that ice inside your soul--* OPEN

[CAITLYN LUISA MILLER]

there was nothing like therapy on a thursday afternoon. there was nothing like having your therapy session pushed back an hour because someone decided to have a mental break down in the morning and tried to kill a staff member. caitlyn breathed in deeply, then let her air out slowly. it shouldn't be this hard to keep time in check. her sessions were always getting screwed with. but then again, she hated therapy. therapists asked so many fucking questions. they tried to pin her eating disorder on a problem, not on the fact that maybe--just maybe, she really only wanted to be skinny.

this, of course, was the furthest thing from the truth. caitlyn had an assortment of underlying issues that had contributed to having an eating disorder--primarily anorexia. but that was her business. if she wanted to be eighty pounds, cold all the time, and unable to move then so help her god. she had just wanted to die, and she'd gotten so close. close enough to lose everything worth living for. but now here she was, with absolutely nothing, and locked up in a fucking insane asylum. or "mental health hospital" as her father tried to put it. so lightly, yes?

wrong. if there was anything caitlyn disliked more it was that everyone was trying to make her problem seem less serious then it was. if they wouldn't just let her die, then at least give her the attention she needed to get better! i mean, this was horse shit, a visit from dad once a week. a visit from mom once a month, if that. and her brother rarely visited at all. caitlyn had been here for a few weeks so far. it was horrible. the food just seemed to leak calories, the water had calories. and god forbid she get two drinks a meal. only one napkin.

but that hadn't stopped her from hiding food, and purging in the bathroom when she got the chance. the doctors asked why she was still losing weight, they asked why she had an electrolyte imbalance--all she had to do was shrug and start crying. that was that, no more questions asked. it was pathetic! she almost felt like screaming about it. but that would get her put in solitary confinement.

just as she was about to skip therapy all together, someone else walked in looking just as furious as she was. raising an eyebrow she crossed her arms and leaned back in her chair, letting her shoulder blades dig uncomfortably so into the rough wood. it was a reminder that she was still there. All 84.2 pounds of her.

[NAVAJO BLUE MOON]

skip the talk, heard it all

There was something about bullshit that set made Navajo grind his teeth and dig his nails into his palms. Bullshit definitely included therapy because all Navajo ever did was sit around, arms crossed, moping. He never spoke, even when spoken to except for the one time he did. That had not ended up well, as everyone had taken offense and no one had understood that they really all were crazy. Why Navajo was lumped in with them was a wonderful question and one that he couldn't answer. He felt like Alice in Wonderland, someone completely normal in a land where everything was weird and backwards. Time was an illusion, as was the help that the staff was attempting to give him. And illusions were best ignored. If asked, Navajo would not be able to tell you what day it was, or what time. He would not be able to tell you what the staffs' goals even were. They were trying to convince him to love his body and other complete bullshit like that. That was not his issue, as if that wasn't obvious enough. People who thought they were fat did not take blades to their wrists like their blood weighed heavily enough to make a difference. Navajo knew he wasn't fat. He wasn't an idiot and he wasn't blind.

Navajo pushed back the door to the therapy room with much more force than it required. Therapy was bullshit and Navajo had a very low tolerance for bullshit. Stepping into the room, Navajo made sure to kick the door shut with the heel of his shoe, making a loud bang that shook the walls. He raised his eyes, preparing to slump down into any given chair, but instead, he hesitated. Someone was already here. "I'm glad to see the staff doesn't know how to organize therapy sessions well at all," he half-snarled, sinking into the nearest chair and crossing his arms, judging the girl sitting across from him silently. She was dangerously skinny--obviously someone with a real problem, unlike Navajo. Sometimes Navajo wondered if the people here were possibly real. This girl was too skinny to exist, like her bones would poke through her skin or she herself would break in half. Navajo knew her vaguely, just like he knew everyone vaguely. She was the leader of his godforsaken clique, not that he knew her name or cared. He didn't pay much attention to the people who didn't catch his interest. But now this girl had his interest, or his interest had been forced onto her under the circumstances. The staff sucked. They were morons. They deserved to be locked up or have their IQs tested or something. Navajo would bet money that his own IQ, while not exceptionally high, would surpass the staff's by a good 90 points, leaving their intellect closer to that of a gibbon's than to his own.

Was it any surprise that Navajo hated the staff? They were a handful of the biggest idiots on the planet, and they were hypocrites on top of that. They thought they were all that because people cared enough about them to keep them sane, but they weren't sane. They were just as screwed up as the rest of the world and had no fucking right to tell Navajo how to "fix himself" as if he was more broken, as if there were levels to how destroyed a person could be. Navajo was in no way more broken than anyone else here. You don't get wrecked by your own failure to communicate with the person who walked out of your life before it had even been considered a life. Navajo blinked down at his fists, which were curled so tightly that his black painted, glittery nails were digging into his palms He unclenched them and spread his palms out, feeling his knuckles ache like an old lady's joints. Suddenly restless, Navajo crossed his legs, then uncrossed them, then crossed them again. He had half a mind to get up and leave right this instant.

time to walk the walk

. w o r d s . 676
. m u s e . pretty gooood
. n o t e s . jhvjkusygfuygsfyufgigfiu
. t a g g e d . caitlyn&&shmanda

[CAITLYN LUISA MILLER]

"tell me about it," caitlyn answered his comment with a matching, just as bitter one. "it's a total load of bullshit, i could be having a mental breakdown threatening to kill myself and i'd still have to wait in these uncomfortable wooden fucking chairs." she shook her head and breathed deeply, "sorry about that. you probablly think i'm insanse. but then again, aren't we all here?" she knew navajo, not on a personal level or anything, he probablly had no idea who she was, but she knew just about everyone here who had an eating disorder. only because it was kinda...maybe, sorta her job? she didn't mind being the leader, in fact, she liked having something that grounded her and made her responsible for others. it was better then having someone trailing and looking after her. as far as caitlyn was concerned, the eating disordered patients could do whatever the hell they wanted. it's what she would have wanted.

