AN ATTEMPT TO TIP THE SCALES

Transcription

ABSTRACT
One of the things that you are repeatedly told in any kind of eating
disorder treatment is that an eating disorder does not make you unique,
special or otherwise an individual. Up to an estimated 24 million people
of all ages and genders suffer from an eating disorder (anorexia, bulimia
and binge eating disorder) in the United States, so perhaps this is true.
Eating disorders can, however, isolate shame and otherwise cause a
person to withdraw from family and friends. The following essays, which
explore my own personal history with anorexia and bulimia, attempt to
break through the isolation and shame surrounding eating disorders to
offer a new perspective and honestly engage in the world.
Yinka Rose Reed-Nolan
May 2013
by
A thesis
submitted in partial
fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing
in the College of Arts and Humanities
California State University, Fresno
May 2013
APPROVED
For the Department of English:
We, the undersigned, certify that the thesis of the following
student meets the required standards of scholarship, format,
and style of the university and the student's graduate degree
program for the awarding of the master's degree.
Thesis Author
John Hales (Chair)
English
Samina Najmi
English
Richard Hansen
English
For the University Graduate Committee:
Dean, Division of Graduate Studies
AUTHORIZATION FOR REPRODUCTION
OF MASTER’S THESIS
I grant permission for the reproduction of this thesis in
part or in its entirety without further authorization from
me, on the condition that the person or agency requesting
reproduction absorbs the cost and provides proper
acknowledgment of authorship.
X
Permission to reproduce this thesis in part or in its
entirety must be obtained from me.
Signature of thesis author:
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a great deal of gratitude to my thesis committee: John hales for his
insight, patience and encouragement; Samina Najmi for her support and
careful feedback; and Rick Hansen. I would like to acknowledge Steven
Church for guiding my writing in new (and experimental) directions; Alex
Espinoza and Tanya Nichols for their mentorship; and the rest of the
MFA program at California State University Fresno. I also owe many
thanks to Andrea Garber for convincing me to write; Margaret McGeachy
for encouraging my craft; and Carrie Todd for fostering my creativity and
self-confidence.
Many thanks to: Jennafur Parks for being a role model and serving as a
constant reminder that it is okay to be exactly who I am; Erin Alvarez,
Richard Margolis, Steven Sanchez and Sara Walters for late nights at
Denny’s; Jamie Barker, Jackie Heffron Williams and Melanie
Kachadoorian for their friendship and support; Jeffrey Ray Coker for his
love and invaluable editing skills; Sara Buckelew, Jamie Levy, Nancy
Pancoast and Christopher Michel for looking after my well-being.
Thank you to my parents for your unconditional love and all that you do.
For Anna Danielle Anderson, Lisa Dreier, Leah Lane and those who got
lost.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
THE ABBREVIATED TWELVE STEPS OF ANOREXICS &
BULIMICS ANONYMOUS .............................................................. 1
1. We admitted we were powerless over our insane eating
practices – that our lives had become unmanageable.............. 1
2. Came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could
restore us to sanity. ............................................................... 3
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being
the exact nature of our wrongs. .............................................. 4
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result of these steps,
we tried to carry this message to others suffering from
eating disorders, and to practice these principles in all our
affairs. ................................................................................... 5
FOOD RULES ........................................................................................ 7
CONSTANT SUFFERER ....................................................................... 10
INTAKE ............................................................................................... 38
THEY CALL US CRAZY ........................................................................ 52
LESSONS ............................................................................................ 67
Things ED Taught Me .................................................................... 67
Things ED Didn’t Teach Me ........................................................... 68
AN OPEN RESPONSE [DOT] PROANA [DOT] NET ................................. 70
Entrance ....................................................................................... 70
Disclaimer ..................................................................................... 71
About Pro-Ana ............................................................................... 73
Thinspiration................................................................................. 78
Tips and Tricks.............................................................................. 82
Bathroom Scale ............................................................................. 87
An Open Response ........................................................................ 90
vi
Page
LOSS .................................................................................................. 93
REWRITING ELVIS .............................................................................. 98
APPENDIX: COPYRIGHTED MATERIALS PERMISSION ...................... 114
THE ABBREVIATED TWELVE STEPS OF ANOREXICS &
BULIMICS ANONYMOUS
The other day, I decided to attend a telephone meeting of the
twelve step program Anorexics and Bulimics Anonymous (ABA). I don’t
know why I decided to do this all of a sudden. I hadn’t been to a meeting
in quite some time, let alone a phone meeting. But somewhere out of the
blue, it seemed like a good idea, and I disabled my call waiting and
phoned into the next meeting. As I sat on the phone listening to the
meeting, I was also on my computer checking email and shopping for a
new iPad case. I found myself particularly fond of a pink case with an
image of a dandelion blowing in the wind, but I couldn’t commit to buy. I
didn’t need a new case for my iPad and I was online shopping to have a
distraction, one that would serve as reassurance for what I’d been
thinking since I dialed into the meeting – I was nothing like the other
people on the line.
1. We admitted we were powerless over our
insane eating practices – that our lives had
become unmanageable.
The first time I went to an ABA meeting, it was a bright spring
afternoon. The way the light hung in the air reminded me of the afterschool moments of my childhood when all I could think about were the
joys and momentary freedom of being finished with school for the day.
Maybe it felt this way because I had just finished a full day of treatment
in my intensive outpatient (IOP) eating disorder program, and I was free
of the meals and snacks and doctors and therapists for the next 18
hours of my life. So why I wanted to go to a meeting and listen to more
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people talk about eating disorders and recovery from eating disorders, I
have no idea.
As the warm afternoon sun dug itself deep into the clear sky,
resisting the march towards night, I walked down one of the small
residential backstreets of Berkeley. The further I walked, the more the
street curved and became deeply lined with trees shading the sidewalk. I
passed a house with a bamboo fence enclosing overgrown shrubs and a
few noisy chickens in the yard, another house with the front door open
that smelled of body odor and weed, and a small playground, before I
found the address that I’d seen on the flier for the meeting. The house
where the meeting was supposed to be looked empty, but seeing a
wooden sign hanging on the door that said Please Come In, I walked up
the three steps to the porch and reached my hand out to try the cold
metal knob. I turned the knob to the left and pushed slightly on the
chipped wooden door. It was locked. I thought that perhaps I hadn’t
pushed hard enough and should try again, but I let my hand fall from
the door knob. I knew I was early, and the meeting wasn’t scheduled to
start for another 15 minutes. Not wanting to look like a creeper, hanging
out on the doorstep of a random house, I headed back towards the
playground.
My nerves were starting to get the best of me. They were rising into
my chest, rising about this meeting, the stupidity of my even being there,
and the new people I would have to meet. I briefly considered running, or
at least walking far away from the house instead of stopping when I got
to the playground. But I didn’t. I ended up sitting on a bench away from
the vacant swings and sandbox. I could see the house from there and I
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watched to see if anyone went inside. I reassured myself that if I didn’t
like the look of the people going to the meeting, I didn’t have to go back
to the house. I could just leave the playground and no one would be the
wiser. But I didn’t let myself do that. Once I saw people start to walk into
the house, one after another, I knew I had no choice. I was powerless
over my eating practices; my life had become unmanageable. I needed
this meeting.
2. Came to believe that a power greater than
ourselves could restore us to sanity.
It wasn’t my first time at an eating disorder specific twelve step
meeting. I had been in the past. They never seemed to help; I was never
really willing to wrap my head around the idea of a higher power, or at
least that was my excuse for not sticking with them. I don’t know why I
thought this time would be any different, but going to a meeting seemed
like the responsible thing to do for someone transitioning out of an eating
disorder treatment program.
At first my higher power was the meeting itself, the structure of it
all. It gave me something to do on Tuesday afternoons and Saturday
mornings, which could have otherwise been binge and purge times. And
then after a few weeks of going to meetings, I started making friends.
Friends I can’t talk about because of anonymity, but they became my
higher power, especially X, a bulimic who called me a few times a week to
talk about how she was doing with food, who always wanted to know
how I was doing as well. As I really started being responsible for my own
recovery, my new friends started to replace my old ones.
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5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another
human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
I suppose you end up at a meeting like this when you hit rock
bottom – or some person, or program, makes you go. I’d like to say that
my program made me go – somehow it seems easier to take no
responsibility for being sick enough to want to attend a twelve step
meeting – but that wasn’t the case. As an anorexic and bulimic, I have
done some pretty bad things. I told my mother to “fuck off” when she was
trying to make me eat. I hid grocery bags full of vomit under my bed. I
went out with random men, just so I could get food when I didn’t have
the money to eat. Although I regret cursing my mother, and I would
never consider making myself available to creepy guys again just so I
could binge and purge, I wouldn’t consider any of these my worst
moment.
My worst moment came on an early Saturday afternoon. After an
hour of working out on the elliptical machine at the gym, I decided to
exercise my stomach muscles with a restaurant crawl. I had already
eaten and purged a vegetarian burrito and chips and salsa when I got to
Oscar’s, my favorite burger restaurant. I thought it was turning out to be
a good day; the endorphins from binging and purging were circulating
through my blood and I was happy. I got a veggie burger, fries and a
large Diet Coke to guzzle between bites of food. It would make everything
come up easier. I was in my own world, chowing down on my food, when
my psychiatrist – my fucking psychiatrist – walked into the restaurant
and came right up to me to say hello. Caught off guard and with a mouth
full of food, I waved in response.
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I was completely mortified. It is one thing for people to know about
your eating disorder in vague abstract terms – that way you can pretend
that it doesn’t really exist – but it’s another for them to see you engage in
eating disorder behaviors. Being caught in the act is a traumatizing
experience. As soon as he turned and walked to the counter to place his
order, I freaked out. I grabbed my gym bag and ran out of the restaurant,
leaving half of my food on the table. If there had been any question for
my doctor as to what I had been doing, it was clear now.
My body quivered and my heart hammered in my chest. Shocked
with terror and excitement, I could hardly breathe, but instead of doing
something rational, like going home, I ran as fast as I could until I got a
safe enough distance away (three blocks), then locked myself in a
McDonald’s bathroom and purged. It’s even more embarrassing to say
that I continued my restaurant crawl, and I went to another restaurant
where I ate and purged pizza, while my psychiatrist called my cell phone
and left voicemails saying that he knew what I was doing; it was okay; I
didn’t need to be scared.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as a result
of these steps, we tried to carry this message to
others suffering from eating disorders, and to
practice these principles in all our affairs.
During the phone meeting, I listened to the other people on the
phone tell their stories during shares, and that’s when I realized the
difference between them and me. It’s not that they needed a meeting and
I didn’t. And it wasn’t time and distance in recovery, or that I had
outgrown meetings. Some people go to meetings for life. The truth is that
what made us different was the truth. They were all honest and
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vulnerable when it came to their eating disorders – two things I’ve spent
a lot of time refusing to be. Sure I write about ED, but I approach it from
what I pretend is a well-deserved distance. Sometimes I say to myself, “I
am so over this. I just can’t write about it anymore.” Yet I always come
back to it because I never quite manage the truth.
Yesterday someone asked me what I write about and I said “stuff”
because I couldn’t – because I wouldn’t – say the truth. I didn’t want to
have to explain myself – explain my words, explain my history, explain
my past. I just couldn’t explain it to someone who hadn’t been there.
Perhaps I’m not strong enough to say it with my voice, but I want to
explain it with my words. These are my essays. These are my attempts.
FOOD RULES
1. Don’t chew with your mouth open.
2. Straw sipping from an empty cup, especially an empty cup
that is clear, is not allowed. The first time you do it, I will try to
understand, and I will assume that you don’t realize that there isn’t
anything left to drink in the cup, unless the cup is clear, then I will
assume you want to piss me off. When you do it 5 times in 30 minutes
(yes, I am counting) I will take your cup and hit you over the head with
it.
3. Don’t ask me what I am eating. You can look at my plate and
clearly see what I’m eating. If you are asking because you want some, I
am sure there is more somewhere in the kitchen. If you are asking
because you are trying to bring my attention to what I am eating, I am
already fully aware of what I am eating. Yes, I know that my salad
doesn’t have any salad dressing (I actually like it this way). Yes, I am
ashamed everything on my plate that can be considered a carb. Yes, I am
disgusted with myself for eating cake, but it’s already been one of those
“bad” food days and I might as well say “fuck it all now.”
4. If you know that I am on “a diet,” don’t ask me if I want to
go out to eat. I’m starving; of course I want to go out to eat! So please
don’t tempt me with this question. If you want company, you can tell me
that you are hungry and you are going to go out to eat. I might invite
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myself to join you because I have a twisted obsession with feeding people
and watching them eat. You may ask me only once (on the way to the
restaurant) if I want something to eat. If I want something, I will get a
Diet Coke, and you will pay.
5. If I tell you that you are not full yet, you are not full yet and
you are expected to eat more. Because I am not good at moderating my
own hunger and satiation, I reserve the right to moderate yours. If you
don’t eat all the food on your plate and I tell you to eat the rest, you need
to make a real attempt to eat the rest. And when I say real attempt, I
don’t mean eating one more fry and telling me that you’ve tried and
you’re sorry, but you are way too full. We can sit here all night until the
food is gone; I have nowhere else to be.
6. Never take me to Olive Garden, but if you do accidently
take me there and you find me contemplating the Zeppoli, loudly
whisper, “do you really think you need that?” This will embarrass the
hell out of me and set me straight.
7. You certainly do not want to share the chocolate melt down
cake with me. The answer is always, “No. You are fat; you do not need
dessert.” You will order dessert, you will enjoy it in front of me, and you
are not allowed to let me have a bite, even if I pout and give you puppy
dog eyes.
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8. Yes, I do need to go to the bathroom, brush my teeth or
shower after every meal.
9. Don’t ask me why I left the toilet seat up. You already know
the answer: I left the toilet seat up because I made an effort to return it
to your preferred position. No insidious business going on here.
10. I am the (im)perfect woman.
CONSTANT SUFFERER
On a Sunday morning in January, 2002, 27-year-old Wafa Idris, a
volunteer ambulance medic who cared for the wounded, took her niece a
container of fruit juice before going to Jerusalem where she carried 22
pounds of explosives on her back. She detonated herself on a crowded
downtown street, killing herself and two Israelis, while wounding over
100 others. Wafa was the first female suicide bomber in the IsraeliPalestinian conflict. She was a martyr.
Martyr is a beautiful word. The way it flows from the tongue in one
determined and frothy breath – martyr. “Constant sufferer” (1550).
“Exaggerated desire for self-sacrifice” (1920). Adopted directly into
Germanic languages from Greek (martyr), but pislarvattr (“torturewitness”) in Norse. A martyr is one who sacrifices his or her life for the
sake of a principle, or to sustain a cause. Being a martyr is an identity, a
way out of the daily squalor and emotional turmoil, most simply a way to
feel some agency.
In images of war, women are casualties, widows fleeing combat,
and victims of militant rapes, while men are the aggressors, the militant
rapists, the ones fighting for a cause, fighting to prove a point. For male
suicide bombers, their reasons and motivations are assumed to be clear
and grounded in religious and/or political ideation, but analysts have a
hard time explaining the phenomenon of militant females who challenge
the typical expectations of women. Female suicide bombers challenge the
notion that women are physically and emotionally weak and incapable of
determining and defending the course of their lives. To explain this
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deviation from the typical female gender role, which suicide bombers like
Wafa present, journalists often search for an individualized psychological
explanation to explain their actions. They claw through a woman’s
history for any possible personal reason that explains how she could
have been enticed into becoming a human weapon.
Western media theorized that Wafa was unhappy with her life
because she was infertile and her husband had recently married another
woman so he could become a father. Perhaps infertility made Wafa’s life
unworthy to her. Perhaps she was a victim of her own grief.
But this is not how I imagine it.
It was fall when she felt the bloodshed finally starting to get to her.
The two hottest months of the year had passed, leaving the sticky air of
Palestinian turmoil stuck to her skin. Wafa found herself walking through
the devastated streets of her neighborhood on a Friday night, unable to
shake the image of an armless man she had tried to save earlier in the
evening while volunteering as a Medic for The Red Crescent Society’s
emergency medical response. She always volunteered on Fridays because
it was a peak time for riots after prayer.
On her last run, Wafa’s’ ambulance had picked up a man whose left
arm had been blown off. It wasn’t just a finger, or a hand, but his entire
arm. In the back of the dark and poorly stocked ambulance, Wafa pressed
a towel of gauze to the gaping wound where his arm should have been.
Covered in his own blood and screaming, he resisted Wafa’s’ effort to hold
him down. Wafa tried to stop the bleeding, but blood continued to spurt out
of his body, quickly soaking the towel and Wafa’s hands. She tried to
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apply more pressure and gauze to the wound with one hand, while
pressing firm on his chest with the other, trying to keep him down on the
cot.
His screams were deep and guttural, coming from an abysmal pain.
