Okay, so I ate my breakfast with no problem at all. I even drank the milk from the bowl after I ate the Raisin Bran and nearly choked on some of the bran bits left over, but that could happen to anyone. The important thing is I ate the cereal, drank the milk, stirred in the jam-like strawberries into the cottage cheese tub, and ate that, too, scraping my spoon into the corners of the tub to get as many of the curds as I could. All washed down with the Maxwell House. All with no problems or issues.

For being the first meal totally on my own as a free man, not bad at all. I could do this.

In the hospital, there was an hour of time where we sat, just digesting our food and dealing with whatever emotions eating brought up for us. The thing is, sit time is when we all sit together with a nurse, and here I am, all by myself, no one to share it with. Guess I’ve been conditioned and socialized too well with the sit time. It feels wrong to be here alone, and I don’t have any negative or bad feelings about eating; I was hungry and I was glad to eat. I don’t feel any compulsion to run to the bathroom and puke it all back up, and I’m glad for that, too, because puking up something like Raisin Bran is really painful, considering all the jagged edges and when they scrape up against your throat or get stuck there, it hurts like a mother hummer. There was a time not too long ago where the toilet bowl and I would be a first name basis, and have quite an intimate relationship going on, but now, we’re solidly in the break-up phase, and I hope we never enter the make-up phase.

So barring any complications or negative feelings, I wasn’t sure what to do. I felt like I should do some form of sit time, just to keep that part of my rituals consistent. I wouldn’t be sitting around analyzing or talking about my feelings or anything like that. I was glad I didn’t have to, and glad to not hear Brandy and Holly go through all their usual after-meal dramas. Talk about tiresome.

Then I remembered that when I’ve stayed at hotels with Mom and Dad before there was usually a newspaper left outside the door in the mornings. I opened the door and sure enough, a USA Today weekend edition greeted me. I snatched it up off the floor and shut and lock the door again before I see anyone, or have anyone see me. I loved the whole being-by-myself thing right now. It felt nice to not deal with anyone for a change, and not to have every move I make monitored, evaluated, judged.

I opened the heavy curtains to the gray and cloudy day outside, and plopped into the easy chair by the window, hooking the ottoman with my feet and sliding it closer so I can put my feet up. I realized I should shower, but that could wait until I read the paper.

I hadn’t read a newspaper in months. We weren’t allowed to read them on the unit, and we weren’t allowed to read any magazines, either. Television was something else we didn’t have access to, except for when the nurses said we could, and even then, that was tightly controlled. Talk about your Orwell scenarios. Big Brother was always watching, always controlling, all knowing and all-powerful. We could read books, but that was only if the nurses approved of them and their content.

But I knew why they controlled things so much. The magazines and television thing I could totally understand, because of the whole skinny models and actresses, and diet tips and how to snag a man, and whatnot. I didn’t think skinny models and actresses made anyone anorexic, but I can see where their presence on an eating disorder unit wouldn’t be such a good idea. Ditto the diet tips and snagging a man tips.

Newspapers I didn’t understand. Dad brought home the newspaper every day, and I’d read it every day. I liked knowing what’s going on in the world. I wasn’t, and am still not, one of those dumb, narrow-minded teenagers who think that the only thing that possibly matters is what they consider to be important, or whatever text message flashes across their cell phones, usually something stupid like “what u doin” or “im bored.” Yes, that’s so much more important than people being killed in a war, or an earthquake knocking a whole Chinese village to the ground, or whether Iran or North Korea is developing nukes or not. It’s morons like that that give us teenagers with an actual brainwave a bad name.

Because it’s been months since I’ve read a newspaper, the headlines and happenings were foreign to me. I’ve missed a lot of what’s going on in the world, but as I read the stories about how the war was going (better than I last knew) and what was new with the economy (worse than I last knew), I quickly got up to speed and felt a bit more connected to the something other than myself and my own feelings and thoughts.

I catch wind of myself as I fold the paper all nice and neat, and place it on the floor. I smell ripe. Time to chip the funk off. Shower, here I come.