"i'm caitlyn, navajo, right?" she introduced and finished curiously with a raised eyebrow. cait offered a smile, she was friendly with everyone at first, but that could change drastically. especially since she acted so impulsively. she didn't think before she spoke and sometimes, that pissed people off. "i like your hair." she said automatically, it was fucking awesome. she'd kill for hair that looked like that. it was so punk rock--but not at the same time. it suited him, definitely suited him. caitlyn had half a mind to ask how the hell he got it like that, but she'd save that discussion for another time and let the guy get used to her first. she didn't want to come off as totally strange and eerily welcoming.

there was the sound of crying from the other side of her therapists door, causing her to roll her eyes. that would be another what...half hour? maybe a whole hour? holy fuck, she cait thought bitterly and began to tap her foot and fidget, much like her acquaintance navajo. were they both thinking about the calories they were burning behind it? caitlyn was trying to see if she could get herself a decent work out sitting around. she wasn't allowed to dance for more then fifteen minutes a day, she couldn't run or walk too long. and tony definitely made sure she held those promises. all she had now was fidgeting, hiding food, and sneaking off to get rid of it with brianna.

she was glad to have the friends she did here. in fact, she would have killed to keep them for the rest of her life.

[NAVAJO BLUE MOON]

skip the talk, heard it all

Navajo glanced at Caitlyn, surprised she was even trying to make a connection. Most people didn't. Once Navajo spoke once, it was clear to most everyone by the tone of his voice that he was not the friendly sort. But evidently, Caitlyn was willing to give him a shot, if only because they were in the same room with nothing else to do. She didn't seem too bad, though she did talk an awful lot. At least, an awful lot by Navajo's standards. And she knew his name, which, though not unexpected, made Navajo raise an eyebrow. It was funny how someone who did his best to be nameless amongst the insane, to remain only as the voice of reason when no one was reasonable, had had his name pinpointed. It was strange how that worked. Navajo had grown up believing that the people who wanted to remain invisible were truly so; they spoken in stolen voices, their whispers were unintelligible, even their footfalls fell like those of a mouse. Their laughter was nonexistent. But maybe, Navajo thought to himself, he wasn't trying to be invisible. He was trying not to leave an impact, for surely he'd be gone from here in a couple of days, when the staff learned what a mistake they had made. Navajo didn't need help. He needed to stop being so disappointing to everyone. Not to everyone. Just Chris would suffice. Navajo still couldn't stand to call him Dad, because Chris was not his dad. Not truly, anyway. Not in the ways that counted.

If Navajo could understand that, could comprehend it and draw conclusions from it, he didn't belong here. He didn't have a fixable problem. At least, no one else could fix it. Navajo could make himself lovable on his own. He just needed to figure out how to do it. He was not insane.

He ran his tongue over the bottom of his top teeth, feeling the edge cut into his tongue while looking at Caitlyn levelly. "No," he said innocently, wondering how in the world she could think he was insane. He left it ambiguous whether he was telling her whether he thought she was crazy or if everyone was as well. He could leave it up to her to decide how she wanted to interpret him. "It is complete bullshit, though," Navajo added on the heels of his last statement, leaving Caitlyn no silence to dissect his one word answer. "Funny how they think this kind of chaos is just a stone's throw from 'recovery.'" With a roll of his eyes, Navajo glanced toward the ceiling, praying to a God that he'd never believed in that just this once, he could prove himself and send a meteor hurtling into this godforsaken loonie bin right now. "Navajo," he parroted, wondering is he wanted to pull a James Bond and state his full name. He didn't, so instead he offered Caitlyn a rare smile, which almost resembled more of a snarl anyway. But he hoped it would suffice, as it was indeed sincere. "Thank you," he said, as opposed to his normal response of 'I do, too.' "It used to be blue." Before he'd stripped it down to it's regular black colour. Before he'd bleached it. It wasn't his electric blue mohawk anymore, that was for sure, and honestly, Navajo wasn't altogether too fond of it anymore. But the compliment was nice and it seemed quite genuine.

The sound of crying made Navajo grit his teeth and groan inwardly. If the fucking place could be more chaotic, it'd be a circus. It was already practically a zoo as it was, but at least in zoos, the animals were penned and controlled. He balanced his head in his hand. Fuck. This. he thought, staring at Caitlyn again, almost like he was studying her. Actually, he was just trying to toy with her. There was nothing more unnerving than someone staring unblinkingly at you.

time to walk the walk

. w o r d s . 682
. m u s e . pretty gooood
. n o t e s . jhvjkusygfuygsfyufgigfiu
. t a g g e d . caitlyn&&shmanda