Some years ago, I wrote a book about my ten days in an eating disorder treatment center. It was never published, but now I feel like sharing some of it. I’m going to post random chapters to be enjoyed in little servings like this. –Juliana
“My father says that if treatment doesn’t work this time, he’s going to stop paying my rent. I’ll have to move back home.”
Jennifer is sharing during morning session. Ruthie is leading the group. All of us are required to attend this group meeting after breakfast and to discuss how we are feeling and what we hope to accomplish during the day. Jennifer sounds defeated and confused, as if she were asking what all of us could ask ourselves: Why is this happening to me? Why am I like this? What is wrong with me? Why can’t I just fix myself, once and for all?
Jennifer continues, “I’ve been in treatment so many times and he’s getting fed up. I am, too. I want to be on my own. But it’s just that I’ve been living in these structured environments so much that it’s what I’m used to.”
“You’re being released next week, right?” asks Ruthie.
“Yes.”
“So how do you feel about that, about leaving?”
“I’m almost afraid to be on my own. I’m kind of scared. Of getting out.
I know how to live in here, but I don’t know how to live out in the real world. Part of me wants to stay. No one judges me in here. Everything is taken care of. Things are decided for me and there is a routine and it’s easy to stick to it, so I don’t binge. I’m comfortable here.”
And Jennifer—her body, anyway—is the picture of ease, sitting cross-legged on the small red couch, in her navy blue cable-knit cardigan sweater, with her dark brown ringlets and porcelain face, and her magazine open in her lap, fingers casually working like it’s part of her DNA, the scissor-cutting as natural and automatic as breathing or eating—or as eating should be, but isn’t, for us.
Later some of us go for a walk, past the imposing brick Catholic church diagonally across from our building, around the curve of our one-way street, down to the river and along the path on Memorial Drive. There are small groups of Canada geese nibbling from the sparse grass on the riverbank and people are scattered, walking singly or in twos, bundled against the chilly autumn wind. Three of us—Jennifer, Jess, and I—have signed up for an hour-long group outing with Beth the RC as our chaperone.
Jennifer is wearing tall high-heeled black leather dress boots and a wool peacoat and she has made up her face with lipstick and eyeliner and mascara and blush—she has dressed for a social occasion, for meeting people, for going out. Her immaculate hair shines in the early afternoon sunlight.
Immediately, Jennifer breaks from the pack, striding away purposefully, quickly. In a minute she is two hundred feet ahead of the rest of us who are in no hurry. At one point it looks as if Jennifer is fixing to run away, away from the treatment center, and off into the distance, and to disappear in the horizon.
She is walking with a purpose, with a vengeance; as if she is trying to get away from something, or as if she is—and all of us are—going somewhere. But we aren’t, really; it’s just a walk along the river and then back to where we started, to kill time, to keep us occupied, to get the blood pumping, to take our minds off all their troubling thoughts.
Jennifer pushes ahead, widening the space between her and the rest of us. We walk about a half mile down the path, turning right to go over a bridge, and then back again by the Storrow Drive side of the Charles River and over a smaller footbridge back to Memorial Drive.
We’ve circled back to our starting point and Jennifer is there waiting for us. She looks restless, impatient. She asks what time it is and when Beth tells her it’s 4:40, she says, “We haven’t used up the whole hour. Can we go around again?”
It’s a crisp early-November day and walking feels good, wakes me up, though I am essentially tethered to the group and to the treatment center, conscious that whatever we do we will end up back there. I am outside, standing on a footpath next to a river, but I’m not really free. I’m in an in-between place, on a temporary pass. I’m neither here nor there.
Beth says, rechecking her watch, “Well, I…think…we have time to do that. Does everyone else want to? Is it okay if we do another loop?”
No one says no and we go around again.
I just wanted to say thank you for sharing these stories. They’re beautifully written. Being institutionalized once, this really takes me right back and reminds me to write my own stories from this time. The ones I keep avoiding making real by telling. Thank you 🖤
Remember November