Sad Perfect Read online

  “Did I miss anything good?”

  “Nah. He just threw a kegger at the frat he started.”

  You sit down and what happens next is perfect. Ben moves closer to you, takes your hand in his, and places his other hand over it. “You doing okay?” he whispers into your ear.

  “Yeah,” you whisper. “I’m really good.”

  And you mean it.

  He makes you good.

  “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

  “Hey Pea.”

  Your dad has called you Pea since before you existed. That’s what they tell you. That your parents found out they were pregnant and they were thrilled. But then a week later, your mom started bleeding and they thought they were losing you. The ultrasound detected no heartbeat, in fact. The technician told your mom, “We’re sorry, there’s no heartbeat. You can have a D&C or let the miscarriage happen naturally.”

  Your mom decided to forgo a D&C. Your parents spent a couple of weeks grieving the pregnancy, but your mom, while she continued to have light bleeding, also continued to have pregnancy symptoms. A follow-up ultrasound showed your little heartbeat thumping on the screen, hard and fast. Your mom cried and your dad announced, “There’s our little Pea.”

  Stubborn and strong, then and now.

  Every time he calls you Pea, you imagine rolling a tiny hard pit with your tongue and you
choke at the thought. It’s come to that. Imagining that small piece of vegetable caught in your throat, this name he calls you, you choke it down, feed it to the monster. You cringe.

  “Hi Dad.”

  Your dad is Vice President of Athletics at a local university, and when he’s not focused on sports at work, he’s focused on them at home.

  And right now he’s where he always sits. In the family room, the TV set to ESPN, watching a game. It’s not important what kind of game, just that it’s a sport.

  You used to think your dad was the most handsome man in the world, a prince. He was so big and strong and you thought he could save you from anything.

  He tilts his head in your direction.

  “How’s that new friend of yours?”

  “Ben?”

  “The track star,” he says.

  It’s the only way he’s going to remember him.

  “He’s fine,” is all you offer.

  “He didn’t try anything funny the other night, did he?”

  “Don’t worry. He didn’t even kiss me.” You’ve given your dad the answer he needed to hear, the truth.

  Ben hadn’t tried to kiss you after the movie. He asked if you were hungry. You weren’t, but you shrugged and said, “Whatever you’re up for.”

  You went to Jimmy John’s and he asked if you wanted anything, and while you were scared to be in an eating environment with Ben, you said maybe you’d have some of the chips that he got with his sandwich. You felt like you could eat chips. You talked about the movie and you fed the monster some of Ben’s salty chips. Because no matter how much you hate the monster, he’s important. You take care of him because he tells you to. It’s that simple.

  The two of you ate, and you talked, and you looked into each other’s eyes. When your hair got stuck on your lips, Ben moved his fingers slowly across your cheek, touching your face.

  “Your hair,” he said. “It’s…” Then you shook your head to move your hair away and laughed.

  “I like it when you laugh,” he said.

  So you laughed again.

  You laughed all night. Somehow you made him laugh all night too.

  When he dropped you off, he rushed out of the car before you could get out and went to your side to open the door for you.

  “Wow,” you said.

  “What?” he said.

  “I’m just not used to being treated this way.”

  “What way?” he asked.

  “Like I’m special.”

  “Get used to it, because you are.”

  Your knees got a little wobbly. He took your hand, squeezed it, then rubbed your palm gently, as if you already had a secret hand-holding ritual. It was no less spectacular each time. In fact, it started feeling more spectacular the more he held it. Every time he touched you, you felt like you were spectacular.

  At the door, he took both of your hands into his and put his forehead to yours.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey back.”

  “This was a great date,” he said.

  “Yeah.” It came out sort of like a whisper from a dream that you didn’t want to wake from.

  “But you know what?”

  “What?” you asked.

  “The next one is going to be way better.”

  He squeezed your hands in an urgent kind of way like he wanted to not leave, like he wanted to do what you were dying for him to do—lean in, tilt his head, and put his lips on yours. You wanted to smell him that close, to breathe him in, to know what it would feel like to kiss him for the first time.

  But you knew it wasn’t going to happen, and that was okay. Because you’d never get that first kiss back, and you knew it would be one of those first kisses that you were going to want to put into a box and take out every day of your entire life to relive over and over again.

  Your foreheads were still touching and you stood like that for what seemed like forever. You didn’t want to move. There were outside night noises: crickets chirping, a sprinkler going off, and the neighbor’s dog barking. You thought you heard Ben’s heartbeat, but then you realized it was your own heart beating out of your chest.

  He put his warm lips to your forehead and you felt the sensation course through your body like an electric wave.

  Just as quickly as it happened, he moved his lips away. You looked up at him, and you must have seemed desperate. You didn’t want to be desperate.

