Character Building

CJ is the scrawniest gangster to ever walk the streets of Los Santos. He rarely eats. He spends hours at the gym but never lifts weights, only runs for miles on the treadmill. He probably couldn’t mug a day’s winnings from a pensioner fresh off the coach from the Las Venturas casinos. Sometimes, just for the hell of it, he rides a pushbike all the way to San Fierro. Intermittently, a “progress” bar flashes in the corner of the screen; a slither of red pixels shows his diminishing body mass. A textbox flashes a warning that hauntingly echoes the pleas of my real-life friends: “Just eat something.” But the warnings disappear eventually, and CJ keeps cycling.

When you stand in the eye of a storm, you can close your eyes and deny it even exists. It demolishes houses, flings cows into the air, and uproots trees all around you, but you can pretend that it has nothing to do with you, that you are not, in fact, right at the center of the problem. This is what it is like to live with an eating disorder. You lose friends, you fail classes, your health and your temper deteriorate. You see the damage wrought all around you, but never do you consider that the cause of all these problems is you.