America would like to say he never hurts himself again, but he does about a week later. The third time around, there's not even really a reason for it— he just gets it into his head and can't stop thinking about it until it's over. The fourth and fifth and sixth times find him sneaking off to bathrooms during meetings, making clumsy excuses, thinking about them constantly. It's a wholly ridiculous affair. For a while America is able to tell people he fell on concrete, since the scabs look like scrapes; after the first couple, he just has to wear long sleeves.

When America wakes up each day, he always first notices the itching and burning of whatever injury he's most recently given himself. Afterward, he normally moves on; today he just stares at his scabbed-over arm and thinks, I should get help. Maybe I'm taking things a little too far. How many injuries is it, anyway? America can't remember. He had never intended to let it get this far. That is why he should, objectively, hurt himself again. It is what any rational person would do right now; at the very least, it does not seem irrational.

So, before America even gets out of bed, he scratches himself until he bleeds. He likes this method specifically because it requires a sort of discipline to get the job done; it always takes him a couple minutes to get going. But then he's bleeding and he just hates himself again, maybe even more now, because his life is starting to get a little too cliché— first the whole eating disorder thing, now this. What is he, a fucking teenager? Isn't he supposed to have learned how to be a goddamn adult already?

This shit is just ridiculous, really— especially when America decides, right there, still bleeding, that he is going to double down on restricting. The coffee he drinks that morning (black, where every other time in recent history he's had at least a little milk with it) tastes like goddamn Hollywood. America really needs to stop being so dramatic. He's not getting paid to do it.

…

America wants to stop after that. He really does. He's disgusted with himself and the way he's acting; he loathes the irrationality of his thoughts. It's hard enough to fight the urge to hurt himself, even more so if he thinks about how humiliating it is to be him— an adult, someone who should know better— and still do it. (America is perfectly aware of the push toward less problematic views, and also of the general push to be kinder to oneself, but he refuses to treat himself in the ways society might encourage; it's just so much easier to be mean.) What's even more difficult is his disordered habits. Every week America watches himself attempt to restrict with varying degrees of success. His lack of success doesn't frustrate him quite as much as his lack of ability to quit does. Each day, no matter what, his first thought upon waking up is whether or not he'll be able to get through the day without eating, and how he could make this task easier.

The only way, really, is to come clean. One day, when he's hanging out with Japan during the meeting break, he says, "Kiku, I've been pretty sick lately. I-I think I've got a magnesium deficiency, or maybe potassium, or something. But I'm goin' to California for some meetings pretty soon, and it's totally gonna get better after that. I'm gonna recover and it's gonna be great."

"A deficiency? I don't understand how you would naturally get that, especially if you haven't had them often before. Have you gone to the doctor over it?"

"No, but I keep getting the muscle pains, and the heart palpitations. It's definitely a deficiency in something. I haven't been eating enough," Alfred admits, "by a long shot. But surfer food is, like, really good. Really reaches everyone's inner dude. How could I resist?"

America had hoped this wouldn't be a big deal, but Japan is very clearly upset about the whole heart palpitations thing. "Why haven't you been eating enough?" Japan demands. "Especially if you know what the problem is, and that it can be fixed by eating. Alfred, we've all been watching you get worse for several months now. How long have you not been eating enough? Why?"

For a moment, America is glad that Japan must think he's thin enough for the whole eating thing to legitimately be the problem— America certainly hasn't thought that of himself lately. "Um, I don't know. I haven't really felt like it lately. But I- I brought a bag of peanut M&Ms with me today, you know, to get back on track. I'll be okay, really. I'll be even better once I go to California."

Japan shakes his head and walks off, leaving America to his share-sized pack of M&Ms and a bottle of water.

…

France responds by telling him that his body is literally shutting down as a result of the not eating thing. America stifles a laugh, if only because France says it so factually, but he does wonder if France has a point when he begs Alfred to get magnesium supplements. He thinks France must not; at any rate, he can't get magnesium supplements because they're a little too expensive for him, and he also can't get them because he doesn't need them because he doesn't have an eating disorder, and only people with eating disorders and other sicknesses really need that sort of thing.

… but, if France is right, California would fix the whole "shutting down" thing, because America would eat, because he said he would. He wouldn't be eating shittily, either— it'd be hard to in a land so blessed with good fortune, with such diverse produce and unlimited access to the ocean. He's proud of this, so when he talks to Japan again later about California, he makes sure to throw in his country's boundless prosperity. This, he says, will surely keep him well.

Now that America has made a public spectacle of his recovery, he must actually recover. He looks forward to it; it really can't come soon enough. He doesn't want to live like this anymore.

…

California comes and goes. It's really better not to make a big deal out of it. He eats pretty consistently while he's there, although he doesn't eat nearly as much as he had before this whole thing had started, and on the flight home he is glad that he is fixed. He'd eaten a wide array of foods, gotten plenty of sunshine, and had calmed the symptoms he'd been suffering with. This whole thing was just a little bump in the road; he is better now.

