Support

They were talking about me.

I could just tell. They were in there, gossiping, making fun of every part of me. Fat thighs, thick waist, chubby stomach. Sunken-in eyes. Chapped lips and dry skin. Every part of me, every part was up there on the plate, ready to be poked and prodded until I was forced to lock myself out of sight.

Little tidbits of the conversation flitting into the room through a thick door. ....‘in denial’...‘needs help’...‘could drop dead any second.’

Gossiping. Always gossiping. About me.

The door open, the words stopped for just a second and Ryan came out into the open. Eyes flickering with doubt when they landed on me, mouth frowning, skinny body leaning against the wall as he blinked. I immediately sat up.

“What were you guys talking about?” I asked, eyes up and wide and staring my question into him. He shifted uncomfortably. He forced a smile onto his lips. He shook his head.

“Nothing.” His smile became wider, realer. “Nothing you need to worry about.”

Nothing. Code for “you.”

I stared holes in him as he walked away, watching every slightest bit of movement, envying the slender body that was now moving away. Why couldn’t I be perfect like that? Skinny, thin, beautiful?

The door was now closed; the chain of insults and snippets of causerie was back in motion. Hushed voices that spoke words I could barely tell apart from each other were all I could hear. I strained my hardest to listen, I really did try, but to no avail.

It wasn’t very long before Spencer and Jon came out, too, and they looked at me with analyzation hidden in their eyes. Jon frowned, Spencer crossed his arms, I stared. Jon was the first to speak.

“Brendon, you need help.”

My eyes immediately shot open, and I started shaking my head back and forth furiously, as if I could shake Jon’s words out of my mind. Repeating one syllable, over and over. “No, no, no, no, no.”

A vice-grip suddenly on my arm, and Spencer’s eyes staring into mine. I looked away from the penetrating gaze. “You’re nothing but skin and bones.”

I glanced down at my stomach, staring at the chubby stomach and huge thighs and wondering what distorted version of me Spencer was seeing. Skin and bones? More like endless layers of fat.

“You need to get help, right now.” Jon stared down at me with this ‘tough love’ look on his face, with disapproving eyes staring at me. I turned my head ‘till he couldn’t look into my eyes. I couldn’t let him do that. If he could look into my eyes, he could look into my soul. “We’ve been trying to find you a support group.”

“What?” My jaw dropped; I could feel my eyes tearing up. “Why? I don’t need help. I’m fine. I’m fine.”

They looked at each other and nodded, the same way Mafia members nod at each other before they go after someone, and then reached out for me. I shrank away like an animal. Their hands still managed to clench onto my arms.

Fingers scraping tears into the couch, my brittle nails nearly breaking against the tough cloth, I could hear a scream building up in my chest as they started to drag me off to the execution room. The guillotine. The scale.

Trying to cry out, with my heart diving into my lungs and cutting off my airways. Couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think. All life cut off. So scared.

Dragged to the bathroom, the scale there, waiting, the little black numbers already snickering at me. Laughing, always laughing. No matter what the weight was, they told me it was too heavy.

Shirt came off. They made me stare into the mirror.

Tears slipping down my face at the sight of an uncovered, exposed, absolutely vile me.

“This is why we say you need help,” Jon said, looking at the mirror at my chest and my stomach and my arms. He and Spencer didn’t bother setting me on the ground; they knew I’d run away. They held me up like a limp little doll.

“You’re a skeleton,” Spencer added on.

An obese skeleton.

“This starving-yourself operation is not working out for you. You could die, Brendon.”

At least I might die skinny.

“You need to gain some weight back.”

No I don’t.

“You need help.”

“I don’t.” I stared at my own reflection, watching the near-hatred flickering in my eyes, the lips almost curling back into a snarl. Hating my reflection. Hardly believing it was me.

Jon bit his lip, probably trying to keep back from yelling at me, and then he shook his head and muttered, “We’ve found a support group and we’re gonna sign you up for it.”

“It won’t work. There’s nothing wrong with me.”

Spencer groaned in frustration, Jon sighed, and suddenly I was dropped down to the floor. Free.

They’d given up.

-------

Dewey grass cold and wet beneath fragile hands, night air tingling my lungs as it mixed in with the cigarette smoke. Blow out one puff, take another in. Endless cycle of self-destruction.

Ryan’s head on my chest, gazing up at the stars. Watching the tingling lights of passing airplanes. His ear pressed up against my heart, listening to the slow beat; his hand on my stomach with fingers just barely touching ribs. It’s what we’d do every night. We’d go out and lay on the grass with his head on my chest and we’d just meditate for a while.

He liked it because it proved I was still alive. I liked it because it felt good to have a friend’s pulse beating in time with my own.

“Did they convince you?” he asked suddenly, voice sharp like a knife in contrast to the cricket chirps. I blinked. It took me a moment to figure out what he was referring to.

“No.” My cigarette smoke seemed to curl around the word. “They didn’t.”

He took his head off my chest, looked me right in the eyes in this way that kept me staring at him. “Brendon, you need this.”

I shook my head and opened my mouth in protest, but he continued.

“You’re starving yourself, and it’s killing you. You’re sick. You need help.”

“I’m only doing it until I’m thin,” I told him with earnest eyes. “Until I’m perfect.”

His eyes rolled. “There’s no such thing as perfection.”

My jaw and stomach both dropped to the ground, and my eyes became huge the second his words started echoing in my ears. Ryan was the one person I’d expected to never turn against me like this, the one who was supposed to always be by my side. My best friend. The one I could trust.

How could he do this to me?

“There is,” I insisted, feeling the tears erupting in my eyes. “And I’ll achieve it. Someday.”

Someday, I’ll be perfect.