Tumgik
#tw eating disorders
Text
Hi everyone,
Neurodivergent Insights made a post about ARFID (Avoidant Restrictive Food Intake Disorder) and Anorexia:
Tumblr media
Neurodivergent_insights
87 notes · View notes
homo-sex-shoe-whale · 2 years
Text
As a biochem student and certified nerd, I feel the responsibility to bestow this knowledge upon as many people as I possibly can:
You do NOT need to "earn" meals through exercise.
You know why?
Because exercise only accounts for about 20% of your calories. The majority of the calories your body burns, it uses to keep itself alive. It uses them to power your brain and metabolism. In fact, your brain ALONE is responsible for spending about 20% of your calories.
Your BRAIN, just to keep itself going, uses up just as many (or even more!!!) calories than all the exercise you do.
Your RESTING metabolic rate is responsible for burning between 60 and 75% of your calories.
You don't just deserve food because you're working out. YOU DESERVE FOOD BECAUSE YOUR BODY NEEDS IT TO STAY ALIVE.
48K notes · View notes
fatphobiabusters · 3 months
Text
As unhealthy as you perceive any food to be, it is much more unhealthy to be scared of the act of eating.
-Mod Worthy
1K notes · View notes
a-sip-of-milo · 6 months
Text
Need a reason to live?
Recently, I made four polls with eleven reasons to live in each. Most of those reasons were given to me by people who have also been suicidal in the past, and I decided to compile them into one long list (plus some) for anyone who needs it to come back to when they're out of reasons to keep going.
⚠️ Disclaimer: Please do not turn this into one of those "ALWAYS REBLOG IF YOU SEE" posts. Thank you. ⚠️
Relationships
Your furry companion(s) (this means pets and friends who are furries <3)
Your friends
Your family
Those who look up to you
To reconnect with someone you haven't seen in a while
Your headmates (specific to those who are apart of systems)
There's someone who isn't around anymore who would want you to keep going
To eventually be a mentor to someone
To make sure your animals never have to sleep alone
To fall in love
Your partner
To meet your online friends/mutuals
To tell your mentor/the people who raised you with kindness that you made it
To see someone close to you through their final days
To make it big enough to eventually provide for those you care about
Your FP (personality disorder specific)
Group photos with your (found) family and friends
To help your friends do the same
The friends you've yet to meet
A promise you made to someone special
Acts of kindness
To be there when someone needs you
To see someone smile because of you
To make a stranger's day a little brighter
To hand out compliments to those who need it
To make the world a little bit better before you go
To treat the people around you the way you wish you'd been treated
To be the one person in someone's life who is there unconditionally.
To help someone you love to quit an addiction
To do charitable deeds
Affection
Hugs from someone you trust
Kisses from a partner, close friend or pet
Cuddles when it's cold/lonely
To laugh until your stomach hurts
Forehead touches
To hold someone so tight that they're wheezing
Doting on people when they're feeling down
To make the people around you laugh
Interests
That new game/movie/show/book/album/etc. that you’ve been waiting for
Telling everyone and anyone who will listen about your special interest/hyperfixations
To share creations that aren't appreciated enough
To save up for something that would make life more bearable
To finally complete a collection
Projects would be left unfinished
To travel
To complete a project you've been working on for a long period of time
Projects you've yet to come up with
To start participating in special interests you've had to put on hold
To laugh at the creations you made when you were younger and less experienced
Those who consume your work would never get to see another creation of yours
Spite (because I think spite deserves Its own section:))
To stick it to your abusers
To prove your younger self wrong
To prove the people around you wrong
To prove your younger self right
To prove the people around you right
To spit on the grave of someone who hurt you
As a big 'fuck you' to the world and everyone in it who tried to silence you
To outlive your enemies
To do something that you've never been allowed to do (get a piercing, tattoo, cut or dye your hair, etc.)
To show off your success to the people who doubted you
To make sure whoever hurt you doesn't win
Milestones
You've got a milestone of some kind that you'd like to reach before you go
To see your (future) children reach a milestone of their own
To see a birthday you never thought you'd make it to
To graduate from school
To see your wounds from self-harm heal
To experience old age
To get married
To recover from your eating disorder
To experience independence
To start/complete your transition
To go on your first date
To get your first job
To adopt a child and give them the life that they deserve
To rescue a pet and give them a home
To purchase your first car
To rent/purchase your first house/apartment
To have your first child
To lose your virginity
To experience the joy of knowing you escaped/got through a bad situation
To eventually publish your own book/art piece/etc.
