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Commentary - Apr 3, 2005 - Printable Version
- Out of Control and Sinking Fast
by Robin Buckallew
Sometimes the hardest words for anyone to say can be "I need help". This is especially true if you have been raised to believe that a lack of self-sufficiency is, well, an unforgivable weakness. It can be much harder to reach out a hand seeking help than to reach out the same hand offering it. For some time now, many of my friends have been urging me to tell my story. They have felt that my experiences might help another person who is suffering in the same way that I suffered. Now, a decade after my battle was won, I feel ready. I stand before you, ready to bare my soul, ready to share with the world the pain of a life so far out of control, so far out of balance that I felt sure I was going to go over the edge at any time. It was not easy to say "I need help". It was not easy to reach out for assistance, even when it was willingly and readily offered. Now, I stand here before you, my soul naked and vulnerable, and admit - I was an anorexic.
Anorexia is a word we all understand, and yet it is a word that none of us understands. Many a mother has worried and fretted if their daughter merely picks at her dinner. Many a father has expressed concern if his teenager is losing too much weight too fast. The press has covered anorexic and bulimic movie stars and rock idols, and the world is aware of anorexia. Jane Fonda - bulimic. Karen Carpenter - dead from complications of anorexia. Mary Kate Olson, Calista Flockhart - the world watches and wonders. Whispers at the water fountain about the colleague who is suddenly appearing deathly thin. Snickers at the locker about the girls who don't seem to gain any weight. It is a disease that exists in the full spotlight of intense media attention, and yet at the same time is half hidden by shadows that don't seem to clear away no matter how or where the light is focused. It is often dismissed or ridiculed as a disease of vanity. It is often bewildering to see a woman starving herself when she is far from fat. What drives these women? What makes these girls willing to die for their figure? Are they simply silly bimbos who just think they need to be looked at and admired all the time? Or are they just ordinary, unhappy girls, perhaps someone you know well and like? While it can become easy (if it isn't your daughter involved) to dismiss this as a fad brought on by too much emphasis on thinness and glamour, in truth the problem of anorexia often has a darker, much more sinister core. It is often a symptom of a life out of control and sinking fast.
Though one would never guess it by looking at me now, a decade ago I was seriously underweight. I suffered from dizziness and fainting spells, and I could barely muster the energy to get out of bed in the morning, or to walk across the floor to turn on the light. My malnutrition had reached a point serious enough that I was hospitalized. I was being threatened with intravenous feeding. And still, I wouldn't eat. I wasn't stupid, or in any way ignorant. I had a strong intellect, and a college education, including courses in nutrition and health. I knew that the course I was on was potentially (almost certainly) fatal if continued much longer. I didn't really feel fat, though I would at times complain of feeling fat. Somehow, it seemed to be expected of me, so I ran through the expected routine like an obedient patient. It wasn't that food held no meaning for me - in fact, I thought of food nearly continuously. Food was actually somewhat of an obsession with me - well, actually, avoiding food was an obsession. And so, I thought about food. I was aware of every bite that went into my mouth (which only happened when someone was looking), and with every bite I felt that I was betraying something very deep within my inner core of being. Food made me physically sick, though I never developed the habit of purging. I simply didn't eat. I weighed myself obsessively, and when I reach the point where I lost an entire seven pounds in one weekend, I took pride of accomplishment in that fact. Why? If I wasn't fat, if I didn't feel fat, why would I care about losing so many pounds? Because for the first time in my life, it felt like I was actually in control of something. Even if it turned out to be my own death.
