Slowly it reared to around 6:00. Oliver had to get home for he had something to do. Adrian and I went to my room. I laid on my bed and Adrian just stood in my room awkwardly, which wasn't quite uncommon these days to be quite honest. Adrian was that type of kid. He was cute when he did that whole awkward standing.
"Dude, your house is huge." He says with astonishment. I laugh, it was true to be honest. I was blessed with this house, and it was absolutely gorgeous. It's pure modern it it's design, and it's designed in the most aesthetic sense that it could.

"You've never been to my Uncle's, his house is basically a castle, it's huge, like yo dude, I could go on, but damn, it's gorgeously huge, sadly I despise my uncle" I say to him, and Adrian opened the bathroom door.
"But dude, at least you have your own bathroom, I have to share one with my whole family and it gets super awkward at times to be honest." Adrian says, and I pull out a drawing that I was working on as Adrian was observing this same fact again, as he seemed to every day that he was over. I just smile at the awkwardness of Adrian's observations.

"It's kinda small though." I say, and Adrian walks back to the bean bags that were by the large window in my room. It peered out into all the other houses that were in the neighborhood and on the outskirts of the town, since the house was placed on the highest part of the whole neighborhood. It was very much a beautiful sight to see, especially when the sun started to set and the dim light illuminated the city and it crashed with lights from the city's streets and the buildings.
"But you have one, at least man, like c'mon, you can take hour long showers and no one harps on you because they need to take a damn poop, yet over at my place it seems there's always someone who needs to relieve themselves right when you strip naked and right before you get into the shower" He says, and I couldn't help but chuckle at the thought. I noticed the sun was starting to go down, and the window in my room dimly illuminated the place. I liked to look out of it whenever I felt a little lost or when I needed to relax my brain. When I was younger, mom used to point out my gym from there, and she would always tell me how proud she was of me, and sometimes I felt like a failure for quitting my most beloved sport because of this dumb illness.

"Adrian." I say, and he makes his way over to where I stood.
"Yeah?" He asks me, and I point to the gym building.

"Remember?" He nods.

"Yeah, hell on Earth, but at the same time the best place ever. I don't know. Mom still brags about my years of competing." He says, and then awkwardly laughs. I nod in agreement.

"Definitely, oh man, my mom calls them 'The Glory Days' it sort of makes me feel like shit for quitting but y'know, it was all for the best." I say, and we sit on the bean bags by the window. It was calm in the house, and the July sun made me feel sort of at peace at this moment, and it seemed like earlier was just a bad dream, and I was still the same boy I was back then. I looked over at the wall that was near the window, and all the medals hanging on my wall and all the warm up jackets and meet shirts sort of brought back memories from the glory days of competing. They forever reminded me of that time, and I guess sometimes that was good, unless it was a rough night, which has started to happen more and more these days.

"Hey, Allen?" Adrian asks, which suddenly snaps me out of my daydreaming. I look over at him, still sort of dazed from my thoughts.
"Yeah, what's up man?" I ask him, and he looks down. It worried me a bit, but I knew he was decently stable, so it shouldn't worry me too much, yet it still did. He sighed quite audibly.

"I don't know, the silence is scaring me, I guess, I really don't know." He says, and I smile. Silence was never something either of us liked, it felt as if it was so much louder than noise, and it greatly made us feel uncomfortable if it occurred.

"I can put some music on if you'd like, I don't know if that'll help, but I mean we could try." I offer to him, and he nods.

"Yeah, I don't really care what, just something, anything to keep the silence away, it's just super uncomfortable to me." He says, and I put my iPod into my speaker and start playing some Counterparts, and Adrian smiled. He used to be super into them, but for some reason we stopped jamming them all the time, until I guess today, which truly made me happy.
"Yoo, I missed Counterparts, dude they're sick as shit, I can get down to this." He said, excitedly. We spend some time just taking in the sun, and talking about anything and everything. I guess reflecting back really was something you do a lot after you quit something that was your life and consumed almost every waking thought and every moment of your life. I then look at the medal that was hanging on the wall beside me; it was from Nationals. I had placed first on high bar, second on floor, and second on Vault. The day I quit was the day after, my mental capacity had hit its' limits, and I knew that continuing would just make everything worse in the long run. I remember my mom just looked at me like she had been shot in the chest. She yelled at me, calling me crazy. Saying I'd come so far, I can't quit now, she yelled about how she wanted me to go to trials and that she didn't want to have a quitter as a son. The only reason she let me quit was because I reminded her of the older coaches, and the strain that they had caused me and the whole family. My dad had been at work while whole thing happened, and when he found out, he was just a little shocked at the speed it had happened at, but he saw it coming. I then heard footsteps, which snapped me from my thoughts.

"Boys, help clean the patio." It was mom; I tap Adrian's shoulder. He looks up also a little startled.
"What do you need?" He asks me, and I point to the door for no apparent reason.

"Mom needs us to help clean up." He sighs, clearly annoyed with his need to help out around my house all the time. Then we run downstairs into the living room, and stop for a second. It was huge, and the grand piano was dusty again, mom hated whenever the piano became dusty. She was a total neat freak in every way. It seemed weird, but she felt the need to take full charge of the family, all the damn time

Adrian then opens the door to the patio, and, to my absolute despise, my uncle was still there. He was talking with my other relatives. Mom hands me some plates to bring inside, and my uncle notices me and the plates.

"Make sure he doesn't eat them all." He says, jokingly, and Adrian gives him a look, but he couldn't see, as he turned his back again and was blabbing away with others. I go inside. I wanted to cry again, and just puke my guts clean out, but I kept my cool. I knew I was being irrational, yet I couldn't stop thinking that way.