Wafa couldn’t help but stop and think, a silly thought of course, that his
pain came from something deeper than his missing arm. She thought for a
moment that his voice carried the same pain that she felt. And even once
she took her bloody hand away from his wound to grab her throat,
thinking that the screams came from her voice, and that she was crying
out for all the pain in the world.
The screams eventually stopped as Wafa’s’ efforts to control the
bleeding failed and he drifted in and out of consciousness. Too pained to
speak, Wafa said nothing, even though she wanted to plead for him to
stay with her. By the time they got to the hospital, which wasn’t much of a
hospital at all, Wafa had grown cold. It was like she had been the one
drained of blood, even though she was covered in an ample supply of it,
and her own blood still pumped through her veins. After they had carried
the man into the hospital, Wafa snuck out around the side of the building
and threw up in the weeds before walking home.
When Wafa got home, her husband was in a bad mood. He sat in
the dark on their couch with his legs spread apart, one foot thumping
impatiently and his arms crossed. He was always in a bad mood because
he didn’t understand Wafa’s’ need to volunteer. He didn’t see why she
was so wrapped up in the cause and the idea of helping people. “Where
have you been?” He asked coldly, even though he already knew the
answer.
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“You know where I was. The same place I am every Friday,” Wafa
responded walking past him into the adjoining kitchen where she opened
the refrigerator. She was in no mood for an argument, but her husband
got off the couch and followed her into the kitchen where he stood towering
over her from behind.
“I know where you should have been,” he barked.
Wafa rolled her eyes as she pushed aside a jar in the refrigerator,
looking for something worth eating.
“You should have been here taking care of me,” he went on. “Instead
of playing nurse and kissing tiny scrapes and bruises.”
Wafa turned around, her jaw gritted tight in frustration. “I wasn’t
playing nurse!”
Her husband moved closer on her, backing her into the refrigerator.
The cool light from inside illuminated her face in shadows making her eyes
look sunken and her jaw stronger than it really was. Her husband saw
her as weak, too idealistic, and ridiculous, on a mission to save the world.
He extended his arm and pushed his hand against the edge of the
refrigerator door. “If you want to play nurse, you can start by taking care
of my needs.”
Wafa ducked under his arm escaping. “You’ve got two arms, take
care of your own needs,” she said coldly and headed to bed.
*
I remember the year, the morning, the very moment my life as an
anorexic and bulimic began. When I was 12 years old I saved enough
money to order a weight loss plan called “The Final Solution” from an
advertisement in the back of one of my Seventeen magazines. Reading
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Seventeen made me feel grown up, and when I sent $15 off in an
envelope, I knew I was going to get a miracle in return. I waited for a
magic weight loss cure by mail, something big, but I wasn’t sure what.
Most of all I was waiting for some hope in a world where I was “too pretty
to be fat.”
I learned that juice has calories earlier that year, and to my
disappointment that it could make me fat. Sometimes I used to drag the
bathroom scale into my bedroom when no one was looking, so I could
stand on it while I ate cookies or cheese wrapped in bologna, or anything
else that was bad. I wanted to know the damage. I wanted to see how
much weight I would gain by eating this or that. But the scale didn’t
move. What a disappointment. No concrete results, just another cookie
wasted, another piece of lunchmeat I didn’t need to eat. That’s why I
wanted to order the “The Final Solution.” If I could just lose weight, if I
could just be skinny, then my mom wouldn’t hide food from me, my dad
wouldn’t tell his friends how much I weighed and I could drink as much
soda pop as my grandma, as much as I wanted. I thought when I was
thin my family would leave me alone.
When the package containing “The Final Solution” finally arrived, it
came in a small box. I picked it up off the porch one day after school
before anyone else saw it and snuck it into my room excited and eager to
open it. But I knew I had to wait until no one else was around. I had to
wait until there would be no interruptions. It was my secret. I knew this
wasn’t the first package I’d ever gotten, but for some reason, I can’t
remember any of the other ones or what they contained. This was the
first thing I spent my money on though, the first serious thing at least. I
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slid the box under my bed for later and went into the living room to be
social. I had gotten a bit antisocial lately and my parents hated that. My
dad was always coming in my room and he didn’t even knock, which was
super annoying. This was part of the reason why I had to wait until later
to open the box.
When I was finally alone in my room later that night, I stretched
out across my mattress and leaned over the edge to grab the package
from under my bed. I pulled it up slowly like it was fragile, breakable,
magic. Since it was late and I was supposed to be sleeping, the lights
were off and I had the blinds in my room open, so the illumination from
the apartment building next door could shine in my room and offer
enough light to explore my miracle. Once I straightened myself up in the
bed, I held the box between my hands, excited, nervous, hopeful, I was
overcome by an anxious feeling in my body. It was like the blood tried to
leave my body, rushing down into my arms and legs, pooling at my finger
tips and toes, looking for a way out of me. I wished fat would do that, but
the world didn’t work that way. I always felt this way when I got anxious,
but this wasn’t the bad kind of anxious, it was the good kind, the kind
where I wanted to squeal with excitement. I told myself enough with the
suspense, and I tore open the box like I’d torn the wrapping paper off a
pair of lavender overalls my mom had bought me for Christmas the year
before. But this was much more exciting. This was life changing and the
stupid overalls didn’t fit anyway. I dug through the box, but all I found at
the bottom of it was a book.
To my disappointment “The Final Solution” wasn’t even half the
miracle I thought it would be. Instead it was a book with a black and
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white picture of a girl, a little older than me, on the cover dressed only in
her underwear. I held it up to my window and examined the inside of it,
but I didn’t understand how a book was going to help me lose weight. I
didn’t even like to read. Probably because I wasn’t good at it and had to
have extra help and tutoring after school. But I wanted to be skinny
enough that I was willing to stay up half the night reading this book,
hoping that the miracle was somewhere inside.
I searched all the pages and between every line. I saw black and
white photographs (before and after pictures) of legs, how they used to be
so fat that they touched, but didn’t anymore. I glanced at meal plans,
instructions that were useless because my mother cooked my meals. And
being the picky eater that I was, I didn’t like most of the things the book
suggested – grapefruits and cottage cheese? Yuck! I found no miracles,
and “The Final Solution” became just another book that was going to be
left forgotten on my bookshelf, unless I wanted to look at some pictures
of legs that didn’t touch and girls with concave stomachs. Oh how I
wished I were one of those girls.
This was the moment that anorexia and bulimia were loaded in
me, the moment when I realized that there were no miracles and no other
options. But it wasn’t until a couple of years later that I made the
conscious effort to become anorexic. It would be too simple to say that I
woke up one morning and decided I wanted to have an eating disorder,
but in a way, it was also that simple. I was 15 when I made the choice.
Surprisingly it wasn’t because I thought it would help me fulfill the desire
I had to be thin and attractive, but instead it was about the fact that I
had the desire. I thought about twelve-year-old me with that stupid book,
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and how I could still see that picture of that girl’s legs when I closed my
eyes. My mother had always told me that she wanted me to lose weight,
but she didn’t want me to develop an eating disorder. The image of
thinness, the image of ideal, was etched into my mind, and I knew it
shouldn’t be. So I made the choice to not eat because I wanted send a
message; I was going to be anorexic to spite both my parents and the
society that fostered the idea that thin equals beautiful and worthwhile.
I thought if I died on the outside – starved myself, became scary skinny,
nothing but bones – that everyone would finally see how much it hurts to
feel fat and imperfect. I wanted to tell the world how much the push for
thinness could really tear a person up inside. But I didn’t have the
words, so I decided to sacrifice my body for the greater good. I didn’t
want any other little girl to ever feel the way I did.
*
Wafa wouldn’t have told anyone about this because she wasn’t the
kind of woman to talk, and she felt some things were best kept private, but
she felt powerless. Not about her life, or her marriage, or her family, or
even her role as a woman, but about the state of the world, the world she
lived in. She hated the conflict with Israel; she hated the militancy of it all.
She probably wouldn’t have used a word like hate, but that’s how she
felt. She wanted her people to have their own state, she wanted them to
be free, but the struggle had become too much. There was so much
violence, and most of it went unacknowledged. All the death she had seen
was overwhelming. She remembered being a young girl, playing outside
with her friends. She had chased a ball through some brush when she
saw two Israeli soldiers gun down an innocent woman from behind, who
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had been rinsing her clothes in a stream. But no one cared about that. The
world didn’t care about the Palestinians who were dying every day.
Terrible, violent, painful deaths. No one cared that Palestinians had their
land stolen from them. They were only fighting for the right to belong. No,
the world viewed her people as the militant ones, the ones perpetuating
violence, unwilling to compromise. Palestinians were the ones who killed
innocents, not the innocents who were killed. But Wafa knew different; she
saw Palestinian casualties every day. She was the one trying to save
them, but usually failed. It infuriated her that no one cared about the
deaths that she saw. That no one cared about the Palestinian suffering.
She wished the world would see. If only the world would see, then maybe
there would be less suffering.
*
It’s fall of my junior year in high school when the eating disorder
starts to get to me. What started out as a juice fast, and a mission to
prove a point to the world, has become overwhelming. I didn’t think it
would take this long to starve to death, and I wish that I could just lie in
bed every day and not eat. That would be perfect. But of course I can’t do
that. I have to go to school, which means I can’t lie in bed all day, and
my mother has decided that I’m losing too much weight, so she has been
trying to make me eat lately. She’s also been really mad at me about
everything, which isn’t helping at all. I think the only one who is actually
enjoying this process is my best friend Jo-Jo, who has been spreading
my secret around school, or at least she spilled it to a couple different
people who asked her why I always look so pale.
19
I imagine that Jo-Jo smiles when anyone asks her about me
because she likes the idea of being associated with losing weight and not
eating. “Well,” she probably says, taking a long pause, drawing things
out for suspense. “She never eats and she takes all kinds of diet pills.”
Jo-Jo’s answer is met with “wow” and “that’s so cool” and she smiles in
satisfaction at this response. I wish what Jo-Jo says were true and that I
never ate. Life would be so much simpler if I never ate, but instead I have
to count calories and make it look like I eat.
Last night I cooked dinner for my parents. I made smothered pork
chops, macaroni and cheese and salad. I was trying to be all nice and
make some yummy food, so my mom wouldn’t have to cook when she got
home from work, but it turned into a big mess. As soon as I handed my
parents their plates, which I had gone to the trouble of fixing, my mom
looked at me all evil like and accused me of not eating.
“So you’re not going to eat anything,” she said harshly.
It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. And that probably should
have been my cue to disengage, but I fed her the lie I had been working
on all afternoon. “I ate while I was cooking.” It wasn’t a complete lie. I
had nibbled a bite of macaroni and cheese, but don’t even get me started
on how big of a failure I am for that.
“No you didn’t,” she pronounced.
“Yes I did. I had mac and cheese.”
“That’s all?” She sounded disgusted. “You have to eat more than
that.”
20
I might have lost it a little after this and maybe I raised my voice a
little. “I told you, I already ate! I’m not hungry. What do you want, to
make me eat when I’m not hungry?”
“Don’t yell at me!” My mom was yelling now. “You need to eat.”
“Fine,” I said and grabbed a plate of salad and stomped off to my
room. I put the salad in a plastic bag and shoved it under my bed. I’ll
throw it out on trash day, along with the other food, I’ve hidden. My
mom was pretty mad for the rest of the night, even after I tried to be nice
and make up with her. She even snapped at me when I offered to do the
dishes as a peace offering.
*
The day after the man with the blown off arm, Wafa was in the
ambulance again when her friend, and fellow volunteer, Habib,
approached her.
“Wafa,” he said low and quiet, putting the emphasis on the W in her
name, like music.
She looked up from where she was doing an inventory of supplies.
“How would you like to do something to help your people?” Habib
asked. He knew about Wafa’s frustration with the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict; they had discussed their concerns in the past.
“What do you think I’m doing now?” Wafa said as she wrote down
the number of bandages on board the ambulance. Volunteering as a medic
was only Wafa’ most recent effort to make a difference with her life. As a
teenager, during the first Palestinian uprising against the Israeli
occupation, Wafa served on the Am'ari refugee camp's women's committee
21
where she assisted in food distribution and helped prisoner’s families.
Volunteering was her calling.
“No. I mean something amazing,” Habib responded.
Wafa laughed. “Like what? Kill a bunch of Israelis? Blow up the
Israeli government? Put Palestine on the map?”
Habib was silent for a moment, as he studied her. He looked at her
round eyes, the hair pulled back and clipped behind her ears, and her
chapped lips still in a slight grin from laughing at the idea. After a brief
moment of consideration, Habib continued, “Yes.”
Wafa’s lips lost their grin. “What are you talking about?” she asked,
almost startled.
“Just think about it,” Habib said backing off slightly.
“Think about what?” Wafa demanded.
“Just think about it,” Habib said again crawling over a seat to return
to the front of the ambulance.
Habib knew that Wafa would think about what he had said. He
knew Wafa better than she knew herself. And the truth was that Wafa
couldn’t stop thinking about what Habib had said. He had peaked her
interest, but she wasn’t sure why. She wasn’t even sure what he had
been talking about, but part of her wanted to find out more. She agreed to
meet with Habib, so he could tell her more, but she was having second
thoughts and didn’t know if she would really go.
Habib wanted to be secretive about it, and insisted that they meet
outside of work. He arranged for them to meet at a back alley café that
Wafa had never been to. It was on one of the routes that their ambulance
sometimes took, so Wafa figured she wouldn’t have much trouble finding
22
it, but it still seemed out of the way. On the date of their meeting, Wafa
was still deciding whether or not to go, when her husband walked in from
work. She had been avoiding him since their argument a few nights prior.
“I’m sorry about the other night,”Wafa’s’ husband said as soon as
he saw her.
Wafa shrugged, unimpressed with his apology.
He squeezed in next to her on the couch where she was sitting. “I
didn’t mean that what you are doing is unimportant,” he continued. “I just
think that maybe you could get a real job.”
“Being a medic is a real job,” she informed him.
“No. It’s a volunteer job. You don’t get paid for it. And it’s starting to
take over your life.”
“Is that what you’re worried about? Me getting a real job? What do
you want me to do – waste my life serving food at some restaurant? Well I
don’t want to waste my life. I want to make a difference with it.”
“That’s not what I meant,” he said putting his arm around her
shoulder. “I just want you to be happy.”
“I am happy.”
“I’m glad. I also want us to be happy. I mean what about kids. I
thought we wanted to have kids.”
Wafa pulled away from him. “Do you know what’s going on around
you? Look outside. I can’t in good conscience bring a kid into this world.”
“Listen to yourself, Wafa. This is exactly what I mean – volunteering
is taking over your life. You are becoming obsessed with this shit.”
She got up from the couch. “I’ve got a meeting can we talk about this
later?”
23
“What kind of meeting?” He demanded.
“Just a meeting,” she reassured him. “I’ll be back later.”
Wafa grabbed her purse and walked out the door.
*
The day after the dinner argument with my mom, my dad wakes
me up at 6 a.m. and I slowly struggle out of bed. I start by sticking one
leg out from under my pink follower print comforter where the cool
morning air creeps up towards my thigh. I lie like this for a minute before
I work up the motivation to stick the other leg out. I’ve only gotten to this
point of getting out of bed, and I’m starting to drift back to sleep when
my dad yells from outside my door that it’s 6:05 a.m. and he doesn’t hear
my feet hitting the floor.
“I’m getting up,” I yell back, roll my feet onto the floor and pull
myself out of bed. I give myself my usual pep talk as I fumble around in
the dark for clean clothes. Today is a new day, I tell myself. There will
never be another day exactly like it. If it’s a bad day, it will be over soon
enough. I really shouldn’t hate getting up this much, but I do. Living is
such a chore. Sometimes breathing is a chore. Not to mention putting on
my clothes. One foot in the right pants leg, one foot in the left, all while
maintaining my balance, especially when I’m usually dizzy in the
mornings.
After I get my clothes on, I head to the bathroom to brush my
teeth. I figure I’m clean enough otherwise. After I finish brushing my
teeth, I begin arranging my breakfast. I go to the kitchen and pour myself
half a cup of red Gatorade, which I take back into my bedroom. I set the
cup on my desk as I open a drawer to pull out a Ziploc bag containing
24
three fourths of a chocolate nutrition bar. I take the bar out of the bag
and break off another forth of the bar, then seal up the rest and put it
back in my drawer for tomorrow.
Mornings aren’t so bad. I get to eat a little bit. I’ve found it tends to
work out better if I do. At least I have a little energy to make it through
the day. I also get to nap on the bus ride to school, or part of the way to
school. I get off the bus early and spend 30 minutes on the swing set at
Washington Park alone with my Discman and earphones, then I walk the
rest of the way to school. Usually a 15 or 20 minute walk, depending on
how fast I go. This is by far the best part of any day, then it starts to get
bad with boring school and homework and my mom being in a bad mood
when she gets home. I should be excited that this is the last day of
school for the week, and tomorrow I plan to get ice cream since I’ve been
good and saved up my calories all week, but I’m not looking forward to
spending the rest of the weekend with my mom trying to force me to eat.
*
When Wafa arrived for the meeting, she found Habib sitting with
another man that she didn’t recognize in the back corner of the café at a
booth. Habib waved Wafa over when he noticed her standing awkwardly
at the front of the café. Once she made her way back to the booth, Habib
scooted over and Wafa sat next to him.
“Do you want something to drink?” he asked quickly.
Wafa shook her head no, and then took note of her surroundings.
She looked up at the light dangling over their heads above the booth. It
was just a light bulb in a socket hanging from a cord, and a dirty bulb at
25
that. Wafa was nervous; she didn’t know what she was getting herself
into, and the decrepit mood lighting and dingy booth weren’t helping.
Habib proceeded to introduce Wafa to the man sitting across from
them. “This is Wafa, the one I’ve been telling you about,” he said. “She is
eager to obtain greatness.”
The man nodded, while sizing Wafa up. He thought her eyes were a
little too small, and her nose slightly crooked, but he figured she would do.
He wanted someone pretty, someone the newspapers would love. The
