Do I really wanna be one those kids?

This isn’t a boy thing.

This will help me make progress.

I felt worried, overwhelmed, and trapped. I was trapped in my body and I knew I had to break free, so I lowered myself to the toilet. I would have been lying if I said that I’d never thought about it, but I think within the last few weeks I had been more desperate. I stuck two fingers in my mouth. It was graphic, painful, and afterward my throat really hurt. The small amount of food I ate that day was looking right up at me. I got up to look in the mirror and saw myself staring back with red eyes. It hurt. I stepped on the scale and tried again. The zeros flashed and changed to 270 pounds. It wasn’t ideal, but it did what I wanted it to do. If it meant I would lose weight faster, then maybe that was the way to do it.

Chapter 7 230 Pounds

I kept a routine. It wasn’t a healthy one, but I didn’t care. I ate once in the morning and once in the evening. Every night when I got home, I went to my bathroom and I purged. Some nights I would binge before purging. Afterward, my stomach and my throat would sting. I hated every second of it, but I kept cough drops close if the pain was ever too unbearable. Eventually, the days turned to weeks, the weeks turned to months, and over time the scale went from 270 to 265 to 261 to 240 to 235, and eventually, to 230. I had lost forty pounds. Mel didn’t know what I did when she wasn’t around, and I planned to keep it that way.

It was difficult. I wasn’t getting any nutrition and it was affecting me — I always felt so tired and had no energy. I often lied and said I was tired because I hadn’t been getting sleep. It did the trick, though. The numbers on the scale went down, and people complimented me often.

I didn’t think I looked any different, if I was being honest. That was the strange thing about losing weight. Other people will notice before you do. I had been growing my hair, but it began thinning in some spots and I tried my best to hide that. People were more interested in my weight loss, though. I was so used to my body that subtle changes didn’t really feel that different over time. One person who really noticed was Donny. When I saw him at school he was like, “Wow, man. You’re going to be skinnier than me.”

That had been after I decided to skip breakfast. I forced a smile but didn’t really feel too great. Mel was in exam mode, so I was seeing her less at school, and she had to take a step back from our workout sessions. It was also starting to get a lot colder. Fall was an interesting time. It was daring to go jogging. The wind would leave us with a chill. I didn’t want to slow down, but fighting nature is dangerous. Mel warned me about getting a chill and said if I got a cold, she wouldn’t want to hang out with me until I got better. She couldn’t afford to be sick during midterms.