I haven’t eaten since breakfast and I haven’t tried since that disaster of a visit to Pizza Vito’s this afternoon. Not a single thing, except for this coffee here at some lame coffee shop by the hotel called Bean Around. I’ve got Ensure at the hotel, just in case something like this happens, but I haven’t touched it. I’ve got grapes and protein bars and even gummy bears, but I haven’t touched any of it. I should care more, but I don’t.

It’s not like I’m backsliding in any big way, and I’m not even really too worried about it now. I know it’s because of my current situation, and the fact I bit aimed too high today and it’s really just hard to transition from having so much structure to so much freedom. I need to remember that for the weekends coming up. I don’t want to keep having this problem.

Once I get back to my hotel room, I’ll drink a can of Ensure and eat some grapes. Maybe even some gummy bears. I can’t go all day without something in my stomach. I don’t like how my stomach feels compressed, like it’s collapsed in on itself and trying to wad itself up into the smallest ball it possibly can. That feeling used to give me so much joy, so much pleasure. It meant I was doing good, I was achieving, I was exceeding. I wasn’t the disappointment Dad thought I was. I was good at something.

The dreadlocked barista comes over to wipe my table. “Slow day in here, man.”

“Yeah, looks that way,” I say. I’m the only customer.

“Haven’t seen you in here before,” he says. “You like the coffee?”

“Yeah, it’s fine.”

“It’s Fair Trade and organic.”

“Saving the world one coffee bean at a time,” I say.

“Something like that.” Then he moves on to the next table.

I stare at his grungy-looking dreds and his hipster Goodwill clothes as he works. I look like I fell out of a Gap ad, and he looks like he fell out of a homeless shelter.

Mom bought and had delivered new clothes about a week before I was discharged. Good old Astrid. I might not be her son anymore, I might have completely upset her crumbling world, but I still had to look good. I still had to keep up appearances. I still had to put on a show.  “Looking the part matters,” she’d say.

I’m the only one who stopped acting.

As I watch the barista work, I wonder if he can see I nearly starved myself to death? That I can puke without sticking my finger down my throat? That I’m parentless now? That I was always was in many ways? That I’m on welfare so I can get the health insurance to be able to afford the day hospitalization program? Can he see any of that written on my face?

I shake my head to stop the questions.  The lack of food is getting to me.

I really don’t like all this self-awareness. Some days I wish I could be as blissfully arrogant and ignorant as Dad is. I could just bully my way through the world and not care about what damage I left behind. I could be right all the time. I could be an emotional fly swatter and whack the heck out of anything that tries to land on me. I could feel how satisfying it is to hurt someone who means me no real harm, to have power over someone else.

But I could never be like that.  I’ve seen what it’s done to me and Astrid.

I’m free and she’s not. That’s the choice she made, though, the choice she makes every day she decides to stay.