newspapers might not love her, but they would like her; she was pretty
enough, and it’s not like there were women lined up, giving their left arms
to blow themselves up. As he looked at her, Wafa timidly examined the
man as well. He had light skin, oily dark curly hair, and moldy stubble
covering his jaw. She wasn’t impressed, and wondered where Habib had
met a man like this.
“Wafa works on the ambulance with me,” Habib informed the man,
as if to reassure him that she was trustworthy.
The man nodded and took a sip from the cup in front of him, which
smelled like beer. “She’ll have to stop that,” He informed Habib, referring
to Wafa’s’ ambulance work. “She needs to devote herself to the cause. And
you two should not be seen associating.”
Forgetting her nerves, Wafa raised her voice, “Excuse me? I will not
give up volunteering on the ambulance!”
Feeling a tension about to grow, Habib jumped in to remedy the
situation. “It might look suspicious if she suddenly stopped volunteering,”
he stammered. “So maybe she should continue working.”
26
“Fine she can work,” the man said, brushing the issue aside. “But
different shifts. You two must work different shifts. No associating.”
Habib nodded in understanding, while Wafa, still riled up and
getting tired of being talked around rather than talked to, raised a brow at
the man.
He liked the fire in her eyes, and thought that she might work out
better than he originally imagined. “Are you sure you’re ready for this?” He
asked Wafa.
“Exactly what is this?” Wafa asked in response.
The man took another sip from his cup and smiled. “We’re going to
give you a bomb, and you’re going to strap it to yourself and then KABLOO-EY!”
“KA-BLOO-EY?” Wafa raised her brow at him again.
He laughed, “Blow yourself up and the one hundred Israelis next to
you. You’ll be in all the papers. On TV.” He paused to admire the ingenious
of it all, and then continued, “A female suicide bomber, you will bring the
Palestinian cause to the world.”
What the man said made sense. No one paid attention to male
suicide bombers other than to use them as proof demonstrating that
Palestinians were the militant ones, the cause of all the conflict with Israel.
But the world would look at a female suicide bomber differently. For a
woman to detonate herself there had to be some greater reason besides
militancy, or a violent nature. A female suicide bomber would garner
attention, make people think and reevaluate their opinions on the conflict.
Maybe a female suicide bomber really could bring the Palestinian cause to
the world.
27
Wafa nodded. For the first time in her life, she felt a warm knot of
hope starting to form in her chest, and it felt good. She was ready.
*
Sometimes I get irritable when I don’t eat. And angry. And
depressed. And sometimes I snap, especially when it involves food. Today
I had a bit of a meltdown. Let me start by saying that I was really good
and I even got away with not eating two days this week. I saved almost
all of my allotted calories (which isn’t many) for the week, just so I could
have ice cream today. Yes, even girls on anorexic missions eat ice cream
sometimes. My mom was supposed to take me to the Baskin Robbins
near my house this afternoon, but she went out with some friends and
said she was too tired when she got home.
It was dumb, but I might have freaked out just a little bit when I
found out that I wasn’t going to get the ice cream cone I wanted so badly.
I went to my room, slammed the door and lay face down on my bed. I
just got so frustrated and sad. Before I knew it, irritation bubbled up
inside of me, turned to sadness then overflowed from my body in a soup
of hot tears. I cried heaving tears until my nose started bleeding. I let the
blood run down my nose and lips and into my mouth that was gasping
for breath for a minute before I stopped crying. I’ve been getting a lot of
nose bleeds lately, especially when I cry. Or maybe I’ve just been crying
more, or harder lately. Sometimes I just let the tears and blood run until
it feels like my body can’t give up anything more and then I gently stop
crying and shove a cotton ball up my nostril to stop the bleeding. But
tonight, I headed to the bathroom and tried to clean myself up quickly. I
blew my nose hard to try to get most of the bloody mucous out, and then
28
I washed my face with cold water before sticking a cotton ball up my
nose and pinching it shut. Within a minute, I watched in the mirror as
blood escaped my nose and ran down my face. I stuffed more cotton up
my nose and pinched it harder. It took 10 minutes for the bleeding to
finally stop.
I shouldn’t have been so upset about not getting ice cream. I don’t
need ice cream. I don’t deserve ice cream. I mean my mom tries to
pretend like she wants me to eat, but she doesn’t want me to eat ice
cream. I’m too fat to deserve ice cream. I obviously haven’t proven my
point yet. Starting Monday, I’m never going to eat anything else again!
*
After her meeting with Habib and the unnamed man, Wafa stopped
volunteering on Fridays, so not to be seen associating with Habib. She
decided to pick up extra shifts throughout the week and on weekends, and
quickly found herself spending more and more time on the ambulance,
giving as much as she could, before her final act of giving. Of course her
husband, who knew nothing of her larger plans for martyrdom, was less
than pleased with Wafa’s’ intensified devotion to the cause. He did his
best to put an end to her volunteering.
“I forbid you to spend every minute of your day volunteering for a
lost cause,” he announced at the dinner table one evening.
“You can’t forbid me from doing anything,” Wafa snapped.
Her husband felt the rage building between the temples of his
forehead and he tried to calm himself. He took a deep breath, and forced a
smile towards his wife. “If you love me, you will stop volunteering.”
“But I don’t love you,” Wafa said bluntly.
29
“This is exactly what I’ve been talking about, volunteering is making
you crazy and unreasonable,” he hollered and slammed his fist on the
table.
In that split second, Wafa realized that she had truly lost all love for
her husband. She wondered if she had ever loved him at all. “No. I really
don’t love you,” she said.
The rage rose in his body and he wanted to smack Wafa across the
face. “That’s it. You’re done volunteering!”
“No,” Wafa said raising her voice. “I’m done with you.”
Her husband jumped up from the table. He threw his dinner plate to
the floor, and then knocked his chair over before calming himself slightly.
“You know what? I’m done with you and your crazy obsessions. We’re
over.”
He grabbed his coat and his car keys and walked out of the
apartment, slamming the door behind him. A few days later he came
home, collected all of his belongings and left a note on the kitchen counter
that read:
Wafa,
Keep your volunteer work. I found someone else.
Wafa rolled her eyes at the note and the fact that her husband
always had to think he was getting the final say, but she was glad that
she could finally devote her full attention to training for the mission at
hand.
*
30
The first day of my fast is the hardest because it’s the easiest point
to turn back. I tell myself to be strong and that I just need to make it
through today. By the beginning of my last period chemistry class, I am
hot and clammy despite being lightly brushed with dampness from
walking across the quad in the rain. It has been cold and dreary all day,
but the rain just started, so I was caught off guard without an umbrella.
I know the clamminess is a result of not eating, rather than the first
symptom of a cold, so I sit in my assigned seat at the end of the table
closest to the door, and try to shake the fevered feeling from my body and
prepare for another day of fuzzy chemistry.
My chemistry teacher, Mr. Ferriter, is an import from Roundup,
Montana, which seems to be a place of transit as he starts with his
weight planted firmly on his left leg when he says it, but ends with it
planted on his right leg as he emphasizes the “-tana” with a wink that
aims for rugged, but misses. Instead of teaching chemistry, Mr. Ferriter
likes to talk about Montana. Most of the students in my class like to
listen to him tell stories because as long as he is talking about Montana
we don’t have to learn the periodic table. Personally, I think he likes to
talk about Montana because he doesn’t know anything about chemistry.
Whenever anyone asks a question related to chemistry, he stands still
and thinks for about the answer for a while before responding that we
don’t need to know that because it won’t be on the test. But I’m not really
complaining.
When Mr. Ferriter enters the classroom today, he’s wearing a white
lab coat, goggles on top of his head and an excited grin on his face. He
announces that we will be doing an experiment and instructs us to pair
31
up and grab Bunsen burners, test tubes and safety goggles, while he
writes instructions for the experiment on the board. I end up working
with Megan, who is a soccer player, pretty and popular, but nice enough
and funny. After Mr. Ferriter finishes writing the instructions on the
board, he goes around the room handing out the rest of the supplies we
will need for the experiment. I watch as he places two jars of Barium
Chloride, a white powdery chemical, in the middle of our table for Megan
and I to share with the other two pairs at our table.
My heart speeds up slightly when I see the barium chloride. I’ve
been researching poison at home on the internet, usually when I’m sad
and frustrated at the prospect of not eating for the rest of my life. The
idea of poison is really just a backup plan, in case I can’t fulfill my
starving to death plan to completion. I think killing myself with poison
would still prove a point to the world, but I don’t entertain the idea too
seriously. I ordered a couple of hypodermic needles from a pet catalogue,
but I haven’t invested in poison yet. In my research, I recently came
across barium chloride, so I can’t help but think it’s a sign when Mr.
Ferriter puts it down in front of me.
Trying not to seem too excited about the chemical, I focus my
attention towards Megan and the experiment at hand. We snap on our
goggles, hook our Bunsen burner up to the gas and begin the
experiment. Once we have a beaker of boiling water, we set one of the
test tubes inside of it and then slowly add the barium chloride to another
substance inside. The test tube is supposed to turn colors, but ours
fizzles, starts bubbling over, and explodes sending tiny pieces of glass
32
flying across our table instead. Megan lets out a girly scream and we
jump back from the table, as Mr. Ferriter notices our explosion.
Mr. Ferriter is clearly puzzled by our explosion. He spends at least
5 minutes scratching his head when we explain that we followed the
instructions written on the board exactly. Mr. Ferriter finally suggests
that perhaps we put a pinch too much Barium Chloride in the test tube.
His experiment wasn’t foolproof. When he leaves, Megan and I start
giggling. Somehow blowing up a test tube makes me feel happy and alive.
After the experiment is over and everyone has returned their
supplies to the carts at the front of the room, Mr. Ferriter begins
collecting the jars of barium chloride. He starts at the other end of the
room. My heart begins pounding; there is a jar right in front of me and I
can’t help but feel that this is a sign. I casually look around the room. No
one is looking at me. I know this is my chance to take the Barium
Chloride. Mr. Ferriter is two tables away when I make the split second
decision and grab the jar off the table and drop it in my backpack
between my History book and pencil case. As Mr. Ferriter approaches
my table, my heart is beating out of my chest. I try to act normal, but my
leg is shaking and I’m sure I’m going to get caught. He picks up the two
jars of Barium Chloride then pauses looking for the third. A look of
confusion crosses his face briefly, but he turns and walks away from the
table with only two jars. He does a quick recount of the chemicals at the
front of the classroom then shrugs. I guess he figures that he had one
less jar than he thought.
33
The bell rings and I leave the classroom as fast as I can. When I get
home, I hide the jar of chemicals at the bottom of my underwear drawer
in case I decide I need to use it.
*
For three weeks, Wafa met in secret with the ones orchestrating the
bombing. She never learned their names, where they came from, or even
their motivations. The last time she spoke to Habib, before they stopped
associating at work, he told her never to ask questions; it was dangerous
to ask questions. So she assumed that everyone was involved for the same
reasons she was, because they were sick of the violence and bloodshed
and wanted to send a message that it had to stop. Despite not asking
questions, which was sometimes hard for her, Wafa learned the details of
what she was supposed to do.
The bombing was planned for January 20th. Wafa would be taken
to Jerusalem where she was to detonate herself on the crowded streets.
She was to make sure that she was in a well-populated location with
plenty of Israelis. If she even thought that someone suspected her, which
was unlikely because she was female, she was to detonate herself right
away. If she could not detonate herself and was caught, she was to say
that she was Layla Al Massri from Rafah and that she was working alone.
Once she got the explosives on there was no turning back, but Wafa was
ready.
*
After seven days of not eating, I’m too weak to go to school, so I
pretend to be sick and convince my parents to let me stay home. I feel
too weak to do much of anything, and I try to spend my day lying in the
34
bath tub. But after my second bath, I find that getting in and out of the
tub is too much of a struggle, so I make myself content to lie in bed. I
can’t believe I’ve gotten away with not eating for 7 days. I feel terrible and
dead, but I lost 20 pounds, so maybe it’s worth it. I know it’s mostly
water weight, but I don’t care. Any weight loss is good weight loss.
I watch TV – daytime talk shows mostly, Sally Jessy Raphael,
Maury Povich, Jenny Jones – as I lie in bed. During commercial breaks I
force myself to do sit ups in bed until I get dizzy and decide to take a
break. Somewhere between Maury Povich and Jenny Jones I fall asleep
and dream of drinking a glass of fresh squeezed orange juice. The dream
is so vivid that I can feel the orange juice in my stomach and I wake up
from my dream in a panic, terrified that I ruined my fast. I look around
for an empty cup, any sign that I drank orange juice. I see none. I move
my tongue around mouth; there is no juice residue. I’m relieved and I
start crying. And then my nose starts bleeding, but I’m too tired to get
up, so I let the blood run down my face and pool on my pillow.
*
The morning of January 20th came faster than Wafa had planned.
She awoke with knots in her stomach and a nauseous feeling in her chest.
As she went about her morning as usual, showering and washing her hair,
she wondered if she was doing the right thing. She was so distracted by
her sudden uncertainty that she merely swallowed breakfast rather than
eating it. She barely realized that she’d even consumed food when she put
her bowl in the sink, rinsing it out. She considered aborting the plan and
hiding out in her apartment forever. What was the worst that could happen
if she didn’t show up? With second thoughts chewing her up, Wafa
35
decided that she needed to see her family one last time, even though she
wasn’t supposed to. Just in case she decided to go through with the plan,
Wafa took anything out of her purse that could identify her before she left
her apartment for her sister’s house.
When Wafa got to her sister’s house, her niece opened the door and
threw her arms around her. Wafa leaned down and kissed the young girl
on the forehead. She had stopped on the way and bought a carton of juice,
which she handed to her niece once their embrace was over. The niece
reached out her hands, gratefully taking the juice from her aunt. She
opened the carton quickly and poured it in her mouth.
“Mom’s at the market, and dad is in the back yard practicing with
his shot gun,” The niece informed Wafa after a few swallows of the juice.
“But you can come in.”
Wafa smiled looking at her niece for a short time before responding.
She studied her big eyes and their youthful innocence, the sweet smile and
joy on her face, and the juice dripping from the corner of her lips. It was
then that Wafa knew that she had to go through with the bombing so her
niece, and the rest of her generation, could have a future free from turmoil
and war.
“Just tell your mom I stopped by.” Wafa leaned down again and
hugged the girl goodbye. “I love you.”
“Love you too,” The niece responded. “See you later, ‘k?”
Wafa waved as she walked away from the house and headed to the
café where she had met with Habib and the unnamed man. She would be
picked up there and driven to Jerusalem.
*
36
On the ninth day of my fast, I can barely breathe. I stupidly
convince myself to eat and I have a cheese sandwich. I feel better as soon
as it touches my mouth, at least physically, but emotionally I’m
exhausted and angry and depressed and I just want to punch a wall or
stick a knife in my stomach. I don’t think I can take it. I don’t think I can
do it anymore. I’m just so unhappy. The whole eating disorder, the not
eating to prove a point to the world, has spiraled and control is slowly
slipping out of my grasp. As the cheese sandwich digests, I make an
impulse decision to inject myself with barium chloride.
I take a pen and my prettiest pieces of stationary paper and write
two notes, one to my parents that says it isn’t their fault and one to the
world that says: Look what you can do to a person. Look what pain you
can cause. I’m dying so no one else has to feel the pain of not measuring
up to standards of beauty. I’m dying so no one else wants to die because
they aren’t thin or pretty enough. I put the notes under my pillow where
they will be found.
I don’t know what I really think is going to happen. Maybe what I
always wanted to happen, that my tragic death from self-starvation, from
suicide, will be noticed – in the newspapers, on TV, maybe even in an
article at the back of Seventeen magazine – and people will start to
rethink all the pressure society puts on women and girls to be thin and
fit into the preprescribed mold of beauty. Somehow my death will make a
difference and be a catalyst for change in the world.
I dig the jar of barium chloride out from my underwear drawer. I
set a small cup of water on my desk and add the chemical. I’m not sure
how much I should add, but a teaspoon seems good, and I stir it around
37
in the water until it is mostly dissolved. I fill the syringe with the
mixture, leaving the cup more than half full. I suppose I will have some
of the mixture left over in case this doesn’t work. I look at the needle in
my hand, as I move it towards the vein that is visible in my left wrist. I
hope this is painless. I hope I only feel a small needle prick.
I push the needle into my wrist.
*
Wafa walked down the crowded streets of Jerusalem with 22
pounds of explosives strapped to her back. Her reason for doing this – her
niece, that she would know freedom – was fresh in her mind. Wafa was no
longer afraid of her destination, just slightly afraid of the pain that would
take her there. She spoke quietly to herself, looking down at the ground as
she walked. “It will be over before you know it. This is for the greater good.
It will be over before you know it. This is for the greater good. You won’t
feel a thing. This is for the greater good.”
Quietly Wafa pulled the cord hanging from her backpack and
detonated herself.
*
The pain is incredible. It flows all the way up her arm to her spine,
and all the way down her spine to her arm. The pain burns like fire
across her skin. Her arm is on fire. Her whole body is on fire. The
chemical reactions, the atoms igniting in her blood, cause a buzzing in
her head. She sees flashes of light in front of her and the world begins to
spin. She falls slowly until she hits the ground. It feels like she is
exploding into a million pieces.
INTAKE
When I was taken away there were no ambulances or police. The
only roadside bombs were the ones in my chest that thrust the air from
my lungs into a tight knot in my throat.
I was walking out of the library, headed to spend the last 15
minutes of lunch with Anna. I had promised her that I would try to be
normal for that long. In reality it would have been more like 10 minutes,
after I walked across the quad and basketball courts of our high school
to Notre Dame Hall where Anna and her friends – my friends – ate lunch
now that they (we) were juniors. It didn’t take that long to walk across
campus, but I planned to walk slowly, and I knew that I would be
stopped by one of the basketball players who would inevitably ask, “Why
don’t you talk?”
I’d stop, bashful, as usual, “I talk.”
“No you don’t,” he’d say barricading himself in front of me.
“I’m talking now,” I would respond, pivoting around him without
making eye contact, and quickly run away.
But I didn’t even make it to the basketball courts. As I walked out
of the library, Sylvia rushed up to me. I wouldn’t say I was friends with
Sylvia because I didn’t need or want friends, and Sylvia was like a bad
strain of Catholic herpes that refused to be washed from my skin. It was
bad enough that I had to pray during homeroom and go to mass on Ash
Wednesday, but Sylvia insisted on chasing me around school, attempting
