Anorexia and a Southern goodbye

Nothing is simple when you have anorexia nervosa. Not even saying good-bye to a loved one.

Today we buried my grandpa. He lived a long, well-loved life filled with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. He loved to tease people and he enjoyed the home-cooked meals of his wife, Dean. He was a Southern boy who fought in World War II and Korea and worked on the railroad as a conductor. He tried his best to let those around know he loved them, and he accepted our love in turn.

Memories flood me of summer days visiting him in Kentucky; summer nights filled with thick air and fireflies and sitting on the porch swing. Breakfasts of biscuits and sausage gravy; dinners of thick cornbread and bean soup. Why is the food the strongest memories?

The feel is different here. It takes me back to my childhood. The yearly treks to visit Mamaw in Ohio and Grandpa in Somerset; the time spent with my father's family in the hills of Pineville. It was a world of cognitive dissonance, one I have not processed to this day. A loving grandpa and step-grandmother. Another grandmother, Mamaw; one of the most beautiful women in the world who didn't care for but one of her six grandchildren. The strangeness of my paternal grandfather and step-grandmother, alcoholism all around and church on Sunday complete with snake handling and speaking in tongues and a mantle filled with pictures of the dead in their coffins.

Several people took pictures of Grandpa today before the funeral started. Why? To add to their collection of soulless bodies. I wanted to scream, "He's not here, damn it! Can't you see Elbert Mounce has left us?" I knew he was gone when I kissed his icy forehead and touched his stiff hand as I placed a small pocket rosary in the pocket of his jeans.

I wanted to say his soul is gone, as the soul of each one of us will fly upward when the cord is cut, when God decides that is it for us, when the Grim Reaper comes to carry us home.

"Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound ..." As soon as the first words floated through the funeral home, the wall I had built around myself with Ativan and Xanax broke down and my heart twisted and I again was a child, playing on the green, green lawns of Kentucky, dancing with the fireflies as my Grandpa, Dean and my mother softly spoke to each other on the long, wide porch. I was again a child; a confused little girl who felt both loved and lonely, a child who dreamed of a life far in the future where I would spend each night with someone who loved me and have a life filled with books and learning.

Afterward I was surround by food. so much food it frightened me. I know the family here has noticed my weight. It has not gone unmentioned, and last night I was given a strident lecture by my sister about how I needed to eat because my mother can't bear me having anorexia anymore. As if I can bear it? My head hung down like a whipped dog, and I wanted nothing more than to become the smallest dust particle, the most miniscule piece of matter in the universe.

I wanted to disappear.

Today I tried to. I have been drinking my coffee black to avoid the plethora of sweet creams filling the house. I ate very little this morning, panicked because I can't keep total track of my calories nor weigh myself. I had a very small lunch, avoiding the rich soups and creamy dishes, the apple and cherry pies, the thick brownies that I allowed myself to have one tiny bite. This complete rigid control has made me feel safe in a place where I feel simultaneously like an adult and a child, with no control over who I am or what is said about me.

Tell me you think the way I wear my hair is ugly, and I will say nothing. Constantly harangue about how little I eat, and I just shrink into myself. Tell me I won't eat and I will just tell myself having anorexia is all my fault and that I have caused everyone nothing but trouble.

I tried to eat more at dinner, as I was feeling weak. Some chicken with the skin left on, some cheesy pasta salad. It was the small pieces of desserts, a bite of spice cake and one of almond bread, that broke me.

I tried to make myself throw up all that food inside me, feeling dirty, needing so badly to purge and be clean. The fingers wouldn't do it, but I found something else to gag up some bile and some of the pasta salad. Then my husband walked in.

Failure again. I needed it so bad. But I also know that this behavior must stop before it becomes out of control.

The end of the funeral came with a 21-gun salute and thanks for my grandpa's service to his country. Taps played from afar, and then we gathered some of the flowers and walked to our cars. As I held two roses, one white and one red, I was both a child and an adult. I wanted .... I wanted things to have turned out different.

I glanced back, one of the last people at the cemetery as they prepared to lower my grandpa's body into the ground. I wanted to scream at them to stop, and then I remembered he wasn't there anymore.

What I really want to say is, "Goodbye, Grandpa and that I've always loved you." Maybe in spite of myself, I will see you again someday. There was another song, one about a dance. Maybe we will dance in heaven, and you will be with your beloved Dean and I will feel whole and not fragmented anymore.

Saying good-bye

Tomorrow I will travel to Kentucky, see my family and say goodbye to my grandfather. I so wish I could have gotten there while he was still alive. I feel like my heart has been broken so many times these past few months, I have no heart left inside me. Maybe numbness is a good thing.

I am trying to eat more, because my sister said the other day the family doesn't want me to die and have to go to two funerals. Deep in my heart, I do care I am hurting them by having anorexia and that my mother feels she is watching her daughter die. It's just that the feeling is so deep, it can't really touch me.

But I realize I have to find strength within me. Strength to face family members who haven't seen me since I developed anorexia and now look like a shadow of my former, vibrant self. Strength to answer questions about why I can't eat. Strength to face the food that will be served and the expectations I cannot meet. I need to be there for my family and I need to say good-bye to my grandpa. I don't need to be a worry or a problem right now, and I'm afraid my presence will only make things worse.

Strength to stop thinking about all the things which have broken my heart this year — probable miscarriage and the death of my dream to have a child, losing a position because of my illness, the complete explosion of my eating disorder symptoms from rampant laxative abuse to carving so deep into my flesh I still feel uncomfortable wearing short-sleeve shirts to counting every single calorie which enters my mouth.

But the hardest thing will saying good-bye to my grandfather; I will never again be anybody's grandchild. Seeing him laid out in the coffin will frighten me, and Southern funerals are just different; it is a different world I will be traveling to tomorrow and anything outside the small zone created by anorexia frightens me.

Maybe that is the hardest thing, knowing my present and past will collide during the next few days and I'm not sure I am ready for it. I have tried to run from my Southern roots for decades for various reasons, and have failed and tomorrow I will be in two worlds, with my anorexia swirling all around me, gnawing at me, just waiting for a way to make things worse.

It is so easy to use grief as a reason not to eat; it is so easy to use anything as a reason not to eat.

And in the end, perhaps the hardest thing — saying good-bye to my anorexia. I want to hold onto the only constant in my life; my ability to restrict and lose weight. Part of me wants to stay anorexic forever, then I won't have to feel grief and pain. 

But I also won't feel joy and happiness, and I miss feeling those emotions. Being thin is a poor consolation, and flatness and apathy are poor substitutes.

My grandpa led a full life, one with joy and pain mixed in. He loved his children and grandchildren, never quite got over my beautiful Mamaw (although he had a long and happy marriage with my step-grandmother, Dean) and was interested in many things until he recently got sick.

I don't know what I'm trying to say. It's late and I'm tired and I'm grieving. I want to get better and live a full life, but I'm afraid. That's all I can manage to say right now.