9th
chapter 1 : RITUALS
We’ve all got our rituals. I always thought the early birds were the crazy ones, worm or no worm, they’re never late to greet the sun with boldly brewed coffee and the morning paper. Other people ritualize their evening jog at dusk, chasing every sunset, running towards the emptiness and mistaking it for the gray pull of the moon. As a night owl, I’d always understood the fascination with that man who’s supposed to be up there, looking down on us from within his thick cheesy contours. I’d never sleep. I’d never ‘take jogs’ though, either. Then there are people like this guy I met when I was nine. He’d always turn the lights on and off 6 times before walking into a room. Weeks later I asked my mom what compelled him to do so, and that’s when I learned about OCD.
By the end of fourteen I’d naturally secured my own rituals. At each meal I would neatly cut my food up into extraordinarily tiny pieces, and only touched a fork to my mouth when I felt the weight of someone’s stare. Never would I let the proteins touch the carbs, the veggies touch the starch, or the reds touch the greens touch the whites, yellows, or those god-awful browns. The only place my nutrients mixed was in the trash. Before school, I’d drink 2 sugar-free red bulls every day and pile the empty cans in my locker. When the taurine wouldn’t do it I’d pop caffeine pills until I noticed my teachers stealing glances at my shaky hand struggling to maneuver ink across paper.
It was the concerned stares that annoyed me, so I worked them into my routine. Every day after fourth period I’d carry around the same old crinkled brown paper bag. Its sole purpose was to be waved at my friends when my eyes met with their suspicious, half-hearted smiles. I either wanted to appease them or annoy them or both. Lucky for me, none of them shared my lunch hour and I found the cafeteria repulsive. I was disgusted by the awareness of mouths salivating, jaws clenching, and teeth chewing apart rubbery processed meats, balls of gooey white bread. Even if there were appetizing options, I had developed a pathological fear of eating in public (what with all the constant staring), so I convinced myself I couldn’t eat with all the white noise.
So I’d either have to sit by my lonesome at a florescent cafeteria table and doodle love poems on coffee-stained napkins, or pretend to do a homework assignment in the computer lab. Every single day I chose the latter option. Only once did I break my lunch/non-lunch habit for a boy named Noah who sat behind me in my Honors English class. He asked to have lunch together, and when we sat down and he realized I wouldn’t be eating, he offered me his apple. I said no. He called me weird and said he forgot I was sick. Then he just walked away, so I took out my coffee-stained napkins and found twelve different ways to make love rhyme with rejection.
Every afternoon before my parents got home from work, I stood in front of my bedroom mirror and placed my fingers over the image of my eyes. So sad and classless, Sad classless eyes I’d call them. I would then use the tip of my pinky finger to trace the crisp reflection of my body. I would inhale, exhale, and bring my hands to my ribcage to make sure I could still feel my bones.
Sure I had my rituals, and in them I found comfort and satiety. A year earlier, my brother Pete left home for Yale University, and I was still adjusting to life as the only child. Pete was my best friend, and the reason I was a tomboy who hated Barbie dolls and loved pro-wrestler Stone Cold Steve Austin. When Pete was 15 he got very ill. His heart was weak from rheumatic fever and he couldn’t walk. Everyday I would return home from school and he’d be on the couch complaining about the cramps in his body. Not a happy, restful sleep, but one full of painful tosses, heavy turns, and dismal breathing. I was sad for him and guilty because when my mother was at his bedside I would think not of his pain but of my jealousy for the stolen attention. My parents never told me he was dying, and it wasn’t until he was healthy that I realized how much his death would have wrecked me.
Years after his illness, he left for college and I cried myself to sleep in his empty room for a few nights, until my mom and dad told me we’d take the hour drive to New Haven over the weekend. I didn’t think they knew about my late night crying sessions, but they were always in tune to my strong sense of loss. As Pete’s newfound absence normalized over time, I increasingly felt his heavy shadow pressing down on my backbone. While I adored my idealized version of Pete, I also hated that I was not comparable. When he left, I succumbed to a loneliness latching onto childhood memories, and I found relief in perfectionism. So I slowly developed my rituals, ones I felt brought me closer to excellence, to purity, to emptiness, to air. I’d let myself reach high and force myself to stay small. I felt hollow, and so I aspired to be hollow.
My rituals had split my reality in two. Sometimes I spent my days resisting my loving family and friends who were of course overreacting, because really I had no intention of ‘isolating’ or ‘starving’ myself like they all claimed. In this reality those were loaded buzz words. My parents were the irrational ones, trying to control my numbers. To me my resistance was levelheaded, whether dismissive, empathetic, or angry. In this world, among the concerned stares and obnoxious comments about my ‘tiny-body-bobble-head,’ I was the only one fooled by my empty lunch bag, my multi-vitamins, and my art of cutting food into beautiful, tiny pieces. In this exquisite routine world, where their perceptions were skewed and I still verging on weightless, everything was perfect.
But then there was my other reality, where I’d avoid intimate moments with loved ones, circumstances in which I’d be compelled to answer the heartbreaking question, “Won’t you just eat a little, please, for me?” The nights when I’d wake up sweaty and disconcerted from a nightmare in which I couldn’t feel my hipbones. The reality where I would stare into the mirror until my gaze turned my skin to its softest point of nostalgic green. The one where I’d shout, This is no way to live. A reality trapped in childhood, in fear of forgetting, in craving for tear-stained 90s laughter to pump through my veins. The purity. I knew it was gone so I’d sigh. I knew I was sick, so I’d cry.
