Anorexia; Phan

Chapter Five

I sat in the local park reading. I always liked to read. I sat on the bench minding my own business until I heard a crash. Someone had fallen down. It then came to me, it was Phil.

"Get up you idiot." I said to him as I gestured him up.

"Thanks, Dan." He answered to me with a smile. "Do you know a boy called Alex in our year?"

"Yeah, I've only ever talked to him once or twice before." I answered.

"He fancies you." Phil said with sadness in his eyes.

I was shocked. Who would like me? A boy with an eating disorder. A boy who is depressed. A boy so fragile and weak.

"I doubt it." I began. "Who would like me?" I chuckled.

Phil looked up at me.

"Maybe I do..." He looked away with the look of guilt on his face. "In a friend way of course. Ha no homo." He added. We both laughed.

After talking for around forty minutes about astrology and how we thought that star signs are true and things.

"According to the Internet we'd be the perfect match." Phil said to me with a glint in his eyes.

"Are you trying to flirt with me?" I asked.

"Maybe I am, maybe I'm not. You'll never know the answer, Dan." He said with a smirk.

It was then I felt my stomach turn. It was clenching. I wasn't nervous, anxious or even remotely sad. I was neutral. What was it? I don't know. I've had it since I first seen Phil. What had my life become? In my eyes, it became a thing I have to overcome day by day and in my parents eyes, it became the failure to my success.

"Have you ever felt as if your life is slipping out of your hands?" I asked Phil as we continued walking down the street.

"Not really." Phil answered, as he put his uncovered hands it his hoodies pockets to warm him.

"Have you ever felt that you're drowning, but everyone around you is breathing?" I asked again.

"No." Phil exclaimed.

I was alone. I thought everyone felt that way at least once in their lives. Was I wrong? Was I right in some sense? Did Phil have anything going on in his life?

That's what I always thought about people. If they did have something going on in their lives. At times, people can have the most impressive social lives and can have so many friends but may have a rubbish life behind closed doors.

I was different.

I had a rubbish life in school, I was friends with nobody. Nobody talked to me. I was alone. I was alone with my spiral of thoughts. The thoughts that wanted to explode from my head and wanted everyone to see them, wanting everyone to pity me.

At home, I didn't do much. My parents tried to talk to me. It almost came to the point of where I wouldn't go to school. My brother was constantly asking to play video games with me. I declined. I never had the energy.

Phil changed me. And for the better.

But was he hiding something?