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It was easier with the drugs, Gerard mused, as he blew out a thin cloud of curling smoke. At least when he had been on the drugs, it had killed his appetite most of the time— the starving, as beneficial as it was for his pretty-boy image, had been the side effect rather than the end goal. All they’d wanted back then was to bury the thoughts that terrified them, (had him pinned to the damp sheets with fright as a child, until he snuck a sip or two from the cough syrup hidden under his bed), and the painful feelings that made him want to act on those same thoughts. The drugs had almost driven him to his death in the end— being clean felt good.
But the cleanliness that came from quitting the drugs was nothing compared to the similar sensation of purity born from starving. And it was starving. Maybe some people took up the habit of skipping meals under the illusion that they were embarking on a diet, (it was important to look good when everyone was watching you onstage), and would return to their old ways as soon as they had slimmed down. It had never been a diet for Gerard: he had a tendency towards self-destruction for as long as he could remember, no safety net for the tightrope walk of sickness, and knew from the start that what he wanted, truly wanted, was to waste away. Starve himself until he disappeared completely. What a sweet, slow suicide.
They lowered the cigarette between their fingers, looking out at the world that seemed to lose colour each day, and shivered in the grey chill of the evening air. It had crept into his bones while he was sleeping, (the cold), and refused to shift, no matter how layers he buried himself in. Some days they wondered how their friends got by without much more than a thin jacket, sometimes just a t-shirt or a tank top, when even the brightest sun didn’t warm his pathetic, limp bones. Mikey shot him empathetic looks when he shivered.
Whatever their brother thought, Gerard knew that it wasn’t the same as the other problems that the duo had wrestled with in the past: the alcohol, the drugs, the temptation to open up skin and let their problems seep away. Those vices had been weak and pathetic, something you had to keep secret or risk being ostracised by those you were close to. You had to quit them. I’m going to get better. But starving was something that people admired. Everyday, some cookie-cutter celebrity endorsed a ‘diet’ of drinking water and exercising until you passed out. Women used to get canonised for forgoing food, the anoretic saints of olden times, because being empty inside made you feel closer to God. When his vision turned a cold white, heart thudding like a trapped butterfly in his chest, Gerard felt that he understood why they did it.
Fans loved the way that his clothes hung off his body now. If Gerard did eat, instead of smoking a token cigarette, they were struck by a sudden fear that the new costumes weren’t going to fit anymore. Or that somebody would look at them, really look at them, and see through the celebrity mirage that they’d spent years constructed. See that Gerard was nothing more than a scared little kid from New Jersey. Eating was something that grounded him in reality, pulling him away from the hazy dream world he usually drifted through, and being anchored to the real world— to his body— made him feel sick. Maybe he was clean, but he wasn’t better.
Stubbing out the cigarette, Gerard paused for a second and felt the tug of his empty stomach, begging for him to give it something to subside on. It hurt. It groaned. It made him miss the alcohol, which had granted him permission to eat whatever he wanted without thinking about it. Then he turned, feeling as if his body was nothing more than a distant object that he should tidy away into a closet, and went inside to stack his scraped dish in the sink.