looking and feeling better and trying any diet that would hasten results. Positive comments began, and I felt good, but food was always around and I began a love/hate relationship with it. On the one hand, I had used it for comfort to the point of excess and on the other, it became an enemy. As I continued to lose weight and the number on the weigh scale continued to decline, it became a game, and an aspect of control I had never sensed before. With all the things that had happened and the feelings I had hidden inside, the need for control became intense.
I think it is important to note that this need for control and the loss of weight were happening at a time when I still had not told anyone about my childhood experiences. Also, the loss of weight and this element of total control were becoming euphoric. I thought about nothing other than the scale and losing more and more weight. It didn't matter what happened in my life. All the things that I couldn’t control became comforted by what I could...my weight.
While at university my disordered eating became serious towards the end of my time there. The need to succeed, finishing something, became another pressure. To do well wasn’t good enough. The already obsessive thoughts of having to be perfect, everything right, were full steam ahead. The weight continued to drop and if I had to eat anything that was not planned I went into a rage. My first attempt at suicide took place during this time. I had never been that sick and it had surprisingly gratifying results...I had lost 10 more pounds. But while the weight continued to fall off, my self loathing continued and increased. I was beginning a life of self torture.
I completed university which was a huge accomplishment for me. Then, within a year, I was on my way to Tucson, Arizona to perform with the entertainment group Up with People. This group continued to reinforce the body image that was becoming ingrained in my mind. Since a high priority was put on looks, presentation and the entertainment value, it became yet again an issue that could not be avoided. I remember girls being pulled from lead roles because they were too heavy. They were devastated and it just made me want to continue keeping control. It became another reason to keep on doing what I was doing. I was down to eating only an apple a day.
The control became insane. I don’t know when I crossed the line. All I know is that journals were no longer chronicles of life but rather pages and pages of weight entries, calorie intake, exercise, calories burned, days planned around how I would avoid situations with food, and if I had to eat, how I would get rid of it.
I have read through years and years of these journal entries. Moments of euphoria were noted if I had lost weight and hours of anxiety if I had not. I look back on those entries and acknowledge that there were no feelings, no thoughts, no emotions...just numbers and more numbers.
As we toured, while staying with host families I would immediately go to the bathroom to find a scale. In Europe, I had to convert kilograms to pounds, so a calculator was in order. But what was happening, even though I couldn’t see it at the time, was that my low body weight resulted in poor judgement and irrational thoughts. I was becoming very depressed. During Christmas break, my boyfriend of seven years broke up with me at 12:50 on New Year’s Eve. My depression reached a critical level. I returned to Up with People in the US in January. During a stay in Hattiesburg Mississippi, I took every pill in my host family’s medicine cabinet in my second attempt to kill myself. I was very ill, but death escaped me again.
Lisa, a dear friend in the cast became my rock. We were in New Orleans for a two-hour stay until we headed to our next overnight city, Mobile, Alabama. I told her I just didn’t think I was going to make it. I was so depressed. I told her what had happened. I said there was something very wrong that despite this wonderful opportunity to travel, I felt nothing.
I remember calling my parents from a payphone in Mobile. I told my dad that I had to come home; if I didn’t now, I never would. He was great. He said that I was to book a ticket and he and Mom would pick me up in Syracuse, New York. I asked them not to ask questions when they picked me up. I vaguely remember the pick up. I felt numb. The disease had grabbed hold.
When I arrived home I saw a therapist, but because she was a family friend it was not the right fit. I then began seeing Bridget and continued to do so for years. During this time, my mom and I went for a walk in the pines, a wooded area west of our home, and she was struggling as a mother to understand what was going on. Why did I have such self loathing? I had so much to live for...why couldn’t I see that? This is when I finally told her about the abuse. I have never seen my mother so distraught. Did it feel better to tell her? Yes, but at the same time, due to my malnourishment and inability to look at a situation rationally, I thought it was the wrong thing to do because now it had hurt Mom. Can you see how the cycle gets so twisted?
My parents were more than willing to take action against my abuser and perhaps others would have done so, but I decided to leave it alone. I did not want to relive it again. The thing that seemed to be most important to me was getting that information out. This became the beginning of an outpouring of emotion. The struggle to do so continued for another ten painful years.
And it got worse before it got better.
I continued to work and ran on adrenaline. I seemed to be able to keep up with deadlines and actually excel in my projects. It was as if work and the disease were an all consuming preoccupation in my life (even though I denied the problem). The insanity continued; it was as though there was a sense within me that life was destined to be short. I was feeling so many things. The eating disorder already had its grip on me when I told my family about the abuse. Perhaps things might have been different if I had been able to talk about the abuse years earlier. I will never know, but I think if I had discussed it then, expressed myself in a healthy manner, the horrible journey through eating disorders may have been derailed.
“I believe the element of being able to express yourself is key to avoiding the onset of an eating disorder as well as avoiding a relapse in recovery.”
I will continue to reinforce this element of expression throughout the book.
The next few years saw the continuation of weight loss. The grip of anorexia was strong during this time. I was married in 1990 to Bill, a true angel. He did more than try to help and support me through this struggle but the disease was overwhelming...stronger than either of us would know.
My weight dropped and dropped to the lowest point of 78 lbs on this 5’8” frame of mine. Over the years I had been hospitalized on several occasions while always insisting that I didn’t have a problem...that I was fine. I couldn’t see then what I see now: the importance of nutrition not only for my body but for my mind. Not only had I lost weight. I had in the process lost my self, my soul and my spirit. I had lost my sense of reality. I became paranoid, hypersensitive to criticism, and I hurt. I hurt all over. I lost myself to the point that I just wanted to die, to have it all over with because to let go of this control would be too overwhelming to bear. To gain a pound meant I had failed, that I was no longer good at one thing.
I wouldn’t... more importantly... I couldn’t let go.
I wanted to be thinner and thinner, in hopes of eventually disappearing. A part of me took pride in my achievement. I had always considered myself mediocre, not good at anything. I finally found something I was good at...really good at.
I continued to flip through magazines as many of us do. I would continue to make sure I could feel my ribs and get my thumb and first finger around my arm. I would constantly measure my waist, my thighs, and top off the process with a step on the scale. I would see others who I deemed thinner than I and would write that I still had a long way to go before I was that thin. I think there is a bizarre envy that women have towards other women who seem to have controlled their weight, particularly when you have an eating disorder. In August of 1993 I received a letter from an anonymous young woman in the town in which I lived, who was also an eating disorder sufferer. Perhaps what was most unsettling about
