Tumbling down

On Thanksgiving Day, I took a tumble down our staircase and landed headfirst into the wall. I could almost hear Alanis Morrisette in the background singing, "Isn't it ironic?"

I am tired. Tired in my soul. I don't know whether I should feel grateful I wasn't more seriously hurt or pissed that I had yet another potentially fatal accident AND YET I DIDN'T DIE. Why? It might have made things much easier.

I am trying to kill myself by plunging headfirst back into anorexia and starvation. At least that is what my doctor said today, and he wants to know why I want to diminish myself until I become nothing.

I struggled to answer his question. Not because I don't necessarily have an answer, but it is typically easier for me to write out my feelings.

Do I want to die? On some days, yes. The anxiety is so all-consuming, I feel as if I could crawl the walls and scream at the moon. I can't stand the thought of all I have to do and all the people I have to please. I want to shut myself away into the box of anorexia, slam the lid shut, and tell everyone to leave me alone. (Thank you, Dr. Sackeyfio, for this very apt metaphor.)

Other days, no. I feel I can pull myself through this and turn it around. I just have to do one simple thing: eat. Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat. Eat.

But I don't want to eat. It's what I need to do to feel better and function more clearly. It is the simplest thing in the world, really. Billions of people lift food to their mouths, insert and then chew daily.

So why do I find this very simple act so very difficult?

Because if I eat, I live. I live and must face life, in all its ugliness and beauty, its pain and joy. I must live my life; read and study, write papers; it is all very simple enough. I must rebuild my relationship with my husband, rediscover love and joy and everything that comes with an intimate relationship.

Is that what I'm afraid of? Perhaps. As we grow closer together, I am haunted still by his actions this summer, when I came back from class and found our home stripped of everything he valued. Except me.  I often dream of that evening, hurtling back into time and seeing the rape of my home, my life; knowing nothing would ever be the same again. I think about it and struggle not to cry.

Maybe that's why I am again starving myself. I don't want to feel what I felt then, and if I block off my emotions by starvation . . .

There it is. The box is there and I crawl into it more and more. I just don't know if I can crawl out of it this time.

Anorexia, the old woman and me

I travel each week two hours one-way to see my eating disorders specialist. Rarely do I see other patients coming or going. (I suspect it is set up that way.)

But last week, I did my usually sprint into the office to grab the bathroom key before my appointment and was stopped short. By a very old woman, leaning against a walker and talking with Dr. S's secretary/office manager/all-around wonderful person.

I was a bit flustered by her being there. Is she a patient? Is she someone's grandmother, paying a bill or arranging for an appointment? Dear God, don't let her be a patient! She must be 80; she should be home surrounded by her loving grandchildren and great grandchildren, baking pies and cookies — NOT battling an eating disorder!


I did not ask Dr. S about her (and I know he wouldn't be able to tell me anything.) BUT had I even mentioned her age, I know he would have said, Of course people in their 70s and 80s battle eating disorders. Or something like that. Since I also knew this deep down, but did not want my knowledge confirmed, I didn't say anything.

I don't want to face the reality that an elderly woman could be battling anorexia or bulimia. I don't want to know that on so many different levels . . .

I haven't been able to get the stooped, elderly woman out of my mind. Was she a patient? No, that's not possible. She was too old. WAS she anorexic? Bulimic? Was she still fighting her demons? WHO WAS SHE???

I know I'll never know.

Sometimes I think of my own situation. I am 45 and still struggling with anorexia nervosa. I am still trying to climb my way out of a relapse. After gaining some weight at a PHP this summer, I've lost most of it and am only maintaining.

Each day I try to eat more to gain weight. This past week has been back and forth. I'll eat well and then panic, swallowing a bunch of laxatives and watching all my efforts go down the drain. Other days, I try to eat what feels a little safer and only add a few hundred extra calories.

Then the war starts in my head. You are getting TOO FAT! See that huge stomach and thighs? Feel that pudgy waist? You are a BIG FAT LOSER?

Get some laxatives and cleanse yourself of all this dirty food. Then go back to the basics. Eat as little food as possible. YOU ARE FAT FAT FAT! Everyone around you thinks that. They just won't tell you — yet.

You don't need food and you don't deserve food.

But eating less is not healthy. I need to be healthy in order to complete my graduate classes and have some sort of a future. To have a life with my husband. To enjoy the fullness of living.

To be less afraid and less anxious.

My mind is constantly this war zone. I sometimes feel as if I am going to shatter in a million different pieces, literally implode upon myself until I'm nothing but a pile of broken dreams and promises. No future.

Then I think of the old woman. I imagine I am her . . .

The year 2050. I am 85. Hopes of recovery are long gone. Counting calories and losing weight has defined me for decades. I am told I am too thin, but I don't believe it. I still could stand to lose a few more pounds. My gaunt face looks at the doctor's face and I laugh.

I am thin. THIN THIN THIN

This is the most important thing about me. Everything else has faded, sucked into the black hole of anorexia. There is nothing left. I never finished graduate school. I became too weak and had to drop out. I've been living on odd jobs and finally, at some point, disability. My husband has left me and I have few friends.

I am alone.

Dear God, please let her be somebody's grandmother. She can't have an eating disorder. She doesn't have anorexia or bulimia. Maybe she was friends with Dr. S's secretary and just stopped by. Maybe she was there to thank Dr. S for the recovery of her granddaughter or grandson.

Can she?

Eating with my eyes

I have been eating with my eyes.

