TW: Eating disorder/weight/depression/suicide 

Sitting next to me on the windowsill, Ambrose told me about his sister, that she was constantly trying to make him meet new people. "It's like she refuses to hear me," he went on. "When I tell her I'm not interested in having friends for the sake of having friends. Like, if I meet someone and we become friends, that's totally different to trying to force a friendship onto every interaction."  

"Absolutely," I agreed.

The coffee was making my head slightly fuzzy and my hands shake, and I put the nearly empty mug down beside me so I could clasp my hands together.

I didn't know how I was going to stand up steadily, couldn't stop running through the possible outcomes of that movement as he spoke, realised too late that he had been speaking. 

"I'm so sorry, I completely spaced out," I admitted. "It's a bad habit." A bad habit or a side effect of barely eating? Suddenly I wanted to laugh; what a fucking stupid thing I was doing, what a fucking joke this all was.

Only, it isn't a joke when you can't stop despite knowing you should, that if you don't, you'll end up wired to a hospital bed or smashing your head on the way down. None of it is a joke, and I felt my eyes turn hot with tears, and I blinked desperately to push them away. 

I don't if he was looking at me then, because I didn't dare look anywhere near him.

I wanted someone to fucking hear me, but how could they listen if I wasn't making a sound? I wanted to scream but I couldn't find the courage to do so. I felt like someone had cut out my larynx. 

"Oh, I'm the same," he said. "I miss entire conversations because I'm having my own private ones." He must have looked in my direction then, for he asked, rather softly - the tone of his voice somewhat threw me off - "Everything okay?" 

I thought, fuck, pull it together. Pull it TOGETHER. 

Nodding, pressing my fingers into the back of my hand, I smiled, wondered if I said no, everything wasn't okay, what would he say next? I couldn't make myself speak. 

Last time someone found out, I ended up being treated like child. Ended up being shamed into weight gain by people who didn't understand that I could gain one hundred pounds and would still be unwell. I hadn't told them what I did when they weren't there during that period of 'recovery'. They had no idea that I had a notebook full of suicide plans, that I had decided to go through with one of them if I didn't start losing everything they made me gain by the end of the year. 

They had no fucking idea. 

It wasn't the physical side of things they should have been concerned about. It was the fact that I had convinced myself that if I wasn't thin enough for people to comment on how thin I was, then I wasn't fucking worth anything. 

Not everyone would react the same way my parents did. I know that. But there's no way of knowing how they will react until I tell them, and by then, if they react poorly, it'll be too late. 

The thing he had said about his weight-lifting hung in my mind. He had stopped doing it because he knew it wasn't helpful or healthy for him. He'd had the common sense of caring more for his mental and physical health than for what others thought about him. Why couldn't I do that? 

What was so wrong with me that I couldn't just do that? 

I almost wanted him to say, hey, I don't want it to seem like I'm judging your body, but I've just noticed you being considerably thinner each time I've seen you. Is everything okay? 

I almost wanted to collapse in front of him just so he might realise what I was doing. 

"Can I get you another drink or anything?" He asked. 

Why did my voice no longer work? Why did I worry that if I attempted to speak, I would instead begin to sob? 

I shook my head. 

It was pitiful. I barely knew this man. This man barely knew me. And there I was about to cry in front of him. 

The thing is, I didn't want to be hungry and weak. The euphoria of starving had abandoned me sometime the previous day, leaving me with an emptiness that I don't think even food could have filled.

The thing is, I didn't know how to stop. 

It didn't matter how much I wanted to if I didn't know how. 

Again, I looked across at the lilac-grey abstract painting.

I swallowed as though I could somehow gulp down the sadness and not have to keep feeling it. I'd rather feel nothing than whatever I was feeling then.

"It's really beautiful," I said quietly.

My head had started to ache. A combination of too much caffeine and not enough food or sleep, I suspect. 

"Thank you." His voice remained soft. "Do you want it? It'll only end up getting painted over if I keep it." 

"Oh, are you sure?" I asked. "Let me buy it." 

"Consider it a loan."

No one had spoken to me like that before. Perhaps he knew somehow.

Around people, I presented myself as somebody who didn't need gentleness as a form of comfort. Even my parents preferred to speak to me almost as though they were telling me off. Like they thought I was not sad but just incapable. 

I'm not incapable, I wanted to tell them, but I never did. I'm not incapable, I'm just fucking sad.  

I really was going to cry in front of this man.