Miscellaneous
To finally get diagnosed with something important
So if nothing else, you can still say you survived
You have a bucket list you'd like to complete
To live because you want to, not because others want you to
Comfort drinks with someone you love
You wrote a letter to yourself that you can't open until a certain date/birthday
Those rare and valuable pieces of media with good representation of a minority/marginalised group.
To read through past conversations with people and cringe/laugh/cry.
All the different foods you've yet to try
To see the world become more accommodating to those who need it
To watch the seasons change
To celebrate the holidays
For those days where you do feel okay, perhaps even good
To eventually replace the stuff in your closet with things that represent who you are now
To read back on journals and diaries you made when you were younger
If you are not in a place where any of these help, that's more than okay as well. It will be here if and when you ever need it. Being suicidal can be extremely lonely and scary and we all deal with it in different ways.
If you have your own reason and you feel comfortable sharing it with me, let me know via asks or DM and it will be added as soon as I can 💞
796 notes · View notes
marmorada · 4 months
Text
Hope this moid dies an ugly and humiliating death. Like to charge reblog to cast
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
406 notes · View notes
drawbauchery · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
391 notes · View notes
tangledinink · 4 months
Note
new gemini update was so good as always but I can't stop thinking:
big mama: there's nothing wrong with my sons
splinter: you fucked up two perfectly good kids is what you did. look at blue. he's got an eating disorder
wwhhhattttt? nooo, don't be silly. leo doesn't have an eating disorder.
leo and donnie have eating disorders--
166 notes · View notes
debunkingfdc · 3 months
Text
"i support neurodivergent people and peple with eating disorders"
ok but are you normal about people with pica
168 notes · View notes
theredofoctober · 30 days
Text
MANNA- CHAPTER TWELVE: FRUIT
Tumblr media
Dark!Hannibal Lecter x Reader x Dark!Will Graham AU fic
TW for eating disorders, noncon, abuse, drugging, Daddy kink, implied child abuse
This is chronologically the twelve chapter
READ AFTER THE CUT...
-
You ascend to your room alone, glancing back over your shoulder in the paranoia that one or the other man pursues you like night after the sun.
Neither have taken you by way of carnality since Will rutted you against the wall. It seems an unnatural strike of fortune, and one unlikely to last.
There is too much lust between these beings, hunger of such echoing depths that the sensual urge is but one chained within. Their eyes all evening have picked you to the bone like carrion set at by desert birds. Your cunt parts, empty, about the memory of Will’s fingertips; there is a sense of art unfinished, a crescendo in the crashing of keys only the hands of men can bring into violent birth.
In dread of missing the sound of their approach across the landing you lie quiet in your bed, no music nor comforting hum of the television as your night-time companions. Yet footsteps only halve the house when your captors go to bed, each in their own room, an anti-climax. 
You think of Hannibal, tossed amidst the curse of unsung ardour, then of Will, crushed under the density of an unsated sleep. Such lonely men, in their way, divided by what lies unchartered between them, and with you.
Though by now settled, the skin which Will has touched—struck—still seems to burn with him. Five fingers, the rounded oblong of a palm, a hand that feeds dogs, has fired a gun, has rocked you, fucked you. A hand that Hannibal Lecter reaches for across dead miles of darkness to know as you have, and to love what you have loathed.
Unsettled, you roll on your stomach, but the pulse you hear when overwrought seems to peal through your very bones in its jeering song.
Filth, sin, soil: you taste your shame in its salt, as you have each night since long ago. Yet before your taking for the purpose of this ritual science there had never been pleasure in it, only the experience of staring always at the edges of things. The corners of ceilings, the light at the top of a door, a wall torn to grain by the night, liminality your legacy of innocence.
With Will, with Hannibal, you cannot look away, are made to witness and to partake in every aggression and gentleness with the same focus of attention. For that is what they want, your immersion in the devil’s playhouse. For you to be a doll, a daughter, embraced after the most inclement incident into a state almost soothed.
You cry yourself to sleep, wanting such a practice of love from someone who’s never once hurt you.
*
Hunger wakes you in the night, a restless drumroll that compels you upright in its rallying beat. As you stretch, thinking morosely of the marvel it is to have gorged and still not be full, you hear someone stumble in the nearby hallway, thudding against the adjoining wall.
A fight? Some drunken struggle? An intimacy overheard? No—
There is but a sole pair of scuffing footfalls on the floorboards beyond, too unbalanced to be Dr Lecter’s.
In consternation you go to your door and try the handle. It gives way easily under your hand, allowing you to peer out into the black mystery beyond.
Will lists against the right-hand wall, his eyes glazed and rolling under twitching lids. As you stare, abashed, his limbs fall under him, and he sprawls thrashing in unconscious spasms of animation.
