“Chicken McNugget?” Tariq asked, extending the container to me.
I took one, held it up, sniffed it. Tore it open. Felt the hot grease scald my fingers. Looked at the weird soft puffy pockmarked texture of the off-white highly processed flesh inside. Thought about the animal it had been. Apologized to it, and to the dead pig hanging from a tree.
“No thanks,” I said, putting it back, and something settled inside me, a decision I’d been mulling over without realizing it. “I’m a vegetarian.”
“Since when?”
“Since . . .” I looked at my wrist to consult the watch I was not wearing. “Since five seconds ago.”
And I was. As simple as saying it. How had I not thought of this before? A way to make smart healthy food decisions and act out my desire to diminish suffering. It felt like the tip of a beautiful iceberg, this decision. How many more ways were there, for me to act to right the wrongs I saw in the world? Millions, probably. Not with hate, not with violence or anger. With love.
Tariq said, “So . . . what? I’m supposed to just eat that nugget? After you ripped it up with your grubby fingers?”
“You didn’t have a problem with my fingers when they were—”
“Shut up, Jew.”
“Whatever, Muslim.”
We drove. We talked, the light jokey tone staying with us, but I didn’t feel light and jokey. I felt sad. I had screwed up so badly. I had messed up so much. Hurt so many people. Earned my broken heart.
“Let me out down here,” I said when we got to the turnoff to the narrow woodland road where my house was.
“Why?” he said. “Your mom knows all about us. And anyway, there’s nothing to know.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I just want to walk a little bit. Stretch my legs. You know?”
“Okay,” he said.
“I never had a friend before,” I said, getting out, because I was feeling melodramatic. “Not a grown-up one.”
“You’re going to have lots of friends, Matt. And boyfriends. Way better ones than me. You’re awesome, and once you actually start believing that, so will everyone else.”
So I wouldn’t get every little thing I wanted, just because I wanted it. My desires did not make a difference to the world outside of me. I could not, in fact, bend the fabric of space and time and reality to get what I wanted.
“Later,” I said and took the McDonald’s bag out of his hand.
“Hey!” he said. “I still have half a thing of french fries!”
“I’m a recovering anorexic, I need these to live, sorry,” I said, shutting the door, getting it right on the first slam.
I wanted to be mad at him. Wanted to hate him for rejecting me, for not believing in my getting better, for not reciprocating my emotions. But I didn’t. I couldn’t. He was fighting a battle just as hard as mine. He had his family damage and self-doubt and whole universes of other struggles I knew nothing about.
RULE #53
Congratulations! With the proper care and feeding, your human body should last you one full lifetime. It will, however, throughout your life, give you shit. Spring new horrific developments on you—diseases, disorders, traumas. Maybe your body came with a free side order of obesity or inherited clinical depression or a tendency toward cancer. Good luck with that. Make the most of it. Treat it right because that’s how you’ll get the most enjoyment out of it, but understand and believe that you are not your body. You are so much more.
DAY: -79, CONCLUDED
Suicidal ideation.
The phrase wouldn’t leave my head. I walked back up the winding wooded road chanting it, and one minute it was a harmless piece of medical jargon and the next it was a pretty appetizing option.
I almost starved myself to death. I broke my mother’s heart. I maybe burned down half the town.
I was getting better, but I still had so far to go. So much work to do. And for what? I still wasn’t entirely convinced that if somebody suddenly gave me the power to snap my fingers and cease to exist, I wouldn’t use it.
I wasn’t suicidal anymore. But once you go there, once your mind has seriously weighed it as a possibility, it never really goes away. It’s always there—always an option.
What the hell was wrong with me? Life just felt like so much work. Being a grown-up, being a son, being a student—I just wanted to walk away from all of that. Boys still called me faggot. I was still named after something people step on. I still thought about running away a lot. I still made plans to hitchhike or ride the rails or follow the river. I still had the bag full of books and hoodies and diet soda under my bed.
I ate french fries. They were getting cold and they were delicious. I made a mental note to look them up, when I got home, to confirm whether or not they were made with chicken blood or jellyfish guts or beef “flavoring” or some other ungodly unvegetarian abomination.
By then it was twilight. Dark came later and later every day. That was something. A little more light. I held out my hands. I felt the weight of my backpack, the texture of my clothes. Overhead, the branches were bare. I stood at the center of miles of wilderness. The universe was a cold dead place of rock and dust and emptiness that didn’t care whether I lived or died.
A grunting noise stopped me. I turned around to see a large pig wander out of the underbrush. Not a wild boar—its skin was the pale pink of a domesticated animal. I could see its ribs, and the spittle flecked along its tusks. It saw me. It stopped. It opened its mouth. It outweighed me, and it was omnivorous, and it was starving.
It charged.
“Stop, pig,” I whispered, bracing myself for destruction, raising my hand—and it stopped. Like, froze in midair. Two legs off the ground, bounding forward. Eyes confused, terrified. My pulse quickened from shock and fear instead of autonomic dysfunction this time.
“Easy there, pig,” I said softly, unbelievingly, and lowered my hand. The pig . . . unfroze. Stood there, looking at me. “At ease, soldier.”
Could this be true? Could my powers be real? Could they be totally independent of my eating disorder?
“Walk in a circle,” I said, and it did.
I took a step forward, and it flinched. “You don’t need to be afraid of me,” I said. And it softened. Held eye contact. Looking like nothing so much as a big ugly puppy. Did it recognize me? Remember that I freed it? Still respect my authority as Commander in Chief of the Swine Army?
We stood like that for a long time. Pig and boy. Man and animal. The hog had spent its whole life in a cage, waiting for the day when it would be slaughtered, and then, shockingly, out of nowhere, it was free. The thing could die tomorrow, shot by a hunter or hit by a truck, but it was living its life while it could. Its eyes were fearless, curious, eager, excited.
My powers had come from anger, from hate, from fear, from shame. I’d convinced myself that I could only draw strength from self-destruction. But what if that wasn’t true?
“Wind,” I whispered, raising my arms in front of me and then pulling them to the left.