“I guess it began when I was thirteen,” I replied candidly. “When I first really began to realize my developing gay identity.” I paused to fully reflect on my complicated relationship with my sexuality. “It was an identity I didn’t truly want, and, therefore, could never fully accept. I felt as though I had no control over my life, like somebody else was deciding my fate for me. So, I began to restrict my food intake in an effort to lose weight, because I felt my eating habits and physical appearance were the only things I could control, since I couldn’t control my sexual identity or who I was sexually attracted to.” I don’t think I had ever fully admitted this to myself or to anyone else.

“Why did it matter so much to you?” Elio asked.

“Because I never had any choice in the matter.” These words seemed to slip from my lips automatically, as though they were on the tip of my tongue all along, just waiting for the moment to be spoken aloud. “And I didn’t like the idea of not being in control of my own life!” My tone became fiercer and my face contorted into a look of anger. “I didn’t wanna deal with people treating me differently or seeing me differently because I suddenly went from being straight to being gay. Even though I was already gay, and I wasn’t really changing who I was, I was only admitting who I really am, I was still afraid that speaking my truth would not only change me but change how people saw me and treated me. I was afraid I would be a different me; a me I didn’t know; a me I didn’t wanna know because I was afraid I would hate that me and that me would hate the current me. And all I wanted to be was the current me because I liked that me.” I looked out at the river, over which a thin fog was beginning to develop. I felt like I was standing a thousand miles away from my reality, and the words I had spoken were echoes repeated by some other, distant, ethereal voice that was both mine and not mine. The words of truth I spoke, I spoke to myself. For I felt I was alone, blazing my path through life in solitary silence, just like the figure in Caspar David Friedrich’s painting Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog.

“Anorexia offered solutions. It offered the self-satisfaction of an empty stomach, a decreasing waistline, a petite, fragile physique, and a below-average weight.” My breathing began to deepen, and my heart began to race. “And control! Above all else, it always offered control!” My eyes began to fill with tears and my vision began to look misty. The multitude of colours that composed my surrounding reality began to degrade into a series of abstract blotches that danced before my eyes like a Jackson Pollock painting. It was then I realized that I was in love with anorexia, that it was the greatest, most significant love of my life, and I didn’t want to let it go.

“Eventually, denial and self-starvation became a regular part of my life,” I stated as I pulled myself from my drug-induced delusion. “And I don’t know how to give up that part of my life.”

I stood frozen in place, as though I had become a camouflaged piece of the night-covered landscape. My mind flashed through all the days when I avoided eating. All the excuses I made to convince friends I wasn’t hungry because I had eaten earlier. All the times I stuck my hand down my throat when I was sure no one was around to hear, swirling my finger so my previously consumed meal would slide from my body in necessary silence. All the drugs I took to curb my appetite and provide me with a temporary source of energy. All the cigarettes I smoked in place of eating actual meals. All the laxatives I took even though I hadn’t eaten in days. All the times I convinced myself that what I was doing was okay, that I wasn’t harming myself, and that I could keep starving myself forever. All the times I told myself I didn’t have a problem, even though I knew I really did.

I felt that I should feel sad and regretful. But in that moment, I felt nothing, and I didn’t care that I felt nothing. Because in that moment, I didn’t want to feel anything. Because feeling nothing felt better than feeling anything.

An uncomfortable silence fell over us. The blare of the nearby traffic began ringing in my ears and became momentarily deafening. I imagined it was a symphony, providing a soundtrack to the flashback of my life. I heard Elio awkwardly shift his body forward and wrap his hands around his legs. He forced a cough or two then turned sheepishly to Ly, who had remained suspiciously quiet through my entire tirade. “What about you, why do you starve yourself? I mean, you’re so talented! You have so many special gifts! Why would you want to throw that all away for an eating disorder?” I couldn’t help but feel he was talking to me while he said this.

Ly’s face turned a ghostly white that seemed to glow like a paper lantern, illuminating the stark, still darkness that was a perfect metaphor for the experiences of the day.

I knew Ly’s story. I was the first person outside his immediate family that he had confessed it to, and possibly the first person he had told the complete story to. I had never repeated it to anyone because it wasn’t my story to tell. And I didn’t know if Ly would be willing to tell it to Elio, who was practically a complete stranger. I wished I had told Elio not to ask about Ly’s disorder. I wished I hadn’t talked so long about my own disorder, so that maybe the conversation could have moved away from this subject, and Ly wouldn’t be in the position where he would have to discuss his painful past. I wished Elio had never asked about our disorders. I wished that anorexia wasn’t even a thing.

Ly began to tremble. I glided up against him, placed my hands on his shoulders, and reassuringly massaged him till his trembling ceased and his breathing regulated.

He pulled away and fumbled through his hoodie pocket for his cigarettes and lighter. After dropping it twice, he finally got a cigarette to his mouth. He lit it, then inhaled and exhaled a long drag of smoke.