How I Got Here by Hannah Harvey

went to my brother for help, because I was being bullied at school, and his only piece of advice on dealing with their remarks, is to tell me to take an exercise class. All I kept thinking at the time was, he’s siding with them all, he’s telling me that I could do with losing some weight, he’s telling me that I’m not good enough the way I am.
    My head started spinning and I remember dazedly getting to my feet, grabbing my bag from the floor but forgetting my jacket, I stumbled out of the door and into the cold, I heard him call after me but he doesn’t follow, not even as far as the front door.
    The entire trip back into the city, I was forcing back the tears, because this hadn’t been what I was expecting. I felt so alone. Outside the window of the bus the lights blurred together, my eyes had filled with tears, but I forced myself to keep a grip, clenching my fists so hard that I broke the skin.
    When I get home neither of my parents speak to me, except for a quick enquiry by my dad on how my day was, which he didn’t even look up from his paper for. I went right to my room and slammed the door shut, it has a lock on the inside, so I slid it into place, even though I knew that neither of them would com e and check on me. I spent a large portion of the night, staring at my reflection in the full length mirror, and do you know what I saw? I saw what they had all been telling me was there, I saw a horrible, ugly, fat girl. I couldn’t take it; I needed to do something to keep myself thinking about it, I needed to control something.
    I stayed up for the best part of the night tearing my room apart, organizing everything until it follows a pattern, my books are arranged by author, my clothes by color, the pens on my desk are lined up in neat rows, everything has to remain in its place, and I can’t handle anything being moved, it becomes an obsession of mine.
    That’s when I started needing some sort of order around me, it’s when I began organizing everything, the doctors here tell me it’s a touch of OCD, I tell myself it was my way of coping with the disorder of my life.
     
     
     
     
    Chapter Six
    Session 3
    ‘Right,’ Oliver coughs to clear his throat, blinks a couple of times and then folds the letter, adding it to the small pile inside his messenger style bag. He wants to tell her that she’s perfect, that none of those people know what they are talking about; he wants to tell her that she is n’t fat and never was. Most of all he wants to make her see that she is beautiful and strong. Actually most of all he really wants to give Wade a piece of his mind. Common sense kicks in and he realizes he can’t do any of that. Telling her she is perfect wouldn’t help, she wouldn’t believe him, and she would just think that he was only saying it because he pitied her, and he didn’t, that wasn’t why he wanted to tell her how he saw her. Yelling at Wade may make him feel better, but it wouldn’t do anything to help her, but he thinks he might know what will.
    ‘What?’ She asks and he looks up at her confused, so she elaborates, ‘Right isn’t a complete sentence, I just figured there was something coming after it.’
    ‘Oh right sorry – I drifted off there a little.’ He stands up and goes around to the other side of her bed, looking around him cautiously; he starts to unhook her drip.
    ‘What are you doing?’ She lowers her voice to a whisper, even though there isn’t anyone near her room at the moment, she still feels it best to be on the safe side.
    ‘I thought you wanted to go to the park.’ He’s so casual about it that it catches her off guard, he’s speaking as though this is a normal situation, just a guy taking a girl for a walk in the park, but it isn’t, there isn’t anything normal about this situation.
    ‘You’ve been saying no for the past week, you said that it was too risky, that you could get into trouble, you said you were worried about me going out.’
    ‘I changed