There is blood on his face where he’s bitten his tongue, ebony in the negation of light. An oil spill on a seabird, drowning. A splash of mud on a bog's sunken dead.
You should let him suffer, step over his convulsing form and dart for nearest open window or outer door, but horror shakes you senseless of the thought before it takes full form.
Will’s fit continues, throwing the young man’s slim frame about like a machine caught in the throes of grim malfunction.
God help you: you pity him. He is human, and you are, as well.
“Will?” you say, stepping gingerly towards him. “Daddy? Can you hear me?”
It occurs to you that Will’s death is also yours, your lifelines enmeshed, a symbiosis in which only he would survive your parting. You kneel with your palms hovering over him, recalling very little that you know of First Aid, and entirely terrified of making him worse.
Hannibal’s voice comes from your left, uttering your name with a softness that somehow bears all the authority of a bellowed command.
He steps up quickly behind you, his hair disrupted from its usual tidy arrangement.
“Will’s having a seizure,” you say, in despair. “I don’t know what to do.”
“I’ll help him,” says Hannibal. “Go back to your room.”
You stare at him, dumbfounded by his apparent calm.
“But—”
Again Dr Lecter says your name, without raising his voice, or with any particular emotion. Yet you scuttle back the way you came, jarred by the suggestion of temper in that subtle repetition.
You hear Hannibal calling to Will, the sound of him lifting the other man and carrying his dead weight back to the spare room. The door closing, the subtle murmur behind it of Will rousing, his friend's soft, reassuring reply.
Silence, as of an exhibition ended.
Half an hour edges by, and not once do you stop shaking despite the heat of the autumn night.
Presently a knock comes at your door, and the doctor enters, his eyes lowered in remorse.
“I apologise if I spoke harshly to you. I know that you weren’t being deliberately disobedient. It wasn’t my intention to imbue your evening with additional distress.”
“It’s not your fault,” you say, quite disarmed by the apology. “It’s nobody’s fault. I mean, I shouldn’t have left my room, but I couldn’t just not go out there and see what was going on.”
Hannibal’s expression is opaque, a mask of ivory.
“I detect a concern for Will that isn’t entirely manufactured for my benefit,” he says. “Could it be that such a little cynic loves something other than her hunger?”
“What choice do I have but to care about Will?” you ask, shrilly. “What’s wrong with him?”
Adrenaline runs so high within you that you see the room on a tilt like some demented circus mirror reflection.
“What’s wrong with him?” you ask, again.
This time Dr Lecter answers, his tone low and even so as not to incite further upset.
“I suspect that Will is suffering from a combination of stress and fatigue, although I can’t deny the possibility of a neurological disorder.”
“Jack said he was sick,” you mumble. “And the other night, when I— you know. He looked awful.”
Will's face is punched into your retina like a flash of light, all blinding awfulness.
“And he’s been getting so angry with me,” you say, in a panicked rush. “Even though sometimes he’s almost nice. Is that why? Because he’s not well?”
“Will’s health has certainly contributed to his recent outbursts,” says Hannibal, smoothing your rumpled coverlet with fastidious hands. “The absence of control he feels amidst his fever leads to acts of impulse, particularly when in an environment he’s uncertain of, or feels threatened in.”
“I’m not threatening him,” you insist, hotly. “How could I?”
“I don’t mean in the literal sense. Will has very few close confidants, and those he possesses he guards dearly— that, or it is he himself that Will defends against his competition.”
You look up sharply, and Hannibal smiles, all benign conspiracy.
“Yes, little one. Having considered your thoughts on Will's dislike of you, I suspect that he also fears you may supersede him, or else share intimacies with me that he alone would otherwise possess. Yet Will’s envy is more complex than mere romantic ire, for unlike other rivals he has contended with, Will finds himself in the position of dizzying power over you.”
Dr Lecter pauses, his head at a rueful incline.
“For my part, I admit that it was rash to elect Will as the disciplinarian between us without taking all factors into account. It seems that I underestimated how antagonistic your relationship would become as his immersion in your treatment progressed.”
This you do believe, at least in that the doctor’s dissuasion of Will’s most outrageous verbal lashings is clearly genuine. Your bickering, in its familial likeness, he enjoys: an outright skirmish, repellent it its indecency, he does not.
“As you’ve indicated,” says Dr Lecter, going about your room to address its customary disorder, “Will’s becoming aware that his resentment is not entirely warranted as he finds himself increasingly sympathetic to your case. Such feelings are at odds with his desire to be alone in my company— an intricate conflict for any mind, let alone one so fiercely ablaze.”
“Ablaze?” you repeat. “What do you mean?”
