Skin And Bones; Harry Styles

It becomes a cycle, each day. He wakes up with the voice impatiently yelling at him to get off his fat ass and go out for a run. When he’s done he comes back and the voice makes him step onto the scale, praying that the numbers have gone down. Then he swallows a bottle of water, chews some gum, before going off on his daily activities. Thoughts of food and calories and weight fill the spaces in his mind, they make up for the emptiness and pain as he pushes through his daily chores, the voice impatiently waiting for him to complete them so that he can go to the gym for more workouts, more training. He takes the diet pills, drinks the green tea and chews the celery stalks, and he pretends to ignore the hunger pains while he hurts himself, taking the pangs away.

This is all he’s ever deserved.

—

It doesn’t take long for him to turn to skin and bones, weak and frail, shivering from the cold even on the warmest days. He can’t stand and he can’t move, and his band mates become so frightened that they rush him to the hospital, force him to get help for his eating disorder.

On the way to the clinic, while the boys are crying over him, the voice tells him not to feel guilty. It tells him that they’re just faking it, that they don’t really care. And he believes them. The voice warns him not to tell anyone about it, to just insist over and over that he’s fine.

But I’m not fine, he argues. I’m tired and starving and weak and I’m scared and depressed and I don’t think I want to live like this anymore.

The voice scoffs at him. You’re overreacting. The only thing that’s wrong with you is how fat you are, that’s all.

But I’m so sad all the time, I can’t keep listening to you, he insists.

If you tell them about me, they’ll try to take me away from you forever. Is that what you want? I’m the only one who loves you Harry, do you want to lose me? I only hurt you because you are my child, I want you to be perfect and skinny and happy. Think of everything I’ve done for you, think of how much less of a fat mess you are now than before I came in, the voice says.

Harry decides that once again, the voice is right. He can’t imagine living without it. The voice is his worst enemy but it’s still his best friend. He hates it, but he loves it more than he has loved anything else in the world. Sometimes it hurts, but the voice has saved him so many times. The voice truly is the only one who cares about him.

So when the doctors began coaxing him to tell the truth, Harry vehemently refuses. He doesn’t want to lose the voice, he doesn’t want to be normal. He’s perfectly fine, why are they treating him like a fucking cripple?

Anger takes control of him, and he begins causing havoc in the room. The boys try to hold him down but he’s so furious, the voice is instigating the anger, screaming at him how dare they call him a mental patient?

When the doctors can’t control him, when he gets violent enough, they drag him off to a padded room, holding him down with restraints. The other boys are crying so badly, they look at him like he’s a disappointment, like he’s failed them and Harry becomes so fucking angry, because he’s so sick of never being fucking good enough. He yells at them to leave him alone, that he hates them all, that he wants them to die. They start to cry even more as they tell him it’s okay, but Harry isn’t listening. He yanks on the restraints, why are they chaining him down like some kind of animal?

Finally the rage calms down into whimpering sobs that wreck his body as he curls into a ball on the bed. He’s so tired, he just wants to sleep, he wants to sleep until he dies, he doesn’t want to have to deal with this anymore. He hasn’t had a thing to eat in more than two weeks, the only thing inside his body was water and his system was already beginning to malfunction. But he doesn’t care, because he’d rather be skinny than anything else, and the voice tells him that he’s okay, he’s okay, he’s okay. He knows he’s not fucking okay, but the voice has a ways of planting ideas into him, and soon he’s succumbing to the words, and he tells everyone the same thing. I’m okay, I’m okay.

Even though a part of him understands that he’s not okay and that he never will be.

—

“Harry, you’re scaring us. Please eat something.”

“No.”

“Please,” Louis begs, offering a bowl of soup. “Please, I spent hours cooking this for you, I put in your favorite veggies and it’s real healthy and Harry, you need the vitamins.” 

“No, I’m not hungry.”

Louis’ eyes are filled and he turns away to cry into the shoulder of the others. “Please eat, please,” he pleads with Harry.

“You don’t understand,” Harry whispers. “I want to, Louis, I really do but I can’t.”

The voice is in the back of his mind, and it’s angry. You’re a fucking idiot, now he’s going to think there’s something wrong!

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Harry adds quickly. “I’m just really tired. I’ve already eaten anyway.”

“No, you haven’t,” Liam’s voice cracks. “You’re lying, Harry, you know you are. You haven’t eaten a thing in god knows how long, you’re some kind of skeleton!”

“You’ve become so thin, Harry, it’s so scary to look at you..” Zayn’s voice trails off.

“Mate, it’s not healthy, please just drink this bowl of soup and we’ll leave you alone,” Niall begs. “Just one bowl, Haz, it’s not gonna do any harm. And even if it did - you’re so skinny anyway, you’re going to need to put on some weight-“

“I’m not skinny!” Harry yells shrilly. “I’m not thin, stop saying that! You’re all a bunch of liars, you don’t care about me and you never did. I’m going up to sleep.”

Louis grabs his arm. “I’m going to make you drink that bowl of soup if its the last thing I do.”

“No, fuck you, no, no!” Harry screams as the other boys hold his arms and legs down onto the chair and Louis forces the burning hot liquid down his throat. Tears start stinging his eyes, and the voice is screaming too. No, you can’t let them do this, you can’t! They’ll make you fat, Harry, why aren’t you fighting back? Fight BACK, you coward! Don’t let them make you fat!

Harry thrashes and yells and kicks and spits the soup out, but eventually after a painful hour they force down a bowl of soup and all the fruits and chunks of chicken and vegetables down his system. Harry’s reduced to tears, streaming down his red face as his mind becomes smothered with the wordsfat, fat, fat repeating themselves. The voice is sobbing in his brain, asking him over and over why he’s so weak, why he’s disappointing it again.

He’s so angry with Louis, it’s all his fucking fault for doing this, he’s the one behind the whole idea, he’s nothing but jealous of Harry. Louis is weeping, his eyes are red with the effort of trying to make Harry drink the soup, and somewhere inside Harry his heart breaks at having hurt Louis like that, but the only other option would have been to become fat and he can’t let that happen.

The boys release him and Harry waits for the voice to give him the order to go to the bathroom, get down onto his knees, and purge it out. His stomach is so weak, even the action of vomiting leaves him dizzy, but the voice refuses to let him lie down. It tells him to get up, go for a run to burn off all that fat.

Harry follows the orders. His muscles cramp and move rustily, and the effort sends pain jolting over every inch of him and as the cold night air whips him in the face, he can’t help but wish that he were dead instead.

—