Everyone thinks I’m sick… mentally, I mean. I’m not talking about, like, severe schizophrenia or psychosis or anything like that, but literally, everyone in my life thinks I have a serious eating disorder. I was first diagnosed with purging disorder, and then I was diagnosed with anorexia-binge/purge subtype (which makes no fucking sense because I don’t even binge, but whatever, I guess). I rarely eat, but when I do, I almost always make myself puke. I swear on my life it isn’t about losing weight or anything. I don’t hate my body like everyone thinks I do. I have my reasons for doing what I do. Anyway, two weeks ago I was discharged from inpatient treatment. I was admitted with excessively low potassium levels and seriously imbalanced electrolytes. When I went to the hospital I was at a BMI of 14.7 which is severely underweight. After four months of group therapy, meal plans, nutritional supplement drinks, nasogastric tubes, IVs and lots antidepressants, I was finally released at a healthy BMI of 20.3. Everyone thought I was so much better when I got out of the hospital, which would make sense if I were actually sick to begin with, but just days after being discharged from the hospital, I “relapsed” as my psychiatrist puts it.
“Danny,” my psychiatrist said, “I know that being a boy with anorexia is tough, especially since there’s a huge stigma surrounding boys with eating disorders, but before we can move on with any treatment. It’s important for you to accept the fact that you’re sick.”
Sick-- I winced at the word, but I kept my mouth shut.
“Come on, Danny. Won’t you at least talk to me this time?” She pleaded.
“There’s not much else for me to say, Dr. Lane,” I sighed. “I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again. I do not have an eating disorder.”
The rest of our session was spent with her trying to convince me that I was anorexic, and me adamantly denying it.
I don’t see most of my family much. I live with my big sister, Diana. Honestly, the only person who seems to care about me is my big sister. Every day she prepares my meals and is insistent on watching me eat them. She can’t be around all the time, though. Diana’s the lead researcher at a chemistry lab; in other words, she’s a busy woman. On the weekdays, when she isn’t around, I flush the meals that she makes for me down the toilet, or I throw them out the window.
I really hate it when Diana gets days off. That means she can watch me eat… force me to eat. Yesterday was one of those days. She barged into my room with a sandwich on a plate and her lab coat still on. She walked up to me and kissed the top of my head.
“Danny, honey,” she crooned, “don’t you see that you’re killing yourself? Please eat, hon, just for me.”
I shook my head.
“Daniel,” she said, taking on a more authoritative tone, “I am not leaving this room until you eat this food I made for you.”
Diana really wasn’t lying. We sat there for forty-five minutes and she still hadn’t left.
My stomach growled loudly.
She sighed, “See, Daniel? You’re so hungry. Please just eat.”
After more of her pleading, I finally acquiesced. With small, tentative bites, I ate her sandwich. Words like disgusting, wrong, and bad ran through my head as I ate.
After finishing the sandwich, I felt sick and disgusting. I had to get the food out of my system immediately.
“I’m so sorry,” I said as I ran past my sister and into the bathroom. After shutting and locking the bathroom door behind me, I kneeled in front of the porcelain bowl like it was a deity, and I emptied the contents of my stomach into it. This was my ritual.
I heard banging on the bathroom door.
“Daniel!” Diana yelled, “you better not be doing what I think you’re doing. Stop it now and come out of there!”
I rinsed my mouth and did as she asked. I had already finished purging everything anyway.
My poor sister was teary-eyed. “Daniel, why would you do that? Why are you hurting yourself like this?”
I had a reason for doing what I did. I wasn’t going to tell her my reason, but I did have one.
When I was younger, my auntie told me about how she used to be a smoker. Her ex-husband hated it when she smoked and would beat her when he found out she had smoked that day. My aunt, trying to be clever, would smoke when he wasn’t at home. Whenever he came home, though, he always knew that she had smoked, and he’d beat her for it. “Well, how did he know?” you may ask. Cigarette smoke smells like a motherfucker, and the scent lingered on my aunt. Even though my aunt was desensitized to the smell, her ex-husband could always smell it on her.
This is the reason why I won’t eat-- why I can’t eat. Like I said, my sister is a chemist. She’s around chemicals all the time. She probably doesn’t realize that I can smell the formaldehyde she puts in my meals.
I’m not sick; I’m just trying to survive.