Together (Larry Stylinson) ✅

Losing Freedom

Louis' Point of View 

It's hard for me to remember what happened during my first day in the  hospital -- the first week even. I've tried so hard to repress it from my memory, but bits and pieces from that day still linger, still hurt.

I vividly remember entering the hospital. I was wearing black joggers and a black T-shirt and hoodie, hoping that maybe if I bundled up enough, I wouldn't appear as sick as I was. Not that I could fool them. The nurses would quickly force me to strip down and hop on the scale, recording my starting weight, that dreadful number that indicated how gravely ill I was for my height and age. 

I hugged Lottie and Fizzy goodbye, our faces dripping with tears as we huddle together into a weeping mess. It sort of felt like I was going away to war or something like that. And in a way, I was. I was going to war with myself -- I was going to war against these awful thoughts which dragged me down and kept me so sick and starved, even when all I wanted to do was eat and get better. 

Eventually, a nurse came and got me, breaking up the hug and directing me inside. I waved to my sisters through the glass windowpane of the hospital door, hoping the next time I saw them I wouldn't look like this anymore. 

The first thing they told me to do was take off my clothes and put on a medical gown. When I was done, they strapped a medical bracelet on my arm with my name and prognosis. Tomlinson, Louis. Anorexia nervosa. 

The very first stripping of my freedom. It would be one many. 

Next came tests -- all kinds. Height, weight, blood pressure, heart rate, bloodwork. I was poked and prodded so many times I started to feel faint. I might have passed out. I did a few times during my stay in the treatment center. The combination of my fear of needles and my low blood sugar were enough to knock out me out. 

So much fun. 

I don't know how that day quite went. Maybe I went to therapy first and then ate, maybe I ate and then went to therapy. Maybe I didn't go to therapy at all and just did meditation or a craft that day. It didn't matter. It was always the same. Slow, monotonous. Lifeless. 

Just like me.

One of my sharpest memories are those of the other patients. They were almost all female, with the exception of a boy named Thomas, who was about 17 and did a brief stint towards the end of my stay. He used to be a track athlete but took overtraining too far. By the end of it, he was so sick he needed a wheelchair. I tried not to interact with him. I didn't want to be rude, but it was too painful to look into his pale, withering face. Part of me wished I could be that sick. 

The other patients were women, aged anywhere from 16 to 31. Kassie was my favorite and we became friends for a while. She had bulimia, something  which I could hardly understand. Sure, I did the purging part every now and then when I was feeling gross. But bingeing was something I could never allow myself to do -- even when I was truly starving. 

Kassie and I used to have this deal where she would eat my food if I could stall the bathroom attendant for her so she could purge. It was so toxic, looking back, we were just feeding each other's bad behaviors. But desperate times call for desperate measures. 

Speaking of desperation, I don't think I've ever felt more hopeless than I did during meal time. I can't stress enough how torturous it was for me to eat those meals in the state I was in. I wasn't even sure it was humane for them to make me eat that much right away. I'm pretty certain they were supposed to slowly up my calorie count over time. 

But they didn't. 

The rule at the facility was that every patient needed to eat 3000-3500 calories per day. They called in Minnie Maude, some sort of refeeding schedule. Keep in mind, 3000 calories is a lot of food for anyone -- most people eat 2000 calories a day. But for me, who was just barely keeping down two meals a day, most times less, it was an absolutely gigantic portion.