Epilogue 2
Charm
Three weeks into treatment
They weighed me this morning.
I stood backward on the scale because I’m not supposed to see the number yet. My dietitian says blind weights keep me from turning recovery into another measurement I can control, but knowing the reasoning doesn’t stop my mind from trying to calculate it.
The number follows me whether I see it or not.
I know what I weighed when I arrived. I know how much they expect me to gain each week, how many meals I’ve completed, and how many supplemental drinks I’ve needed when I couldn’t finish what was placed in front of me.
My brain collects every detail and builds a number from it because numbers have always felt safer than hunger, mirrors, photographs, or the expression on my mother’s face when she looked at my body.
Today, I asked.
My dietitian hesitated before telling me I weighed 101 pounds.
I’m five foot three, and I’ve spent years doing everything I could to keep my weight inside two digits. Ninety-nine felt dangerous. Ninety-five felt acceptable. Ninety-four was the number on the scale when I entered treatment, and some sick part of me had been proud when I saw it.
Today, I was 101.
Seven pounds in three weeks.
The number followed me into breakfast and sat beside my plate while I tried to eat scrambled eggs, toast, fruit, and yogurt. It crawled under my skin during individual therapy. It waited inside the mirror when I changed for group, telling me my face was fuller and my stomach had changed.
I know this is the process.
Knowing hasn’t made today easier.
In this place, I could tell myself they’re only forcing me to eat. I could believe they’re forcing me to stare at everything I’ve done wrong while taking away the clothes, makeup, routines, and measurements I used to make myself feel safe.
That is the mindset I have to change.
Food isn’t a punishment. Weight restoration isn’t something they’re doing to me. The people here aren’t trying to take away my control so they can hurt me. They’re trying to keep me alive long enough to understand why hurting myself felt like the only thing I could control.
I can’t remain the person I was if I ever want to walk out of the cage.
Some days, it feels like there are a thousand things I need to change before they’ll let me leave.
I have to eat when every thought tells me I shouldn’t.
I have to sit with the panic afterward instead of trying to undo the meal.
I have to stop checking every reflective surface for proof that I’ve become unacceptable.
I have to learn that feeling full isn’t failure and that gaining weight doesn’t mean I’ve lost value.
I have to stop hating the woman in the mirror long enough to let her live.
Today, I’m struggling to believe I can.
Eleven of us sit in a circle inside the group room. The chairs are comfortable without being soft enough to disappear into. A box of tissues waits on the small table in the center beside a bowl of wrapped mints no one in eating-disorder treatment voluntarily touches.
The counselor asks what has been occupying our thoughts today.
People take turns speaking. Mara talks about her first supervised restaurant outing and the panic she felt when the menu didn’t list calories.
A college student named Wren admits she misses running even though she knows exercise became another way to punish herself.
Luke keeps his hands folded between his knees while everyone else speaks.
I haven’t shared during group since I arrived.
I answer direct questions when the counselor calls on me. I nod when someone says something I understand, and I complete every written assignment they give me because written words can be controlled before anyone else sees them.
Standing in front of the group is different.
It feels like handing strangers the ugliest parts of myself and waiting to see whether they confirm everything I already believe.
“Charm?”
The counselor’s voice brings my attention up from my hands.
“You’ve been quiet today.”
“I’m quiet every day.”
A few people smile because they know it’s true.
“You are,” she says. “Is there anything you want us to know?”
My first instinct is to say no. The word is ready, safe and familiar, but I’m tired of choosing the answer that keeps the door closed.
My hands tremble as I push myself out of the chair.
I don’t know why I stand. Nobody else has, and the counselor doesn’t ask me to. Sitting makes me feel trapped inside the circle, though, and if I’m going to say this, I need enough air around me to breathe.
“There’s someone I can’t stop thinking about.”
My voice sounds too small for the room, but everyone is listening.
The counselor leans forward slightly. “Who?”
“His name is Ryan.”
Saying it aloud hurts. I haven’t spoken his name in three weeks because I’m afraid of what will happen once I start.
“He’s the love of my life.”