Where did my anorexia begin? I have never totally answered that question to my satisfaction. I do know that as a young teen, I would go for periods of time, say a week, without eating anything. It would be a point of pride with me, especially if I could manage to do it without my parents noticing. And they usually didn't. With six kids in the house, there is always enough on your mind that one child might slip through the cracks for a short time. The episode of fasting usually began unobtrusively, with a period of mild to moderate depression resulting in a missed meal. Somehow, missing the meal gave me a feeling of power, a feeling of euphoria that acted as a feedback, leading me to miss another meal, then another. I found it is possible to rearrange the food on your plate to an extent that no one, if preoccupied enough with other worries, will notice that nothing has been eaten. This is even easier when you are a teenager who does the clearing up or the dishes, as it is quite easy to dispose of an uneaten meal without anyone observing you. During my teen years, these periods never lasted for a particularly long period of time - usually a week was the limit. Somehow, I managed to control it to that extent. It wasn't until I was 20 years old that I had an episode severe enough and prolonged enough for anyone to take notice. This episode lasted only about three weeks, and I was eventually eased out of it by beginning to date steadily, and not wishing my new romance to think I had a problem. My mother was more than willing not to bring up the issue, for she was getting desperate to get me married off, firmly convinced I was becoming a hopeless spinster doomed to live and die alone, having to take care of myself and support myself, and not having any children. So, I ended up marrying without my husband ever discovering my dark secret.
For several years, the anorexia was dormant. I never paid much attention to it, thinking it was just a silly game of my youth. Never too serious, after all, only a couple of short episodes of toying with myself and my family. It became just a memory of a seemingly harmless diversion that I could forget about, like so many things we do when we are young and prefer not to bring up later. Life went on, drifting into a peaceful normality, finishing college, finding a job, having a child, and just in general finally believing myself to be - well, if not June Cleaver, at least her modern-day, working mother version. And if my life seemed a little dull and lifeless around the edges, I tried very hard not to notice that. After all, I was, at long last, normal. But, of course, there is always a snake in Eden. In fact, there were many snakes in my Eden, and all of them poisonous. In time, the anorexia once again flared up. It snuck up on me, I barely noticed it this time. This time, everyone else noticed what I was unable to see. I simply wasn't eating. I was losing weight. I was unhappy, moping and crying, not able to sleep. I was not able to say "I think I need help". So, my husband said it - "I think you need help". With his encouragement, I got help, entered therapy, began eating again, tentatively. In time, I was sure, I would be able to sleep again, too. Everything was fine, life was not a 50s sitcom, but then, who would want it to be?
A year after entering therapy, still moderately depressed and even occasionally suicidal, I suffered a huge loss. My husband of seven years walked out. He wasn't the right sort to be married, he told me. The responsibility of a wife and a child weren't something he wanted anymore. He didn't tell me the truth. I found that out the hard way - when he moved in with another man. The marriage was over. I became even more depressed, for my lifeline seemed to have been snatched from me. All my life, I had been identified by the men in my life - I was my father's daughter. I was my husband's wife. I was my son's mother. I, myself, didn't even exist as a separate entity. I threw myself into my work - now, I had an identity. I existed as an employee. Therapy continued, but had little positive effect. The eating disorder, when it returned, came gradually. At first, I didn't notice. I just knew I wasn't hungry, so I didn't eat. At first. But then, I noticed. I wasn't eating. No one could make me eat. I felt the old euphoria. I felt the old power. I was in control, strong and determined. No one could make me eat. For three years, I ate nearly nothing. I lost weight. I became severely malnourished and alarmingly thin. My family and friends feared for my health, and even for my life. I never feared for my life. I felt immortal. I felt strong. I was, for the first time in my entire life, in control of my own destiny. And that, my friends, is the secret of anorexia. Is it vanity? Is it silliness? Is it a silly, bimbo-like desire to be looked at with constant admiration? No, it was none of those. I was not being looked at with admiration - in fact, I rarely left my house. It was, plain and simple, a life that was out of control, out of balance, and desperate to restore order.
Control. Balance. How few of us when we are children, or teens, feel that we are in control of our own destiny? We may feel immortal. We may feel like we are destined for inevitable greatness. But we do not feel in control of our lives or our bodies. There is always someone, older than we are, in a position of authority over us, who tells us what to do, when to do it, where to do it, and how to do it. This is nothing that is unusual in the life of an average teenager. This is at a time when we have pretty much decided that we already know what the world is about, what life is about, and that those telling us how to live our lives don't know anything. In addition, the world of advertising and entertainment is showing us all sorts of glamorous people we somehow imagine we have more in common with than we do our family. Of course, this is an experience common to all adolescents, and not all adolescents develop eating disorders. In fact, only a small portion of adolescents do. Adolescents assert their feelings of independence and need for power in diverse ways. Not all of them are so ruinous to the health.
