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Every time, he tells himself that it will be the last, and so it never is.
He presses undo and thinks that tomorrow he will wake up and do a better job of not needing. It doesn't happen.
And really, isn't that all that he is at the core--someone who needs and just keeps needing, who takes and can never have enough?
_____
Everyone finds out eventually.
The starving and stuffing and spewing really isn't an easy secret to keep, and the closer proximity, the more difficult it gets.
Anthony also watches as he breaks every set of standards he had had for himself--like no purging in public, or not on nights where you have a show, or never more than once in a day.
It stops mattering.
And when he opens the bathroom door to Tucker just a few steps outside, saying, "you threw up again," he doesn't have any grand lies to tell.
He says, "yeah," and shoves his hands in his pockets and walks right by.
That's all there is.
_____
And when everything hurts, his throat and his teeth and his head and the cracks in his knuckles, at least he knows he's losing weight.
He's dizzy and every state passes in a second; at least he's losing weight.
_____
People have things to say, because of course they do, always have. Always more to say the worse he's doing. They spill vile, awful things in comments sections about how obvious it is that he's relapsed on the heroin, backhanded reminders to take care of himself. It's cruel. It's validating.
He doesn't want to stop hearing it. He wants to keep being told he looks unwell. It sounds like good work. It sounds like keep going.
_____
It's an odd place, being so forthright about some of the ways that he's fucked up, about getting sober and relapsing and getting sober again, about more than a few trips to the psych hospital because he cannot keep himself steady, yet keeping this so close, still. This is different.
There's a line, he knows. You can't tell people you eat next to nothing until you can't stand it. You can't tell people you puke on purpose so often it doesn't even bother you anymore.
It feels deceptive, somehow, to talk about sobriety, recovery, when what he recovered into was a vessel of himself.
It feels like promising he was just like you and came out the other side and it's equal parts true and not.
He came out the other side--misshapen in new ways, defective as ever.
_____
And when people leave, (and they do; he can't be surprised--he's always been a lot, he can't blame them if this is the end of their rope) he has this: at least he lost the weight.
And when his fingernails break and his gums bleed and he can't think clearly enough to create anything, he has this: at least he lost the weight.
And when he dreams about his teeth falling out, dreams about choking on food that won't come back up, dreams about getting high, dreams about dying, when he wakes up, he has this: at least he lost the weight.