"...I sense that you don't particularly want to stop being attracted to him."

"Not particularly, no, but I also don't particularly not." 

A long, extended, awkward silence. 

"I gave Lev a questionnaire measuring red flags that a relationship may turn abusive. Your relationship scored as very high risk."

He raises an eyebrow but doesn't say anything. 

"Getting very involved with each other very quickly. Escalating rapidly to a high level of commitment-- I believe you talked about kids after only knowing each other for a few weeks? Spending as much time with him as possible instead of encouraging him to maintain other relationships and enjoy activities unrelated to you. Encouraging him to end important relationships, such as those with his family, which leads to isolation. Black-and-white thinking-- your partner is all good and perfect in every way, which can lead to thinking he's all bad whenever he makes a mistake, which can result in extreme anger and even violence."

"I never encouraged him to end his relationships with his family. I didn't approach the subject of children. I recognize that he has flaws. I'll admit that I enjoy his company and wanted to spend as much time with him as I could, rather than encouraging him to do activities he hated with people he felt isolated around." 

"It was one of the reasons Lev decided to try to recover."

"And I'm not going to try to dissuade him from recovering." 

"Perhaps you are simply not ready to recover."

"Perhaps." 

He can't think of anything else to say. He isn't sure whether he'd say it if he could. 

Then they can sit in awkward silence until she dismisses him.

And at that point he'll go. 

The next days are — hard. He gives Lev his space, doesn't lose that constant awareness of where Lev is and what he's doing and who he's talking to. 

He misses Asher. (He misses feeling like he had people he could talk to. Like he wasn't alone here. He misses having someone who — maybe didn't understand, but tried anyway.) 

He plans out a bracelet made of braided wire, works on it during free time. He hides all of his needles and all of his thread and doesn't embroider at all. He looks at his old photos with his computer screen turned towards the wall. 

He doesn't eat. 

He does his best to open up in group. The second time they do therapeutic holding, he makes sure not to touch anyone in any way where they could feel it if he got hard. He touches the ball once when he's playing football, mostly because Asher's gone and so Marlo occasionally has to share the ball with someone else. He's getting good at car repair, although he hasn't stopped hating it. He reopens his SAT prep books, which had been gathering dust, and spends every night studying. He fell behind, he can spend every spare minute studying and then he'll catch up. He sneaks into the bathroom at night to jerk off and almost manages to fantasize about women, but before he comes he's always thinking about faceless men whose names he does not know.

It's not that bad. He used to feel like this all the time. It can't be worse just because he knows what he's missing. 

And Thursday after dinner Christine says, "Please see me in my office."

There's only a few possible things this could be about. Sasha goes to her office. 

Christine has a lot of questions for him! What are his eating habits on a typical day? Does he drink water instead of eating? Does he feel full after eating only small quantities? Does he "feel fat"? Does he constantly check his appearance in the mirror, or avoid checking it? Has he experienced irritability, or difficulty concentrating, or social withdrawal? Has he been dizzy, or had dry skin, or felt very sensitive to the cold?

He describes his eating habits on a typical day, and then notes that the last few weeks have not been typical. He does drink water instead of eating. He doesn't feel full after very small quantities of food, but does feel like he doesn't want to eat anymore. Why would he feel fat, he is objectively tiny. He doesn't avoid mirrors at home but he avoids them here. He hasn't been able to concentrate on anything since Sunday. He hasn't had dry skin or been very sensitive to cold but has been dizzy. 

"I believe you may have the beginnings of an eating disorder. Fortunately, we have caught it early. If you work hard on your treatment I hope you will be recovered by the end of therapy. If not, I will recommend that you stay at camp for an additional three months."

"Given that I only developed an eating disorder after I was forced into coming here, keeping me here for extra time seems like a strange way to handle it." 

"I believe that your eating disorder may be linked to your homosexuality. Eating disorders are particularly common among homosexual men. Homosexual men tend to seek self-worth, validation, and approval through their sexuality, which makes being less attractive particularly upsetting. It is compounded by the fact that, because homosexual men have difficulty with experiencing selfless love due to their sexual brokenness, they're particularly likely to objectify each other instead of treating each other as full people. I do not think your eating disorder will go into remission unless you treat your homosexuality."

"Is there literally any problem I could have that you wouldn't think was linked to my homosexuality?" 

"If you were hit by a car, I would not think it was caused by your homosexuality!" She grows serious. "But homosexuality is one sign of pervasive trauma and serious unmet emotional needs. It's not an accident that homosexuals are at higher risk of every kind of mental problem and are more likely to engage in self-destructive behavior."

"Yes. It's almost like living in a world that hates you and having to hide important parts of yourself from most if not all of your loved ones is stressful."

And it sure is weird how the person who runs an ex-gay camp thinks the only way to treat a problem that was caused by the ex-gay camp is to stay in ex-gay camp, he doesn't say, because it doesn't seem like there'd be much point. 

"It feels to you like your eating disorder isn't caused by your homosexuality," she says, "but by other people's responses to your homosexuality."