Fic: If I Just Keep Breathing
Occasionally I post things instead of just writing and then forgetting about them.
Title: If I Just Keep Breathing
Fandom: Bandom (MCR)
Pairing/Characters: Bob gen
Rating/warnings Mature, HUGE FREAKING WARNING for eating disorders, including disordered thoughts and a description of purging
Summary: It took Bob most of his life to find a way to ( Read more... )
Title: If I Just Keep Breathing
Fandom: Bandom (MCR)
Pairing/Characters: Bob gen
Rating/warnings Mature, HUGE FREAKING WARNING for eating disorders, including disordered thoughts and a description of purging
Summary: It took Bob most of his life to find a way to ( Read more... )
I don't know if we've discussed fic preferences before or not, but realism is what I most appreciate in a fic. Even in the most extreme AUs, I expect them to be realistic (that even if we're talking about aliens and space the fic makes me believe that, if such universe existed, that's exactly how it would be.) When you told me it was a ED fic, I guess I was afraid of romanticized ED, which is something I've encountered in the majority of the ED fics I've read.
Granted, I'm no ED expert, but in my humble opinion, this is EXACTLY how ED fics should be written. It's realistic, it's blunt, it gives you goosebumps, it provokes a reaction, but there are no gratuitous shocking scenes and no extreme victimization of the character and no unrealistic endings or solutions.
I loved everything, but the part in which Bob admits that touching his own body was worse than the pictures he saw on the website was fantastic, because it helped me to empathize with how Bob truly felt about his body. I mean, he didn't want to be all skin and bones, that was never what this was about (which you emphasize in the part about not liking how he could see his ribs through his skin) but he just didn't know how to stop.
I loved the little details, like how he felt bloated whenever he ate a full meal, or the tricks he used so people wouldn't realize he wasn't eating.
It was heartbreaking how he constantly lived in fear of getting caught, and it was also heartbreaking (for me) that his bandmates didn't comment about his weight loss at all, and that, despite leaving pretty much on top of each other, they never noticed that Bob wasn't eating. I guess it made me feel like they didn't really care that much about him. Or maybe they just believed that Bob was dieting, not starving himself. Although when he started to get constantly tired and sick, I was surprised that only Brian was smart enough (or cared about enough) to put two and two together. But I might be projecting my whole Bob/MCR issues here. (Would you mind explaining this part to me? Like, why they didn't notice/mention anything?)
Lastly, I kind of relate with Bob. See, I smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. Have been for over 15 years now. I know it'll kill me, but I just don't know how to stop. But when I was pregnant, I was able to quit cold turkey. And then afterwards, I picked it up again. So people often ask me why can't I quit if I was able to do so during both of my pregnancies. Well, the answer is simple: if I had smoked while I was pregnant, it would've affected my babies. Right now, I'm the only one affected by my vice (I don't smoke inside my house or car, and never EVER in front of my kids, even if it's an open space.) I guess I don't love myself enough to stop for me. I realize it's not the same than what happened with Bob, but in a way, it hit him that if he didn't stop, his ED would affect others, not just him. I mean, he pretty much gave Gerard advice in how to become an anorexic. That had to be terrifying to Bob.
IN CONCLUSION: I adored this, and obviously I had A LOT of opinions about it, and I'm really, REALLY glad I gave it a chance.
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This fic really came out of a) my own experiences and b) gala_apples wanting realistic ED fic, so I was definitely aiming for something that felt real. I've never read that 'romantic' kind of ED fic because I generally avoid fic on the topic, but I can imagine what it would be like. I sort of get the appeal of the love cures everything/healing cock kind of fic, but it doesn't do it for me, and especially not with EDs. It's not something that can be fixed by love alone, although having people to love and support you can help a lot.
You make a good point about his bandmates not noticing, and I guess that's one point where I was writing too much from my own life. It wasn't a conscious decision to have them not notice or not confront him about it, but I guess it was a subconscious one.
I spent a year going through pretty much the exact same thing as Bob - EDNOS, or an eating disorder which doesn't meet the diagnostic criteria for any of the accepted, recognised disorders like anorexia or bulimia nervosa. That was way back in 2006, and most of the time I consider myself fully recovered, but it still influences me. I came close to having a minor relapse fairly recently, because when I feel really depressed or powerless, my first coping mechanism is still to stop eating. So, that's the background.
The flipside to that is that none of my immediate family have ever recognised that I had an eating disorder, even though I was living with them the whole time that I was undergoing the worst of it. Because I didn't lose weight very fast, never got *too* thin and still ate meals with them (although I never ate more than half of what was on my plate) they didn't really notice. And I think the idea that eating less and losing weight are good things is so deeply ingrained in our culture, especially for women, that they didn't see anything wrong with it either. Plus, like Bob in the fic, I tried to hide it. I hated what I was doing to myself, and I hated that nobody noticed, but at the same time, controlling what I ate seemed to be the only way I could control my life at all back then, and I was terrified of someone trying to force me to stop. As strange as it sounds, being hungry all the time made me feel strong. It felt like my disorder was all I had, and if someone came and took that away, then I'd have nothing.
After about six months, though, I was getting sick basically all the time due to the lack of nutrients, and after one episode of blargh when I spent two weeks in bed feeling so drained that it was exhausting just to roll over, I decided I wanted to stop. So I went and found help by myself and eventually I just did it more or less on my own. But the fact remains that my family, for all that they love me and want to see me healthy, still don't believe I ever had an ED.
I guess my point is, as horrible as it seems that the rest of MCR didn't realise what Bob was going through, it's possible for people to live with you and love you and still not notice something's wrong. I wrote Brian as the only one who noticed for plot-related reasons since I wanted to explore the way it affected Bob when he left, but I honestly didn't realise what that implied about the others until you brought it up. It's not something I intended to say, but in a way, it's just as much a part of my own experience as the rest of the fic.
I'm so glad you gave it a chance, Laura. I didn't know if you'd want to, seeing as it's really not a happy Bob-fic at all, but it means so much to me that you did.
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