New Year’s came and went and I didn’t even notice.
Out of spite, I supposed, I gulped down the other packet of pills after parking behind our studio. It wasn’t long before I found myself facing down the office toilet, the pills and the meager meal I’d had for lunch making their presence known again. Afterward, I curled up on the office couch, and when I woke again, it was already 2009.
I had never been much for the whole holiday; reflections on the past year and resolutions for the new just weren’t my thing. Time passed however time wanted to pass, and whatever would happen was largely out of my control. Knowing that didn’t really give me any sense of peace, though. But neither did making promises to myself that I knew I wouldn’t keep.
Even this attempt at running away was a promise I couldn’t keep. Kate and I both knew it wasn’t going to last, and I hadn’t even gone that far. I wasn’t impossible to find, if anyone had been searching for me. Of course, I knew that they wouldn’t. They would give me as long as I needed to blow off my steam, but the truth was that I didn’t have any steam to blow off. I didn’t have anything left.
For a few hours, I puttered around the office, tinkering with a few songs that were in the running for our next album, but I didn’t really accomplish anything. It was nice, but a little eerie, to be in the office alone. At some point, though, the quiet became stifling. I couldn’t take it anymore. It was time to stop pouting and go home.
The drive home felt longer than it ever had before, but finally I arrived, finding things much at all quieter than they had been the night before. This time, the driveway was completely empty, and even Kate’s car was missing from the garage. In vain, I searched the kitchen for a note that might tell me where she had gone, but I came up empty. I could only hope that she needed a small break, too. Everything seemed suspended in motion, a few dirty dishes from the party I had ruined still lying in the sink and a bag of trash sitting by the garage door waiting for someone to take it outside. There was no sense of finality to it at all, and that gave me hope that Kate had just stepped out temporarily.
I walked quietly and carefully through the house, like I was a guest or a resident coming home after a longer time away than just one night. Like I was trying to document all the ways the house might have changed in my absence. Of course, it hadn’t changed at all. Maybe I had, but not in just one night.
Eventually I made my way into the bathroom, where I decided to take a much needed shower. As always, I turned the water up as hot as I could stand, until it felt like a million needles boring into my skin. At least while I was under the spray, I could convince myself that it was washing away all of my problems, all of my sins, and leaving nothing but the person I wished I was underneath it all.
When I finally emerged from the shower, I realized I had forgotten to grab a towel from the linen closet that was inexplicably, and annoyingly, just outside the bathroom door. I was home alone, though, so what did it matter if I walked around naked for just a moment?
My reflection in the mirror stopped me before I even made it out of the bathroom. Who was this guy? I could practically count all of my ribs, and the dark shadows under my eyes seemed to go on for days. Was this what I had become? All of my effort to lose weight, all of the work I put in… to become this walking skeleton.
Against my better judgment, I stepped onto the scales Kate kept next to the sink. One hundred and twenty seven pounds. After weeks of back and forth, finally a number that was officially underweight. I should have been proud of that accomplishment. Months ago, I would have been. But right then, I just felt empty and hollow. I couldn’t dredge up a single emotion, good or bad.
“What are you doing?” Kate asked, her reflection suddenly appearing in the mirror next to me. I hadn’t even heard her walk in or her car in the driveway.
“I’m just…. Nothing.” I sighed. “I didn’t know you’d be back any time soon.”
“I didn’t know you would be,” Kate replied, but that was a lie. Of course she knew I wouldn’t stay gone for long. Where could I go?
Kate stepped forward and glanced at the scale. Her breath hitched in her throat, and I knew she was trying not to gasp at the number.
“It’s bad, isn’t it?” I asked, doubting she would answer honestly.
“It’s bad,” she replied, proving me wrong. She ran her fingers up my side, trailing across my ribs. “It’s… it’s really bad. God, I don’t know how I didn’t see it.”
“I was gone for a few months.” I shrugged. “And who would have thought… I mean, it’s me. You know how I am about food.”
Kate shook her head. “I thought I did. Now I don’t know anything anymore. How did we get here, Zac?”
“I think I’ve been on this trajectory for a long, long time,” I admitted. “I’ve never been… just never as happy as everybody else. As happy as I acted.”
“And you think I have been?” Kate asked, but her tone was soft, not accusing. “Some of us just aren’t happy creatures, Zac. I don’t know. Some people, maybe it’s because they’ve seen too much, been through too much, know too much. Some of it’s just our nature. Why do you think the two of us work so well together? It isn’t because I’m so damn cheerful and we balance each other out like that.”
