“Good.”
You tune out the movie. There is no more guy running a frat house. It’s just Ben holding your hand, rubbing slow circles on your palm with his thumb and it’s crazy amazing. You rest your head on his shoulder. It feels like you’ve known him forever. He feels like comfort. He relaxes you. His hand is large and warm and protective. It’s not sweaty and awkward like it was with Alex. It feels natural, like his hand was meant to hold yours—two parts of a puzzle that fit.
Ben says, “I’m not letting go. I’m just going to hold your hand till the movie’s over.”
You sigh.
8
You and your mom have different perspectives on what you used to like to eat as a kid. Of course, you don’t remember what you ate as a two-year-old, but she insists you liked regular kid foods. She says you ate bananas and hot dogs, hamburgers and jelly sandwiches cut into tiny squares, and macaroni and cheese, and spaghetti with red sauce. She says you ate blueberries and cantaloupe for a while, and that you used to ask for more. More blueberries until the outside of your lips turned purplish-red and she had to take the container away from you. But you don’t remember any of that. You’re sure she’s confusing you with Todd.
What you remember is that you never liked food, only that sometimes you craved salt and sometimes you craved sugar and when that happened you needed to have something salty or sweet right away, and you’d get cranky if you didn’t. Your mom says you were a “challenging” baby, a “precocious” toddler; that’s how she describes you to Shayna, the therapist at Healthy Foundations.
“She’s always just been stubborn,” your mom tells Shayna.
Shayna nods, jots down a note, then says, “We like to use the phrase ‘strong-willed.’ Our girls are strong-willed.” And she smiles. You like this about her. That she turned a negative word into a positive, so you sit up a bit straighter and try to tune in. Because before you heard the phrase “strong-willed” you were hearing a lot of “blah-blah-blueberries-blah” coming out of your mom’s mouth, and it was annoying.
“Yes, she’s very strong-willed,” your mother agrees with Shayna. “She does what she wants to do. And we’ve never been the type of parents who forced her to eat. I wasn’t going to do that to her. I wasn’t going to leave her at the table all night with a piece of meat she didn’t want to eat and wait it out. I couldn’t do that.”
You look at your mom because her voice cracks and you’re afraid she might cry and more than almost anything in the world, you hate seeing your mom cry.
Shayna writes something else down, then turns her attention to you. You like the way she’s dressed, sharp and stylish, nice pants and a shirt with fancy buttons, like she might have shopped in the Juniors section. And her jewelry’s on point. She’s also got these funky glasses that she probably needs to see stuff up close, but they don’t make her look old, they just make her look more like a hipster. You think your mom should probably get some style tips from her while you’re getting eating tips. You laugh a little inside when you think about this. A two-for-one—help dress your mom, help you eat.
“So,” Shayna says, and looks at you. “What about you?” She smiles kindly.
You half shrug and suddenly you’re really nervous, like you’re being called out. You feel your blood go cold. You’re not sure what to say. Because the monster has taken over. He’s taken over your voice and you can’t talk for a few seconds. But you shove the monster back down and find your voice. Because you know you’ve got to be stronger than the monster that has controlled your life for practically sixteen years if you’re going to get better.
You speak.
“I wish I liked food. But I don’t.”
Shayna jots it down, you’re sure, word for word.
“Stuff just doesn’t taste good to me. I can’t put food into my mouth. It’s just, it’s just … gross.” There’s no other way for you to describe it. Food in your mouth is not pleasing. You eat to survive, and only to survive, barely. Sometimes you see something, like cake or ice cream, and that’s different. That, you want. That, you know is comforting. That, you know is safe. You tell this to Shayna, and she writes it down.
You keep talking. Sixteen years of built-up silence spills out: how you feel like you’re letting your family down, how you feel like you’re to blame for your parents arguing about you not eating, how you feel like your family doesn’t even feel like a family because you mostly don’t eat with them, how your brother doesn’t even acknowledge you anymore, how he couldn’t care less if you existed. And the tears come and you heave and cry and you watch as your mom cries too, and it’s painful and sad and all you want, more than anything in the world, is to get better, and to be able to eat a regular meal and have it not feel like you’re chewing human flesh and like it’s killing you. You say this out loud to Shayna too. And your mom brings her hand to her mouth in shock.
“Mom, stop. Don’t cry,” you say. This is your pain. Your trauma, and you have to console your goddamn mother. What the fuck.
Shayna hands you a box of tissues and then goes back to her writing. You think she writes too much. Then she asks, “What do you eat? What is your favorite thing to eat?”
You take a deep breath before answering her.
“Bread.”
“What else?” Shayna asks.
“French fries, with ketchup,” you say. “Waffles, pancakes.”
“No syrup or butter,” your mom interjects.
You glare at your mother.
“Go on.” Shayna addresses you.
“Pizza.”
Your mom says, “She takes the cheese off.”
You give your mom another death stare. “Do you want to tell her, Mom?”
So your mom does. “She eats apples sometimes, and carrots, and white foods, but not pasta or rice or potatoes. Nothing like that. She does eat peanut butter, thank God, for the limited protein. Bagels. She eats cake and muffins, but no muffins that have nuts or fruit. Only muffins that have chocolate chips. She loves chocolate. And ice cream. And crackers. Goldfish and Ritz and saltines. Basically all plain crackers. Sometimes she’ll eat cereal. Potato chips, pretzels, that kind of stuff. And pop. No orange juice. Oh, she loves apple juice, but no other type of juice. She drinks milk, and occasionally she’ll have a yogurt, thank God, thank God for that…”
Your mother drones on and on about you and your eating habits. If you were five years old, you’d clamp your hands over your ears and scream really loud. Instead you sit silently, letting the tears streak down your cheeks. They just fall and fall and fall and you’ve never hated your mother more.
You’ve also never loved her so much.
9