to enlighten me with Christian Rock and proverbs. I sat through Ms.
Dean’s Christian Morality class because I had to, and I watched 7th
39
Heaven on television because I wished that was my life, but that was as
close as I planned to get to God.
“Your mom is looking for you,” Sylvia said.
I was confused. “My mom?”
“Yeah, I ran into her in the office. I told her you might be eating
lunch by the lockers in Notre Dame.”
I ran past Sylvia towards the quad. My mom had never just shown
up at school before. My dad was the one who always took me to school,
or picked me up if I needed a ride.
It all seemed surreal. Like the dream I had where I died. Sylvia was
in my dream, and I was being nice to her – I was only reluctantly nice to
her in real life. She wanted to show me something in her locker, so I
squatted down next to her. As she fiddled with the combination lock, I
started feeling dizzy and all of Notre Dame Hall blurred around me. I fell
backwards and blacked out. I came to long enough to see Sylvia and a
group of teachers standing over me, and then I blacked out again. The
next thing I knew, the teachers had turned into to doctors and I was in a
hospital bed hooked up to beeping machines. I watched as one of the
doctors lowered a mask over my face before everything went black. I was
dead. As soon as I made this realization, I woke up in the dark of my
bedroom terrified that I had actually died. I looked around my room to
see that nothing had changed, but who was to say that hell wasn’t the
monotony of life.
I caught up to my mom before she made it halfway across the
quad.
40
She seemed agitated, but relieved to see me. Before I could ask
why she was there, she demanded to know where I had been, like
spending my lunch doing homework in the library was a crime. She said
we needed to go back to the office, so she could sign me out. I had a
medical appointment that she’d forgotten about and we needed to leave
right away. I didn’t have time to get my books from my locker, or tell
Anna goodbye. I asked what kind of appointment, but she said, she’d
explain when we got there.
She signed me out in the office and then we walked down Chestnut
Street. She asked me which way the bus stop was because she couldn’t
remember. I pointed straight ahead. Three blocks and to the right. It was
a nice day to be out of school, sunny and warm for March. I was wearing
my uniform skirt instead of pants and my arms were bare below the light
blue sleeves of my blouse. Earlier that day, my chemistry teacher, an
import from Roundup, Montana, had been amazed to be wearing nothing
but his shirt sleeves in winter. It seemed silly, when he had spent the
first 15 minutes of class talking about it, but it was nice to have the
brisk warmth of sun on my skin. We passed the corner store where the
seniors got to go off campus to buy lunch. A few stragglers were rushing
out, trying to make it back to school before the 4th period bell rang.
“Where are we going?” I asked again once we got to the bus stop.
“Dr. B. called me this morning,” she began.
My therapist? I searched my mind and thought back to the session
I had with her the day before. What had we talked about? Had I said
something to get myself in trouble? Had I said anything at all?
41
“She said she stayed awake all night. She didn’t want to break
your trust, but she decided she had to do something.”
“Do something about what?” I asked, my heart jumping in my
chest.
“She said you were suicidal. You told her you wanted to jump off a
building.”
“That’s… not true,” I said calmly. Of all the things Dr. B. could
have said about me, of all the secrets she had pulled from me slowly, one
by one, that was the stupidest. Maybe I had said that I wanted to jump
off a building, I couldn’t remember. But wanting to jump off a building
and jumping off a building were two different things. Besides what
building was I going to jump off and how would I even get to the top?
“She was very worried. She called the hospital and they agreed that
you should come in for an evaluation. They’re expecting us at the
emergency room. I’ll call your father when we get there.”
I gulped. I knew this was serious. My mother had taken the
afternoon off work, rushed all the way across the bridge from her office in
San Francisco, without even stopping at home to get the car or my dad,
to take me to the hospital. I didn’t know if I could talk myself out of this
one.
We got off the first bus downtown to transfer to a line that would
take us to the hospital. My mom asked if I wanted to stop and get
something to eat. I wanted to tell her that this wasn’t like milkshakes at
Johnny Rockets after she dragged me to see the creepy psychiatrist with
the dimly lit office and a collection of Indonesian masks covering the
42
walls, the one who sent me away with a prescription for pink antidepressants instead of the anti-anxiety medicine I had agreed to take.
But I just shook my head. No I didn’t want anything to eat. We stopped
at Burger King anyway. I got a Diet Coke.
I played with the straw in my drink until I got up the courage to
ask, “Can we just go home.” My mom didn’t say anything, so I went on, “I
promise I’ll be good. I’ll be happy. I’ll be nicer. I’ll talk more in therapy.”
She wanted to say yes. She wanted to say that we could just go
home. She wanted to believe I would keep my promises, but she didn’t.
“We’ll go home after you get evaluated at the hospital. Now let’s go
to the bathroom and get out of here so we can catch the next bus.”
I left my drink on the table and followed her to the bathroom.
When I finished washing my hands before she even came out of the stall,
I walked back into the restaurant. For a moment I thought about
running, but I didn’t know where I’d go or what I’d do besides leap into
traffic and get hit by a car. I didn’t want to go out like that, and running
and getting caught would have been worse than cooperating. My mom
had considered that I could run, so when she didn’t see me, she came
rushing out of the bathroom in a panic. I laughed a little, like I’d never
considered taking off without her, but she didn’t find it so funny and she
held me by the wrist as we walked to the next bus. She didn’t take her
eyes off of me for the rest of the trip.
When we got to the hospital, my mom signed me in at the check-in
counter and explained why I was there. She explained it again at the
triage window, after the nurse had taken my blood pressure and
43
temperature from across the counter. Then the triage nurse turned to
me, all caring like, and asked me to explain why I was there because she
needed to hear it from me. Triage window number one didn’t provide my
privacy from triage window number two, so I looked around selfconsciously before I whispered, “I guess I told my therapist I wanted to
jump off a building, and she thought I needed to come here.” The nurse
seemed satisfied in a sympathetic, yet what-a-pity, kind of way. She
extended us a seat in the waiting room until my name was called.
My dad met us at the hospital. He asked me why. I said I didn’t
know. He wanted to say more, but my mom stopped him. None of us
talked much after that. I read the signs on the wall about the translation
services available and how to prevent the spread of germs. I watched the
other people in the waiting room, homeless people looking for a warm
place to sleep, elderly people with the flu, and a man with a broken arm –
his radius fractured clean across during a sporting accident. After the
day had turned to night, I went outside with my mom for fresh air, as
she smoked a cigarette. I took in a cold breeze of air while I watched
EMTs dressed in blue jump suits unload a gray haired man and wheel
him inside. I tried to read The Great Gatsby, but didn’t make it much
further than my bookmark in chapter 4.
I waited for 5 hours.
Quiet.
Bored.
Nervous.
The man with the broken arm left. The homeless people stayed.
44
Someone finally called my name. My dad stayed in the waiting
room while my mom and I followed a nurse to a makeshift bed in the
corner of a florescent lit hallway. The nurse apologized, said it had been
a busy night, told me to hop up on the bed so she could take my vitals,
then apologized again, and said a doctor would be with me shortly. My
mom sat down in a chair next to the bed, but we didn’t talk. Once the
nurse was gone, I slid my shoes off, buried myself face down in the white
of the hospital sheets, and listened to the hum of the lights.
I tried to think about what I would say to the doctor, or what I
wouldn’t say. I told myself that I could get out of this situation. After all, I
was the one word queen. Yes. No. Maybe. Perhaps. My therapist said that
talking to me was like pulling teeth. And I needed to keep it that way.
After all, talking was what had gotten me into trouble in the first place.
Letting one little thing slip had me positioned in a hospital bed.
When the doctor came he was younger than I’d expected, young
enough to still be idealistic about being an emergency room physician,
idealistic enough to think he could save teenage girls who wanted to
commit suicide.
“Do you know why you’re here?” Was the first thing he asked after
introducing himself.
“Yes.”
“Can you tell me why you’re here?”
I looked down at my toes, silent. I had straightened myself up, and
I was sitting on the side of the bed with my legs dangling over the edge.
My mother recapped the story of why we were there. He nodded then
45
asked my mother if she’d give him a minute to talk to me alone. Once my
mom had made it back to the waiting room, he asked me if I was
suicidal.
“No,” I responded calmly.
“Have you ever tried to kill yourself?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Trying to force momentum in the conversation, his follow-up was
quick. “What did you do?”
“I took a bunch of pills,” I confessed deviating from the yes, no,
maybe, perhaps plan. I told myself that it was okay because I was giving
him something to hang on. Proving that I was honest and forthcoming,
when I was really telling him about something that had happened so long
ago, it was irrelevant.
“Do you remember what kind of pills?
“Pain medicine, like Advil, Tylenol, Motrin.”
He scribbled my words in his notes. His ball point pen dashing
long, quick marks on a piece of paper fastened to the manila folder with
the words and numbers of my existence. The beginnings of a record.
When his pen was satisfied he looked up, “How much is a bunch?”
“57.”
“And what happened? Did you go to the hospital?”
“No. I just woke up with a really bad stomach ache.”
He looked surprised. “How long ago was this?”
“Seventh grade, so like 4 years ago.”
“Was this the only time you tried to kill yourself?”
46
I told him about trying to slit my wrist a year later. I explained how
it bled, small drops at first then steady. I’d wrapped and bandaged it
myself and came up with a lie about cutting myself on a cardboard box. I
said it wasn’t as deep as it could have been; it was more about wanting
to see what it was like than wanting to die.
His reflexes sent his eyes towards my wrists, but both were covered
with thin plastic bracelets. “Have you had any recent attempts?”
“Maybe,” I said, my words getting away from me. I was always good
at saying too much if someone actually got me talking.
He laid my file down on the bed next to me and looked at my face.
“What did you do?”
“Promise not to tell my mom?”
He gave me the look that adults give right before they explain that
they only want to help, but if you are going to hurt yourself or someone
else, they will have to tell; but he promised. “This is just between us.”
When I told him about the poison, the barium chloride injected
into my wrist, he looked at me with disbelief, like I shouldn’t have been
able to do that and survive. It was the worst pain I had ever felt, like
getting burned, but being on fire from the inside. Bubbling, melting,
charred – my wrist turned black and dark blue. My fingers tingled and
burned for days, and it was over a week before I had full range of motion
in my hand. I had been so scared that I would have to have my hand, or
part of my arm amputated, but I didn’t tell anyone because I hadn’t
wanted to end up in a hospital talking to someone like him.
As if looking for proof, he asked if he could take a look at my wrist.
I handed him my left arm and let him push aside my bracelets. The only
47
thing left was a small purple bruise. He touched it lightly. Then wanting
to do something medical, tired of examining my brain, he asked me to
straighten out my hand, bend my fingers one by one, and squeeze his
hand, so he could test my strength.
“Do you still want to kill yourself? Do you plan to jump off a
building?”
“No.”
I was more surprised than I should have been when the doctor
brought my mom back and announced, in his expert opinion, I needed to
go to the psychiatric hospital across town for a more complete
evaluation. My heart sank into the new buddle of nervous that occupied
my stomach. I had walked the line of open and cooperative a little too
closely and fallen off into the dark abyss of mental patient. I just wanted
to go home and sleep. Sleep all night. Sleep all week. Sleep forever until I
died, and the nightmare was over.
I lay face up in the back seat of the car, watching the night sky
wander, as my parents drove me from one hospital to the next. When we
got to the hospital, we were greeted by one of the hospital directors who
seemed more like a cruise director, intent on selling the experience. I
zoned in and out of the conversation, saying only a few general words
when she asked me questions. After her spiel she escorted us upstairs to
the adolescent unit where we met the charge nurse who could have been
a character played by Diane Keaton in the horror movie of my life. Maybe
an evil character that pretended to be nice and reassuring, until she
48
ripped teenagers away from their parents and locked them in a room
where no one could hear their screams.
The nurse offered me some food, which my mother accepted; then
she took my parents into a room with large blinds, behind the couch
where I was sitting. She opened the blinds, so they could watch me while
they talked. I sat with my legs pulled tight to my body, and bit into the
cloying sweetness of a red delicious apple. The area where I sat, part of a
day room, was pained with fish. It was supposed to be friendly, maybe
inviting even, but it reminded me of my dentist’s office, minus the
distracting entertainment of a live aquarium. It was late and other than
colorfully painted fish, the unit was quiet. I finished the apple, and took
a bite out of a cheese sandwich before the nurse returned with my
parents. She told them she’d meet them at the door and left so they
could talk to me. My mom sat down next to me on the couch where I
was curled in a ball, while my dad stood in the doorway of the room they
had just exited.
“All the doctors have gone home for the night,” my mom said
carefully. “So you’re going to have to wait until tomorrow for an
evaluation.”
“So we’ll come back tomorrow?” I asked hopeful that we would just
forget about it and not come back at all.
“You’re going to spend the night. And you’ll get evaluated in the
morning.”
“You’re going to stay with me, right?”
“We can’t stay with you, but we will be back first thing tomorrow.”
49
I was mad and scared. She had promised that she wouldn’t leave
me alone in some hospital. She told me the doors wouldn’t be locked to
the unit, but they were. There was no way out and I was about to be
trapped alone. Hanging on to my last piece of hope, I asked if I’d get to go
home the next day after seen the doctor.
“Hopefully,” she said and then hugged me goodbye.
I didn’t move from the couch. My mom got up and walked towards
the door. My dad squeezed my shoulder and told me to be good, then
followed her. I watched them until they were out of sight, almost to the
end of a long hallway that was painted with different fish and seaweed.
Eventually I heard the metal door slam closed and lock behind them as
they left.
The nurse took me to another room that was slathered with the
fluffy white paint of clouds. She took my backpack from me; then handed
me two hospital gowns – one for the front and one for the back –
instructing me to take off all of my clothing except for my panties. She’d
give me a minute to change and then she’d be back for intake
procedures.
I took off my clothes slowly, starting with the buttons of my blue
shirt. Mr. Riley, my English teacher, had said I was arrogant when I wore
my uniform shirt untucked. He was demonstrating the use of the word,
but I still blushed, wanting to hide. I wondered what word he would have
come up with to describe me in that moment – abject? Abashed? Pitiful.
Once my bra was off, I slid on the two oversized hospital gowns, tying
them as best I could on my body. I slid off my navy blue shirt next,
followed by shoes and tights. There was a chair in the center of the room,
50
so I sat there, legs held tight together, body tense, with my clothes on my
lap.
When the door opened a different woman came in; one, who
dressed in blue jeans and an oversized sweater, didn’t look much like a
nurse. She had a badge affixed to the tan threads of her sweater, but it
was turned backwards so I couldn’t see what it said. She was younger,
and prettier, with her hair swept back in a messy pony tail, than the
other nurse. As far as appearance was concerned, she seemed less
intimidating, but the stony look in her eyes and the way she crossed her
arms against her chest said she was less than pleased to be there with
me in that room.
“Are you ready?” she asked, her voice pointed and thick.
Unsure of what I was supposed to be ready for, I nodded.
“Stand up,” she commanded.
I stood.
“Put your clothes in the chair. Take off your jewelry.”
I placed my clothes carefully on the chair behind me, and took off
my bracelets one by one and put them on top of the pile.
She took a piece of paper and a pen from her back pocket and
walked towards the chair. I watched her pick up each piece of clothing,
examine it, check for pockets then inventory it on her paper. When she
was done she separated my clothing into two piles: shirt, skirt and bra in
one, and shoes, bracelets and tights in the other.
“You next,” she said. “Spread your legs slightly. Now hold your
arms out. I’m going to pat you down.”
51
I closed my eyes as her hands reached for my body. She felt my
shoulders and arms first then her hands breezed across the bareness of
my braless breasts, then down my torso to my hips and butt and legs.
When she was satisfied, she stepped back and instructed me to do 15
jumping jacks.
“Jumping jacks?” I said with my voice barely above a whisper.
She rolled her eyes and explained what jumping jacks were, as if I
didn’t know; and added, “To make sure you’re not hiding anything where
you shouldn’t.”
I did the jumping jacks, counting in my head. As I jumped, she
asked me why I was there. “I suppose I want to kill myself,” I said.
“Not good,” she replied. Her words fell on me thick as soviet snow. I
wasn’t sure if she meant wanting to die was bad, or I was bad.
When she was satisfied that I wasn’t hiding anything, she handed
me the larger pile of clothes. Jewelry was not allowed, and she kept my
shoes and tights, claiming they were dangerous; I might try to use the
shoe laces or tights as a noose. I hadn’t considered the idea, but I
glanced up at the ceiling wondering if there was anything in the place
that one could hang oneself from. I received two booklets, a small one
about my rights as a patient and a large one outlining the rules of the
unit. We left the area with clouds painted on the walls and she showed
me to the darkness of my room. Go to bed she instructed and closed the
door behind her.
I knew I was going to have a long time to think about how I’d
gotten there.
THEY CALL US CRAZY
I’m sixteen and my hair is bushy and wild. It hasn’t been flat
ironed in almost a month, so I’ve been forced to alternate between letting
it flow wildly and winding it into tight Zulu knots. Today felt like a wild
day or maybe I was too lazy to part and twist my hair this morning. Leah
offered to braid my hair last week, but I don’t like Leah. I can’t decide if I
don’t like her because everyone else loves her or if it’s because she is
overdrawn and exaggerated like her name. L-E-A-H. Four letters is one
too many. Her name should be spelled L-I-A like the girl who sleeps in
the bed next to mine. They are on name alert, Leah and Lia, but it’s easy
to tell them apart, overstated and not.
My feelings about Leah have nothing to do with the way she spells
her name; it’s the way she acts. She manufactures lies like Santa’s elves
manufacture Christmas toys. And the worst part is I can see her
cranking the wheel in her mind to indent lies in the air so clearly that
she hands them out like receipts people can fold and carry in their
pockets. Leah is a slippery 15 year old who talked her way into getting us
a cabinet full of candy. The cabinet is locked of course, but once a day
we can have our pick of candy. Sounds great, right, but the four of us
who have the candy cabinet are eating disordered. We don’t want candy,
or, at least I know I don’t, and I’m pretty sure Leah doesn’t either.
Craving candy was another lie aimed at chiseling some time off of her
sentence behind the locked double doors of Herring Psychiatric Hospital.
It’s hard to escape anyone on the girls unit where we live, but it’s
especially hard to escape Leah.
53
The regular girls who are depressed, suicidal, bipolar or
schizophrenic eat at two long rectangular tables between the kitchen