  “I’m going to text you as soon as I get home, okay?” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  10

  It’s late Monday afternoon and you and your mom meet with Shayna for your first one-on-one therapy session. Normally, your mom won’t be here, but for this first meeting, Shayna suggested she be present. The plan is that every Monday, you’ll have your one-on-one with Shayna, then you’ll have a fifteen-minute break, and then, down the hall, you’ll attend group therapy for girls with eating disorders. That’s the part that has you nervous, but you have to commit to this. Mondays are going to suck.

  On Thursday when you and your mom met with Shayna for the first time, she did a series of tests. She now explains to you both that you were born with very few taste buds, where a normal person has hundreds.

  “Also,” Shayna says, “I could tell that the insides of your cheeks are very sensitive, which must make chewing, tasting, and swallowing extremely unpleasurable to you?”

  “Yes, it really is,” you say.

  “Well, what you have is ARFID.” Shayna presents this diagnosis to you and your mom like she’s offering you a gift, like this is an amazing announcement.

  You shake your head in confusion, and your mom asks, “What’s ARFID?”

  “ARFID stands for Avoidant/Restrictive Food Intake Disorder and it means there’s a feeding or eating disturbance not due to anorexia or bulimia, and not caused by self-esteem issues. It means you cannot tolerate many foods and may gag when presented with new foods. You have a small bank of ‘safe’ foods you are comfortable eating. And we know there is probably some psychosocial interference involved. My guess is that you don’t do well in social situations where food is at the center of the event?”

  You want to cry in relief that she has discovered your problem. This feels like a big win. It still doesn’t make you want to try to eat new things, but at least it’s an explanation of why you’re the way you are.

  Your mom asks a bunch of questions about treatment and Shayna tells her that she’s helped others with ARFID, and that she feels confident she can help you too.

  “I can’t believe we finally have a diagnosis,” your mom says. “For so long, we’ve been going to nutritionists and different doctors, trying to find out what was wrong. When they look at her they think she’s fine.”

  “That’s the thing about ARFID,” Shayna says. “Most people with ARFID look perfectly okay, and since it’s a newly named disorder, not many professionals are familiar with it, or even know the best way to treat patients.”

  When your hour with Shayna is up, your mom hugs you and thanks Shayna. To you, she says, “I’ll come back to get you. Good luck with your next session.”

  You felt that your session with Shayna went well but when you walk into group therapy, your heart starts racing because the room is filled with a bunch of girls and they’re all staring at you, the new kid. You feel completely out of place as you take a seat on one of the couches.

  Immediately you think you don’t belong here with the anorexics and bulimics. Shayna said your disorder isn’t like theirs—and you want nothing to do with these girls.

  Suddenly, you’re mad at your parents for sending you here. You’re mad at Shayna, who said she was going to help you. You feel as if she’s got it all wrong now. You know these girls are looking at you and coming to their own conclusions about you. It feels like a clusterfuck.

  And then, just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, it does.

  Shayna introduces you to the group and tells them you are there not for anorexia or b
ulimia, like the rest of them, but for this newly named eating disorder called ARFID.

  “Basically, it means she only eats a few foods,” Shayna explains.

  “So she’s just like a picky eater?” a very thin girl says.

  You knew it. It’s that picky-eater thing you’ve heard a hundred times before, and so you stare down the girl. You fucking hate it in that room. You are not going to speak during the whole freaking time you’re here.

  You hate the whole fucking world at that moment.

  But then Shayna sticks up for you.

  “No, it’s more than that. ARFID is extremely serious. It can evolve into purging and bingeing and even become a serious medical problem. Many ARFID patients can become anorexic or bulimic. Psychologically, it can cause extreme anxiety and depression and other social or mental disorders as well. It’s lucky that she got here when she did.”

  “How come no one’s ever heard of it before?” someone else asks. You’re not looking at anyone because you’re so over it.

  “Well, the disorder has been around forever. But it’s just been named, so in that way it’s fairly new. It’s a disorder that’s affected by trauma, like with you all, and ARFID can be triggered at very young ages. So, as always, with new members, I want to remind you that this is a judgment-free zone and I ask you to be kind.”

  This is when you look up and see eight sets of eyes on you. Some of the girls smile lightly, some look beaten down, some look exhausted—they look like how you feel. You wonder if they have monsters, and how bad their monsters have been to them. You wonder if they hate eating. You wonder if they feel happiness, or sadness, or pain and anger. You wonder if they like how food tastes, or if they have cravings, or if they feel hunger. You’re sure they feel some of these things. You wonder what they’re like, if they sit in their rooms listening to sad music in the afternoons, trying to figure out what went wrong. You wonder if they wonder, like you do, what they did to deserve this life. You wonder if they cry at night when the lights go out because that’s the only way to quiet the monster inside them.

  You pull your stare back down to your lap, quieting the wonder in your body, quieting the questions in your mind. You guess you’ll have to wonder some more, at least until they figure out how to help you kill this monster.