“But you do balance me out,” I replied. “You’re kinda the only thing that does. And I hate that, actually. I can’t do this to you. I can’t put all of this on you.”
“I said yes,” Kate replied. “I said yes, and I knew what you were like then. I knew what we were like together. I signed up for this. I don’t… I don’t know what to think about last night, but I’m not done. I’m not giving up.”
I leaned back against her and sighed. She wrapped her arms around my waist, and I swore it looked like they could wrap around my twice even as thin as they were.
“Why don’t you get dressed?” Kate asked. “I’ll microwave some of the nacho dip from last night. I’ve been thinking about it all morning.”
I scrunched up my nose in disgust, but the truth was that Kate’s nacho dip was some of my favorite stuff, even if it was absolutely the least healthy recipe she ever made.
“I know, baby,” she said softly. “But when was the last time you ate?”
“Lunch yesterday,” I replied honestly. “The grilled cheese you made.”
I could see the horror and surprise in Kate’s eyes, but her voice didn’t betray it. “Let me get you a towel. It’ll just take a minute or two to heat up. And I don’t know about you, but I could eat the whole tray of it by myself.”
“I’ll try.”
It was the best I could offer her, and it seemed to be enough. She gave my waist a squeeze before walking away. A moment later, a fluffy, oversized towel flew into the room and smacked me in the head. To my surprise, I laughed. And it was a real laugh. It hurt, somewhere deep inside that I didn’t know and couldn’t explain, but strangely, it was a good sort of hurt.
As if on cue, my stomach growled and it only made me laugh more.
The moment to be melancholy and self pitying ruined, I decided to do exactly what Kate had said. Without another look in the mirror, I dried myself off and walked into our bedroom to find something vaguely clean to wear. I settled on sweatpants and an old shirt from one of our past tours, because I knew I didn’t have anybody to impress, and then I followed the smell of warm nacho dip to the kitchen.
I found Kate sitting at the island, the dip and a bag of tortilla chips in front of her. A can of Diet Mountain Dew was sitting across from her, and I knew it was meant for me. Wordlessly, I popped it open and took a sip.
I didn’t want the dip. At least, I didn’t think that I did. But the more I stared at it, the less I could resist. I knew, but now I saw with real clarity, that I needed to fight this voice that shamed me for every bite that I put in my mouth. And if Kate could sit there and dip her chips directly into the pan, then why couldn’t I?
She nudged the bag of chips toward me and I nodded. I plopped down on the bar stool like a ton of bricks and dug in. It was scary, and I didn’t know how much I would hate myself for it later, but I knew it was important that I do it right then. I knew I needed to eat, and after just one bite, I knew that I wanted to as well. The feeling would probably pass, but for right then, I was going to take advantage of it and gorge myself.
We ate in silence for a few minutes before Kate finally asked, “So what now?”
“I don’t know,” I replied, heaving a sigh. “It’s like I keep saying, I can’t just… I can’t turn this on and off. Because it’s a part of me, you know? Maybe it only got this bad this year, but it’s a part of me. And I think it always has been.”
Kate nodded. “Of course it has been. Aren’t creative people always a little dark? The really good creative people, I mean.”
“So maybe getting back into the studio will help, but how much? It’s not going to fix everything. And maybe nothing can fix everything, because like I said, some of it’s just me. It’s just how I’m made. I don’t want to not be me, I just don’t want to be… this me.”
“I think, at least to some extent, we do have a choice in who we are.”
I nodded. Maybe we did. Maybe I had just been making all of the wrong choices for months, years even. Maybe it was terrifying to think about changing. Maybe I didn’t even know where to begin. Maybe I just wanted to sit here and eat the rest of this nacho dip and then everything else we had in the house.
For several minutes, we sat there quietly, still eating heaping chips full of the beans and cheese. I didn’t know what else to say. No, that wasn’t right. There were a million thoughts swirling around in my mind, so quickly that I couldn’t pin any of them down and try to begin figuring out what to say. All the thoughts centered on one thing, though—that number on the scale, a number that at least on an intellectual level, I knew was so, so unhealthy.
I wanted to be angry with everyone, myself included, that it had gotten this bad. It was, though, no one’s fault but my own, even if my mind was obviously so warped that I couldn’t see how bad it was until now. Now, for whatever reason, something had snapped and I could see it. I could see that everything I had done, all the steps I had taken to supposedly better myself, had only become twisted and left me this hollow skeleton of a person.
That really only left one thing for me to say.
“Katie,” I said, “I think… I think I need help.”