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
There are seven women in residence here. Four of us—Deb (my roommate), Melania (who is being discharged tomorrow), Muge, and myself—are anorexics and we are all, as you might imagine, skinny. The rest—Jess, Jennifer, and Darcy—are bulimics. They are “normal” sized. They don’t look sick; if you saw them walking down the street, you would never know there is anything physically wrong with them.
We range in age from twenty (Muge) to fifty (Melania). We never cross paths with the teenaged eating disorder patients residing on the floor below us.
At three o’clock on the dot I hear a woman call down the hall: “Snack!” Time to come to table. We gather in front of the kitchen door. The resident counselor (RC) on snack duty does a head count and then unlocks the kitchen with a key hanging from a lanyard around her neck. We file in.
There are two counters, two sinks, an oven, and a teapot on a stove. A microwave. Dishwasher. Fridge. Cabinets. All the regular kitchen things. Two long tables are arranged perpendicularly but not touching, with space enough to seat four people comfortably on each side of each table. Since there are only seven of us in residence, we only use one table. Through the big window running alongside our table, I can see a large, long brick building with copious old chimneys—part of Harvard University—and lots of sky.
There are twelve beds here on the fourth floor of the Eating Disorder Center. I imagine that when the place is at full capacity, both kitchen tables are necessary. Our snack time RC, Josie, sits at the head in a position of benign authority. She doesn’t eat when we eat; she watches us to make sure we finish everything on our plates and guides the conversation, if there is any, away from verboten subjects (food, body image, our problems, etc.) and tries to maintain a light, breezy, uncomplicated mood. Josie also keeps time; once we have all been seated, we have exactly fifteen minutes in which to eat and drink everything in front of us. (My information packet says that we have forty-five minutes for dinner and half an hour for breakfast.) This isn’t so we will wolf down our food quickly; there is ample time in which to complete the task. The time limit simply leaves no room for playing with our food or pushing it around or avoiding it.
Each resident has a place marker which identifies her food as hers. The RC in charge of arranging a particular meal or snack tailors each setting to each girl’s unique food and drink specifications, which often change according to each patient’s progress (or lack of such), and everyone’s evolving weight/health situation.
The girls who have been here for a while have made their own place markers with materials from the Arts and Crafts bin in the main front room where all group meetings take place. Most of the place markers are crude, childlike napkin-sized squares made of colored construction paper and magic marker personalized by each place marker’s creator. Jennifer’s has a photo of a pretty and stylish fashion model cut out of a magazine and pasted to the middle of the red paper square. The words “It’s Good to Be Fancy”—cut from a magazine—are below the photo. Jennifer’s name, above the photo, has been put together, ransom note style, with different-sized letters scissored from magazine pages.
On Jess’ place marker, magazine photos of pink flowers have been glued onto a light blue square and her name is handwritten in cursive. Muge’s place maker is just her name, ”Muge,” scrawled boyishly and unartfully in red crayon on white paper, with some messy impressionistic squiggles drawn around the name like afterthoughts. Seeing this, I am instantly fond of Muge.
Since I have not had a chance yet to make my own customized place marker, someone on staff has written my first name in black magic marker on a white napkin. That is how I know where to sit (and what I must eat).
Construction of personalized place markers is not compulsory and one or two of the girls have not gotten around to making theirs yet. They, like me, find their names written in magic marker on a paper napkin.
I will come to learn that the place markers are never in the same place; the RCs mix it up. I wonder if there is some psychology behind the seemingly random and ever-changing placement of the girls at the table. Is it to discourage any sort of ritualistic attachment to anything having to do with the eating process? To keep us vulnerable; open-minded; malleable; treatable?
I sit down in front of a small white plate with a Red Delicious apple on it. There is also a paper cup full of water—12 ounces of it. This is my designated snack. I must eat and drink it all. Some girls have fruit as well as a few crackers and/or a small bowl of yogurt. Some have juice instead of water.
There is music coming out of a boombox radio sitting on the empty table. “Hot and Cold” by Katy Perry plays, and then Pink’s new single.
There is a small plastic and metal contraption sitting in the middle of our table. It looks like a little wagon wheel, with a plastic tire and metal spokes. Jess picks it up. I ask her what it is.
“It’s a fruit slicer.”
Jess stands up, centers the slicer on top of her green apple with the stem sticking through the hole in the middle of the wheel and, using the weight of her upper body, leans forward with her hands pressing down through the apple which then fans out in eight slices like flower petals as the fruit slicer hits the plate. Jess removes the core and discards it.
“Cool,” I say. “I’ve never seen one of those before.”
Jess says: ”It’s a lot easier to eat the apple when it’s cut up like this.”
Everyone uses the fruit slicer. It goes from girl to girl.
I have been told that anyone who doesn’t finish every last morsel and drop of what’s in front of her will be made to drink a bottle of Ensure (a liquid nutritional drink). A case of the stuff sits ominously, like a threat, on the counter next to the fridge, in full view of all of us at the table.
But we are a remarkably compliant bunch and during my stay, I never witness anyone being made to down an Ensure. This is a voluntary program. We came here for help, and we will let them help us and we will not fight them. We all seem to understand, through the fog of our confusion, that we have damaged ourselves, and that to undo that damage we need to do what they tell us to do.
All the kitchen utensils are plastic and disposable. The bowls and plates are ceramic. The cups for cold liquids are paper, as are the napkins. Tea is served in washable mugs. It’s a motley crew of dishes.
I have always been a naturally slow eater and I am the last to finish my snack. Even though it was only an apple, it was a rather large apple, and I feel pinched by the hands of the clock as it nears the time limit. But I make it, just. I am going to have to pick up my pace a bit to fit in.
Everyone stays seated at the table until I am completely done. Then I follow the lead of the other girls as they place their utensils and napkins in their paper cups and pass them to Darcy who is seated nearest to the trash bin and who throws all the cups away. Jess scoops up all the place cards and deposits them in a neat pile at the end of the table. Muge and Deb and Josie take the plates and bowls and mugs to the sink where they rinse them and place them in the dishwasher. The cleaning up takes almost no time. Officially, two different girls are supposed to be assigned to dishwashing duty at each meal, but no one ever looks at the cleaning schedule. Someone always volunteers. Everyone pitches in.
The whole operation—seating, eating, cleaning—is methodical.
Anorexics and bulimics all have their own personalized systems based around eating (and purging, as the case may be). What they are trying to do here at the treatment center is replace our unhealthy, screwy, pathological rituals with healthy ones.
We all exit the kitchen together. That wasn’t so bad, I think. I made it through my first feed.
Beautifully written - thanks, Juliana!
Can't wait for more. Well done!