As soon as he's going back to work, though, he starts trying to restrict again. He doesn't feel bad about California (not yet), but he knows that the trip had thrown him off. He's hungrier now, he's tired more easily than before. All the discipline he had worked so hard to build is gone. Each day he fails spectacularly, more than ever before; he feels he eats just as much as he normally would, only he does so in a shorter time period, which is even worse than just eating regularly.

Then Thanksgiving rolls around, and it's so easy to fall back into tradition. His neighbors invite him over; they have turkey, ham. He makes pie and stuffing and a sweet potato casserole with marshmallows on top and they have that, too, and he eats until he feels full and he doesn't even think about it, not then; instead he just goes home and sleeps.

Several days of leftovers later, America goes to a doctor's appointment. It's just a check-up, of the sort he's only recently started actually going to. The first thing they do is weigh him: 119 pounds. It's lighter than he'd thought he'd be, and if he remembers properly, it's underweight. America had never gotten too into weighing himself, because he feared escalating his situation, but now he knows. If he's 119 now, he must've been— what, 115? 113? before California. If he's really low-balling it, maybe even 110… he really had eaten like a pig throughout the holidays. All America wants, sitting in his doctor's office, is to get that number down.

America doesn't tell his doctor about the eating disorder thing. That'd be too responsible.

Even after the holidays have passed, America still eats what he views as "too much". He'd always had this much before while maintaining, so he knows that realistically he is fine, but every time he eats now he can only think about going to his next doctor's appointment and seeing a higher number. His muscles don't hurt, his heart doesn't beat irregularly; he is too healthy to have such disordered thoughts, so only naturally he feels he must become unhealthy. If he doesn't, he is failing— he is losing ground he'd previously gained.

While he'd been restricting, he had started to focus on certain features: a sharper jawline, veinier arms, bony hands… America had always viewed these things as more masculine, and he had been glad to have them, and he'd focused on them to compensate for his gradually shrinking torso, for the arms that never gave way to muscle. America wants the number to go down now, but muscle is denser than fat, and anyway, he has never been able to gain enough muscle to satisfy himself.

This is how America resolves that he is not going to eat the food offered to him anymore. He is going to make egg drop soup, the way his neighbors had taught him when he'd lived in San Francisco so many years ago, and he's never going to eat anything else ever again, not until this is all over. (He finds that, after the whole protein/muscle thing, he cannot eat eggs any other way; he's just had too many pan-fried, poached, and boiled eggs in his life.) If he can't be muscular, he'd at least like to be wiry; to do that, surely restricting and only really focusing on protein are the way.

One day, he's sitting with a cup of this soup and just staring at his hands, and while it tastes fine, he's not even enjoying it. His jawline and veins never seem pronounced anymore, but his hands change by the day; today they are completely inadequate, and he knows it is not about discipline anymore. It's not about discipline because he's not strong enough to stay focused. Instead he has let himself succumb to this problem, the one he's struggled with continuously for so long. America sees it clearly now— while he'd been restricting until his body ached, he had been deluded. The other nations don't like him, and they never have, and whether or not he ate was never going to change that. They find him arrogant and stupid, and they are right. The world had only seemed more vibrant back then because he had been starving.

America hates the idea that he's killing himself for fun, that this really is a problem, but the only solution he can think of is just to keep restricting. One pot of egg drop soup per day, and he'll stop bringing food to work, and maybe he can even throw in some push-ups, pull-ups, sit-ups, squats. If he's going to be doing all that, he may as well do bicep curls, and if he's going to be doing bicep curls he may as well do tricep extensions, and if he has his weights out he may as well do Arnold presses (what he wouldn't give to look like the Terminator) and shoulder presses. Side raises, lateral raises, upright rows. If he's going to be doing all this shit with weights, he really can't neglect core strength, so he should probably throw in a shit ton of planks in various positions, and some lunges, and more squats and more sit-ups.

Back in the day he had thrown ham and cheese together in a pan and wrapped it in a high-protein tortilla each day, hating the taste but desperate to get in enough protein. He'd slathered eggs in tomato paste and powdered cheese and choked it down like a fucked up pizza. America must have went about everything all wrong, really— and sure, it had seemed right to try to get in a balance of fats, but it hadn't ever worked, had it? What America really needs to do is restrict and work out as if he isn't; this, surely, will allow any muscle to become undeniable. Also (though it's really not worth it), he should probably throw in some cardio. Wouldn't it be so embarrassing to finally achieve his dream, the thing he had worked at and failed at for decades, and not be able to run a mile?

Yes, he may be undisciplined enough to be susceptible to this disorder, and yes, all his friends may hate him, but he can turn his lack of discipline into a good thing, into something worth living for when everyone and everything else remains unconvincing. There's always the disorder. At least he has the potential to be good at something— and even though he has this unwavering conviction that he is goddamn stupid while he plans his workout for the next day, he has faith that he can be stupid and hot. That would be an upgrade, surely.

Sorry for the kind of cringe amount of time I took for this one, I had finals and I also was just trying to live a normal life. I'm not living a normal life rn so it's a good time for me. A review would be appreciated; have a great day and stay safe.