The sun beamed through the few windows that populated my apartment while the opening lines of a live rendition of Bob Dylan’s “When I Paint My Masterpiece” was being performed on my couch.

My best friend Lysander was an incredibly gifted musician studying classical music at a lucrative, local performing arts school. He was usually in three to four bands at a time while also performing solo shows and receiving top marks in school. I was incredibly jealous of his talents.

He finished playing the song and lit a cigarette. “My parents have been nagging me about eating again.” He took a puff and slowly exhaled, letting the smoke trail elegantly from his mouth. “I’m so fucking sick of it!”

“That sucks, dude,” I said as I lit my own cigarette. “Well, you’re always welcome to hide out here!” I dramatically gestured to the small space that was made even smaller by the multitude of artworks that crowded around us.

Lysander laughed. “Thanks, dude, I appreciate it!” He began plucking at the strings of his guitar, improvising a song as we spoke.

I met Lysander, or Ly as I called him, during my first attempt at self-recovery. My decision to give up anorexia was made rather abruptly, as it came as the result of a mushroom trip.

I hadn’t eaten anything for two straight days, which had become the norm for me at the time. I sustained myself with coffee, cigarettes, weed, and whatever hard drug or prescription pill I could get my hands on.

I was 5’10”, weighed 98 pounds, and had been anorexic for six years. My digestive system was so messed up from not eating that any time I ate anything I ended up with explosive diarrhea. I barely slept at night because my heart would pound violently in my chest, making my body shake and my mind race with thoughts of eating. I was always tired and always hungry. But I couldn’t tell anyone, because that would be admitting defeat. So, I had to force myself to use energy I didn’t have to pretend that nothing was wrong with me, and convince both myself and the world that I could keep up with, and even physically surpass, people who ate more in a day then I ate in a week.

I hated it. But I also felt that I needed it. And I didn’t want to let go of it. Or, at least, I didn’t know how to let go of it.

Then one night my two friends and I boiled an ounce of mushrooms into three disgusting cups of tea. As I chugged down the viscous, black liquid, I immediately began to feel the vomit rise in my throat. I ran to the bathroom and began expelling the terrible poison that I forced upon my body. With each violent expulsion, I felt myself grow higher and higher. When I had finished, I turned my head away from the toilet and towards the door, which looked as though it were thirty feet away from me. Indeed, the entire bathroom appeared to have stretched so that the possibility of an exit seemed like a long and arduous journey. Through no small amount of concentration and effort, I managed to propel my way across the expanse of the expanded bathroom, stumbled through the door, and began incessantly babbling about all the wondrous patterns and optical illusions that rippled through my field of vision.

The wind was gusting through the open balcony door, causing the floor-length blue curtains to sway in a way that made me feel like I was caught on a boat in the middle of a tidal wave. Feeling suddenly seasick, I urged my friends to leave their apartment so that we might venture through the city in search of a more comfortable place to chill and trip out.

This search led us to the provincial Legislative grounds, where we were greeted by a plethora of flowers that emerged from the green-covered space in firework-like explosions of dazzling pinks, purples, and reds. As we reveled in the beauty of our surroundings, we quickly became aware of the presence of a lumbering security guard. The paranoia that immediately overtook us caused us to flee across a pedestrian bridge that connected to the city’s south side.

In a blurred haze, we stumbled our way to a populated park. We were suddenly frozen in place by the threatening screams of a would-be jumper that echoed from the over-hanging high-level bridge. Our heads simultaneously twisted upwards in an effort to locate the suicidal individual, but our sight was too clouded by hallucinations for any of us to tell where this person might be. 

The fear of witnessing someone’s death drove us back across the river towards a serpentine staircase whose three-dimensional truth appeared as a two-dimensional obstacle to our drug-addled vision. Unable to tell where one stair ended and the next began, we ascended the staircase by crawling and leaning against the handrail for both guidance and support. My one friend, who was experiencing his first psychedelic-induced high, bounded up and down the staircase two or three steps at a time. I yelled, swore, and implored him to stop moving as he was tripping me out by acting as an ongoing distraction that compounded our already challenging upward journey.

The star-speckled night sky greeted us as we finally reached the top of the staircase and staggered back to my friends’ apartment. We all three collapsed in heaps onto the various couches and mattresses that covered the stain-riddled carpet of their cluttered living room.

I instantly curled myself into a fetal position as I desperately tried to quell the rippling pangs of hunger that suddenly incapacitated me. I began writhing in agony and prayed that the pain would go away. Yet all the while I was trying to pretend that nothing was wrong and that everything I was experiencing was just a normal and natural reaction to all the drugs I had consumed.

Perhaps sensing my clumsy attempt at disguising my pain, my friend innocently offered me a plum. It seemed like such a simple offer, yet I was momentarily mortified. How could he offer me food? I mean, of all things!

Then this voice began to whisper in the back of my head, “It’s just a plum. Eat it! It won’t make you fat!”

So, I grabbed the plum and devoured it within two minutes. To my surprise, my stomach immediately felt better. I was shocked. My entire way of thinking, being, and living came into question. Should I really eat? Do I really need food to survive? Is starvation really worth it?

I contemplated this as I came down from the high. After an intense amount of introspection, I concluded that I needed to start eating or I wouldn’t live to see the end of the next six months. So, I decided that the next day I would start eating again. I convinced myself I was going to eat healthy, and I was going to eat everyday. No matter what.

But it was hard. Making myself eat everyday was scary. I was still afraid that everything I ate would be instantly turned to fat and I would become obese within a week.

Thus, I resolved to seek help and began attending a male eating disorder support group. Attendance was scarce and consisted mostly of sixteen-year-olds who looked like they were ten. Ly was the only other person there my age.

I noticed him immediately. He was the kind of skinny I wanted to be, just a skeleton with smooth skin covering his bones. His shoulder-length blonde hair looked like a golden waterfall cascading from the top of his head. His cheekbones protruded from beneath his sparkling blue eyes, giving his face a hard-edged look that appeared both dangerous and attractive.

When it was his turn to speak his truth before the group, he explained that his parents had insisted he attend these meetings because they were concerned about him. He sounded bitter and resentful. And he avoided any explanation for his reasons for being anorexic. Which I thought curious at first yet found myself doing when it came time for me to recount my own reasons for being there.

He stared at me the entire time I spoke. I avoided his gaze as it made me feel awkward, uncomfortable, and afraid to talk. He was so hot. And he was anorexic, just like me. But I could tell just from looking at him that he wasn’t gay, so I didn’t want to waste my time fantasizing about him. Instead, I focused on how much I wanted to look like him and wondered if it was possible to be that skinny and still eat. I very much doubted it.

He approached me after the meeting, when I convinced myself that someone as hot as him would never talk to me. He asked me for a smoke. We began to talk. In retrospect, the whole scenario felt like a foreshadowing of my first encounter with Elio.

We instantly bonded over music, art, and our shared experiences avoiding eating. We began to hang out and quickly opened up to each other. Ly understood me in a way that no one else ever had. His desire for the starvation, for the thinness, for the perpetual feeling of physical and emotional emptiness that anorexia provided was the same as mine.