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
Deb is weeping quietly while holding a mini-Oreo—one of five taken from a paper cup in front of her—aloft, in front of her mouth. Jen, who is sitting next to Deb, is rubbing Deb’s back while others around the dinner table offer words of gentle encouragement: “You can do it, Deb.” “Take your time.” “You’re doing great.”
Deb looks up at the clock on the kitchen wall. There are seven more minutes left. Dinner is from six to 6:45 and all food and drink must be finished within that time frame, and no one can leave the table (or the room) until everyone is done. The rest of us have finished already and we wait patiently for Deb to get through the ordeal of her dessert.
I know that some girls are eager to go out on the balcony and have their after-dinner cigarette (smokers are allotted one cigarette after each meal, and each girl’s pack is kept locked in the office—cigs are doled out by RC’s). Some of us are simply antsy and want to leave the kitchen. But we keep quiet, counting the remaining minutes in our heads.
Deb, my roommate, an anorexic, has been here for five weeks and she hasn’t gained a single pound. They keep raising her meal plan to the next level, giving her larger and larger amounts of food at each meal, plus adding more volume to her snacks.
Deb is a runner. Or she was a runner (exercising is not allowed in here). There are photos propped up around our room, framed snapshots of her in running shorts, racing number across her flat chest, arms draped around running buddies, all of them smiling, at the finish lines. Deb tells me she regularly ran long distances on an empty stomach. (I used to do that—exercising with no fuel in my tank—but I quit the practice when I began to worry about potential wear on my heart.)
I imagine that the strain of Deb’s long-distance exertions has seriously damaged her bodily systems and metabolism. Like an old alcoholic who gets sober but whose liver has been irreparably afflicted with cirrhosis, or a longtime smoker who finally quits but still develops lung cancer anyway, Deb’s problem may have unfixable repercussions.
She seems simultaneously determined—to stick it out in this program, to start to improve, turn a corner, see it through to the end, get well—and discouraged, downhearted. She may not have fully accepted that she may have messed up her body permanently but she knows she is in trouble.
In contrast to Deb who has put on no weight in more than a month, I will ultimately gain five pounds in the ten days I am here (I am pretty much a model inmate, in terms of weight gain).
In this morning’s post-breakfast group check-in sharing session, Deb had said, “I’m having a really hard time with my meal plan. They just upped it again, to seven. It’s a lot of food. A lot of food.”
She peppers her thoughts with “…and everything,” and delivers it with a casual savoring of the “r” sound so it sounds like “…an’ errything.”
“It’s really hard. I’m trying an’ errything but it’s tough.”
I feel her pain. While I have just a piece of fruit and a glass of water for a snack, Deb has an array of plates and cups in front of her—she has the fruit plus a cup of milk plus a cup of juice plus cookies. I know that to go from eating almost nothing—and jogging it off—to such a seemingly vast spread (and six times a day) must be very difficult and even sort of traumatic, harrowing.
Last night at dinner Deb seemed happy, lighthearted. She was showing off her gigantic new white ceramic Chanel wristwatch (“Ooh!” “Whoa!” “Oh my gosh!” “WOW,” we all gasped, thinking, “$$$!”). Her husband had bought it for her on a shopping expedition during Deb’s daylong pass out of the treatment center. The watch matched her white cotton cable-knit sweater and contrasted sharply with her deep tan.
“Do I have to eat all this?” Deb had jokingly asked Josie the RC sitting at one end of the table. “I think I had some extra calories today.” Deb’s husband had come down from their home in Maine and gotten a hotel room and the girls were debating.
“Is semen protein? Or is it carbs?” Darcy asked.
“It’s carbs, I think,” said Jess.
Then Deb said, ”Yeah. I had extra carbs today” and laughed, along with everyone else. And to Josie: “So can I not eat my crackers?”
Josie rolled her eyes, smiling.
But today Deb is struggling at the table. Her husband has gone back up to Maine, to his work, to their home. Deb will see him next weekend, and he will buy her other expensive gifts, and she will spend time with him in his hotel room, maybe see a movie. Her husband will be supportive, and then he will leave. And then he will come back again the following weekend. And they will not know when or if she will be released. And they will hope that things get better with Deb. That is the routine.
Is it too late for Deb? She is the oldest patient in here. She has been so invested in her anorexia- her starving, her running, her self-deprivations—for so long that it has become who she is, what she is, what she does. It is an identity. How does she change it?
Every couple of days there is a huge new bouquet of flowers on the shelf in our room. And Deb always returns from her conjugal outings with some expensive new designer goody—an article of clothing, jewelry—that her husband has bought for her. She talks about her husband a lot, makes it sound as if he’s a saint. “He’s been through a lot with me. He supports me one hunnerd percent.”
In contrast, X has sent me nothing, said nothing. He has left me alone in here, to fend for myself—to fix my problem. (“Get well,” he said, when I left.)
Do the flowers mean Deb is loved more or more authentically than I am? To me her oversized and fragrant-to-the-point-of-being-almost-unpleasant bouquets smack of overcompensation. I sense (without any actual evidence, and without having ever met the man) that the husband feels guilty, or helpless, or both. Does he think that maybe he contributed somehow to his wife’s condition? Maybe he worked too hard and was never home? Neglected her over the years while he was off earning money? Maybe he cheated on her and now is trying to atone?
Deb spends about half an hour on her hair and makeup every morning—even on days when her husband isn’t visiting. I take a shower every other morning and throw my clothes on and that’s it; I’m ready to try to face another day in here. I wonder why Deb bothers. Who cares what she looks like? Who is she trying to impress? Do people style their hair and apply full makeup and use tanning creams in rehab? In jail? Why? Are routines that ingrained?
Right now looking good is the last thing I’m thinking about. There are much more pressing matters. I don’t have the energy, anyway, to care about how I appear physically to other people. What I’m concerned about is what’s inside of me—what I’ve done to myself and how to stop doing it anymore—and in my mind there is no use covering it up.
But Deb seems set in her ways. And anorexia is nothing if not a strict set of rigid daily habits. I wonder: Maybe if Deb left the blow-dryer and the flat iron in the drawer and let her hair go wild, she could change her other habits, too. Maybe if she would let us see her unpainted face, she would have one less thing to worry about and she could feel a bit of relief, and the starved, scrawny, desiccated creature she has become could begin to take new form, inside and out, and begin to bloom again.
But I know it’s not that simple. And I am not the one to be giving out advice. Look at where I am.
I will never once see Deb’s face without makeup. Every night she is lying in bed with the lights out and her face turned toward the wall, the covers pulled up around her head, when I come into the room after brushing my teeth. And she is up and either in the shower or already fully put together every morning before I am even awake. I don’t know how she does it. But she manages to present only her put-together image to the world, even the little closed world in here. She hides her real face from us always. Blow-dryers and flatirons aren’t even technically allowed in this place; it is written in the rules. But Deb has smuggled them in.
Thanks for sharing.
Been a Juliana fan for years and it’s a real good day when one of these stories shows up in the inbox.