Really Good, Actually

by Monica Heisey

But we weren’t unhappy, just unsatisfied . . . until suddenly we were so, so unhappy, and we couldn’t laugh, and we couldn’t have sex, and we couldn’t order Thai food without looking at the other person like, who are you?, staring at the stranger we’d chosen at age nineteen and nineteen and a half, respectively, not hating them, exactly, but wondering if they died without warning—of natural causes or in some kind of horrible accident, not that that would be good, of course, it would be a tragedy . . . but if it did happen—if maybe life would be easier.

Even if we handle it as well as possible, I thought, it’s still going to be terrible.

The truth is, if you start your eating disorder even slightly overweight, no one will notice until things are very much at the “what if two meals a day were soup” stage.

“One day,” she said, “and it will surprise you how soon this day will come, but one day you will wake up and feel good. It won’t last long, but then you’ll have another day where you barely remember this abjection, and another, and another, until that’s just your life. But for now, it will be hard. This is the part that’s hard.”