“If my suspicions are correct, then Will’s condition may have been agitated by the ingredients in various dishes served in my home these past few weeks. The symptoms are closely matched to Will’s behaviour— disorientation, loss of consciousness, personality changes, mood swings. It’s unfortunate that I didn’t notice this much sooner.”
There is something performative in Hannibal’s guilt, his unshed tears like the glass eyes of a taxidermy animal. He’s known of Will’s ailment far longer than he suggests, and as he turns his back to close your chest of drawers you feel relieved, no longer forced to entertain this show of lies.
“You mustn’t mention any of this to Will until he’s received a formal diagnosis,” says Dr Lecter. “It may be that he’s simply mentally unwell, which would be a far more complicated outcome to navigate. But what you’ve seen of him lately is merely a conjunction of symptoms and heightened territorial emotions. Will’s true self you’ve yet to meet.”
The assurance is of little comfort to you, being that the nearest you’ve come to perceiving Will at his most natural and honest is in his private conversations with Dr Lecter. Through these you’ve glimpsed a complex creature, one that approaches evil with a newborn’s chary exploration.
You want to believe, for your own sake, that the sensitivity you’ve received from him sporadically evidences the continued persistence of his soul. Yet you cannot decide if he began a good man, changed through Dr Lecter’s influence, or if he’s always been a hunter, each kindness a flash of marsh fire luring you to drown.
The image of Will—twitching, defenceless—ultimately overrides this dilemma of thought.
“So what do we do now?” you ask. “We have to help him.”
Pleased by your concern, Hannibal leans across the bed to kiss the downturned corner of your mouth.
“I’ll reschedule tomorrow’s appointments so that I can tend to him. Will needs rest, first and foremost. As for his role here, it would be safest for him to delegate the majority of his more strenuous duties until he's recovered. I’ll continue them, in his stead.”
Choosing not to linger on the implications of this, you ask, “What about me? What can I do?”
“Healing Will is not your responsibility, little one.”
“But I’m making things worse,” you say, fretfully. “I know it. How can I make him like me?”
Not without humour, Hannibal says, “You can begin by tempering that sharp tongue a bit. Like Will, you rarely attempt to sweeten your words. I’ll never encourage you not to bite, but it is important that you roll on your back when we bid it. You must be our good girl, above all else, or if not good then charming, at the very least.”
You roll onto your side, crushing your face into a valley of pillows.
“I guess I really haven’t been playing along enough,” you mutter.
Hannibal chuckles.
“Not nearly enough, for all your promises. But it’s early days yet, sweet girl. We’ll see how you are once we're used to one another.”
*
 
Morning comes rudely, stalling the excitement like an opera’s intermission.
You take breakfast with Hannibal, only distracted from the usual struggle of eating by the presence of Will’s vacant seat. Having thought of him without respite for hours you’re in state of nervous delirium, your flinching knee a seismic force under the table.
“I want to see Will,” you blurt out, at last. “I want to see if he’s alright.”
“I’ll be taking a tray up to him in a few minutes,” says Dr Lecter, scarcely bothering to hide his delight in this new interest. “Don’t ask him too many questions. No doubt he’s feeling somewhat delicate this morning.”
You watch as Hannibal prepares a separate meal for the other man, cutting fruit and stewing tea leaves with loving ceremony. When he puts a strawberry to your lips you take it, your tongue rasping the juice gamely from his fingertips.
The shock of the previous night has amputated your mulish declination to humour him; even the disgust that meets your every concession is hushed, made redundant by a renewed vow to leave this house on soft feet rather than screams.
Other women have befriended their keepers and lived, as will you, if you can bear to pander to Dr Lecter as long as they.
*
Accompanying Hannibal to Will’s room you find that you’re oddly excited, even gleeful in anticipation of the visit. You’re taken with the notion that his seizure will incur some unknowable change, though whether in Will himself or the dynamics of the households you cannot predict.
Never have you seen him so utterly fragile, the dilapidation of a man. You think of a child, foisted on a detached father by a mother Will had never seen fit to name.
Will he be ashamed that you’ve seen that self so clearly? Will he be angry, indifferent, or else fear the power his weakness allows you as though your thumbs press deep in the fluttering dell of his very throat?
There is another possibility, however, the one your morning-fresh hopes hang onto by their nails: that he’ll remember how you’d crouched at his side and called to him as he shook in the darkness.
“Wait here for a moment,” says Hannibal, as you crowd up behind him at Will’s bedroom door. “I’d like to speak to him alone first.”
You hang back as Dr Lecter goes in, pressing your ear to the door the moment it shuts at his back.
“You’re awake,” says Hannibal, simply. “How are you this morning?”
There is a pause as he sets down the beautifully arranged tray somewhere in the room.