counter and the lounge area where we have groups. The four of us eating
disordered girls sit at a tiny square table by the window. We are our own
island with our own staff monitor and our own rules. No talking about
body image or weight at meals. No talking about food, whether you like
the food on your tray or not. And you have to eat everything on your tray
or you have to have a Resource (or maybe two depending on how much
food you leave behind). When I first got here, two weeks ago, I didn’t
know what a Resource was, and it didn’t sound so bad. When Jude, the
patron staff of our lost eating disordered souls, told me I could either eat
the rest of my disgusting veggie burger that tasted like grilled rice and
soiled mustard or complete two Resources (using the word complete was
a trick), I eagerly chose the two Resources.
Hearty bulimic Hannah, who eats tums three times a day for
calcium and heartburn, shook her head in warning, but Jude shot her a
sharp look. I didn’t understand what could be so bad about a Resource
or two. I thought Jude would drop an encyclopedia type book in front of
me and I’d have to write something about coping skills. Instead Jude got
up and headed to the refrigerator that is only unlocked during meals.
“Chocolate or vanilla?” She asked.
“What?” I replied confused.
Jude held up a boxed nutrition drink much like Ensure and
repeated, “Chocolate or vanilla?”
“Uh, one of each?”
54
She returned to the table with two drinks and smiled, “You’ve got
15 minutes.”
I nearly gagged as the taste of musky vanilla syrup flooded my
mouth.
“I told you that you didn’t want a Resource,” Hannah said,
knowing that she is always right.
“Hannah you know the rules,” Jude warned, “do I need to get you a
Resource?”
Hannah quietly went back to shoveling the mac and cheese off her
tray and I finished gulping down my first drink. Jude slid me the other
one with a satisfied grin on her face. She may be the food police, but it’s
hard to hate Jude with her sly smile and strawberry blonde hair that
smells like cinnamon. Even if everyone says, “leave it to Jude to ruin
your day,” I kind of like her because when she works nights she always
lets me stay up past lights out so we can talk about my day. Leah, on the
other hand, has no redeeming qualities.
An hour before staff change, we have our snack. A tray of cookies
and juice cups are set out in the kitchen for the regular girls, while I sit
in front of the nurses’ station with Hannah, Leah and Ashley, a girl who
has been known to jump up in the middle of a meal and declare that
nothing tastes as good as thin feels. Jude oversees as we open white
paper bags that contain our special order snacks. I find that I get off easy
today; I only have a cranberry juice cup and a box of raisin granola,
while Leah, who likes to sit next to me, has a thick slice of cherry pie.
Once Jude has checked to make sure that our bags have all the
food we’re supposed to eat, we are allowed to begin the process of
55
glorified indulgence. I tear my cereal box open to get to the pocket-sized
bag of granola, then pinch the bag on either side and begin to pull. The
bag isn’t cooperating today, and I wish that a non-cooperating snack
meant I didn’t have to eat, but it doesn’t, so I yank the bag with force and
it rips open, exploding granola. Leah laughs loudly, causing Jude to look
up from her cheese sandwich and frown at me and the granola in my
hair.
“Sorry,” I whisper to Jude.
“Clean it up,” she says flatly and I think I may actually get out of
snack until she gets up from her seat, warns us not to try anything
funny and walks around the corner into the kitchen area. Jude is all
knowing. She knows to quickly grab Ashley’s tray when she is about to
toss it off of the table, she knows that Hannah likes to sweet talk med
nurse Patti into giving her milk of magnesia as a laxative and she even
knows that I hide food in my socks. Unfortunately she doesn’t know
about Leah’s lies, but even Leah knows that she isn’t immune to an after
meal strip search from Jude. There is no way we are going to try
anything funny.
“I couldn’t find any granola, so this will have to do,” Jude says
placing a box of cheerios in front of me.
I am more careful this time. I tear the box open, then slowly pull
the bag open and begin to eat. I’m supposed to use a spoon and a bowl,
but Jude is eating her sandwich and maybe feeling a little nice, so she
lets me pour the cereal directly into my mouth. After a few crunches and
a swallow, I break the rules and announce, “This tastes like nothing.”
56
Jude looks up with a smile and tosses me a box of raisin bran,
“Cheerios are nothing, which is why you are eating this box of cereal
too.”
I slouch down in my chair with only a pout because there is no
arguing with Jude unless I want a third box of cereal. Leah bursts out
laughing again and a wad of cherry pie flies out of her mouth and onto
the table in front of her.
“It’s really not that funny,” I mutter.
“Sure it is,” Leah assures me as she takes her hand, wipes it
across the table and licks the pie from her fingers.
“At least I don’t have fattening pie,” I whisper quietly so Jude
doesn’t hear.
Leah turns to me and opens her mouth so I can see the cherry
filling on her tongue, “The pie isn’t so bad. It’s a lot like when a boy
shoots sperm in your mouth.”
Slightly disgusted, I look at her blankly as she shovels another fork
full of pie into her mouth and licks her lips before she continues with a
loud moan, “Sperm is gooey and bitter, but it feels so good when a boy
gives it to you in your mouth as a present.”
“I wouldn’t know,” I say appalled and turn away from Leah.
Leah clicks her tongue and gasps dramatically, “We have to get you
a boy then.” She touches my bush of hair and smiles. I can tell she has
got her wheels turning again. “You really should reconsider letting me do
your hair. I can braid it in corn-rows like mine and then we can surely
get one of the boys from the other unit to shoot sperm for you. “
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I flinch in disgust and Jude is standing over us. She slaps a cookie
down on the table in front of Leah and announces, “For inappropriate
snack time conversation.”
Hannah looks our way and shakes her head to say that she knew
Leah was going to get extra food for that one and I shouldn’t have sat
next to her in the first place. Simply relieved that I didn’t get a third box
of cereal, I start on the box of raisin bran as Leah begins to fondle the
cookie in front of her.
After snack, Lia, the one I like, is waiting for me. Humming a song,
her body is perched on the window ledge by my bed with her legs
dangling above the ground. She smiles sweetly as I enter the room and
asks, “How was snack?”
“Psh, you know Jude,” I reply as I flop down on my bed.
Lia smiles and nods, but she doesn’t actually know Jude. At least
not the way I do.
At the beginning of every shift staff gets to pick who they want to
work with for the day and Jude always picks me and Hannah. I know
this because Sheryl, who only gets to work with me on Sundays (Jude’s
day off), told me she was disappointed that Jude always snatches me up.
I picture staff having fist fights every morning over who gets who and
who is stuck with leftovers. It’s nice to know that people want to have me
and I’m not yesterday’s dinner tray. I like Jude because she always picks
me. It means she loves me and I love her too. I like Sheryl, and all, but I
want to be just like Jude when I grow up. Maybe I don’t want to be as
mean, but I want to wear smart plaid pants, eat cheese sandwiches, and
ask people questions when their mouths are full and then apologize for it
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because I used to be a waitress. Jude is smart, chic and tactfully passive
aggressive. Sheryl is butch, dykish and direct; that just isn’t me.
Lia usually gets chosen by Sarah and she seems happy about it. I
wouldn’t be unhappy if Sarah was my staff. Sarah’s a little older than the
other counselors, but Sarah manages to look cooler than them. She dyes
her curly hair a color that is somewhere between violet and burgundy,
has nose and lip rings and tattoos all over her body. My favorite is the
one behind her ear that says “joy.” Smiling, she explained that it was so
joy could always whisper in her ear. I’m going to steal that tattoo from
her, but mine is going to say “hope.”
Kicking my feet against the mattress, I whine that “I have to pee.”
“The bathroom is unlocked,” Lia says quietly.
Because I am on eating disorder protocol, the only time we have
free access to the bathroom is in the mornings before breakfast. Any
other time of day and we have to ask for staff to unlock it, but Lia has
never complained about the limitation. I jump up off the bed and
scramble to find that she is right and the bathroom is unlocked.
“Score,” I yell.
“You’re only going to pee right?” Lia calls as she follows to the
bathroom.
“Of course,” I flash a smile.
“I’m going to watch,” Lia announces knowing that every time I go to
the bathroom, staff has to stand outside a cracked door and make sure
I’m not purging.
“Do you also want to look in the toilet after I go?” Staff does this
too.
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“Not really,” she laughs. “So, you have to sing.”
“Sing?” I say as I push the door closed a little, and then pull down
my pants.
“Yes, sing, so I know you’re not throwing up.”
“I don’t know what to sing.”
Without much thought, Lia suddenly begins harmonizing her
favorite song. I don’t know the song or the words, but I hum along loud
enough to please her.
After I flush and wash my hands, I come out of the bathroom and I
am met with a big Lia hug. “What’s that for?” I ask as I return her
embrace.
“Cause, you’re awesome.”
“Thanks,” I walk to my bed and lay down. Lia follows, crawling into
my bed and cuddling up next to me, “I wish I could feel your pain.”
“That’s sweet. I wouldn’t want you to feel my pain though. I wish
you didn’t even have to feel you own,” I turn my head and look at her.
Her soft blond vegetation is spread across my pillow and she’s gazing at
me with the big upside down smiles that are her green eyes. Lia is a giant
sunflower in a late summer corn field; even if she is depressive, she has a
soft happiness.
She sits up and leans over me, “Let me feel your pain tonight, so I
don’t have to feel my own.”
Her pain is written in the soft pink curves of scared skin. Lia has
mapped out the abuse and betrayal for strangers to follow. Every scar
represents something, she explained. She said they were like stars in the
dark sky of her existence; they help her see the way. Lia thinks of herself
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as dark and twisted, but she is not manipulative or conniving like the
other Leah, so I know she is light.
“What do you mean?” I ask.
Lia leans in slowly and her lips press against mine. Mouth sucking
is gross, but this kiss from Lia is sweet. I hold back a smile and blush
knowing what she means by “feel your pain.” Lia pulls back, her eyes
smiling in anticipation. I giggle and nod bashfully; I’ve never done
anything before, but I will let Lia take my pain tonight. Her body floats
back down next to mine and she drifts into a dreamy sleep that I follow.
“Wakey wakey, it’s time to get up for dinner,” a thick Russian
accent infiltrates my dream and I feel a hand on my shoulder. I open my
eyes to see Ksenya standing over me. She must be my staff tonight.
When I brace myself to get up, I hit the warmth of Lia sleeping next to
me; it wasn’t all a dream. My eyes look to Ksenya nervously, but she is
only waiting for me to get up. In Ksenya’s Russia it must not be unusual
for two girls to sleep together in a twin sized bed, or maybe she doesn’t
care to get us in trouble, either way, I am happy because any other staff
would have been calling our doctors right about now for approval to
transfer one of us to the boys unit. Girls who touch other girls aren’t
going to touch boys, right? As Ksenya wakes a sleepy Lia, I get up and
walk into the kitchen area.
When I sit down at our table, the other Leah is already eating the
limp noodles of a sickly macaroni and cheese dish that is passed around
among us. My tray is unfortunately placed next to hers. With a mouth
full of food, Leah begins blabbering on about her plan to get me a boy.
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Still feeling the weight of dreams, I hardly listen as Leah tells me that she
wants to fix me up with Graham, a dork who looks like Macaulay Culkin
with glasses. I am so not interested, but Leah continues explaining her
plan. She says that since we only see the boys in the mornings at school,
we will have to get Graham to shoot sperm then. Leah plans to distract
Teacher Sam (the man who has us color pictures of buildings for
edification) long enough for me and Graham to sneak under the counter
like table in the back of our classroom and “do it.” Even my half-hearted
listening stops at this point because Teacher Sam is an oily man with a
forward comb of dark mushroom hair, thin rimmed glasses and slick
lips; Teacher Sam and the phrase “do it” should never be used in the
same sentence. Eventually Leah asks me if I am listening to her and
when I don’t respond she gets bored and starts talking to Ashley who is
sitting across from her.
After dinner we have night time activities, which include games of
Pictionary and Scattergories. Then we have Check-out followed by
bedtime snack. At Check-out we sit in a circle on the floor of the dark
living room and talk about our day in three choppy sentences. Leah
begins by turning to the staff members leading the circle and smiling,
“Right now I feel happy. The high point of my day was eating nutritious
food.” She pauses for a pleased nod from staff and then continues, “And I
didn’t have a low point today; everything was great.” I want to gag myself
listening to Leah and I think Hannah feels the same way because I can
tell she is biting her lip so hard she is about to break the skin. I push
away the negative thoughts when it’s my turn, “Right now I feel hopeful.
The high point of my day was napping during shift change. The low point
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of my day was eating two boxes of cereal at snack.” When the circle
comes around to Lia her high point was napping too and she is feeling
peaceful.
After eating an apple for snack, Lia brushes by me, sneaking a
squeeze on my shoulder, and retreats to our room to change into her
white hospital issue pajama bottoms and wait for me. Ksenya is talking
to us as she monitors our 45 minute snack period (15 minutes to eat, 30
minutes to sit after we eat). Although Ksenya can’t be older than 27, she
is talking about the “old world” again. When someone has cut
themselves, she has been known to say, “In old world we couldn’t cut
ourselves. Do you know why? If we cut ourselves in old world, we would
get tetanus and our arms would fall off.” When she says “old world,” I
think she is referring to Russia when it was The Soviet Union, but I’ve
never asked to be sure. When the 45 minutes is over, we scatter and
Ksenya’s “old world” is left behind.
In our room Lia is jumping up and down on her bed. She squeals
as I enter the room and does a flip off of the bed. “I can fly,” she says and
begins to dance around me.
“Oh yeah,” I ask playing along. “Like Peter Pan?”
“Exactly!” She leaps over to the window and begins climbing on the
ledge. She stands up and spreads her arms like wings and presses
herself against the glass. “I’m going to jump out the window and fly into
the night sky.”
“What?”
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She turns around to face me and starts jumping on the ledge, “I’m
going to fly.”
“You can’t really fly. You know that, right, Lia?”
“Watch,” She commands and she jumps onto my bed to ready
herself for a running leap out the window.
I move backwards slowly, “I’m going to hit the nurse call button.”
“No!” She screams and jumps from the bed tackling me to the
ground then calmly states, “you can’t do that.”
“Lia, you can’t fly. You will die if you jump out of the window.”
“I’m immortal.”
Reasoning with this girl who has the full weight of her body
pressed against me isn’t working, so I scream “Help, help!”
Lia takes one hand and clasps it over my mouth. With the other
she pinches my nose closed and calmly whispers “Don’t do that.”
I try to push her hands away from my face and kick her off of me,
but she is surprisingly heavy. Her hand is so tight on my mouth that she
can’t hear me say that I can’t breathe. I have no choice; I bite her hand.
Quickly releasing my face from her grasp, she laughs and springs
upwards. She is headed for the window again; I scramble to my knees
and grab her ankle. Lia falls to the ground with a hard thud. I climb on
top of her and pin her down. She is laughing because it’s all incredibly
funny, but I’m about to start crying and screaming for help again when
the door to our room opens and med nurse Patti comes to do her
medicine rounds. Hearing Patti gasp at the sight of us on the floor, I
jump off of Lia and frantically explain, “It’s not what it looks like. She
wants to jump out the window.”
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Still laughing, Lia corroborates my story, “I can fly.”
Patti rushes to Lia, who is climbing the window again. Patti pulls
her away and calmly escorts her to the door, “I’d really love to hear all
about how you can fly. Let’s get you calmed down, so you can tell me all
about it.” Lia waves her hand goodbye and I run to the door to watch as
they disappear down the hall.
When Ksenya comes to do the first round of bed checks, I am
sitting on the window ledge, watching the last bus of the night drive
down Haste Street in the dark. Her voice startles me as she enters my
room, “You know you’ve got your love riding on a dark horse.” I snap my
head in her direction and she continues, “Lia is Manic-Depressive, she’s
always going to be like this.”
I shake my head fighting back tears. Lia is not always like that.
Ksenya walks over and taps the glass on the window, “Plexiglas, it
won’t break. We’re not going to let you girls hurt yourselves; you’re safe
in here.”
I nod. I should have known that they wouldn’t put actual glass in
the windows when they took the doors off the closets in our rooms and
they take our shoelaces and draw string pants.
“You know, in old world we can’t stand still to be sad. Do you know
why?” She pauses and waits for me to shake my head before continuing,
“If we stand still too long in old world, we freeze to death.”
I think she is trying to be funny, so I crack a small smile.
“Come, it’s time to get in bed,” she offers me her hand.
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Taking her hand, I slide down from the ledge and crawl into my
bed. Ksenya pulls the covers up over me and thickly whispers, “sleep
snug as a bug in a rug.”
I’ve been lying in bed awake for at least an hour when Jude comes
in to do morning vitals. She seems chipper and happy, strapping the
blood pressure cuff to my left arm as I remain in bed. I am hardly as
eager to start this day. After she pushes the button on the blood
pressure machine and the cuff begins choking my arm, she slides a
digital thermometer in my mouth for me to hold in place with my right
hand. I turn my head and look at Lia’s empty bed.
“She will be alright,” Jude attempts to comfort me with all the
information she is allowed to give and suddenly she doesn’t seem allknowing anymore.
She takes the thermometer out of my mouth a minute later and
the blood pressure machine beeps. “Stand up slowly”, she says, and I do.
She sets the timer on the machine for two minutes and places two
fingers above my left clavicle to measure my breathing while we wait.
This is our morning routine.
When I don’t say much Jude begins talking about the “amazing”
movie we are going to watch after lunch, but I assume it’s like the last
educational movie we watched that put half of us to sleep, so I’m not
listening. The blood pressure machine starts back up and Jude removes
her fingers from my chest. When the machine stops she asks me if I am
dizzy.
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“No,” I say and sneak a look at the final numbers. A 20 point heart
rate increase is not enough to keep me in bed for the morning since my
standing heart rate (I’m sure they have some sophisticated term for it) is
still under 130 beats per minute, so Jude pulls the cuff off my arm and
finds the key on her thick keychain to unlock my bathroom. I have 30
minutes.
As soon as Jude rounds the corner out of my room, Leah is
standing in the doorway, “I heard your friend tried to off herself last
night.” Leah isn’t supposed to be in my room, but she moves in and
leans her arm against the bathroom door, “I can’t believe there are people
like her in here and they call us crazy.”
“Get out!” I scream shoving Leah away from my bathroom.
She stumbles back a little and pretends to brush herself off with
an innocent smile, “I was just coming to see if you wanted me to do your
hair.”
I stomp in the bathroom and slam the door. As I reach for the
shower faucet, I hear Leah call, “You’ll get in trouble for closing the
bathroom door.” I move to the sink while the water heats up. Stretching
on my tippy toes, I reach above the light fixture to feel for the contraband
razor blade that Lia keeps hidden above the light, and pull it down. As I
turn to my distorted image in the thin slab of tin that is supposed to
serve as a mirror, I take the blade and tear it across my hair. I am so sick
of this tangled mess.
LESSONS
Things ED Taught Me

