The treatment center was in California, but not in the city that I knew so well, the city that I was sure must have stolen my soul years ago. It was farther north, but still along the coast, convenient but still secluded enough that I was surprised it wasn’t more popular with the rich and famous.

I hadn’t wanted to chose somewhere like that, one of the cheesy places that people far richer and far more famous than me went to dry out so they could do it all over again. I wasn’t like that. I just wanted to get better and never set foot in one of these places again.

It took a few weeks of intense research for Kate to find just the right place for me. She knew me better than I knew myself, and as soon as she showed me a picture of the campus, I knew it was right. It was where I needed to be.

I spent a lot of time thinking about what Kate had said, and I decided that she was right. Some people really just weren’t meant to be happy, at least not in a carefree, oblivious sort of way. It wasn’t about intelligence, really, but it was about knowledge. The things I’d seen, from such a young age, showed me that there was so much to the world outside of myself, my family and the little bubble we existed in. And there was so much more bad than good. There were so many reasons to be depressed and give up hope.

But I was just tired.

I was tired of having all of the pain in the world weighing down on me all the time. I couldn’t change the world, though. But I could change myself, at least to a certain extent. It was like that proverb, I supposed, and I was learning what to accept and what to just let go.

I was tired of the lies, too. I was tired of hiding what I was and how I felt. I was tired of pretending that nothing was wrong, even when it was becoming more and more obvious to everyone around me that it was all smoke and mirrors. But they were all so willing to believe what they were told, wanting the simple and easy answer, when nothing was really simple or easy. Even when the truth was staring them in the face, gaunt and malnourished, they only saw what I had told them.

Not everyone was supportive or understanding of my decision to get help. It pushed back our album’s recording schedule and interrupted everyone else’s lives. Of course, it interrupted mine in a bigger way, but my life had been on hold for the last year anyway. Mostly, I don’t think any of them were as ready to let go of the lies as I was and admit that things had gotten really, really out of control.

I was just so, so fucking tired–of everything and in every way.

Part of that, I knew, was because of how much weight and muscle mass I had lost. I was so weak, it was a wonder I had made it through the tour at all. Since arriving at the treatment center, I had gained sixteen pounds. The weight came back easily, helped by how delicious the food was. In a place that was so close to being a hospital, that had been a surprise, but I supposed it made sense. With so many patients suffering from eating disorders—a phrase I wasn’t afraid to associate with myself anymore—serving shitty food would probably make it even harder to help them recover.

It had taken me a week after arriving to accept the diagnosis. I knew it was true, of course. I had known it was true from the first time Avery had suggested it, but I didn’t want to admit it. Eating disorders were something that teenage girls and models suffered from. Not me. Not strong, manly men. But who was I kidding? I wasn’t strong at all.

I spent a lot of time thinking about the root cause of it all, and I never came up with a real answer. Most people, I think, would have looked back to the early days of our fame and sought answers there. Had I been abused, mistreated, forced into something I didn’t want? Maybe music hadn’t been my dream at first, the way it had been my brothers’, but it was too much a part of me to imagine giving up now. And in spite of our child star status, we had an almost impossibly idyllic childhood. Even as teenagers, we were no worse than any other teenagers. There was no event, no one moment I could point to and say that that was when everything had changed. There was no tragic, inciting incident, but why did there need to be?

Maybe this was just who I was. Maybe I just wasn’t meant to be happy like other people. And that was okay. Who needed to be happy and carefree all the time? I liked seeing the world for what it was and understanding both the good and the bad. I needed them both, I was realizing. Without the good and the bad, the light and the dark, I was only seeing half the picture, half the truth.

And I wanted it all.

The truth of me was so much more complicated than just one diagnosis in two words—anorexia nervosa. The words major depressive disorder didn’t explain everything about me, either. But I didn’t need those words to define me. Defining me was my job, and I was so many things that weren’t contained in those words—son, brother, husband, father, drummer, artist, producer, businessman and so much more.

I was just me, and for the first time in years, that didn’t feel like such a bad thing to be.