“I feel like I could sleep for another forty-eight hours,” says Will, his voice thick and slightly nasal, a sickbed tenor. “I should probably get up and head home. I need to check on the dogs.”
“I called Alana and asked her to look in on them,” Dr Lecter replies. “It’s inadvisable to drive in this condition. Try to eat. You’ll revive much quicker if you line your stomach with something.”
“Yeah, well. I can’t make any guarantees of keeping it down.”
You hear the metallic scraping of a fork about Will’s plate and writhe in envy. Even unwell he eats without thought of the fat that disallows your enjoyment of any meal. You live vicariously through him, in that moment, imagining the liquor of fruit across his tongue, the forbidden pearls of white sugar.
What you’d give not to be a slave to thinness, the goal whose end will never form.
Hannibal says, "Present issues aside, I can't help observing that you've been conflicted, as of late, Will. One might even say confused."
"Have been since the start of all this,” says Will. “The clouds still haven’t cleared. A bilious forecast.”
"Yet you've no wish to abandon this project for brighter climes."
Will gives a little snort of derision.
"I'm too enmeshed in this household to extract myself now. The night I first touched her was my signature at the end of the page. Indelible ink. No taking it back."
You flatten your face to the door so as to better interpret Hannibal’s silence.
"You feel a genuine duty to our little one, for all your misgivings,” he says, at last. “I was beginning to question if I’d made a mistake."
"She's abrasive,” says Will. “Not exactly malleable. I believe you know what you’re doing, but on paper it seems like an ill-fitting adoption."
"Children are reflections of their parents, and so far she’s shown herself to be a mirror of you. Towards me she is cool, distant, and distrustful. With you, there is an attraction of sorts. Not sensual, nor even familial, but it’s enough that, in spite of your every rebuttal and harsh word, she’s beginning to develop something of a rapport with you."
Laughing tersely, Will says, "Not sure I see it."
"You don't allow yourself to,” says Hannibal. “But you’re aware of that truth, all the same. Each time you relent into even momentary tenderness you turn against her in savagery that is vastly unearned.”
“You asked me to punish her,” Will says, sharply. “Encouraged me to— relish it.”
The admission does not move you; these men have knifed ecstasies of you like oyster flesh enough times to have indicated their tastes.
It is the why you listen for, the object they skirt about with the same flirting avoidance of a tryst that cannot be.
“I’m not referring to punishment,” says Dr Lecter. “This I have openly supported. It’s how you address our charge that’s beginning to make her feel displaced.”
“Are you criticising me, Dr Lecter?” asks Will, with a smile in his voice.
“Certainly not. I’m merely observing a pattern of behaviour, and its impact upon my patient.”
To this Will says nothing, but the tension between the two men is as visible as the door that stands between you.
"If you yearn for the hours that you and I once spent alone, I'm able to accommodate by replenishing that time together,” Hannibal says, at last. “But the blame for that neglect is solely mine. I've foisted our little one upon you without consideration of what response such an abrupt change would elicit."
"You don't have to apologise,” says Will, as surly as ever. “It’s an adjustment. I’m getting used to it.”
Your ears catch the delicate action of him lifting the tea cup on his tray, then of setting it down again.
“I spoke to her alone last night,” he says, abruptly. “Told her of my intentions to stay part of this. For a moment it felt like we connected. Like that was the promise she was looking for. But when I refused her something she wanted, she accused me of being ‘like him’. I figured you'd know who she was referring to.”
“Yes,” says Hannibal. “I can make what I imagine is an accurate guess.”
“Whatever parts we try out here, I don’t want to become the unnamed shadow that stands at her shoulder. It made her the way she is. There’s a tastelessness to that kind of evil.”
"I know. It’s more than apparent that you repel her less through genuine hatred, and more through the necessity to protect yourself from what it would mean to know her, and for her to know you in return.”
As Will replies you hear the huskiness of genuine emotion forced out between gritted teeth.
“All this would be a wasted effort if she were ever taken from me.”
“That won’t happen again,” says Hannibal, at once. “The pillar of salt left when you looked back at Abigail will never form with our new charge. When our second daughter turns to me with the same thirst for intimacy she’s developed for you she’ll be, at last, our Chloris, the nymph turned mistress of flowers."
He speaks with such tender compassion that it starts an ache somewhere in the underwing of your ribcage. What necromancy he conducts here to wake your dead and mangled innards into a living heart you cannot guess, only fear the compassion you’re capable of towards such creatures as would destroy you.
"Our little one would like to speak to you, it seems,” says Dr Lecter, closing the previous subject with a seamless finality. “Should I let her in?”
