Gina’s mom killed herself and what the hell was she going to do if she did, too? And Gina won over Hanna, and no one had ever done that before. And she went back, left the knife in the hotel room and let them take her back. Because she loved her. She let her talk and she listened and smiled wide and didn’t judge but she pushed because she fucking cared. She loved her, and-- she loved her back. And this time she said it. And everything was good.
“So, you just told me how much both of these people love you. And how you love them.”
“So, why do you feel abandoned? You said the note promised you’d see each other again, and I’m sure Heather feels the same way.”
“I’m just tired of people leaving me! They’ll get out there and realize they don’t want me. And I’m never fucking getting out, I’ll die in here.”
Of course, she asks why she thinks that. Because Tess dumped her and decided she didn’t need her anyway and left her there until she was seventeen and too fucked up to feel anything but bitterness. And everyone she lived with for sixteen years just said fuck this and sent her back, over and over, return to sender. ( We don’t want this one. She’s not good enough. ) And God obviously hated her, because what the hell did she do to deserve all this crap?
Dallon slides her notepad over to let her make a list.
ALL THE CRAP GOD GAVE ME - pepper chase
1. a shitty body
2. a fucked up brain
3. a mom who threw me away
4. a brother who apparently did not ask about why i was thrown away enough to instill guilt before i was fucking seventeen
5. self loathing
6. a dead girlfriend
7. no spiritual guidance. seriously. no fuckin leads man
8. stretch marks
9. sadness
10. nothing good to offer the world #worthless trash
By now, she’s crying, digging tissues into her eyes. “And then, like, even she left me, so, fuck me I guess.” The words slip out before she knows what she’s saying.
Dallon says Hanna didn’t get to choose. Pepper knows that. But everyone else did, so why did they leave? They didn’t care. Dallon reminds her that Gina and Heather care. And they have no reason to change their minds about her. “They know just about everything, don’t they?” She nods. “So what would make them decide they’re out, suddenly?” She doesn’t know. “They won’t,” She answers for her. “You just tell yourself bad things are going to happen so you won’t be disappointed by anyone. And you don’t expect anything from yourself because you think you’ll let yourself down, too.”
Dallon looks at the list.
“Why do you hate your body?”
“When did you decide that?”
“When did you start acting on it?”
“2013. I wanted people to like me.”
“You wanted to like yourself?”
“So, if it hasn’t helped so far, what makes it hard to give it up?”
She says she’s scared. Of what? It’s hard to answer.
Dallon says she needed to be in control, after years of watching everyone else move her around and put her in the trash and leave her behind. She says she can take control of her life completely now, not just this tiny part of it. She says actually, the hateful alt-Pepper in her head is controlling her now, making her go further than she ever wanted to. And she can stop her.
Pepper says she doesn’t know how.
She must not understand how it all works. No, she doesn’t know how. If she did, she would be better by now--
“You came here today. You won today. You can win again.”
She says a lot of other stuff, but that sticks.
She decides she wants to win-- she knew it when she got up out of the bathtub, let Jordan hold her. Now she just has to fight.
