Hungry for Release

Part 10

The sky was so much bigger out in the desert. Sometimes, he’d just sit doing nothing and watch the sunset, imagining he could hear the ‘ping’ as it finally sunk into the vast horizon.

Time seemed to move differently here too. He’d been banned from communicating with the outside world on arrival - and without the constant drip feed of information, alerts and distractions from his iPhone, there was a lot more of it to fill.

Regardless of how long they felt, the days were marching on. In three weeks, he’d be expected to rejoin the real world. The cast and frame were gone, but he’d be on crutches for a while yet.

Going to the local private hospital they’d transferred him to last week for the removal had been yet another sober reality check. The nurse on duty had greeted him warmly, as though they’d talked before. And they had - the first week he’d been sent down to Arizona. He’d just been so ill, his brain had blanked the whole thing. He wondered how  many other things he'd missed over those last few breathless months.

Although there were still daily aches and pains, in himself, Zayn felt stronger. It felt like he’d slept more in the past few weeks than he had in his life - catching up on a debt accumulated from hundreds of nights spent staring at hotel ceilings. 

Of course all this came with a double edged sword. Feeling better, feeling the dizziness and constant chills abating, were all signs that he was gaining weight back. But if he couldn't attain the BMI they wanted,  then he'd be locked up here forever - and, as his mood picked up, that was starting to feel like a more daunting prospect.

They’d advised against paying too much attention to the numbers, and he deliberately turned his back every time they weighed him - it was too hard to see. He wasn’t sure he’d ever just be able to step on the scales without triggering the self-destruct switch. 

Therapy had been so difficult at first, and a lot of it in those early days had been a steady chiseling away at the layers of protection he'd so carefully built up around himself. It had been a long time before he was able to get through a session without emerging a broken, sobbing mess. However in time, something seemed to click into place. The antidepressants they had him on may have also had a little to do with it - but deep down, Zayn sensed a kind of seismic realignment taking place. 

Looking back, with his counsellor’s help, he realised that he’d been depressed for a while - long before that gate had come down in his mind. Of course, it wasn’t just as simple as that. Lots of people get depressed. But only a tiny fraction of those end up starving themselves to the edge of a heart attack.

Even the people at the ranch couldn’t tell him why he’d chosen food as his weapon of choice. Whether it was a poor genetic card, the pressure of fame, or just a horrible chain reaction, the result was the same: An alchemic reaction had taken place in his brain, and the controlling monster it had spawned had feasted on the chemical effects of starvation - growing stronger as he withered away. 

It was still hard for Zayn to accept to himself that he’d been starving himself. To him, even a sandwich still felt like a binge. Let alone a sandwich augmented with a series of snacks, a cooked breakfast, and enormous helping of whatever was for dinner. No matter how many times they drilled it in that it was ‘normal’, he still couldn’t register that this applied to him.

The first few weeks of refeeding had felt gentle. At that point, they’d watched him like a hawk. It had been utterly terrifying facing those first few banned items. The milk, the bread, and worse of all, fat laden cheese.

His brain had screamed at him as he stared at his plate. What are you doing? Don’t touch that! Every bite was torture, at first, and as he’d quickly learnt, if he didn’t finish in half and hour, he’d be forced to endure the whole unpleasant ritual all over again. And for every small victory, the expectations only piled up ever higher.