All my life, as long as I can remember, I lived in fear. Fear of rejection, of course. Fear of pain. Physical pain. In self-defense, I became invisible. I learned to scrunch down inside myself in such a small ball of matter that I was hardly noticeable. If no one sees you, no one threatens you. If no one sees you, no one hurts you. You become such a nonentity, you can barely recognize yourself in the mirror of a morning. You don't know who you are, and you are pretty sure you would rather not know - you just know that you really don't like you. You also know that nobody else likes you, either. How do you know? Because no one ever says hello to you. No one ever notices you. In spite of the fact that this is exactly what you were seeking, it hurts. At lunch in school, everyone pairs up with best friends, gangs, cliques. You sit alone. At recess, everyone runs and plays. You play tetherball with yourself. As you grow older, you strive to become even more invisible, because you have been invisible so long you are now convinced you are repulsive. And the invisibility doesn't even really work. You are still getting hurt. You are still getting hit. You are still getting screamed at and feeling small, frightened and lonely. You are still scared to go home when school is over. Nothing feels right. I discovered there was no escape from fear, from pain. And so, as I grew older, I developed coping mechanisms besides the invisibility. And when I first stopped eating, and discovered the feeling of euphoria that goes with it, it seemed like a godsend. A powerful drug that could help take my pain away. I have since learned that anorexia is an addiction. I have been told that the very act of fasting can release endorphins in your brain, making you feel better. At the time, I didn't know that. I just knew that I felt better. I felt more in control. I felt less scared. And I never, ever, ever felt like I was going to risk death from my addiction. Maybe others - maybe Karen Carpenter. Not me. I was in control. By the time it recurred, when I was in my 30s, I knew I was not in control. But I could no longer help myself. I needed the fix to ease the pain.
Anorexia is a frightening disease. It frightened those around me who cared about me, and saw me wasting away. It frightened my doctor, who was trying desperately to bring me out of it, to help me. It frightened my son, who couldn't figure out why Mommy didn't eat. It frightened me, once I realized I was no longer in control of it. It was in control of me. My efforts to be in control of something, anything, in my life had backfired. I was once again out of control.
When you're anorexic, people say the strangest things. I can't possibly count up the number of women who said to me that they wished they had my problem. They were attractive, intelligent, successful women. They didn't feel good about themselves, and thought they would feel better if they were anorexic. I wanted to shake them. I wanted to shout at them. I wanted to tell them about the nightmare that anorexia becomes once you get past the initial euphoria and realize you are on a rollercoaster ride to death. A slow, lingering painful death. I wanted to let them know how obsessed I was with food, how I thought about food almost constantly. Somehow, it becomes a belief in the minds of those around you that you can stop, if you just wanted to. You only want attention. You are self-centered and vain. Very few people ever see the sinister core of a life that is out of control and needing to ease the pain and fear.
I will always remember those around me during this dark and dreadful time. I have been one of the lucky ones. I survived, I recovered. I am now healthy and well-nourished, and there is as yet no evidence of permanent damage. I had a remarkable therapist, who maintained his patience with me, and never gave up on me. I had Ken Shade, who listened and cared and worried. I had my son, who would sometimes give me a quizzical look, and ask some profound question that would point plainly to the total ridiculousness of the world. I had my intellect and my strength. I returned to school, completed a master's degree, and am now close to completion on my doctorate. I found out who I was, and developed a separate existence for myself. In a totally surprising development, I found out that I like who I am (well, there are things I would change - but overall, I don't find much reason to hate myself anymore). I met a wonderful, very special man whom I realized was my soulmate, and we have now been married for four years. The happiness we feel together is something I could never experience until I was able to find happiness alone. I have, indeed, been one of the lucky ones.
For a decade now, I have spoken of this only seldom. I have never discussed it at this level of detail. I have never shared my experience in the totality of the fear and pain. I have felt ashamed, embarrassed and stigmatized. Now, I hold my head up, stand up tall, and hold out my hand. I stand before you, my life naked and vulnerable, and let you see the scars. I am invisible no longer. But I will admit, I am often still afraid. And that's OK.
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