Up close, lanugo is visible on Will’s cheeks—the soft yellow hair that grows on an anorexic’s body, most likely to conserve heat. It gradually falls away as an anorexic returns to health.

_I was everybody’s friend in middle school, but I was always, like, the little buddy. Not having a sex drive because of the eating disorder was just a smack in the face. Like, that’s something else to make you different. I compared my insides with people’s outsides, you know? And the eating disorder became a numbing-out mechanism, a way to distract myself from how lonely and empty I felt. _

_ Getting help at that young of an age and being a male was like shooting in the dark and expecting to get a bull’s-eye. When I did find places, I was the only male, and a lot of the material that they were doing in the groups was all about females. On some issues, like the body-image stuff, their concern was completely different than mine. A lot of the females are dealing with abuse, so they’re not going to trust men. And I would take that personally at times, because I do just love people and want to help. Then it’s awkward because they don’t want to say certain things because I’m there, and I see that in them, and then you just don’t feel like you can open up to really anybody. _

_ Eventually it reinforced the insecurities and the feeling worthless. That even in getting help, I was still the odd man out. It made for almost a bitterness or an anger toward the eating-disorder community. _

He pauses repeatedly to open and close his jaw. Later his doctor explains to me that Will has lost fat even on the tiny pad near his middle ear that seals his Eustachian tube. With the tube open continuously, Will hears a constant rushing of air, as if he’s in a wind tunnel. Shifting his jaw closes the tube temporarily.

Food became my identity: I’m good if I eat this, this, this, this; I’m bad if I don’t follow my meal plan. There was a lot of: "My parents are telling me to do this, and I can’t do it, and they’re disappointed in me." It made me think that all their emotions depend on what I’m able to eat that day.

You know that eating will make you healthy. What is it that prevents you from eating?

_Like, right now? Because then I don’t have an excuse anymore, I guess? _

For what?

_For not being perfect. Or I have to face that emptiness inside of me. Or at this point in my life, I have to face my past, you know? I have to face the bad choices of staying in the eating disorder and the loss that I have from that. _

Your doctors obviously care for you as a person, not simply because you’re their patient. There’s a tenderness in the way they talk about you.

I guess that’s why I have this issue, because I don’t feel that. Ever.

Do you understand that there are people who love you?

_That’s what I’m wrestling with right now. No matter what I do, I just don’t feel loved. _

But something keeps you coming back here to get help. What is it?

It’s my God. It’s God. Because I know, I know, I know deep at my core, and I may not be able to live it out right now, and I may not be able to grasp it, but I know that love is there. I know that. From just intellectually looking at my life and just seeing His hand and His guidance. I remember lying in my bed, and I was praying—I was like 8 years old—I said, "God, you know I give my life to you." I was this super-fired-up little kid: "I don’t care if I have to go in the cafeteria tomorrow and dive in front of ninjas who are throwing ninja stars at Betty and Steve and take it for the team. Use me whatever way you want!" I look back and I see what I’ve lost. But that’s where my hope is that I can get back to that childlike zest for life: in my God. And there’s no reason I should be alive. There’s no scientific reason that my body should still be functioning. I have been at death’s door way too many times. Something’s there.