This is the Hour of Lead -
Remembered, if outlived,
As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow -
First–Chill–then Stupor–then the letting go
~ Emily Dickinson
I first realized my otherness in the third-grade.
I was fat. Not chubby, not pleasantly plump. F. A.T. That nanosecond of realization would set me off on a path filled with cracks, twists, bumps and winding turns that more than 20 years later, I have yet to find my way fully out of.
At 14, I began shopping in the plus size department. I weighed more than 170 pounds. Nine years later, I stood on a doctor’s scale, humiliated as the weights clacked into place: 300 pounds.
The ensuing effort that would, in the next year, pare off 175 of those pounds — more than one half of my body — was Herculean, dangerous and life-altering.
The struggle between body and mind is difficult to overcome. It is nearly impossible to say where the body ends and the self begins. The body often stands as testament to the internal self; its insecurities, fears, hungers, and desires, carved in a sculpture of flesh and bone.
I did not set out to become anorexic or bulimic or as I’ve been diagnosed, eating disorder not otherwise specified. I simply began dieting.
Self-restraint grew seductive, a breathy whisper in the ear. Deprivation felt good, purifying even, like a baptism of the flesh. I fasted, subsisting on chewing gum, water, and diet pills. Starving, in its own perverse way, empowered me. Unlike so many other women, not only could I control my appetite, I could transcend it.
At a time when I felt deeply depressed, confused, and unsure of myself, starving gave me a goal, a way to stand out and exert control. Finally, something I could excel at.
And I was very, very good at it.
I ate less and less and grew thinner. Compliments flowed copiously from women who sighed and admired my almighty willpower. I stopped menstruating. I shopped in the junior’s department.
Nightly, I examined my changing body in a full-length mirror, each piece fragmented, judged and compared, each flaw known and perceived as grotesquely magnified, each part greater than the sum. I reveled in its metamorphosis: flexing my fingers so that the now visible bones and veins in my hands rippled; noting how my thighs no longer touched; shoulder blades protruding like tiny wings.
Eating disorders fester in isolation; they thrive in secrecy. Friends and family fell by the wayside as I lived in my head, and only my head.
I found a strange solace in starvation and yet, at the same time, used it as self-imposed castigation. In time, fasting becomes more than a game of endurance; it becomes absolutely necessary to survive. Our delusions contain within them an ability that allows us to live but they can also kill us. For it becomes necessary not only to lie, but to believe in the lie.
My fasts grew longer and more intense: four days here, eight there, and then the longest, 12 days. My heart beat erratically. Panic attacks. Obsessions with numbers. The world vibrated with intensity.
I developed lanugo on my back and belly. Eyes hollow with dark circles, I downed ephedrine with coffee. I was perpetually cold.
Starvation often gives way to binging. After being in “control” for so long, this frenzied loss of power petrified me. I drank syrup of ipecac — a sickeningly sweet emetic the consistency of molasses – which has been cited as the cause of death for singer Karen Carpenter. I ripped my esophagus in a feverish effort to vomit lettuce.
In my convoluted mind, no measure was too extreme. Surrender to hunger would lead to mayhem and I knew I was winning the war: body versus mind, flesh versus the purest will. The body, a palpable expression of Cartesian dualism.
In hindsight, I could not express the loneliness or desperation I felt, but I could wear it. When words failed, I fell back on my body, allowing its behaviours and compulsions and urges to say what I really felt and needed, letting it explain the inexplicable. In flesh, I described a pain I could
not communicate in words.
Glacial life changes eroded the disorder. Over time, the old system of starvation and purging simply fell apart, became too stultifying and oppressive to maintain. I recall the ironic mixture of dismay and elation of watching this happen, knowing I no longer had the will or energy to starve or to self-destruct but not really knowing how to live differently, how to deal with issues in my life or make choices, how to define and respond to hunger.
Relinquishing established rules of eating, discarding time-honored rituals of starving, binging and frenzied exercise, gave way to a quiet persistent sorrow, an emptiness I can neither identify nor fill. There is a profound grief, and I mourn for it still.
Eating disorders wage war on the body politic. Yet, there is no direct cause, no smoking gun. Understand the body is a natural outlet of aggression. Understand the cult of diet and exercise is not only socially-sanctioned, but culturally expected. Women are taught from birth to view the body with a wary eye, to mold it into a Stepford ideal.
To treat eating disorders, you must first treat culture.
When a chronic illness is diagnosed, well-wishers bring casseroles and potted plants. Mental illness is all too often swept under the rug of our collective consciousness. But eating disorders are as real and deadly as cancer. For many, recovery is the carrot forever dangling out of reach.
There is no cure, the final symptom is suicide.
Life after an eating disorder can be Sisyphean, but after much more work than you ever thought possible, there is a state of recovery. The bitch in your head silences. The Babbage ticker of calories fades. The body and mind learns to live yet again.
There is, in the end, a letting go.
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