This pizza I’m staring at should not scare me. It is knowable and understandable, all through the magic of dietary exchanges. I know the role and function of each part, and I know that this pizza is a balanced, fairly healthy meal to eat, as long as I stick to a piece or two.

But who sticks to a piece or two?

And who comes to Pizza Vito’s all by themselves and orders a large pizza? Who comes in at two in the afternoon, after walking past the joint every fifteen minutes since noon, building up courage to walk in, only to swerve back to the sidewalk and walk the same two-block circuit, only to fail yet again?

Who does that?

Someone who just wants to prove to himself that he can order a whole pizza, sit down, eat two slices, ask for a box, and take the rest home to eat two more slices again at another meal. Or maybe ask for a box, walk out of the parlor with it, then pitch it in the first trashcan he sees on a street corner. What happens to the pizza after it’s ordered and the two slices are eaten isn’t important, but he makes it important by dwelling on it, which means he doesn’t have to dwell on the fact he still has to eat two slices from the pizza in front of him.

Lunchtime is supposed to be at noon. It is now two o’clock. My stomach is snarling. The hunger pangs are deep and they echo. I shouldn’t say this, but it feels so good to hear that snarl and feel that deep echo again. It reminds me of a time when I had the power and something as simple as pizza didn’t.

Oh, who am I kidding? That pizza would have had all the power in the end. Just like it does now.

A pizza is not just a pizza. It is not just tomato sauce with some oregano, basil, and thyme smeared on a spongy piece of white dough, topped with mushrooms and pepperoni, buried under a thick layer of cheddar and mozzarella.

A pizza is more than a pizza. That tomato sauce? It’s lycopene. It’s vitamin C. It’s a vegetable exchange. That dough? It’s simple carbohydrates (assuming you’re not being fancy and using whole wheat, in which case you’ve got some complex carbs and protein thrown in for fun), yeast, and water. It’s a starch exchange. Those mushrooms? They’re more than just delicious cap-shaped fungus. They’re a non-starchy vegetable exchange. That pepperoni? It’s more than just thinly sliced hard sausage packed into a casing. It’s a high-fat meat exchange. That cheese? It’s more than just a bubbly, stringy gob of spoiled milk. It, too, is a meat exchange. Just how high fat depends on how much gets piled on.

A pizza is more than a pizza, no matter how you try to narrow it down. It’s one thing, then it’s another thing, and those things add up to something you thought you knew, but don’t.

The fun of exchanges is that food is no longer food. Food becomes the parts they play in your body, the role they serve to feed you and keep you healthy, the sum of their nutritional whole. They are stripped of what they seem to be, and displayed for what they really are – components, pieces, vitamins, minerals, amino acids. Chains, reactions. All serving a purpose. All understandable, all understood. The magic is gone and when the magic is gone, the fear is gone.

Or so I was led to believe.

Since I haven’t eaten since eight fifteen, and all I’ve put in my mouth besides sugarless gum since then is diet soda here at the parlor, I’m feeling lightheaded. I’m remembering what it’s like to starve, and I like it.

I got spoiled by all the structure I used to have in the hospital. I’m supposed to keep that structure going. I’m supposed to have my schedule rigidly in my mind, and follow it just as rigidly. I shouldn’t be letting hours go by, working up the courage to walk into a stupid pizza joint. I was trained to be able to do this. That’s how I can even be here in the first place. I’m not locked up anymore. I’m free.

Only I’m not free. I’m still locked up. This pizza is proving that to me. I’m just as weak now as when I weighed ninety-nine pounds from starving myself and throwing up what little I did eat. I’m supposed to be stronger than this. That’s why they let me out.

I really could use Sandy’s encouragement. She’d be practical: “Nathan, it’s okay, it’s just some starch and meat exchanges.” She’d remind me of what the pizza means when I couldn’t, when I was wrapped up in the other things it means to me, like weakness, like defeat, like loss.

The steam from the pizza is thinner than it was when Kasey, the bored waitress, brought it to me, looking at me like I was a hog for ordering a large pizza. Or maybe I imagined she looked at me like that. Maybe I was projecting, like Dr. Jamitrack said I have a tendency to do. The steam started out fat, and now it was thin.

Like I used to be.

Now stop that, Nathan

know what’s wrong with me. What’s wrong with me is that I ordered a large pizza just to prove I could, and now I have to eat two slices of it and get a take-out box, just to prove that I can. Just to prove that I can do something millions of people can do without even thinking, without even blinking. Just to prove that two slices will not make me fat, but will give my body the energy and nutrition it needs to help me get through the day. Just to prove that I’m not a prisoner anymore.

Just to prove that I’m not what I used to be.

But I am. I am today. Just for today, at least. And not even just for today. Just for now, just here at five minutes past two at Pizza Vito’s on a slow Saturday afternoon. Just long enough to remind me that I’m not as far along as I thought I was, but not so far gone as I used to be.

I shift my weight, and grab my wallet from my back pocket. I pluck a twenty out, tuck it under my clean plate, sip the rest of my diet soda, slide out of the booth, the pizza untouched, and head for the door I never should entered in the first place. I walk away from what I worked so hard to be able to do, but now can’t.

Pizza is not just pizza. I should have known that.