Will shifts uneasily on the bed, creaking its springs.
“She asked to see me?” he asks.
“She did.”
You imagine the younger man scraping a tangle of hair back from his temples as he gathers his thoughts.
“Where is she?”
Thus your cue to enter announces itself: you open the door, peeping at its edge, oddly shy.
"Hey,” you say, in a semi-whisper.
Will is as grey and moist with feverish sweat as deep-sea stone. His vast eyes nest in violet shadow, the whites a thread work of capillaries.
You pity him, this shambling experiment of Dr Lecter's creation, one of many, no doubt.
"Hello,” says Will, dully. “Sorry about last night."
Edging into the room, you allow Hannibal to slip discreetly away behind you with a light pat on your shoulder.
"Are you okay?" you ask. “How are you feeling?”
"Tired, mostly,” says Will. “I'll get over it. Need to. I’ve got a case to work on."
He scrutinises the half-empty tray before him from under lowered lashes.
"I'm surprised you helped me. You could have run off. Hit me over the head with one of Dr Lecter's vases."
"I wouldn't do that,” you retort. “You even said so. That I— can't."
"No, but you could have gotten away. So why didn’t you?"
There is no surprise in his voice, nor even suspicion, which you’d expected. He merely sounds ill, and trying to be interested, in spite of it.
“I don't know,” you admit. “I felt bad for you, seeing you like that. I didn’t want to leave you."
A weary cynicism twists Will’s features into momentary ugliness.
"You were afraid of being alone with someone you could never hope to understand without me."
"Not just that,” you insist, alarmed by the truth of the insight. “I was scared for you. Really. You should go to a hospital. You need tests. Meds. Scans and stuff, maybe.”
Will searches your face with eyes like dull rain, and some of the guardedness falls away from them.
"If it gets any worse, I will,” he says. “Just not today.”
You see how much he detests his own weakness, the potential to be devoured like an animal fallen in a savannah. If you strike, he will struggle, and sick as he is, you will lose.
So you offer him the gift of submission instead, the cunning exertion of a child's mite power.
"Okay, Daddy.”
You feel rather than see Will straighten in response to the word.
"Don't think I'll ever get used to that,” he says. "It’s alright to use my name. There aren't any rules against it."
"No, but he wouldn’t want me to.”
“When have you ever cared what Dr Lecter thinks?”
Shrugging, you mumble, “I guess I’m just sick of fighting all the time.”
The sick man scrutinises at you for so long that you hop from foot to foot in discomfort, itching your sole against your calf.
“It’s going to be hard for me to trust you,” says Will. “You’re probably just going to pretend until you see an avenue to get out of here.”
“Everything’s pretend, here,” you say, smartly. “Nearly all the conversations in this house are about myths and dreams. Dr Lecter talks about them like they’re real, or something.”
Amusement lights the sunken dark of Will’s gaze.
“He finds their philosophies more valuable than the moral structures most people follow.”
“And me?” you ask. “Am I valuable to him?”
Being that you’re still convinced that your worth to Dr Lecter is entirely reliant on Will’s continued interest, you only ask to discern if he himself understands this, or if he believes Hannibal would love you of his own accord.
With a tired caution, Will says, “Right now, I think you entertain him. What else he feels about you I don’t know.”
“And what do you feel?” you persist. “Still don’t like me?”
At this the young man laughs and shakes his head.
“Ask me again once I’ve gotten to know you. If you can agree to a truce, that is.”
“Fine,” you say, and you put out your hand for him to shake. “Truce. Let’s try that.”
With a wry grin Will accepts, letting go almost at once with a sharp inward breath.
“You’re freezing!”
“Haven't you noticed?” you say, hastily stuffing the offending hand under one arm. “I always am.”
It’s an unfavourable symptom of your hunger, this blood and touch of ice. Under even the sweltering gasp of summer’s heat you’ll shiver, knock-kneed, and suffer at the slightest feather of a draught.
Still, that cold affirms you. Were you to be warm again you’d hate yourself, having regained enough of the weight your system craves to regulate its heat.
Glancing up, you notice Will examining his own hand as though he shares your temperature, his fist a twin to frost.
"Come along, little one," says Hannibal, materialising in the doorway again. "Will needs more rest. Perhaps you’ll see him later on.”
But by late afternoon Will has dragged himself home without saying goodbye, and as before his absence eats a crescent into the house.
*
Some days later you pass an evening with Hannibal like so many others, yet unlike for the new state induced in you through his medicinal enterprise.
You're accustomed to the concoction of drugs that regresses you to a needy youth, the sleepers, the stimulants, the tea that lowers you from the electric heights of righteous hysteria into something slowly numb.
