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He doesn’t know why it bothers him so much.
It’s just an Instagram comment, not even on his own post. It’s below a photographer’s shoot of Dunes performing at Adjacent Fest, and it really shouldn’t sting like it does.
It says, “Anthony looks better, like he gained some weight back. He was too thin before :].”
He reads it back over some fifteen times.
The thing is, it isn’t untrue. He had lost a lot of weight with the last relapse and gained it back when he started taking better care of himself. Everyone had told him that was a good thing. He believed them.
He isn’t sure he does now.
__________
He doesn’t forget about it.
He goes back to his story and clicks through, saves the post in a private folder he decides to call “fix this.”
He searches his own name and finds images of himself from six months ago and how did he let this happen? How did he let go of that body? Bony fingers and collar bones and veins that are hidden under flesh now. He’s gone so far backwards. There’s this rage that seethes between his ears for undoing so much progress.
It’s 3 a.m. flipping back and forth comparing images of himself over a span of months and years and he resolves that if he did it once, he can do it again.
He will do it again.
__________
Tim’s yawning and pouring out a bowl of sugar cereal. Frank’s halfway through a plate of toast with butter. Travis and Tucker hadn’t eaten breakfast.
Nobody says anything about Anthony not eating breakfast, either, even though he used to before, every day.
Nobody notices when he pours another cup of coffee with cream and skips the sugar. He wonders, distantly, if he should have skipped the cream, too. But no, that’s too obvious. He can’t let people notice. They’ll start asking questions.
__________
It starts to bother him that there’s no scale to step on in the morning. No glowing numbers to assure him he’s headed in the right direction.
But he has to be. It’s been six weeks since he’s eaten breakfast, and he always feels lightheaded by the time he actually sits down for a meal. It has to count for something. He thinks, staring in the tour bus bathroom mirror, that maybe his face is the slightest bit thinner. He thinks his jeans are fitting looser.
Except what if he’s wrong?
He has to do more.
__________
He’s on one of the couches in the bus commons. They’re heading west from New York to somewhere he can’t remember. He finds himself forgetting things more and more lately.
In an attempt to kill time, he opens up Instagram and navigates to that folder. It’s still called “fix this,” and it now has four-hundred and five saved images.
Behind him, there’s a laugh. It’s Tucker.
“Are you hoarding pictures of yourself?” he asks, more teasing than accusatory.
Anthony feels his throat go dry. How could he even begin to explain?
Instinctually, he answers, “if you looked as good as I do, you would, too.”
Tucker laughs again and shakes his head. He doesn’t ask anything further.
So he just thinks Anthony’s a secret narcissist.
Great.
(And yet, it’s better than him knowing the truth of the situation.)
__________
He hadn’t really hated his body, per say, before. Before he read that comment, started all of this.
He does now.
It’s agonizing, actually, feeling like so much all of the time. He isn’t worth the space he occupies.
__________
At some point he stops eating after shows, too. He was never really hungry then, anyway, not with all the adrenaline flooding through him; it was all extra. Excess.
And he can’t afford that anymore.
__________
He wakes up on the bus at noon with a splitting headache.
He groans as he stands up, rubbing at his temple with one hand and grabbing at his bunk to steady himself with the other. He’s dizzier than usual, and it takes fifteen solid seconds for the fuzzy stars in his vision to clear.
“You look hungover,” Frank says. Anthony looks and Frank’s frowning. And then he’s standing up, heading towards the fridge.
“Here,” Frank says, and presents him with a bottle of blue Gatorade. Anthony remembers buying the case of those maybe two months ago, back when he still drank sugar. Still drank calories. He’d had maybe two before he set that rule into place and left the remaining bottles untouched.
Anthony swallows thickly. He makes no move to take the bottle.
“Electrolytes,” Frank offers. “You’re sick.”
Anthony shakes his head. “I just need ibuprofen,” he says.
“And sugars. Food. When did you last eat?” Frank asks, like it’s a realization.
Fuck.