That there are 3500 calories in a pound of fat, 80 calories in a
small apple, 40 in half a slice of toasted low-calorie bread, 20 a
teaspoon of sugar free jelly. No matter how hungry you are, this is
all you should ever eat in a day. If you eat more than this, you’re
fucked, and might as well binge and purge for the rest of the week.

That self-induced vomiting is a great way to work out your
abdominal muscles, but chocolate is disgusting and should never
be thrown up under any circumstance. If you must over indulge
eat ice cream (just not chocolate) – it’s like a milkshake coming
back up. When you know you are going to throw up after eating,
drink lots of water, or diet soda (never regular – you don’t want to
start that habit) between inhalations of food.

How to make a goal and stick to it even if good judgment would say
that your goal is unrealistic and unreachable.

How to lie. It doesn’t matter if everyone knows the truth; you must
provide a plausible explanation for your behaviors. It’s easier on
you and your loved ones if everyone pretends that nothing is going
on.

That you’re allowed to make an absolute pigsty of your bedroom
and hide candy wrappers, half-eaten apples, yesterday’s dinner,
and bags of vomit under your bed. When the odor starts to
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permeate your room, you shove all the trash in a giant Hefty bag
and dump it in the garbage can across the street from your house
before anyone else wakes up.

When you alienate your friends, especially your best friend-a fatpositive feminist who doesn’t understand your need to sell out to
an image obsessed society, and can’t imagine that your need to eat
and throw up, take laxatives and go to the gym every day is
anything other than a commentary on her body-you will find other
friends, better friends, sick friends who get where you are coming
from. You should have cut off Ms. Fat positive long ago; she’s only
been holding you back. And that watching lifetime movies, binging
on pizza and throwing up in the dark corners of someone else’s
basement can be more rewarding than intelligent conversation.

The location of every public restroom in Berkeley. The one in the
parking garage off Center and Shattuck, although dirty and slightly
disgusting, is best because nobody ever goes in there during the
day, and it provides quick relief from the cheap Chinese restaurant
across the street.
Things ED Didn’t Teach Me

That apples and caramel taste good together; nachos are delicious;
and oatmeal is best with raisins, walnuts and a pinch of brown
sugar.
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
How your body can do amazing things; how you can jump off a
boat and swim to shore in Catalina, even when your mind is
scared to death you’ll drown; how you can walk 6 blocks to pay
your father’s CitiBank bill, 5 more blocks to the Virginia Bakery, so
you can surprise your mother with her favorite coffee cake, and
then another two blocks to buy lilies to put next to your dead
grandmother’s urn.

When it’s best to ignore that your friend is unhappy; when you
should hug her tight and simply ask her if there is anything you
can do; when to accept that some problems can’t be solved.

When it’s appropriate to be passive-aggressive, but how to be
assertive most of the time instead.

That no matter what anyone else thinks, you are beautiful when
you stop in front of a homeless man sitting cross legged on the
sidewalk to offer him a Pepsi because you’re all out of cash and it’s
the only thing you have; the smile on your face will glow when you
end up having a conversation and he lets you pet his dog.

