Work Text:
The thing about having this problem, this ambiguous, in-between eating disorder is that everyone close to you catches on eventually.
When you’re a recovering addict, it’s so easy to get overtaken by something else. Food is a quick, mindless comfort for many. And on the other hand, self-starvation can serve as a great new crutch. Regrettably, for someone as gypped by the brain circuitry lottery as Anthony, it’s easy to vacillate wildly between those two choices. It’s all dopamine, serotonin, whatever. The point is: it feels good to not eat. It feels good to eat. It feels good to eat too much, sometimes. It feels good to purge what he eats. And so it goes.
He loses weight.
A lot.
And then it stops.
Right there, at the border of underweight, it won’t budge anymore. He doesn’t look ill. He doesn’t look like those visibly anorexic models on Instagram contorting their bodies in a contest of who can reveal the most bone. No, he doesn’t look sick.
He goes to the dentist and needs seven cavity fillings. Has to tell his wife, like she couldn’t have guessed.
He writes songs about living like this. No one will ever hear them.
The thing about having this problem on tour is that no rock bottom is far enough.
It’s puking in artist venue bathrooms backstage until it’s puking in the public venue bathrooms to hide from bandmates until it’s puking in the cold, dark, on the parking lot out by the dumpsters.
Lying about going out for a smoke.
Tucker tried to talk him out of this once. Told him he’d ruin his voice. Anthony laughed; he never had much of one, anyway.
No, he can write, and he can play guitar, and with the rest, he lucked out. And then his luck ran out, because his body is a traitor and his teeth are rotting out of his skull but he can’t lose any goddamn weight.
He wishes he were a more honest person. He lies about migraines to get out of eating breakfast. It’s split fifty-fifty whether he’ll eat when the guys all go out anyway and then make himself sick in the tour bus bathroom.
It’s nothing anymore.
The thing about having this problem when you’re an adult man is no one is looking for it. The public eye, the audience, no one sees, no matter how much turmoil it brings into the lives of those close to him. Anthony has problems, but not like that. Not teenage girl problems. He’s not ninety pounds and on a tube-feed. He’s fine.
The thing about having this problem is that you know it could kill you, someday.
They had fun with an opening band once–fun entailing swapping around Fitbit watches, and everyone was in awe that Anthony’s resting heart rate was forty-nine.
“Like an athlete,” someone had laughed. More like a corpse, he had wanted to tell her, but he kept his mouth shut.
But he’s aware. He knows it could be anytime, anywhere. He’s heard the horror stories. Someone could find him dead from a heart attack in a puddle of his own vomit. He knows.
But it won’t happen to him.
And even if it does, it’s fine.