9th
chapter 5 : MOTHER MAY I HEAL
After things got bad, our house was overtaken by an ideological battle about whether or not I was too skinny. When I denied I was losing weight my father never tried to convince me to say otherwise. That was my mother’s job. She always stated her opinions as a matter of fact: “You are too thin.” “You do not eat enough.” “You are self-destructive.” I always rolled my eyes and found such things superfluous and subjective.
This one particular evening, I was lying on the couch reading Wuthering Heights for my Honors English class when my mother came home from work. She seemed frazzled and in a hurry. As she marched past me to get to her bedroom, she grumbled under her breath, loud enough to get my attention but quiet enough so I couldn’t make out her words. She sounded angry, which confused me since we hadn’t argued in weeks and I barely saw her all day.
“Huh? What did you say, mom?”
“I said you’re killing yourself. You’re killing yourself!”
“Mom, I—”
“All we ever did was love you so what did we do wrong?”
“I love you guys too, you did noth—”
“You are killing yourself. Your heart will stop! Don’t you see?”
She had commenced with a soft tone but by the third or fourth repetition she grew intense and irritated. Then her tears came. But no one is dying, I thought, there’s no reason to cry. “Mom, I’m fine, mom. I’m okay, I promise.”
We just didn’t understand.
After a few months I got tired of all the tension and the sickness and the crying. I missed my family, and how they were there but I was vanishing. I told my parent’s I’d see a specialist. I went to therapy for a little but quit because after every session my therapist would weigh me and feel my stomach to make sure it wasn’t empty. She’d tilt her pudgy face to the left and glare at me in disappointment. She was awful.
Then I saw a doctor who was both a psychiatrist and nutritionist. I told her I wasn’t doing this for me, I just didn’t want to hurt anybody anymore. She made me keep a food journal, and I thought she was so dumb because I’d always fabricate the ‘meals I ate’ for the week while I sat in her waiting room before my appointment. I didn’t mind seeing her though, because she was kind of funny and never seemed to judge me. I liked how she’d invite my parents in for sessions so I could tell them I didn’t like them trying to micromanage my weight, my food intake, or me. Even if they weren’t actually, it felt nice asking them to not. They listened to her. They listened to me. She listened to me. She guided my exploration of guilt, control, and perfectionism, long before I even realized these concepts were at the core of my disorder. When I embarked on recovery, I did so for me. She was smarter than I thought.
I grew up in a warm home with a kind family full of love, laughter and life, in a community that offered me countless opportunities. I was never starved of love, comfort, or possibilities. Still, I craved weightlessness. I strived to control an intangible emptiness. I tried to disappear. I continue to search for the cause of my isolated spiral into a world of skewed perception and self-denial, where lies became true and I could be proud of my bones. A few years removed and relatively clear-minded, I am still scrambling through memories and self-constructions, hoping to piece together my reality. I’m not too certain how we can ever separate perception from truth, when everything remarkable always feels so unbelievably real.