How to put yourself first and how to get your needs met without
feeling guilty or selfish.
AN OPEN RESPONSE [DOT] PROANA [DOT] NET
Entrance
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Disclaimer
| About Pro-Ana | Thinspiration | Tips and Tricks |
Bathroom Scale | An Open Response
Disclaimer
This essay is about pro-ana. This essay is for support for those
with an eating disorder who visit pro-ana blogs because they feel alone
and by themselves with this issue. I support the recovery of the
individual when they are ready. I will never support those who want an
eating disorder. Pro-ana is for the support of those who already have
anorexia/bulimia, and/or those that accept people who are anorexic or
bulimic.
Some images, text and thinspiration contained in this essay may
be considered triggering in nature. If you are looking to get
anorexia/bulimia by being here then please leave now. You will not find
information contained within this essay on how to become anorexic or
bulimic. If you do not accept the condition of anorexia/bulimia/other
eating disorders plus the pro-ana movement then you must also leave
this essay immediately.
You have been forewarned. By reading this essay you are signing a
certificate stating that you have read and understand the above
mentioned conditions, and you are entering this essay knowingly, or
willingly, of the aforementioned conditions.
One Comment
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Martjin2009 says: Disclaimers like these may have the unsolicited effect
of increasing the desire to go further into pro-ana sites or increase the
influence of the information contained in the sites.
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Disclaimer | About Pro-Ana
| Thinspiration |Tips and Tricks |
About Pro-Ana
Recently Tumblr banned pro-ana (pro-anorexia/eating disorder)
blogs. In February, 2012 the internet blogging site announced plans to
update their content policy to prohibit self-harm blogs. These self-harm
blogs include pro-ana and thinspiration (anything that inspires one to
strive for thinness), as well as blogs with self-mutilation content.
Tumblr added the following statement to their Content Policy:
Active Promotion of Self-Harm. Don’t post content that
actively promotes or glorifies self-injury or self-harm. This
includes content that urges or encourages readers to cut or
mutilate themselves; embrace anorexia, bulimia, or other
eating disorders; or commit suicide rather than, e.g., seek
counseling or treatment for depression or other disorders.
Online dialogue about these acts and conditions is incredibly
important; this prohibition is intended to reach only those
blogs that cross the line into active promotion or
glorification. For example, joking that you need to starve
yourself after Thanksgiving or that you wanted to kill
yourself after a humiliating date is fine, but recommending
techniques for self-starvation or self-mutilation is not.
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Tumblr isn’t the first to prohibit content regarding self-harm. Web
hosting sites, such as Tripod and Angelfire have been shutting down proana sites since they started appearing on the web in the 1990s; and proana groups are frequently shut down on Facebook, as the social
networking site states, “[Facebook] is not a place for self-destructive
behavior,” which includes “the promotion of suicide, cutting, eating
disorders, or illegal drug use.” YouTube has taken a less proactive
approach deciding that it is not up to their administrators to remove proana material, but instead it is up to the viewers to flag it. In 2005 there
were over 400 pro-ana websites (not including pro-ana groups on
Facebook). Because of amendments to terms of service and content
policies, as seen in the addition to Tumblr’s policy, most of these no
longer exist.
After much public outrage about the pro-ana movement on the
internet, France passed legislation to ban pro-ana sites in 2008, and it
became a criminal offence (punishable by two years in prison or a
€30,000 fine) to “encourage another person to seek excessive thinness...
which could expose them to a risk of death or endanger their health."
There have been calls for similar legislation in the United States, but
right now it remains up to social networks and web hosting services to
decide what is appropriate for the internet. But deletion from web
hosting services and social networks does not stop pro-ana webmasters.
After a site or blog is shut down, users respond by setting up heavily
disguised sites or blogs elsewhere, ones which avoid using terms like
“ana” and “anorexia” all together. A few years ago pro-ana sites could be
quickly found though search engines, now most of them take a while to
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track down, and often times links are only traded on password protected
message boards.
Not surprisingly, most people never hear about pro-ana sites or
blogs until they get banned from social networks. So what are pro-ana
sites anyway? Pro-ana refers to the promotion of Anorexia Nervosa. The
lesser-used term pro-mia refers likewise to bulimia nervosa and is
sometimes used interchangeably with pro-ana. In the public eye pro-ana
has come to mean anything that glamorizes, pushes, or otherwise
promotes anorexia, bulimia or any other eating disorder. However many
pro-ana sites claim that they do not encourage the development of eating
disorders, rather they offer support for people who already have them.
These sites give eating disordered individuals – those who have already
succumbed to the pressures of a society that promotes thinness and
encourages jokes about self-starvation – an opportunity to share their
own stories, find sympathy for their daily struggles, and celebrate their
successes with those who share their goals.
That being said, the most common visitor to a pro-ana is a young
girl, perhaps unsure of herself and teased mercilessly at school, perhaps
a victim of abuse or family dysfunction, perhaps seemingly normal; but
anyone can visit a pro-ana site, people of all races, ages, and genders.
These are people who feel isolated from society, but desperately want to
be a part of the world. They want a sense of community, and for many
people the sense of community created by pro-ana sites is attractive.
People who visit these sites are also often those who perceive face to face
communicating about eating disorders as shameful because of the
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stigma and misunderstanding that comes from societal views of eating
disorders.
Four Comments
Sanger2012Gurl says: Proponents of pro-ana sites are actually killing
themselves and their readers slowly. We already know that anorexia is
deadly. Tumblr banned pro-ana websites because they don’t want blood
on their hands and they want girls to get healthy.
ProAnaBlogger says: If Tumblr wants girls to get healthy, why do they
continue to let all the same stuff that was posted on ana sites appear on
non-ana sites? It’s not about pro-ana content; it’s about the pro-ana title.
And OMG pro-ana is bad.
BowlingWebProNews says: Any site promoting content intended to
encourage harmful behavior in people shouldn’t be permitted, period. It’s
especially dangerous when a site fosters the self-harm ideation within a
person already prone to hurt themselves. People die because of this stuff.
Used2bAnasBitch says: I first discovered pro-ana in high school. I’m
probably dating myself here, but I had a blog about my struggles with
anorexia and bulimia called “Ana’s Bitch” on the blogging site
Diaryland.com. Other people with eating disorders started following my
blog and communicating with me online. That’s how I discovered pro-ana
communities. I already had an eating disorder, these communities didn’t
entice me into one, but they did make me feel less helpless and alone.
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78
Disclaimer | About Pro-Ana | Thinspiration
| Tips and Tricks |
Thinspiration
Thinspiration is a main feature of most pro-ana blogs. And also
one of the most contested by those who aim to kill these blogs.
Thinspiration can include pictures, quotes, reading or movie viewing
lists. The content of thinspiration, especially pictures, varies from site to
site depending on the level of thinness found desirable. Some groups of
pro-anas strive for mainstream beauty ideals and will post pictures of
celebrities such as Mary Kate Olson or Nicole Richie (both rumored to
have eating disorders). Other groups focus on a more anorexic beauty
ideal and post pictures of emaciated or malnourished people.
Images aimed at selling clothes, celebrities and other products,
come out of the billion dollar modeling industry. These images, which
also inform the idea that thin is beautiful, are frequently found in
everyday life – in advertisements, on billboards and in the pages of
fashion magazines – as well as on pro-ana websites. In fact all of the
images above, taken from the thinspiration sections of pro-ana blogs,
initially appeared elsewhere.
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The two photographs (shown above) are from a photo collection
titled “Thirty Two Kilos” (about 70 pounds) created by German artist
Ivonne Thein, as social commentary on thinspiration and the fashion
industry. Thein, who was inspired to create her 14 photograph collection
after reading about pro-ana websites in a magazine, dressed her friends
(rather than professional models) in medical bandages, contorted their
limbs into disturbing poses, and then digitally manipulated the
photographs to make her subjects appear emaciated. Thein does not
glamorize anorexia. She wanted her photographs to draw attention to the
fact that many young people get weight loss information and starvation
tips on the internet, but her images have found their way to the sites
which provide this information, becoming a thinspiration staple of many
pro-ana blogs.
Images, which are often digitally manipulated or photoshopped to
make models and celebrities appear thinner, are acceptable for fashion
magazines or as social commentary on the internet, as long as they come
with a disclaimer that do not glorify anorexia; however they are not
acceptable content on pro-ana blogs because they are taken out of
context when marketed as thinspiration, especially Thein’s photography.
Thein’s goal was to critique thinspiration, but once she put her art into
the world, she lost the ability to control it. An artist cannot have
complete control over how his, or her, art is viewed. Despite Thein’s
intentions, whether her images can be a powerful social commentary or
not, she put out photoshopped images depicting the emaciated women.
Her images can and will be taken out of context and that is not a factor
she can control. It is questionable whether other images originally from
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advertisements or the pages of fashion magazines are truly taken out of
context when they appear as thinspiration. Most images that sell
products like clothing, soda, or celebrity image, also sell the culture of
thinness and the “thin is in” mentality that is prominent in western
culture. Their subtext glorifies thinness: thin is attractive; thin is sexy;
thin is glamorous. Ultimately thinspiration only reminds pro-ana
bloggers what society markets as beautiful.
Seven Comments
ProAnaGurrl says: Those pics are so, so beautiful! I want to look like
them!
AlMinerSmithsonian says: In regards to Thein’s photography– she isn’t
accountable to the young women on the pro-ana blogs who have adopted
her. It would never end if we tried to censor what we put out there for
their sakes. It's clear that she's mocking or appropriating poses that we
see in edgier haute couture editorial work. . . . They look uncomfortable
and bizarre. The poses are a reminder that they're a critique of the
fashion industry and not just weight loss.
ProAnaBlogger says: I still think that some of the models have big
thighs. How distorted am I?
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DietEDblogger says: @ProAnaBlogger, it’s sick to think those girls are
chubby, but I agree. Sorta a relief to know I’m not the only one who with
Ana stuck in her head.
ProAnaBlogger says: @DietEDblogger, I think we might understand each
other. Want to talk? Message me your email or instant messenger name.
Used2bAnasBitch says: I never posted thinspo on my blog. It seemed
kind of pointless to post. You can get it everywhere. Sure I used to look
at thinspo online, but I spent more time clipping out pictures from
magazines and gluing them in my thinspiration journal. Even though I’m
recovered and don’t seek out thinspiration by any means, it is pretty
hard to avoid. There are pictures telling me what is attractive and what I
should look like everywhere.
ProAnaGurrl says: Yes, there is so much thinspo everywhere. I never
have to look hard to find it. I love it, but I also kind of hate it… it’s
complicated.
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Disclaimer | About Pro-Ana | Thinspiration | Tips and Tricks
|
Tips and Tricks
Tips and tricks sections, where users give each other advice on
how to lose weight and maintain their eating disorders, are another
frequently criticized part of pro-ana blogs. These sections feature
information on fad diets such as The Cabbage Soup diet, which allows a
dieter to lose up to 10 pounds by consuming low-calorie cabbage soup
for 7 days, The Russian Gymnast diet, a 200 calorie/day plan for rapid
weight loss that was once followed by Olympic silver medalist Irina
Tschachina when she needed to lose weight to compete at the Olympics,
and the Ana Boot Camp diet, basically a fad diet created by pro-anas
based on calorie shifting – the idea that you can trick your body out of
starvation mode by consuming a different amount of calories every day
(usually more than the Russian Gymnast diet allows). What opponents
of pro-ana blogs don’t realize is that most of the diets found on these
blogs were originally developed elsewhere and the pro-ana specific diets
are based in the science and image of other fad diets.
Fad diets are distinctive eating patterns that promote short term
weight loss. They are often catchy diets that focus on a single element
such as cabbage, grapefruit or cottage cheese. In addition to exaggerating
a single food item or food group, fad diets can also be based around the
elimination of a food from an individual’s diet, or placing emphasis on
eating certain foods (e.g. high protein, low carb). These diets tend to
either ignore/misrepresent science, or neglect to follow the scientific
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method in establishing their validity. Examples of fad diets include both
those found on pro-ana sites and those frequently advertised during
television commercials, like the South Beach Diet, Nutrisystem, and
Medifast, which offers a restrictive 800 calorie/day liquid starvation plan.
Critics have argued that the information and diets pro-ana blogs
give to aid people in weight loss are questionable at best. Some advice
will help pro-anas meet their goals, but some will not, as tips are mixed
with speculative science, guesswork nutrition and lies. The people
running pro-ana sites and handing out this information are not medical
professionals skilled in weight loss or nutrition techniques and most proanas do not realize that their mentors do not have scientifically based
evidence, therefore they do not know where the information ends and the
disinformation begins. The same could obviously be said for the fad diet
culture.
Satirist Robert S. Wieder creates mock fad diets, such as the ABC
Diet where a person only eats foods on Wieder’s list that begin with the
letters A, B and C. The A list includes:
Abalone: Even if you find any, you couldn’t afford it.
Antelope: You’ve never seen a fat one, have you?
Asparagus: Zero calories, because you probably hate it and
won’t eat it.
Apples: You’ve got to eat something.
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Some of his other diets include
the D-Day Diet where the dieter is
only allowed whole wheat bread, raw
vegetables and bottled water on any
day with a letter “d” in it, and the X
Diet, where dieters, who are not
allowed extra helpings of food, can
only eat while exercising. The X diet
also takes a jab at bulimia by
instructing dieters to expose
themselves in a mirror while wearing a bathing suit before consuming
food, and if all else fails take Ex-Lax right after eating. The ABC Diet even
comes with a faux book cover (pictured left) that gives Wieder the lofty
credentials of M.D., Ph.D. and R.D.
With a culture of fad dieting that asks dieters to attempt ridiculous
weight loss techniques, it’s not hard to believe that someone might
mistake Wieder’s diet and credentials as authentic. In fact, one reviewer
on a diet review site did believe Wieder was for real, even going so far as
to attempt his diet. In the end, the reviewer advised dieters to avoid the
ABC diet because of its extremely low calorie nature.
The inclusion of fad diets is not the only problem with the tips and
tricks available on pro-ana blogs. The blogs also include information on
how to purge without rupturing your esophagus or damaging your teeth,
how to avoid eating at social gatherings and how to hide an eating
disorder from loved ones. Although this information is misguided and
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does not encourage eating disorder recovery, it is often provided with
good intentions. A typical bulimic visiting pro-ana blogs is going to purge
regardless of the tips and tricks provided on the internet. The
recommendations provided are aimed at helping the bulimic maintain
his, or her, health longer. As for the information geared towards hiding
an eating disorder, or avoiding eating, it is often given with the intent to
support those who are ashamed to be open about their eating disorders
and not ready for treatment/recovery. Ultimately if a person’s relatives,
co-workers, or friends think they have an eating disorder they are
probably on the internet trying to find out information and might read
the same tips and tricks, making them that much more ineffective.
Four Comments
ProAnaBlogger says: Tips and tricks are common sense. Anyone could
figure them out without the help of pro-ana blogs.
Sanger2012Gurl says: Imagine for a second that you’re a heroin addict.
You’re trying to kick the habit, so you search online for something like
“heroin addict support” and click on a link you’d think was a site for
rehabilitation and getting better. Only it turns out to be photos of smack,
places to find out, and new ways to get high from it. That’s dangerous.
That’s damaging. And that’s not much different from a pro-ana website.
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ProAnaBlogger says: @[email protected], did you actually read this
page? Guess what… Your example isn’t much different from society.
There are thousands of images of smack and people getting high on TV
and in movies. Do you really think that a heroin addict isn’t already
schooled on how to get high without the internet? Same for anorexics
and bulimics. They’re on pro-ana sites because they’re anorexic and
bulimic; therefore they already know how to be anorexic and bulimic.
Used2bAnasBitch says: I never learned anything revolutionary on proana sites. I learned to purge on my own through trial and error. It seems
like a simple thing to be able to make yourself throw up, but there is a
particular way to do it that is easiest and most effective. I’d never teach
anyone that because I’d never want anyone to hurt themselves. Misery
loves company sometimes, but most pro-anas aren’t in the business of
selling eating disorders to people. People usually figure out most of the
tips and tricks on their own before they ever read a pro-ana blog. And
some of the same people who gave me tips and tricks when I was sick are
some of my biggest supporters in recovery.
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Disclaimer | About Pro-Ana | Thinspiration | Tips and Tricks |
Bathroom Scale
| An Open Response
Bathroom Scale
At the end of the day anorexics and bulimics rely on weight and
measurement for assessment. Pro-ana blogs include links to online
measurement tools such as BMI calculators (pictured below) and charts,
some of which include directions – the same directions professionals use
– to make BMI calculations. BMI is an abbreviation for Body Mass Index,
a number calculated from a person’s height and weight that is supposed
to be an indicator person’s body fatness. The calculation is a screening
tool used by health professionals to identify possible weight and weightrelated health problems for adults. As recently as in the last 15 years,
this system of body fat measurement has made its way out of the
doctor’s office and into the average person’s hands via magazines,
television and internet websites, some of which have dedicated tools
dedicated to calculating a person’s BMI.
Body mass index is nothing more than a formula (pictured below)
that was invented by Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quetelet in the
mid-1800s. The formula gained popularity in the 1970s when American
scientist Ancel Keys published a study in a 1972 issue of The Journal of
Chronic Diseases. During this time period, interest in measuring body fat
ignited because of the rise of obesity in developed nations. Keys found
Adolphe Quetelet’s formula to be the best proxy for measuring body fat
percentage without taking physical measurements of a person’s body.
Keys noted that the formula was only appropriate for population studies
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and not individual diagnosis. Due to its simplicity, however, the body
mass index formula has become a popular method for individual
diagnosis and measurement of a person’s body fat without actually
measuring their body fat.
The body mass index scale neglects
to take into measure a person’s overall
health and fitness, but BMI calculations,
especially those performed by an online
calculator (pictured right), usually come
with suggestions for lifestyle modifications
to improve an individual’s BMI. These
suggestions are often fraught with
misguided information and triggering
pushes for weight loss. For example, one
online calculator suggests that someone
with a BMI number in the mid-range of
normal make efforts to lose weight
because it’s only a matter of time before their BMI creeps into the
overweight range. Another BMI calculator bullet points recommendations
for those with BMI numbers in the underweight range. These bullet
points include: embrace healthy eating, eat between-meal healthy
snacks, and exercise. For an individual with an unhealthy mindset, this
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recommendation sounds like short hand for eat healthy and exercise to
lose weight.
Pro-ana blogs that link to BMI calculators and include BMI charts
are not inventing a twisted method of determining anorexic status; the
same calculations to measure fatness – or lack therefore of – are found in
magazines, calculated elsewhere on the internet and utilized in doctors’
offices. Although this tool may be more alarming in an anorexic’s hands
than in the hands of an average person, it is available everywhere;
anorexics do not need pro-ana blogs to find it.
Two Comments
Bushnell says: including BMI charts on pro-ana sites is mental
manipulation, propaganda even, that promotes voluntary starvation if
you don’t fit into the ideal range.
ProAnaBlogger says: @Bushnell, doesn’t that make BMI propaganda in
general?
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Disclaimer | About Pro-Ana | Thinspiration | Tips and Tricks |
An Open Response
Opponents of pro-ana blogs often refer to pro-ana as a religious
cult-like movement that promotes self-starvation as a lifestyle rather
than a disease. Texts found on pro-ana blogs, like “the Thin
Commandments,” are cited as evidence of this.
The Thin Commandments, a take on the Ten Commandments of
Christianity, state:
1. If you aren't thin, you aren't attractive.
2. Being thin is more important than being healthy.
3. You must buy clothes, style your hair, take laxatives, starve
yourself, do anything to make yourself look thinner.
4. Thou shall not eat without feeling guilty.
5. Thou shall not eat fattening food without punishing oneself
afterwards.
6. Thou shall count calories and restrict intake accordingly.
7. What the scale says is the most important thing.
8. Losing weight is good/gaining weight is bad.
9. You can never be too thin.
10. Being thin and not eating are signs of true will power and
success.
When looked at closely, these commandments are nothing more
than the unspoken rules of western society. Although not always clearly
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stated, it is almost certainly implied that if you aren’t thin, you aren’t
attractive. In addition to clothing, hairstyles, and make-up tips, fashion
magazines sell thinness as a beauty standard. Television shows like The
Biggest Loser, reality show that features overweight contestants
attempting to lose dramatic amounts of weight for a cash prize, along
with a steady stream of commercials for fad diets and weight loss
programs, like Jenny Craig and Weight Watchers, infiltrate daily life; and
reinforce the ideas that “what the scale says is the most important
thing,” “thou shall count calories and restrict intake accordingly” and
“losing weight is good/gaining weight is bad.” In a society that berates
people with the notion that being overweight is unhealthy, undesirable,
and unattractive – that it is a sign of weakness – being thin and not
eating are viewed as signs of willpower and success. When society tells
people these things, they tend to be accepted. When magazines,
television, and advertisements sell emaciation, weight loss, and selfcontrol, anorexic mentality is viewed as a lifestyle. When the same
images, diets and measurement tools appear on pro-ana blogs, anorexic
mentality becomes a disease.
Social networks, such as Tumblr, that ban and remove of pro-ana
blogs want to protect people from the glamorization and development of
eating disorders. What they neglect to realize is that anorexic ideation is
a constant in society. Pro-ana blogs may be triggering in nature for those
with eating disorders and impressionable minds, but they come with
warnings and disclaimers announcing these triggers. A person has the
opportunity to click out of a pro-ana site or blog before they are enticed
by photoshopped images and unhealthy diet plans. The rest of the world
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doesn’t come with such a warning. A person does not see a pop-up
informing them of and allowing them to opt out of any triggering content
when they flip through a magazine or watch their favorite television
show. And even news reports and documentaries on the dangers of proana show the same triggering images that appear on these blogs;
however they rarely indicate that triggering material is forthcoming.
Social networks, and opponents of pro-ana blogs, fail to
understand that in a society where Tumblr’s content policy clearly states
it is acceptable to joke about self-starvation, and humorists feel free to
mock eating disorders as diet humor, pro-ana communities represent a
safe place for those suffering from eating disorders to connect with each
other and escape the stigma and misunderstanding that comes from
societal views of eating disorders. Until society no longer promotes a
culture of thinness, banning pro-ana blogs will not prevent anorexia from
becoming a disease. Pro-ana sites can be harmful, but so is the culture
we live in.
LOSS
I.
My friend Lisa can’t have babies. She has had two miscarriages in the
past two years. Both times I held her and told her it would be okay. I said
the time just wasn’t right, reminded her that she doesn’t really love her
boyfriend, and wondered out loud if maybe the universe was trying to tell
her something. Everything happens for a reason, I said. It just wasn’t
meant to be. I said all the bullshit you say when you know that there is
nothing you can do to make it better. I said what you say when you want
to avoid the truth.
Lisa is anorexic. She is one of the few eating disorder friends I still talk
to. Six years and we’ve been through a lot, so I smile when she calls me
her ED Sister, even though I know this mindset isn’t good for her (and
probably not for me either). From time to time I encourage her in
recovery, but usually I like her in her disease. I’m not always the greatest
friend in the world, or even a good friend – sometimes when I miss my
own ED, I enjoy living vicariously through her, so I can have both
worlds: my recovery and her disorder. But for all my bad, there is also
some good. I’m the one who loves to listen to her crazy stories, the one
who sends her letters when she is in the hospital, the one who accepts
her just the way she is. And she’s the only one I can tell everything to
and not feel judged.
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When Lisa says if she’s not pregnant before her birthday she’s going to