Yet whatever element comprises the pill flushed down by water from today’s gently tipped glass elevates you to orbit a heaven above you, so removed from your imprisonment that you observe all below with an objective eye.
Dr Lecter has bestowed upon you the rare trust that you may eat without prompting or assistance, and you have done so, temporarily rescinding your disordered agitation to a mycelium half-dream.
Thus entranced, you watch yourself drape the tines of your fork back and forth across your half-eaten plate, enthralled by patterns on the porcelain that are not there.
Your eyes drift repeatedly to a painting on Hannibal’s wall, mounted coyly for any dinner guest to comment on.
Naturally, you’ve seen the piece many times before, and have been, in turns, startled and disturbed by its subject.
Now you find yourself dully intrigued, as you were by the Japanese prints. This attention does not go unnoticed by Dr Lecter.
“What is it, little one?” he asks, intently. “Do you have an interest in art?”
“I don’t know,” you say, confused by the banality of the question. “It’s just this picture. Isn’t it... rude?”
Hannibal smirks, eyeing the image with a fond appreciation.
Its focus is a supine young woman, draped, half-naked, on a rumpled bed towards which a curious swan approaches with its curved neck bowed.
Likely it is the original painting, procured at auction, its price unimaginable; all things in this house are ripe with expense, even you, its demanding charge.
“Artistic nudity is only considered rude by children,” says Hannibal, blithely, “or else by shallow and ignorant adults. Does the depiction of genitalia offend you, my darling?”
You gaze up at the cowrie of a cunt under its shadow cap of hair, pinkly presented on spread silk, and think how often your own has been arranged likewise for Will or Hannibal to admire.
“Why is it in this room, specifically?” you ask.
You struggle with the syllables of the words, spitting the sibilants in a manner unbecoming of so distinguished an event as dinner with Dr Lecter.
“Doesn’t it put people off their food?”
“I find it makes for an amusing conversation piece,” says Hannibal, pouring himself another generous glass of wine like the blood of some celestial giant.
You attempt to grimace, none of your muscles quite taking to the motion.
“I don’t think it’s funny at all. Just creepy. Sad.”
“Are familiar with the story of Leda and the Swan? Zeus, a virile and insatiable God, looked upon the queen of Sparta and desired her. So, in order to seduce her, he transformed himself into a swan so that she would be fooled by his beauty and appearance of vulnerability to take him to her bed.���
“He tricked her,” you say, quietly. “He didn’t seduce her, at all.”
Dr Lecter’s face scarcely moves, but there is something of laughter in the lines of his strange beauty.
“So it’s the deception that unnerves you,” he says. “The pretence that he was an innocent creature rather than the all-powerful and lustful deity he truly was.”
You nod, not wanting to admit that you see your own face mirrored in the brushstrokes of the damned queen.
Prophet-like, Hannibal interprets the gesture with flawless vision.
“You empathise with Leda. Recognise the parallels between her story and your own.”
“Is that why you put it there?” you retort, emboldened by the miles between you and the girl slumped in the dining chair. “Because you think you’re the swan?”
“The bird is a shield for the truth, remember,” says Hannibal. “So what would the swan be, in me?”
Dropping the fork with a discordant clatter, you consider.
“The polite, handsome doctor,” you say, at last. “You fool everyone: Jack, Alana Bloom. My parents. They would never have left me here if they knew what you really were.”
Hannibal turns his head at a slight angle, as though by doing so he might uncover some mystery in your face.
“And what am I, little one?”
“I... don’t know,” you admit; a killer, certainly, though there is more to him even than that. “There are a lot of things you’re hiding from me.”
“Tell me your perceptions, then. There’s no need to spare my feelings; after all, you so rarely do.”
Amidst your mushroom-made divinity, you are fearless in your answer.
“You’re a bad person. You’ve done things that would get you into a lot of trouble. Hurt people. Not just me. Not just Tobias. And you don’t feel bad about it. You think that everything you do is right, somehow. Like you should be allowed to do it. Like you’re the gods in all these stories.”
Hannibal absorbs this with the silence of having been sated by your answer.
“And what about Will?” he prompts, some moments later. “Is he, too, a starving monster under the cunning guise of a tender animal?”
“No,” you say, with less certainty. “He’s... sick. You're using him, making him think that this is what he wants.”
Your captor laughs over the rim of his wine glass.
“That’s where you’re wrong, little one. The Will you think you see is only one wing of a swan. Soon, you will glimpse beyond that fragile veil, and feel the mythic need of all immortals to plunder from the weak, merely for the pleasure of knowing that they can.”
A sudden sadness tugs you back to earth like a choke chain, iron-like the lump in your throat.
