What Grows Dies Here

Not because I was afraid he’d hurt me. Karson would chop off his hands instead of hurting me, I knew that. But because he was forcing me to acknowledge what everyone had been tiptoeing around. The concern, panic and horror in his eyes showed me just how thin I’d become.

I’d known, of course, that I had relapsed. But I’d explained it away with the travel, with the parties, with how busy I was. And there was no one to call me out. To speak to me like this. I hadn’t seen Zoe, Yasmin or Stella yet. None of them knew I was home yet. I was avoiding them because I knew what they’d see. They had commented on it when I was home last, concern in their eyes, but I’d managed to dismiss it with a joke or two about too much champagne and not enough food.

Karson was staring at me. Waiting. Daring me to scream at him once more, tell him to leave, shut him out.

But I was tired.

Exhausted.

“I’ve had a problem with food my entire life,” I admitted, looking at his face but not focusing. Shame washed over me like a tidal wave. “Talk to a therapist, and they will give you a laundry list of reasons why an eating disorder manifested.”

I made a mental note to schedule an emergency session with Tina tomorrow.

“Absent parents who didn’t give me enough love,” I said, feeling like I was betraying them somehow, especially since my mother was finally acting like one now. “Me growing up in an environment that promoted unrealistic beauty standards. Fuck, I don’t think I’ve ever seen my mother eat more than two bites of anything my entire life.”

I thought of my mother then, wondering if her obsession with food came from her history with loss, the pain she never dealt with.

“Then, in a life of chaos, food was one thing I could control,” I explained. “Take your pick.” I sighed. “It could be that. But honestly, I feel like the reason is much simpler. I wanted to be thin. I wanted to fit into the sample sizes. All the vain and terrible things you could think, that’s what I wanted. In my early twenties, at least. Growing up, I realized what bullshit it was. Got myself together. Created a semi healthy relationship with food and my body image.”

I paused, picking at a hangnail, frowning at the state of my hands. When was the last time I’d had a manicure?

In the time before, I had a weekly appointment with the best manicurist in the city. No matter where I was in the world, whatever predicament I found myself in, my personal grooming was always impeccable. You can get a bikini wax, manicure, eyebrows threaded anywhere in the world… Even trapped in an oil baron’s mansion in Costa Rica if you were crafty enough.

But I was here, on my home turf, my stomping ground, where everyone knew me, knew the money I had, the influence I could wield, the careers I could make. There would be an army of men and women at my door in a moment to primp me and groom me within an inch of my life.

I pondered this for a second wondering if buffing, tanning, plucking would make any difference at this point.

Karson didn’t say anything in the silence I created while inspecting my ruined nails and peeling cuticles, he just waited.

I kept my gaze down at my hands for what I had to say next. “It isn’t something you just get over. Not something that ever goes away. Alcoholics and addicts have to fight every day not to drink, not to use. It’s the same concept when you’ve struggled with an eating disorder. Every day you fight against urges to eat nothing. Eat everything. Battle with mirrors. But I’d never fought less than when I was with you.” My breath hitched ever so slightly. “Never felt more nourished, more beautiful.”

I let the words hang before I continued. Because I’d ruin whatever positive glow those words had created with what I had to say next.

“Except when I was growing our child,” I choked out.

I saw Karson’s body move out of the corner of my eye. A slight recoil. I didn’t let that penetrate. If I wanted to get this all out, I couldn’t take his reactions in.

“For people who have struggled with food and body image, being pregnant can be incredibly triggering. Not to mention dangerous.” I kept inspecting my ruined hands. “I was afraid for a while, of that. For a very short time. Until I saw your reverence. With every change in my body, you reveled in it. In me. And I reveled in it. I didn’t resent it. Not for a second. My body wasn’t just mine anymore. It was ours. Hers.”

My breath caught as I drowned in my memories. In trauma unresolved, a bottomless ocean inside of me.

“And then it was taken from me,” I forced out the words, my voice a rasp. “She was taken from us. But I was left with all those changes in my body. It didn’t all disappear because she did. My body was no longer ours, no longer hers, but it wasn’t mine either. It was like a graveyard. One I couldn’t escape.”

My hand went to my too flat stomach. “I reasoned that the farther away I got from what I used to be with her inside of me, the easier it would be to cope. To breathe. I thought I could shed my skin from the life we’d had. Become someone completely different. Unrecognizable.” I sighed. “And I wanted to disappear. Disappear, not die. The logical part of me knew I was killing myself with what I was doing. But logic didn’t factor in at all.”

Something inside of me, something that had been tense since the moment Karson and I became Karson and I, that thing relaxed. Here was a man who knew almost everything about me. Here was a man I’d given everything to, willingly. Because it hadn’t been a choice. Because he was my person.

I fought it at first, scared of what that meant.

Then I leaned into it. Then I leaned into the indescribable joy of knowing that he was my person.

Then we lost everything. I lost everything. Lost myself. And Karson lost everything too. Lost me. Because I tore myself away from him.

At least I thought I did.

But I was deluded, blinded by my pain.

So I forgot that he was my person. He was Karson. He wasn’t going anywhere. For better or for worse, no matter what I did to him, he wasn’t going anywhere.