stop eating completely because she doesn’t want to live if she can’t have
a baby, I try to appeal to her sense of reason. What if you get pregnant a
week before you birthday? Or a day before? That won’t show up on a test.
Just give it more time. You’d never forgive yourself if that happened. I love
Lisa, so I try to show her that there is hope in the world. I say all the
things I don’t believe myself:
You will have babies eventually.
You will get pregnant when the time is right.
You can always adopt.
You will be a great mom whether it’s biological or not.
The Universe has a plan.
II.
A miscarriage is a spontaneous abortion of a fetus before the 20th week
of pregnancy. Half of all fertilized eggs die before a woman even knows
she is pregnant, and ¼ of all known pregnancies end in a miscarriage.
The greatest risk of miscarriage occurs in the first seven weeks before the
baby’s heart beat is detected. Miscarriages are usually attributed to
chromosomal problems that make it impossible for the fetus to develop,
but they can also be caused by hormonal problems, exposure to
environmental toxins, infection, defects in the mother’s reproductive
organs, or serious body-wide diseases in the mother.
Anorexics and bulimics are two times more likely to miscarry than
healthy women.
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Anorexia, bulimia and binge eating affect a woman’s endocrine system,
which is responsible for producing reproductive and growth hormones.
Eating disorders disrupt ovulation and cause irregular menstrual cycles,
or stop them entirely. Prolonged eating disorder behavior can also reduce
the quality of a woman’s eggs, or lead to ovarian failure, which is a
condition that mimics menopause in younger women. The effects of
eating disorders on fertility are so wide spread and severe that one out of
five women treated at fertility clinics is there because of infertility related
to some type of eating condition. But seventy-five percent of women who
recover from eating disorders end up being able to conceive.
Twenty-five percent don’t.
III.
I’ve only ever wanted two things in my life – I mean as in really wanted,
like I would give anything for – to be skinny and to be a mother. Ever
since I was a little girl I knew that being a mother was what I wanted to
do with my life. Instead of dreaming of my wedding, I dreamt of being
pregnant and having babies. At 19 (two years into recovery), I found out
that I probably won’t be able to have children because of the damage my
eating disorder did. I denied it. When I was first told this, Ignored it.
Convinced myself that the doctors were full of shit, that they didn’t know
what they were talking about. Two years later, I had surgery to remove a
growth from my fallopian tube, and I relapsed in my eating disorder. I
decided that I didn’t deserve to eat for what I had done to myself.
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I think of my uterus as rotten, black, and slightly shriveled. I picture it
decaying inside my body. Sometimes I imagine pulling it out of my
abdomen and holding it in my hands. It’s the size of the heart in my
chest, but instead of being full of blood, or anything useful, it is a tangled
mass of worms.
I used to cry myself to sleep at night. Pound my fists into my lower belly.
Ask the universe, why me? What did I do to deserve this? But I already
knew the answer. I abused myself, disrespected my body, decided not to
eat, decided to eat too much and throw up. But weren’t there worse sins?
What about the people who abused their kids. The ones who didn’t love
their kids. Those who didn’t want kids and probably shouldn’t have
them. I screamed into my pillow that it wasn’t fair.
Maybe if I didn’t have bad thoughts. Maybe if I didn’t judge. Maybe if I
were nicer. Or if I did more good for the world. Maybe if I prayed for
strength and courage and serenity rather than things. Maybe if I prayed
more for other people and less for myself. Maybe if there was more
goodness in my heart. Would the Universe fix me then? Would I deserve
to have a child grow inside my womb?
Sometimes when I feel particularly brave, I look at pictures of children on
the internet, the ones I could possibly adopt. In a way, I suppose it’s like
looking at pictures of dogs available at the SPCA. And somehow it seems
wrong that these children are listed on government websites like
animals. But I entertain the possibility of adopting one of them, as
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seriously as possible. I know that spirited and hard to place are code
words for difficult, angry, disrespectful, unwanted, but I imagine myself
with these children, hugging them. There is the girl in New York who is
about to age out of foster care, the siblings in New Mexico that hope to
stay together, the wheelchair bound boy in California who needs around
the clock care. I look at their profiles (and many others), and imagine
myself giving them a loving home. I imagine us becoming family – me
becoming a mom. I think that maybe everything does happen for a
reason. That maybe I’m supposed to be a mother to one of these children
rather than my own. Maybe the universe has plans for the love in my
heart. Maybe not being able to have my own children is for the greater
good. Who am I to say who deserves what? Who am I to say that the
universe doesn’t have a greater plan?
When I hold Lisa, I’m really holding myself. Sometimes I still feel the
same way she feels, and I hate myself enough for not being able to have
babies that I want to die. But I tell myself the things I tell her:
I will have babies eventually.
I will get pregnant when the time is right.
I can always adopt.
I will be a great mom whether it’s biological or not.
The Universe has a plan.
REWRITING ELVIS
Danielle Has Agreed to Appear in
a Documentary about
Addiction
My first Memory of Danielle is a sutured wound across her thigh.
Part of me thinks it was an intentional wound because she showed it off
– the orange discolored skin, puss oozing against a neatly threaded
closure – but I can’t remember for sure. My second memory of Danielle is
her jet-black hair, then her southern drawl and cackling laugh. I see her
eating French toast sandwiches, making herself throw-up, then jumping
on the kitchen table and belting out Skin and Bones by Marianas Trench.
Even if she sings off key, Danielle is my Southern rock star. She is my
other half, a representation of everything I lack.
Danielle is obsessed with three things: anorexic watching,
breakfast and Elvis. Not 1950s and ‘60s Elvis, but the troubled, cracked
out Elvis of the mid to late ‘70s. She thinks it is romantic the way he died
“all fucked up”; she believes the drugs did him in.
When I’m not working register at the grocery store where I met
Danielle (she got fired a few months ago), I’m at the gym. Danielle says
the gym is for schmucks who have people to impress, so lately “gym” has
become code for sitting on public sidewalks eating strawberry tart frozen
yogurt and listening to Danielle tell stories as she chain smokes, or
sitting in the air-conditioned comfort of Starbucks and “anorexic
watching.”
One morning when we have all day to kill, we ride the bus to the
city to make our way to the Starbucks on Union between Octavia and
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Buchanan. I like this Starbucks because I know it well; it’s the one I
spend hours at every Wednesday afternoon before my behavioral therapy
group. Danielle, on the other hand, likes this Starbucks because it’s in
the upscale area of Cow Hollow and it makes her feel particularly classy
to be associated with such a neighborhood even if she doesn’t act the
part. She also claims they have the best anorexics here, but she says
that about whichever Starbucks we happen to be at on any given day.
We arrive early enough to get the table hidden in the corner next to
the cash register and we mark our territory with our backpacks before
sashaying to the counter to place our orders. We come here enough that
I suppose we’re regulars; the cashier knows Danielle always orders the
same thing: a venti-sized Java Chip Frappuccino. I’m a little trickier,
depending on the day, but I either get a venti-sized ice water or grandesized passion tea lemonade sweetened with 3 packets of Splenda. I’d like
it to be even sweeter, but I figure it would seem excessive to ask for more
than three packets. After we pay for and collect our drinks, we return to
our corner and commence the anorexic watching.
At 9:30AM when a stuffy looking man in a business suit walks in,
Danielle declares, “He looks boring. I smell an order for drip coffee.”
We listen as he orders and he does get a tall drip coffee, but I think
there might be something interesting about him.
“ It’s 9:30, shouldn’t he be at work?” I comment.
“He probably owns the company and goes in whenever he wants,”
Danielle replies sipping her Frappuccino.
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“No. If he owned the company then he would have an assistant to
buy him coffee. I think he puts suits on every morning to convince his
wife that he is going to work. He probably doesn’t have a job.”
Danielle laughs at me like I’m crazy, but I watch the man grabs a
newspaper off of a vacant table and takes a seat next to the window.
Before I can say anything else, however, Danielle elbows me in the side
and gestures to the register where a woman with dreadlocks and a thrift
store skirt is ordering. Danielle predicts that she will order a Zen Tea
because she is a hippie. Danielle is right of course.
Eventually an anorexic walks in and Danielle gets so excited that
she kicks me under the table and I almost spill my water.
“Anorexic alert,” Danielle whispers and points to an emaciated
woman dressed in workout clothes walking through the door.
I glance up and see the woman approaching the counter.
“Pish, she’s going to order an Americano because she’s got people
to impress. As if people are actually watching her or care what she
orders,” Danielle rolls her eyes.
I want to point out that we are watching and we kind of care what
she orders, or at least I care. I mean, I would be willing to die to be the
woman, but Danielle would die just to keep being herself. I suppose
that’s the difference between me and Danielle, but it’s also what I love
about her; in a torn t-shirt and greasy cutoff jeans, Danielle has no one
to impress.
I smile and pretend I don’t care, “Yeah, look at the sweaty Lycra
hanging off her ass.”
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When orders are slow and there isn’t anyone to watch, Danielle
talks about Elvis.
“Did you know he had a twin who died at birth?” She asks taking
the last long slurp of her Frappuccino.
“No, I don’t know much about Elvis. He actually kind of scared me
as a kid.”
“What?” She laughs.
“I saw this documentary when I was 6 about how Elvis is still alive
and in hiding and I was convinced he was coming to get me.”
“Wow. You’re totally crazy,” Danielle grabs her side trying to
control her laughter. “Tell me more.”
“No. Not totally crazy. I mean people write books about it. There’s
even a website that talks about how he is in witness protection because
he was an FBI informant and the people he double-crossed want him
dead. Some guy even posted a video on YouTube that shows Elvis at the
last presidential inauguration.”
Once she is finally able to calm herself down, Danielle puts her
hand on my shoulder. “Trust me. Elvis is very much dead,” she says and
I finally understand that Elvis’ death is the romance of it for her.
Danielle doesn’t believe that Elvis could possibly be alive and I
don’t know what I believe anymore. I’m not sure when it happened, but I
stopped being afraid of Elvis coming to get me at some point. I suppose, I
eventually realized that I was insignificant and if Elvis were alive, he
would have no desire for me. I’m aware that believing myself
insignificant is probably my problem, but awareness hasn’t fixed much of
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anything for me thus far and it will take a lot more than awareness to
begin to touch Danielle’s troubles.
Danielle needs an entire rewrite.
Like so many other people, I want to rewrite Elvis’ death. I don’t
want to do it for a good story or because I care whether Elvis is alive or; I
want to do it for Danielle because maybe if she didn’t have the romance
of it all, she would be a little less self-destructive.
Elvis Variation (Version 1)
Elvis stands alone in his bathroom. The door is locked. He has 14
bottles of prescription pills lined up on the counter. He’s made all the
calculations. He knows the number of pills to take from each bottle, the
number that will induce a heart attack. The water is running while he
counts the pills. All of a sudden there is a knock on the bathroom door.
“Elvis?” Calls his live-in fiancé Ginger Alden. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, baby. Go back to bed.”
“It’s almost afternoon.”
“Oh, well I’m going to go to bed soon.”
“Okay, I love you,” she says and goes away.
Elvis still dies.
Fuck. Danielle doesn’t change.
Living on Fumes
My mom doesn’t like Danielle and I don’t think Danielle’s mom
likes anyone, but I still spend the night at Danielle’s house at least once
a week. Even though her mom smokes all over the house, Danielle is
only allowed to smoke in the basement, so she’s turned it into her
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bedroom and we hang out there. She smokes with one hand and paints
her toenails with the other as we watch episodes of A&E’s Intervention on
her laptop. Danielle thinks it would have been so cool if Elvis had been
on Intervention, but since the show didn’t exist back then and he wasn’t,
our favorite episode is the one with Peter (we usually fast forward though
his sections) and Renee. We’ve seen the episode half a dozen times, but
we get goose bumps every time. Renee is a bulimic housewife who relies
on water pills and laxatives to stay “thin;” Danielle and I are collectively
in love with her.
We know all the words to Renee’s part of the episode and we speak
along with her in our most dramatic voices because we can relate to
everything she says.
“I should be happy, but I’m bulimic,” We say with Renee.
“Food is my medication; it helps me feel better…” Danielle says
next.
Then I finish the line, “…food is my confidant, my friend.”
Danielle takes the last drag on her cigarette and puffs, “So fucking
true. I mean, yeah it’s about feelings and shit, but it’s also totally about
the food.” She lights a new cigarette then gets quiet in preparation for her
favorite line.
“After I eat, I just feel disgusted,” Renee and Danielle say in
unison. “I will have that same voice in my head that says, ‘throw up, just
throw it up you’ll feel better. Just throw up, you’ll feel better!”
“If only she would throw up,” I sigh as we watch Renee sit on her
living room floor eating frozen waffles with butter and syrup. “I totally get
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Renee, but I don’t understand the frozen waffle thing. Frozen waffles are
nasty and not fun to purge.”
“For real,” Danielle agrees, “but like you said, she’s not going to
throw them up anyway. Poor Renee, she just doesn’t understand how
good bulimia works.”
We call Renee a chubby bulimic. In Renee’s case, “chubby” is code
for fat, but we love her because of this. She’s not all “skinny scary” (as
Danielle says) like all the other eating disorder people we watch on
Intervention. She’s real, like us. The other thing we like about Renee is
how carefully she puts food in her mouth, like each bite is fragile. We
love to watch her eat and emulate her behavior. When Renee drives to
her favorite chicken place, Danielle decides she wants fried chicken. I
have to remind her that she doesn’t have a license; I don’t have a car and
her mom is at work, so she’s not getting any fried chicken tonight.
“Fuck this shit! I need some food,” Danielle slams the ashtray and
lit cigarette on the table and stomps upstairs into the kitchen.
I put out her cigarette and follow behind her with the computer in
my hands. When I get to the kitchen, Danielle is gathering the
ingredients for French toast. I set up the laptop on the counter diagonal
from Danielle’s frying pan and we continue watching Renee. Danielle dips
three pieces bread in a bowl full of egg yolks and cinnamon sugar, and
then drops them in the frying pan without taking her eyes off of the
screen as Renee’s husband talks about the insidious nature of her eating
disorder. When her toast is done, she microwaves some bacon and
organizes a bacon French toast sandwich on a paper plate. She doesn’t
105
offer me anything, but I know where all the food is and she always tells
me I can get whatever I want.
In the next scene Renee tells her friend Michelle about her medseeking visit to the doctor over cocktails (she wanted prescription water
pills). When Michelle finds out that Renee is still taking over-the-counter
water pills even though her doctor told her they were very dangerous,
Michelle demands, “You’re going to stop the pills and the laxatives!” Then
she has a break down and starts crying and pleads with Renee to stop,
“You’ve got to fight. Just fight.”
Laughing with a mouth full of French toast, Danielle mumbles,
“Michelle is a fat bitch, just like your friend Nicole.” Danielle and Nicole
hate each other. They both hate everyone, yet they are polar opposites;
Danielle does stuff to the world and the world does stuff to Nicole.
“Well…” I say.
“C’mon admit it, Twin.” Danielle always calls me twin, like I’m her
mirror image.
“Nicole can be a bitch,” I admit.
“More than a bitch, she’s totally like Michelle. I can see her doing
this,” Danielle puts her hand on my shoulders, shakes me and screams,
“Yenn, you’re going to stop the pills and the laxatives now!”
I giggle, “So if Nicole is Michelle, does this mean I get to be Renee?”
“I guess you can be Renee this time,” she laughs shoving more
French toast in her mouth. “And like I said, Nicole is a bitch. Her name
should be Nicolabitch.”
I can’t help but laugh even harder and the name Nicolabitch
sticks. We call her that from now on.
106
For all my friends who manage to be defunct versions of myself,
Danielle is my favorite. I never get tired of her because she is always
unapologetically the villain. I can’t imagine life, and how boring it would
be, without Danielle.
Candy Finnigan performs Renee’s intervention; she does all the
eating disorder interventions. We love Candy with her former alcoholic,
premature grandma wrinkles, but we ignore most of the intervention and
all of what happens afterwards. We try to pretend like Renee doesn’t go
to treatment and that she doesn’t get all happy and better. We pretend
that everything will be the way it is right now forever, that we will be the
same forever. I know we won’t though. I know we will be the statistical 1
out of 4 bulimics who die like Intervention warns us. Danielle will
probably die soon; she vomits blood every day. And I might not be far
behind, so we pretend like we want to die; we talk about it like it’s
glamorous, like the only good bulimics are dead bulimics. But when I’m
with Danielle, I don’t want us to die. I want us to live on these fumes
forever, inhaling each other like a manic drug.
Ginger Alden, Priscilla, Elvis’ dad Vernon, and his cousin gather
together in a hotel in downtown Memphis where Elvis believes he is to
take part in an interview. They sit on two sofas in a room with a younger,
pre-former alcoholic Candy Finnigan. Together they are ready to intervene
on Elvis’ life. They’ve all written letters and prepared ultimatums. Candy
has reassured them that what is about to happen will be life changing and
magical; they will save Elvis. They wait. And they wait. Elvis never shows
107
up. He has gotten word of what is supposed to go down this afternoon and
he wants no part of it. After two hours they give up. They don’t try another
intervention. Elvis still dies.
The Intervention
Instead of a letter that begins, “Dear Danielle, your eating disorder
has affected you negatively in the following ways...” Danielle’s mother
packs up a few of her belongings in a suitcase and drags her to the
airport. She buys Danielle a one-way ticket to Birmingham; she is going
to go live with her Aunt Vicki and Uncle Sal. I’d like to think that
Danielle’s mom does it gently, that she puts her hand on her daughter’s
shoulder and tells her that Aunt Vicki and Uncle Sal will take good care
of her. They need someone to nanny their kids and they will pay her with
room and board and a couple hundred dollars a month. She will be able
to buy all the cigarettes she wants. I want to believe this, but I know her
mom doesn’t care about her; she just wants to get rid of her.
Danielle probably tries to negotiate, “Send me back home to
Pensacola. I’ll live with dad. Anywhere but Alabama!” But her mom
pushes her out of the car and informs her that she’d better get on the
plane because if she doesn’t she won’t have anywhere to live. Danielle
does get on the plane, but she thinks about missing her connection in
Houston. She thinks she could start a new life there and get a job
waitressing at a Waffle House. She could tease her hair, wear too much
make up and call herself “Ginger.” She thinks it could be fun, but then
she remembers the kind of people who frequented the Waffle House near
108
where she used to live and she changes her mind. She gets on the plane
to Birmingham.
I’m going about rewriting Elvis all wrong.
Elvis is on an airplane heading towards Washington, D.C. He’s
writing a letter to President Nixon, telling him how much he wants to help
the country go in the right direction. He is offering his services in any way
possible and suggests that Nixon make him a Federal Agent at Large.
When Elvis arrives in D.C., he drops his letter off at the white house
then meets with the deputy director of the Bureau of Narcotics and
Dangerous Drugs to seek a badge. Elvis’ request for federal credentials
and the position of Federal Agent at Large are denied. Elvis goes back to
his hotel slightly dejected, but he is sure Nixon will read his letter and
contact him. He even brought the president a gift all the way from
Memphis. But Nixon never gets the letter. His secretary knows that he is
preoccupied and busy; he’s beginning to plan his re-election, trying to find
the funds for the campaign. She knows that Elvis will only be a
distraction.
Elvis never meets with Nixon; he never becomes a Federal Agent at
Large; he never fakes his death; he never goes into witness protection.
Instead he goes back to Memphis; he focuses on his music; he becomes
disillusioned with fame and the government; he hits the drugs a little
harder; he still dies.
Danielle still moves to Alabama.
109
The 90-Day-Follow-Up
Danielle lives in Troy, Alabama now, but she calls me almost every
night. She says she hates Alabama. Her aunt is always all up in her
business and always wants to know why she smokes so much or why it
takes her so long in the bathroom. Danielle has taken to purging in the
shower. “Shower” has become code for purge and she showers more than
ever, at least 5 times a day, to deal with the stress of living with Aunt
Vicki. She’s not supposed to smoke in their house, but during our late
night calls she leans her head out the window and smokes an entire
pack.
“I like being a nanny,” Danielle says. “I like getting paid to draw
and play with Miranda and Emily, but the best part is cooking French
toast every day.”
“You do love French toast,” I point out more to myself than
Danielle. I’m happy that Danielle likes her new life, but I miss our old
one.
I can hear Danielle take a long drag off of her cigarette before she
puffs, “My aunt is a bitch though.” She’s quite for a minute as she sucks
in more nicotine and then she yells loud enough to wake her sleeping
relatives, “a religious bitch!”
“Oh my,” I laugh. Danielle hasn’t changed all that much.
“That bitch told me we were going to take Miranda and Emily to
the park the other day, but when we fucking got to the park there was
this whole baptism thing going on. She tried to fucking save me! Me. Can
you believe that shit, Twin? As soon as I figured it out I ran as fast as I
could across the park.” The anger fades from Danielle’s voice as quickly
110
as it came and she begins to laugh, “Then I realized that I forgot my
cigarettes and I had to do back.”
I laugh with her, “You and your cigarettes. They’ll be the death of
you.”
“Damn straight. I wouldn’t’ have it any other way,” Danielle agrees,
but we both know that throwing up will be the death of her.
“So, you didn’t get saved?” I ask trying to hide any hint of
hopefulness in my voice.
“Fuck no! I’d slit my wrists first.”
“Oh.”
“You sound like you want me to get saved.”
“No. I mean, I just don’t see what it would hurt. Isn’t it kind of
romantic to get saved? Jesus could be your prince charming or
something.”
“You’re fucking cracked out tonight, aren’t you?” The anger quickly
reappears in Danielle’s voice. “You are starting to sound like Aunt Vicki.”
“I don’t mean to. I’m just saying, I don’t want anything bad to
happen to you.”
“Poor little you not wanting anything bad to happen to me. I think I
need to go blast some Elvis on the stereo while I ‘shower’, this
conversation is making me feel dirty all of a sudden.”
Click.
Elvis doesn’t like music. He’s actually more into science. As a child
his parents scraped together enough money to buy him a small microscope
111
for his 9th birthday. Elvis went to college and he became a scientist. He
wants to help his country, so he takes a job at a government lab working
on top-secret technology to protect the U.S. from Communists. During the
Vietnam War he becomes disillusioned as his friends and younger cousins
are drafted and die in the war. He wonders what the point of protecting
his country is if his country doesn’t protect its people. Depressed and
distracted, he accidently blows up the lab. Elvis still dies.
Danielle’s parents never meet at an Elvis concert. Danielle is never
born.
Elvis picks up the phone; he dials my number.
“Hey Twin,” I answer expecting a call from Danielle.
“No, baby, it’s the king. I hear you’ve been trying to rewrite my
story. Now why do you want to do that?”
“Who is this?!” I demand.
“It’s Elvis,” he says smoothly. “I know you don’t believe me. You’re
skeptical, but you’ve got to listen to me. You’ve been rewriting my story all
wrong.”
“You’re right, I don’t believe you,” I say.
Elvis continues anyway, “To change things you would have to start
at the beginning. The only thing that could have changed anything is if my
twin had lived. But you can’t change the past and changing my story
won’t help you or Danielle. You’ve got to change your story.”
“Yeah. Whatever. I can’t rewrite my life.”
112
“You have to,” he pauses to find the right words. “What you and
Danielle need is to not be together. You need the opposite of what I need.
You need to be away from your twin.”
I’m still skeptical, “So to help Danielle, I need to have never met her?
How is that possible?”
“No, baby, you can’t change the past. You can only change the
future.”
Intervention Revisited
Danielle and I don’t talk much anymore. Without Danielle I’m like
a junkie without her drug; I’m like carrots without ranch – I have no
tang, no pop. But last time I heard, Danielle is still doing what she does
best, still being Danielle. I never wanted Danielle to stop being Danielle; I
just wanted her to be less Danielle, so she could be Danielle longer.
I gave up trying to rewrite Elvis for Danielle a long time ago, but
sometimes when I watch Intervention I still find myself lost in
imagination.
Aunt Vicki, Uncle Sal, Danielle’s mom, and I gather in a hotel in
downtown Birmingham where Danielle believes she is to take part in an
interview. We sit on two sofas in a room with interventionist Candy
Finnigan. Together we are ready to intervene on Danielle’s life. We have
written letters, practiced reading them and prepared ultimatums. Candy
has reassured us that what is about to happen will be life changing and
magical; we will save Danielle. We wait. And we wait. Danielle finally
shows up with a smirk on her face.
113
“I knew this shit was going down,” She takes a seat on one of the
sofas and lights a cigarette.
“We’re so glad you came here today, Danielle,” Candy says in her
most reassuring voice. “There is no one in this room who doesn’t love you.”
I bite my lip and look at Danielle. She gives me a wink and I want so
badly for Danielle to tell Candy how much we love her and ask about
Renee. I want her to get Candy to tell us where Renee lives and if she
really is all happy and better. I want Candy to say, “No. She’s still a
bulimic housewife, but that doesn’t have to happen to you.” I want
Danielle to choke on her cigarette with laughter before grabbing me by the
arm and dragging me out of the room with her. I want us to find Renee and
take her to her favorite chicken place.
I want us to run away from this room and never look back.
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April 8, 2013
Date

AN ATTEMPT TO TIP THE SCALES

Transcription

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