I am a stalker. I have been lurking around several blogs written by women recovered from anorexia, in which they post pics and describe the foods they are now enjoying. I feast my eyes on the pictures, drinking in the bowls of fresh oats, almond butter and bananas mixed together; the fresh bread spread with avocado and topped with crumbles of hard-boiled egg, Romaine lettuce and tomato; the long, tall smoothie blended with yogurt and cream and fresh fruit, the young woman leaning forward to take a sip; the cookies-and-cream drumstick, the ice cream slightly dripping as if it had just been delightedly slurped.

I am obsessed.

I remember when I was first diagnosed with anorexia nervosa. It was by a dietician whom my family doctor referred me to around February 2008. Of course, at the time I didn't feel anything was wrong with me. So when she said I was anorexic, I reacted first with surprise and then a little anger.

It wasn't like I didn't know anything about anorexia or other eating disorders. And I didn't have a eating disorder, in spite of the fact that I weighed about 95 pounds at the time, was very restrictive and rigid in my eating, and had an intense fear of gaining weight (and in fact, wanted to lose more.)

But I wasn't engaging in any of the bizarre anorexic food behaviors or rituals at that time. I didn't cut my food up into miniscule pieces. I wasn't afraid to eat in front of my friends or co-workers (I didn't really care if they thought two thin slices of deli turkey meat did not make a complete lunch.) I wasn't collecting recipes, reading food magazines or cooking large, elaborate meals for anyone.

So therefore, Ms. Dietician, your diagnosis is wrong wrong wrong. I am not anorexic, I do not need to see an eating disorders specialist nor go to Renfrew, Remuda, or Rogers Memorial Hospital. I do not have a problem. I am just thin and what's wrong with being thin? Even if I am depressed and anxious, even if I am yanking up my size zero jeans and fighting with my husband about food and eating and hearing from everyone that I need to gain weight and my niece's nickname for me has become "Skelator"?

I'm just fine. Other than being severely underweight, of course. There was the daily counting of calories and weighing myself. And the fact that I was becoming quite popular at the office for the weekly donuts/scones/ {insert forbidden food here} that I brought in. But I wasn't doing anything else except restricting, therefore I could not have anorexia.

My treatment with that dietician ended after she declared I wasn't making any progress, i.e. I had not gained any weight after four months of treatment. Soon after this, my psychiatrist terminated with me (I had been seeing him from depression and anxiety) because he agreed I had anorexia and he wasn't equipped to deal with it.

So I went to Rogers Memorial, only to check out AMA 24 hours later. The psychiatrist there declared I would be dead within a year if I didn't gain both insight and weight. My discharge papers were a dismal declaration of how ill I was. Prognosis: poor.

As most of you know, I did eventually agree to see an eating disorders specialist who convinced me to go into Beaumont Hospital for two weeks of refeeding. But even though I was connected to a TPN line running nutrients into my body, I remained unconvinced I had anorexia.

You see, the eating disorders patients there all did strange things like cut their food into tiny pieces and hoarded sugar and salt packets and get angry because we weren't allowed to have no-calorie sweeteners for our coffee like the other patients. One woman carried around a notebook filled with recipes and pictures of food,  another continuously chewed on ice and a third would not eat her food without loading it with salt and pepper and mustard and whatever other condiment she could get her hands on (since I didn't care what my food tasted like — the blander, the better — I was happy to give her my packet of condiments each day.)

I had read about these and other behaviors and decided there was no way I could be anorexic because I didn't do such things. I became a bit annoyed by these behaviors and seriously wanted to tell one girl to please please please stop pressing your grilled cheese sandwich between five million napkins before I lose the last shreds of sanity I have left!

But this was years ago, and I notice I have my own little food rituals. I can't eat foods that touch each other and I have to eat one food at a time. (I notice normal people eat a few bites of this and a few bites of that.) I can't tolerate foods with sauces or gravies, unless they come in a box and I know the exact calorie count. I can't pick up a sandwich and bite into it; I must either cut it up or deconstruct it. I need to eat slowly, and I actually do cut my food into tiny pieces, thus taking more than an hour to eat a meal most people can finish in twenty minutes.

Have I had these rituals for years and just didn't notice? Or did I develop these food rituals as an attempt to gain some control? Or are these behaviors the manifestation of anorexia as I have continued to recover from it.

The few times I haven't been able to adhere to these rituals? behaviors? has caused a weird sort of anxiety and strangeness, as if I didn't do it right. I usually need to take an anti-anxiety medication before I can eat out with friends. Restaurants feel like torture unless there is some type of salad I can order. I was positively thrilled when Bob Evans, my husband's favorite restaurant, came out with its light menu and listed the calories, fat grams, etc. on that menu.

Denial hangs around a long, long time. I weigh 97 pounds and have been actively restricting food since January. I feel exhausted, and yet often can't get to bed until 4 or 5 a.m. I have trouble concentrating on anything; class work, magazine articles, watching a television show, holding a conversation. I have gone through the assessment process at Renfrew and plan to be admitted in May for the 30-day day treatment program.

But despite all this, I said to my husband last night, I don't think I have anorexia. I think I am just thin and everybody is making too big a deal out of it.

Then I dreamt last night of those food blogs, the abundant richness taunting my sleep. I could almost smell the cinnamon sprinkled on the oats and taste the creamy saltiness of the almond butter. I opened my small container of yogurt, which was not mixed with granola or sprinkled with fruit, and wondered why I would ever question that I have anorexia.

I am now following a couple of these blogs; I need the images and descriptions in a way I can't describe. I want to eat with all my senses. This is my dream, and I believe full recovery will be achieved by first being able to eat without fear.

I have been eating with my eyes.