Plug it Up (Steve)

Surprisingly, showering in the facility was the least of my worries. I had more concerns about how to force myself to eat one more forkful of food or try to get the other patients to see me as human. One guy, Ryan, admitted to using me as "inspiration" for his ideal body. But who would want to look like me? Who would want to look like a soft, flabby sack of--

That's fat talk. No fat talk. My body is fine. My body is fine. I am fine. I let the water roll off my body and take the fat talk with it. Being away from the cameras and the questions was nice, but I missed the outside world. I missed my students, my boyfriend, Mark, and the sensation of diamond hitting diamond. Though I'll recover, it won't change the fact that this eating disorder stole my band's first season away from me.

At first, I seemed to miss my eating disorder. I knew it was destructive, but it was still a part of me. If I felt overwhelmed, I just threw up. Now that I can't do that, I am truly left to my own devices. However, like playing the violin, learning healthier coping mechanisms is something that comes with practice and it's never pretty in the beginning. My latest one-on-one session left my full-on ugly crying and cursing myself for even developing this thing in the first place.

But now, I couldn't cry. I just about finished washing when I felt something moist running down my leg, but the thickness told me it wasn't water. Looking down, I saw red mingling with the water. I managed to keep my meal down even as it tried to climb up my throat, but all I could do was stand and stare. I tried to get rid of this thing by purging. I stared in shock at the red streaks between my legs. This was perfectly normal, I tried to remind myself. Except it wasn't. Men don't bleed.

I needed help. It had been a long time since this happened. Why had I decided to recover, if it meant I would bleed in the process? Overcome with anxiety, I screamed "I'm bleeding! I'm bleeding!" like some kind of broken record. I left a trail of blood as I ran and left a handprint on a nearby towel. I didn't know who would help me or if anyone would help me. They would probably think I was crazy or screaming for attention, but attention was the last thing I wanted. I wanted to disappear.
        "Plug it up, Carrie!" A voice came from the shower next to me. Others joined in and seemed to corner me. Others laughed and others stayed silent.

The nurse supervising us demanded to know what was going on. My fellow patients fell silent and all left to change except for Ryan. A cramp tore through my body like lightning.
        "I think Steve is either trans or intersex."
        "You're not helping." The nurse shooed him away as well. "You're okay." Easy to say when the showers look like a crime scene. My breathing began to slow, but I was still feeling quite shaky. As I rose to my feet, the nurse helped me.
        "Is this the first time you had your cycle?" Talk about pinpointing the problem.
        "No."
        "So you know what's going on?"
        "Yes. It's my period. But it's a shameful thing."
        "It's not shameful. It's something natural."
        "Not for a guy, though. And I was born male too."
        "I see. Let's get you to bed. You can talk to me if you need anything."
       

Bang Bang You're Dead (Landon)

Bless this kid for putting up with the difficult vocal part I wrote for Josh. I may or may not have unintentionally modeled the character after myself which led to high belting, compressed lyrics, and other things that would fray an ordinary theater kid's vocal cords, but that's not the case with Kyle Palacios. He simply nodded, acted, and killed it.
         "That was great, everyone. Take five." The students rushed for the onigiri and teriyaki meats. While a high school student has surprising endurance, I know better than to drive them to that point. Kyle watched my presentations and other content to do character research and for vocal inspiration. He called some of my more impressive covers "inhuman".

I've been wanting to write a musical adaptation of something for so long and now my dream was being realized. I created the noise and now I must cut through it. Trashing armories and promoting extreme binaries in going about a certain issue won't doing anything, but getting inside of someone's head will. Both sides love hijacking tragedies to further their platforms, which is something that undermines the nature of the situation and exploits survivors in the name of politics.

After some consideration, I decided to see a psychologist because I get very strong urges to chew or even eat non-edible things. It's been a problem for much of my life. As a kid, I got bored and ate a pencil. Nowadays, it's paper and it happens mostly when I'm hungry. Psychologists liked to probe me in an interrogation-style setting, but now things might be different. I wasn't the same person I was in high school.