My throat closes, and I look down at my hands. They’re bare now. I miss my rings, makeup, clothes, and every polished piece of the life I used to wear like armor. When I picture returning to any of it, I become so overwhelmed that my lungs tighten.
I don’t want that life anymore.
I want a healthy one. I only wish wanting it didn’t mean accepting that Ryan might never be inside it.
“I lost him because I was afraid,” I continue.
“My fears, anxiety, and all the things I refused to face made decisions for me until they cost me the person I loved most. Ryan knew I was struggling, but he didn’t understand how bad it was because I hid it from him.
I lied. I avoided things. Sometimes I reacted in ways that probably made me look irrational because I wouldn’t tell him what was happening inside my head. ”
The counselor watches me carefully. “What were you afraid would happen if he knew?”
“He would see me.”
The answer comes too quickly to soften.
“He already saw more than anyone else. He knew when I wasn’t eating enough.
He noticed when I hated my body and when I was panicking that people were judging me.
He could feel every part of me trying to pull away, but I never gave him the truth.
I wanted to ask how he could leave me after knowing me better than anyone. ”
Tears blur the circle.
“He didn’t know me, though. I made sure he couldn’t.”
Nobody interrupts.
“I hid so many parts of myself from him. He could sense them and feel the space where they should’ve been, but I never let him see what was inside it. Loving me meant constantly finding another locked door. Ryan kept opening them, and I kept building more behind them.”
The cage is part of every therapy session here.
My counselor says my parents built the first bars, but I reinforced them long after I became old enough to recognize what they were doing.
My father taught me obedience. My mother taught me how to make that obedience look beautiful.
My illness convinced me the cage was safer than disappointing either of them.
Ryan opened the door.
He couldn’t make me walk through it.
“When he needed me to choose him in front of my father, I froze. I watched my father humiliate him, and I couldn’t move. Ryan begged me to stand beside him, but I looked at the floor because I was terrified of what choosing him would cost.”
My voice breaks. I wait until I can continue.
“I understand now that freezing was part of everything I learned to do to survive my father. That explains why it happened. It doesn’t erase what Ryan experienced while it was happening. He needed me, and I made him feel disposable.”
The word hurts more than any other.
Disposable.
Ryan spent his entire life being passed between people who decided whether he was worth keeping. He trusted me with the place that still remembered every locked door, packed bag, and promise that expired as soon as loving him became inconvenient.
Then I became another person who watched him leave.
“I haven’t spoken to him in six weeks,” I say. “I haven’t spoken to my parents either.”
“How does that feel?” the counselor asks.
“I don’t miss talking to them.”
Admitting it brings a strange relief.
“I don’t miss waiting for my father to tell me what I’ve done wrong. I don’t miss my mother looking at my clothes, my face, or my body before deciding whether I’m presentable. I don’t miss feeling like every conversation is a test I’ve already failed.”
My hands tighten together.
“I miss Ryan.”
The tears spill before I can stop them.
“I miss his taste and the way his hand felt around mine. I miss his voice when he spoke Spanish and the look on his face when he forgot he was trying to hide how much something mattered. I miss reading beside him. I miss waking up in his bed. I miss the way he looked at me before I gave him a reason to stop.”
My breathing turns uneven, and the counselor reminds me to slow it down. I inhale through my nose and release the breath through my mouth the way they taught me.
It doesn’t stop the grief, but it keeps me inside the room.
“I miss every part of him. I keep wanting to believe nobody could understand how lonely it is to miss someone this much, but I know that isn’t true. Everyone in this room is missing something.”
Luke looks down at his folded hands.
“When I woke up this morning, I heard a song in my head. I was in the shower, and it kept playing even though there wasn’t any music. It’s called ‘Willing and Able.’ I’ve always loved Noah Kahan, but today the song felt different.”
The counselor waits.
“It felt like it belonged to Ryan. The meaning made me understand how badly I hurt him. He was willing to love me through every fear and every ugly part I let him see. He kept asking me to meet him somewhere outside the cage, and I wanted to believe I was able to do it.”
I wipe my cheeks, but more tears replace the ones I catch.
“I wasn’t. When the moment came, I left him standing alone.”