“So you don’t want to help me, after all,” you mumble. “It really was all a lie.”
Taking your hand across the table, Hannibal presses a thumb to the pulse at your wrist, a soothing motion.
“Not at all,” he says, firmly. “I’m quite fond of you. I wish you to be strong. Each time you find yourself resenting Will and I you must remember that Leda did not die after Zeus bedded her: she became a mother. In you, I seek another outcome. More than one, and not all of them so horrible as you imagine. There will be beauty in this conversion, as well.”
You gaze at him with disbelieving eyes, close to rejecting the hope he grooms in you.
“What other outcomes are you looking for, Dr Lecter? How can I become all the things you want if I don’t understand them? What’s really going on?”
Hannibal kisses your knuckles and places your fork back into your hand.
“Nothing you need to think about at the moment,” he says. “Now, finish what’s on your plate. I’d like you to move on to dessert.”
Just like that, you are his little girl again, the moon having passed across the sun.
95 notes · View notes
amithedevil · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
3K notes · View notes
Text
people love their ghostly, frail anorexic friend until her hair thins and she looks genuinely skeletal, or until she throws up or binges.
people love their hyper adhd friend until he forgets your birthday because he was daydreaming.
people love their quiet, honest autistic friend until they shut down, or visibly stim, or are a bit too blunt, or they weird out your other friends.
people love their tidy ocd friend until she tells you about her intrusive thoughts or trichotillomania (how the fuck do you spell that)
people love their sad-boy depressed friend until he shows you his sh scars or gets admitted to a psych ward or you’re scared he’ll actually kill himself.
people love their gay friends till they get a partner before you.
people love their trans friends until they’re a bit too out there, or they don’t quite pass.
people love their brown friend until he brings up colonialism.
people love their disabled friends until their disability impacts them.
people love their fat friend until she starts loving herself.
people love you, but only if they can step on you to get higher than you.
131 notes · View notes
fatliberation · 14 days
Note
ok so please dont block me just read this ask
so basically i starve myself right? but for sum reason i always scroll through these types of blogs, and im just like, man, i wish i was as happy as them, cause u guys seem to not gaf u know? you guys do what you want and i honestly think thats pretty cool
idk its always when i make myself the hungriest i start scrolling like it dont even make me h0rny i just get sad yk?
idk
Project HEAL theprojectheal.org
The National Alliance for Eating Disorders allianceforeatingdisorders.com
FEDUP fedupcollective.org
Body Reborn bodyreborn.org
MEDA medainc.org
ANAD anad.org
59 notes · View notes
fatphobiabusters · 8 months
Text
This post is to remember the singer Cass Elliot who tragically died due to fatphobia. To put it simply, an entire life of cruelty about Cass Elliot's fatness caused her to resort to starvation diets, substance misuse, and what very well could have been an eating disorder. She attempted to survive the fatphobia by playing the fatphobic, stereotypical role of the "funny fat person." Not even in death was she allowed to escape fatphobia, as her tragic death was used as a fat joke by spreading a rumor that she had died by "gluttony." More specifically: choking on a sandwich. Despite that not being true, people continue to believe that debunked myth today. If not for this fatphobic society, Cass Elliot, an incredibly talented singer, would not have died at age 32, involuntarily leaving her only daughter parentless, and likely would have still been alive today.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
If you're not sure who Cass Elliot was, this is one of her most iconic songs with her former band:
youtube
And here is a solo performance by her. Some people might recognize this song since it was apparently used for a TikTok trend:
youtube
For more details about the horrendous fatphobia she endured her entire 32 years, here is a video and two articles that explain. A trigger warning for the second article since it uses the slur "ob*se" and "overweight."
youtube
In memory of her, please do not call her "Mama Cass." She hated that nickname because it was used specifically due to fatphobic stereotypes.
If anyone needed an example of how deadly fatphobia has been for centuries, I hope you'll think of Cass Elliot, one of the plethora of people who have been killed by fat people's systemic oppression and still faces oppression to this day while 6 feet under.
-Mod Worthy
2K notes · View notes
akindplace · 1 year
Photo
Tumblr media
Beth Evans
367 notes · View notes
autistic-af · 9 months
Text
youtube
Video that calls out the bullshit of:
A 1200 calorie a day diet
The BMI
Ozempic use for weight loss
Fat shaming
Medical discrimination against fat people
Diet culture
Online weight culture
Also discusses eating disorders in women and men.
It starts off with a quirky skit, as the channel is satire but the information is on point.
122 notes · View notes
drawbauchery · 7 months
Text
Tumblr media Tumblr media
violently launching through my computer to hug and support the FUCK out of you
188 notes · View notes