And now, you have stopped taking the pills. You’re trading Ben for the pills. At first, you simply forgot for a couple of days, then you realized you didn’t feel much different, and that you felt good even though you hadn’t taken your pills. So you skipped them. And you’re still feeling moments of happiness more often than not. Despite the monster. You think the monster may be dying. You haven’t heard much from him lately. Maybe you’re learning how to quiet him. Maybe he’ll go away. Through therapy, although you know you haven’t been in therapy all that long. But. You know you’re trying.
Shayna is going to help you learn how to like food and you’re starting to trust her and the process. One of the things she plans to do is reintroduce food to you through four of your five senses: through touch, sight, smell, and then, finally, taste. You’d be lying if you said you weren’t scared about this part of therapy. It’s food. And it’s very unfamiliar to you.
But you want to be able to enjoy it someday. When you are older, you want to go to functions like weddings, parties, and business meetings and not feel socially awkward. You want to walk to the buffet table and thoughtfully consider the foods and select things that look delicious and pretty—foods that you know are healthy and that will taste good. You want your stomach to growl in anticipation of a good meal, and you want to feel that fullness that others describe after they’ve had Thanksgiving dinner, when they pop open their top button, thankful for a home-cooked meal.
You’ve never felt that way. You want to appreciate food. You do. You just don’t know how. And you so badly want to learn.
21
It’s Ben’s birthday and he’s decided he wants to spend the evening with you and that you’re going to meet his family later in the weekend. This is a huge deal because although you knew it was his birthday you hadn’t talked about doing anything together.
“We’re going out tonight, you and me, okay?” he says when he calls you that morning.
“What about your family?”
“Sunday afternoon we’ll go to my house and celebrate. You’ll get to meet everyone, okay? I want to see you tonight,” he says.
You get butterflies in your stomach when he tells you again that he only wants to spend his birthday with you. When you ask where he wants to go he says he’d like to go to a movie and dinner.
You and Jae had gone shopping earlier in the week to find a present for Ben and you finally decided on something simple: movie tickets, and a gift card to Nike. Then as a joke, at the bookstore you bought him a Fault in Our Stars key chain.
“He’ll either love it or hate it,” you told Jae.
“Well, then, you’ll know how he feels about you when you see his reaction to the key chain,” Jae said.
“That’s true,” you said, laughing.
But now you think that since he wants to spend his birthday with you, it’s a pretty good sign that things are going very well.
When you tell your mom you’re going out with Ben, she gives you a sideways glance and says, “You’re seeing a lot of him.”
“I guess so,” you answer her.
“Don’t you think you should be more focused on therapy and working through your other problems? And not spending so much time with him?”
“Mom, I’m totally doing therapy. And the only time I feel good is when I’m with Ben. He makes me happy. He makes me not think about the food crap, all the stuff that bothers me.”
“I’m just thinking about what happened last time,” your mother clucks. She actually clucks like a chicken when she says this.
“This is not like with Alex,” you say. “Nothing like how it was with Alex.”
“I just don’t want you to get hurt again.”
*
The two of you go to the movies and you beg Ben to let you pay since it’s his birthday, but he refuses. “I asked you to come with me. I’m paying.” He grabs you by the hand and kisses you full on the lips. You literally cannot believe how charming this boy is. You snuggle and kiss during the movie and only partially watch because there’s nothing else you’d rather do (well, maybe, but you’re in a movie theater). Near the end you whisper in Ben’s ear, “Happy birthday.”
He whispers back to you, “It’s my happiest one yet.” And he pulls you closer.
You feel so lucky to have met him.
When the movie is over Ben announces that he’s starving and asks you what you feel like eating. The monster snickers.
“I don’t care.”
“You feel like pizza, Chinese, Mexican?” he asks.
You figure you can fake your way through pizza so you say pizza sounds good. You’re starting to feel really anxious and try to remember some of the skills you’ve been learning in therapy but your mind goes blank. You feel a physical shift in your system when you walk into Angelino’s Pizza and smell the strong odor of garlic. It doesn’t seem to help that Ben is holding your hand when the hostess leads you to a cozy booth near the back.
Ben senses your mood has changed and asks if you’re okay. You want to be okay. It’s his birthday. You don’t want to ruin this night for him, so you lie and say you just have a little stomachache.
“Do you want to leave?” he asks, but you can tell he is disappointed.
“No, I’ll be fine,” you say.
You want so badly to be fine. You want so badly to be good for Ben. You want so badly to be good for yourself. You need to do this. This is just another one of the steps you have to take. And it’s only pizza. You can usually do pizza, minus the cheese.
The waitress comes over and you both ask for Sprite. She leaves to get your drinks and Ben asks if you know what you want to eat.
“I don’t know.”
“What kind of pizza do you like?”
“Usually just plain.”
“What if we did half cheese and half sausage?”
“That’s okay,” you say.
When the waitress comes back, Ben orders the pizza.
“You okay?” he asks again.
“I’ll be fine.” Then you remember the gifts in your purse, so you tell him that you’ve got something for him and his eyes light up. You pull out the envelopes with the tickets and gift card and the small package that has the key chain in it. You also got him a card. He opens the movie tickets first.
“We could have used those tonight,” you say.
“We can use them another time,” he says, smiling widely at you. Next he opens the Nike gift card. You tell him it’s not much but maybe he can buy a T-shirt or some new socks for when track starts.
“And this one”—you push the small package toward him—“is kind of a joke.”
He opens the key chain and cracks up. It’s got a goofy quote from the movie on it, one that you both had laughed at when you watched it together.
“I love it!” he says, and you believe him because he adds it to his keys right away and comes over to your side of the booth and gives you a kiss.
You kiss him back and it doesn’t even feel weird to kiss him in public. You want to take a picture of the two of you because you don’t have one of him yet so you pull out your phone and hand it to him.
“I want a picture,” you say.
“Oh, you do, do you?” He’s grinning like crazy.
“I do.”
“I guess we could do that.” He clicks on the camera on your phone, turns it in his direction, and starts clicking pictures of himself making silly faces. He takes a dozen or more pictures. You grab your phone from him.
“No! One of us!”
“Oh … you want a picture of the two of us? You should have specified. I need your phone back then.”
You hand him your phone and he pulls you to him tightly, holding you low around your waist. “You smiling?” he asks.