“It’s fine,” Anthony says. “Migraine. If I eat, I’ll puke.”
He isn’t really sure if it’s a lie.
__________
The headache doesn’t go away. He gets through the show despite it, but he’s sure the performance sucks, his head pounding and his ears ringing and everything blurring together. The venue is too hot, and there are too many people, the sea of fans is too much.
He lies awake in his bunk that night, too, ruminating.
He wonders if Frank had pieced anything together from the way he behaved that morning.
He wonders if he should really be exercising more to get the weight off faster.
He wonders when he started caring about added sugars and preservatives but by now he really fucking does and venue catering is off limits and so is three quarters of the food on the bus and he really, really wants to step on a fucking scale.
__________
Someone knocks on his hotel room door right after he gets done unpacking, settling in. Which isn’t so unusual. Sometimes someone wants to go on a walk, or watch a shitty movie, or mess around with song ideas.
It’s Travis.
He’s smiling, but Anthony can see the anxiety underneath it in his stiff shoulders and crossed arms. The feeling is contagious, but he invites him in anyway.
Anthony seats himself at the edge of the bed while Travis takes the armchair.
And Travis says, “we’re worried about you.”
Anthony pauses. Maybe it isn’t that bad.
“I just haven’t been sleeping,” he tries. “Getting headaches and shit.”
Travis takes a long time to answer, like he’s considering his words meticulously. He says, “you look like you did when you relapsed last time.”
Maybe it is that bad.
Anthony fumes. He balls his hands up into fists. “Really? That’s what you think this is? Search my shit if you want to–I’m clean.”
“I believe you,” Travis says, steady, “but something is wrong.”
“What’s wrong is you coming in here and accusing me when I’ve worked this hard. Seriously, fuck you,” Anthony says.
Travis takes his time with his response again. Anthony grows increasingly frustrated, wants to tell him to spit it out. Finally, he says, “the guys are worried, too.”
“Cool,” Anthony says. “Keep talking about me behind my back. That really makes me want to hear you out.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Whatever it’s like, leave. We’re not going to talk about it again.”
__________
He can feel them tiptoeing around it. He’s sure they still talk about it when he’s not around.
That’s fine. Deserved, probably. Validating, even. Because if they’re worried enough to talk about it, he must be losing weight.
Somehow that’s become more important than anything else.
__________
It almost happens on stage.
He gets the black spots in his vision every time he stands up; he’s used to that.
The issue is that they appear, suddenly, in the middle of 2022. He holds himself still, in place, getting the words out on autopilot. But the spots don’t dissipate over the next minute; they grow and spread and he feels faint and then he isn’t sure if he’s singing the lyrics right or singing anything at all.
From the corner of his eye, in the bit of vision he has left, he spots Tim. He staggers over and leans into Tim’s shoulder, trying to make it look natural. Like part of the performance. Like one of those things he just does with the guys. He rests his head on Tim until the song ends and the world comes back into focus.
__________
It must not have looked like one of those things he just does because the second they’re backstage Tucker is asking, “dude, what the fuck happened?”
“I spaced. Anxiety,” falls out of his mouth reflexively.
“You don’t get stage fright anymore,” Frank says flatly.
“I did this time.”
“Or you’re not eating,” Frank says, “and you’re going to pass out and crack your fucking head open if you keep this up.”
Anthony says, “I still eat.” Which isn’t a lie. He eats, every day. Just less.
“Do you think we don’t notice?” Frank asks.
“You think I’m using, too?” Anthony says, and the rage fills up his chest.
Frank shakes his head. “I think you’re starving yourself. I think you replaced one way to fall apart with another.”
“Yeah?” Anthony says. “Well I like the person I am now, and you can deal with that, or you can leave.”
“It’d be all of us,” Frank says. “It’d be all of us leaving.”
Anthony considers. “So be it,” he decides.
__________
He did what he resolved to do.
Bony fingers and collar bones and veins that aren’t hidden under flesh anymore.
He can let them go if it means preserving that.