"Allen, don't listen to him, he's just playing around with you." Adrian tries to comfort me, as he knew the comment bothered me.

I clean off the plates and then sit on the couch, in which Adrian joins me after finishing up his own work. I observed the living room again, and the windows were basically floor to ceiling, just like my bedroom, and to be honest it was really cool seeing as I've never observed the ceiling before, or our house structure. Mom had rigged aerial silks into the place as well, as she was once an aerialist when she was younger, and I liked to spend time on them sometimes when I truly missed gymnastics. The modern feel of the place definitely was really nice to me, and others who visited. The thoughts of earlier started to eat at my brain.

"Adrian?" I ask, and he looks over at me, since I caught his attention.

"Yeah man?" He asks me. I nervously rub my fingers, it was a habit I've had since I was extremely young, it calmed me down before I would ask hard questions or confess something.

"Am I fat?" I ask after a big sigh. Adrian then sighs and looks at me, concern spread across his face.
"Allen, you're not man, no matter what bullshit people spew, I promise you, you're not fat." I look down at my thighs, which seemed to be massive. Just massive. I wanted to scream, how could I ever let myself get this huge. Goddamn I'm a whale and it started to eat at me again, just as soon as the thoughts had left. They were back, full force.

Fatass, I'm a damn fatass, I need to lose this weight.

"Really?" He nods, and I sort of lied. I didn't believe him a single bit, but to hide suspicions, I lied through my teeth to him.
"Yes really, I promise you can trust me man, just believe me." He said to try and reassure me, yet I didn't believe him, but it made me feel good. Being around Adrian made me happy, and it's always been that way. He had vibes that just made him seem approachable and an absolute wonder to be around.

His phone vibrates, and he then goes about and checks it, sighing afterwards in a slight frustration.

"Yo, I gotta get home, mom needs me for something. We're over at Oliver's tomorrow to write some stuff. You're still picking me up right?" He asks and then he gets up. I nod.
"Yeah, I'm getting you." I say, and then he smiles and gets up off the couch

"Cool, see ya tomorrow man, I'm stoked on this." He says, and then we say goodbye to each other before he walks out the door. I then tie a knot in the silks that hung from our ceiling. I liked to sit on them to calm down after stressful days or just sometimes because why not. I mean it's a silk, so why not, y'know. It was one of the best things I did to relax, and after a couple minutes mom walked in.

"One of those days?" She asked me, and I nodded while spinning a slight bit.

"Yeah," I say, and then I thought about Adrian. He was my friend, and I knew that, but I guess sometimes I feel like he's more. We've been friends for the longest time. I don't know if I liked him, I didn't know anymore. I think so. I think I like Adrian. I think I've liked him for years, even just a little. Mom starts walking away.

"Hey mom?" I quickly ask out of impulse, and curse myself for getting her attention shortly afterwards. She turns around.

"Yes?" She asks and I look down, contemplating if I should confess or sugar coat.

"I have a question." I finally say, and she walks over to me and leans down to meet me eye to eye, and then knelt.
"Yes hun?" She asked, and I refused to meet her eye to eye.
"What if I was, I don't know," She starts looking worried. I take a deep breath and sigh. "What if I wasn't straight>" I blurt out, and instantly I felt red and started to blush. She breathes a sigh of relief.

"Then I'd love you just the same. You're always my little boy, never forget that." She reassured me, and then she hugs me.

"I love you." I say, and she smiles.
"I love you to." She says, and then dad soon arrives. He greets mom with a kiss and then waves at me.

"You're 17 now, congrats, one year until you move out right?" He says in a joking manner. I laugh quietly and swing a little in the knot again.

"Yeah, right." I say, sarcastically back to him.

Mom had some food for him. Then the memories of earlier today flooded back to my head. The purging. the feeling of the food coming back up, the pain of purging heavy carb foods, especially cake. I wanted to go again, puke more out, but it would already be digested, and I wanted to scream. I quickly undid the knot and walked upstairs I lock my bedroom door, no one was allowed to see this. I'm not letting Adrian in on this either, ever, and that was a promise. The box was somewhere, I knew it was, then I pulled back a bean bag and there it was. It brought back many memories of the years prior, it was the same box I had when I was 13, and for some reason that made me feel strangely dumb, I don't know. I was doing this shit at age 13, I'm 17 now, why am I doing it again, damn I'm dumb. I open it and there were all the tools I had collected in seventh and eighth grade. The edges were still sharp, much to my surprise to be honest. I pick one up and roll up the sleeve on my shirt. Exposing the skin on my shoulder. It'd be easier to hide that way, everyone checks wrists, but who checks a dude's shoulder, like damn that'd be awkward. I place the cold metal on my shoulder and drag it across, just like I used to do. The pain started to throb again, damn, I truly missed this, yet it was such a sick thing to do, but I was sick, so it worked out I guess. The pain became more prominent, and small red droplets started to come out of the wounds, and it made my brain start to ease itself again. It became addicting and I cut more, and again. Sharper, harder, deeper. Oh god I didn't know. I felt as if I was on autopilot the whole time, and my brain wasn't thinking rationally or truthfully. All I could think about was the pain. The pain was sort of relieving in a way I guess. It took my mind off anything that had happened throughout the day that would cause any sort of negative thought. I knew the feeling was temporary, but damn it felt good for now. So good, and once I stopped myself and cleaned up the wounds, I questioned myself. Why did I ever stop this?

Swear I've seen this a thousand times
before. It's like a metaphor that I can't
Ignore, anymore. This is the last time I
Remember crawling on my knees in desperation.
I'm falling asleep again.