I wish I could say we helped each other recover from our mutual illness, but that would be a lie. In fact, the more our friendship grew, the further into our eating disorders we both regressed. But somehow it felt as though we gave each other strength; the strength to continue living our lives, with and despite our lack of nutrition. And we had been managing quite well for quite some time. A few years, in fact. Which was a few years less then before I had attempted my failed self-recovery. So, that was good, right?

But like I said, I felt that I had a pretty good handle on the whole situation. I was back living on drugs, cigarettes, and alcohol, but I was managing it all way better then before. I didn’t feel as though I was going to pass out every time I stood up or exerted the slightest bit of physical energy. I didn’t think about food and eating every moment of the day. I didn’t try to avoid thinking about food and eating every moment of the day.

I reflected on all this as I stared longingly at Ly, entranced by the beautiful array of sounds that danced from his fingertips through the strings of his guitar. I realized I needed him in my life; like I needed anorexia; like I needed art; like I was beginning to believe I needed Elio.

Elio.

His name suddenly sent shudders of anger through my body.

I furiously spouted out, “That guy I met last night, Elio, guilt-tripped me into eating supper yesterday!” I felt like I was confessing to a murder. I expected Ly to look at me with disappointment and disgust, but instead he looked at me with sympathy in his eyes and a frown spread along his face.

“That sucks!” he exclaimed as he let the corner of his mouth curl up to reveal his surprisingly white teeth and almost-as-white receding gums.

“Yeah!” I took a drag of my smoke. “But he’s so damn hot I couldn’t say no! I mean, he practically begged me to eat!” A lot of this statement may have been a fabrication. “Beg” may not have been the most accurate description. It was more like he nonchalantly encouraged me to eat. But Ly didn’t need to know that. Even though I was pretty certain he did know that.

“You like this guy, huh?” Ly asked as he brushed his fiery-yellow hair away from his brilliantly complimentary blue eyes. He stared at me with a forced look of indifference.

Abandoning all sense of embarrassment, I twisted my head in an exaggerated expression of exasperation. “So much, dude, so much!” I exclaimed.

My mind snapped back to the reality of our shared eating issues. “Except he insisted on making me eat and it pissed me right off! I mean, what fucking business is it of his whether or not I eat! It’s not like we’re dating!” My heart rate quickened, and my body began to shake as I said this.

“I know, right? Why are people always trying to control us?” Ly angrily crushed out his cigarette and threw his back against the couch.

A tense moment passed where we both let our anger and resentment of non-anorexics simmer. Looking to break the tension, I reluctantly admitted, “At least he means well.”

“Yeah, that’s true!” Ly nodded his head and again brushed his hair from his face with a skeletal arm. “They all mean well, I suppose,” he muttered as he resumed strumming his guitar.

My eyes became fixated on his wrists. They looked like two pencils that had been loosely tied together to form a functioning impression of a human limb. It seemed as though they could break at any moment, and their fragility made me jealous. Because all I longed for, as I stared at his wafer-thin appendages, was that my wrists could be as thin as Ly’s. 

I wrapped my fingers around my own wrists to be certain I could still form a complete circle with my fingertips. I could, but I worried there wasn’t enough of a gap between my bones and the flesh of my fingers.

Every time I thought about my weight, I became incredibly anxious. I never felt I was doing enough to sustain my skinny stature, so I would begin plotting ways I could further control my eating habits. Sensing a wave of anxiety washing over me, I decided to change the topic of our conversation.

“Elio might come to your show tonight,” I said with a hopefulness that was betrayed by the underlying fear that I was wrong.

“That would be cool,” Ly replied as he fought back a sneer and continued distractedly strumming away at his guitar.

Ly always became weird when I talked about guys. I mean, he’s always known that I was gay, and had made it perfectly clear that he didn’t care. He also made it clear from the beginning of our friendship that he wasn’t interested in any kind of sexual relationship with anyone. And I decided that I didn’t care. No matter how much I wanted him, I had to think and act as though I didn’t want or think about him sexually. I had to act as though I thought of him as just a friend, and never anything more. And I was glad for his friendship. In Ly I found a kindred spirit, an almost identical reflection of myself and my experiences. And I believe he felt the same way about me. Because every time I talked about, or introduced him to, a male friend, he became incredibly defensive and possessive of me. It was as though he didn’t want me, but he didn’t want anyone else to want me either. It was very confusing. So, I did my best to ignore the whole situation, choosing, instead, to starve away my feelings as opposed to facing them.