Together (Larry Stylinson) ✅

Painful

Louis' Pov

I was eleven shots and who knows how many hits in when I started throwing up. Who really cared though? I was 25 and living in a studio apartment I could barely afford with a job let alone without one. My mum was dead, I had hardly any friends and I was single.

This wasn't how things were supposed to turn out.

I didn't even make it to the bathroom. I just leaned over my bed and puked onto the floor, not caring where it landed. Wiping my mouth, I took a swig or Diet Coke, one of the only things that I allowed myself to consume these days aside from drugs.

I placed the bottle back on my desk and laid back in bed, the room spinning around me. I remember feeling like I wanted to hurt myself. I had thought about it five million times, but I knew mum wouldn't want that. I would be letting her down if I did that. I would be wasting my own life, my own chance to live.

But what I had wasn't much of a life anymore. I can't remember the last time I went out on the weekends. The last time I went to a restaurant. No, my nights consisted of running up and down the stairs of my apartment until a neighbor complained, and then going outside in the freezing cold and running some more. Then I would way myself. Once. Twice. Three times. Use the bathroom and try again. But the number was never low enough.

I wasn't oblivious. I'd noticed I had lost weight. I was aware that almost none of my clothes fit and that my once muscular and athletic legs were now bony tooth picks. But I didn't care. This was my way of dealing now. This was my way of feeling good, of numbing out. And I didn't want to stop.

I remember when Harry used to have an eating disorder. How I used to hold his thin, shivering body in my arms and beg him to just have a few bites. Beg him to get off the treadmill. And I could never understand why he didn't listen. But I do now. I understand better than ever. Truly.

The difference between Harry and I is that he had a reason to recover at the time. We had been dating two years when he started getting symptomatic. Someone had made a comment about his body at the gym and he just snapped. An innocent diet turned into a never-ending restriction. Lists of foods he couldn't eat anymore, ingredients I shouldn't use anymore.  Hours and hours spent running or at the gym.

The only reason he got better was because of me. And his sister Gemma. We loved him. We took him to the doctor, we encouraged him. And finally, nearly a year later, he was on the road to recovery, getting stronger by the day. Pushing forward.

That was never going to be me though. I didn't have a Gemma or a Louis to stand by my side. And even if I did, I would push them away. My illness wasn't an accident. I deserved this. I needed this. I wanted this.

If I could play God, I would have made it me in the hospital bed. If I could change the past, I would have made it me who got the cancer — I would have made it me who passed away. Because it was me who deserved to die. Not mother. Never ever mother.

I was the one who had been so awful to her. I was the one who never spent any time with her, who moved away and left her behind in England to pursue "my dream career in New York." I was the one who told her I hated her when she asked me to come for holiday. I was the one who chose to spend Christmases with Harry instead of the family.

I was the one who deserved to die. And every single god damn die I wished it was me, I wished it wasn't her. I wished that I could just undo all of it, bring her back and make things right again.

But I couldn't.

Rolling over on my bed, I pressed on my stomach, which was aching now — from hunger or the alcohol I wasn't sure. My eyes began to flutter and I felt sleep coming. But all I could think  before doZing off was: I hope I don't wake up.