I went up against a pepperoni and mushroom pizza and the pizza won.

I’m an emancipated minor, an “adult” barely off his training wheels, and I couldn’t take on and defeat one stupid pizza.

How am I ever going to do this? How am I ever going to find out how to eat without someone watching me and holding me accountable when I don’t? It’s not like there were any nurses there to give me double the meal’s calories of Ensure when I just walked away from Pizza Vito’s without eating any of what I ordered. I didn’t even eat at noon, like I’m supposed to, because I was too busy being scared of the pizza joint. I was scared of the pizza. I was scared of starch, meat, and vegetable exchanges.

And I had no one to talk to about it. It’s the weekend. I’m not an inpatient anymore. I was discharged yesterday and left to fend for myself until Monday when I start the day hospitalization program. No one at the hotel knows anything about me, or even cares. I’m supposed to be moving to a new place soon with a family, and I thought that would all be worked out when I was discharged but it wasn’t. I’m in this limbo.

I don’t have a home. I don’t have a family. I don’t have friends. I don’t have Sandy or Dr. Jamitrack or Dr. Panzer, or even Holly, Brandy, and Sarah. God, I’d rather put with Brandy’s crappy pro-anorexia attitude than be alone with these thoughts right now.

I’ve got my thought restructure sheets folded in my back pocket. They’re supposed to help me transition from the unhealthy thoughts to more productive ones. The sheets are basically flow charts starting with the negative thoughts, then identifying the trigger of the thought, then stating the emotion felt before and during the thought, and ending with a shiny, happy new thought that will make everything all better. Sandy told me it’s part of cognitive behavioral therapy. I have a stack of them at the hotel, and I grabbed a few about food, but nowhere in my stack is one dealing with being beaten by a pizza.

Let’s try doing a thought restructure now, shall we? Okay, the bad thought is this:  I am a failure for ordering that pizza, not eating any of it, and walking away. The trigger was seeing the whole pie and not the individual slices, sort of a reverse forest-for-the-trees scenario. The emotion I feel is fear and self-loathing. Fear because of the high-fat nature of the food I ordered, and self-loathing because maybe my father is right, maybe I am pathetic and weak. The shiny, happy new thought would be this:  Exchanges are my anti-freak-out friends. Or something like that.

See how easy it is?

Only it’s not. It’s not easy when you’re in the middle of the negative thought in a pizza parlor, staring at a pizza with enough saturated fat to scare any non-anorexic person if they really thought about it. Is it bad to think about it, though? Is it bad to be aware of what’s in the food we eat, and to turn away from the food that could clog your arteries and make you fat?

There I go again. Afraid of getting fat. Afraid of food.

They shouldn’t have let me out yet. I shouldn’t have been discharged. I’m not ready for this. I can’t do this –

Wait. I’ve got a thought restructure for this. I reach into my left back pocket, pull out the folded sheets, and unfold them. The top one’s negative thought is “I’m not ready for this.”  I lean back on the bench, and read it, hoping for a bit of shiny happy.