Purge

by Nicole Johns

  I want you to move halfway across the country and still not be able to forget.

  I want you to be ashamed of your body, to hide in sweatshirts and pajama pants.

  I want you to hate yourself.

  Oh, and another thing, I want you to have to go through the ordeal of filing a sexual harassment complaint. I want everyone to try and keep you quiet. I want you to have to tell your story a minimum of five times. I want you to turn fuchsia each time you tell it.

  I want the sexual harassment counselor to tell you how fucking mature you are because you are cooperating and keeping a secret when in reality you want to tell the whole school. I want you to be pressured into signing all the forms.

  I hope I never have to see you again. If I do, I will stare you down. You have no power over me now.

  So this is all I have to say for now. I’m done being scared and now I’m fucking pissed. You’re lucky we’re not in the same state because if I was, I’d slash the tires on your lame-ass Honda Civic.

  I’m done keeping secrets. I’m tired of taking one for the team and being the peacemaker. That’s not me. It never was. The cost of keeping quiet was too high.

  I’m done with you.

  —NICOLE

  As soon as I finish the last sentence, everyone shouts and exclaims that my letter is awesome. RC Allison is especially proud. She jumps out of her seat with a big smile on her face, and I think I detect tears in her eyes. Everyone hugs me. My anger has dissipated, at least for now.

  Later that day I talk to Rachel about how angry Psychodrama made me.

  “You made me feel like an alcoholic, and like what happened that night was my fault,” I say.

  “I want you to see that you aren’t helpless, that you have control over your life. I don’t want you to wallow in victimhood.”

  “I understand that, but you went about it the wrong way.”

  “You could have told me to stop; you have the power to do that.”

  “I didn’t think it worked like that,” I say.

  “The power is always yours,” says Rachel.

  I try not to hold a grudge against Rachel, but I have lost trust in her. I am skeptical of her methods, and of Psychodrama in general.

  Evoking Emotion

  IN THE UNEMOTIONAL

  Rachel thinks I have been avoiding the ropes course, that I am harboring a secret fear of heights (in reality, it has been a rainy summer, and Recreational Therapy has been indoors). She thinks that if she gets me up in the air, balancing across an inclined log with nothing to hold on to, my inner emotions will be evoked in this precarious state. Rachel wants me to feel vulnerable. I want to tell her to bring it on, that it will take much more than a jaunt up an inclined log thirty feet in the air to break me.

  Thursday comes around, and it’s time for this special session of Psychodrama on the ropes course, otherwise known as Get Nicole in Touch with Her Feelings Time. It’s a balmy August day, and not many of the residents come to this special Psychodrama (Psychotrauma), as they prefer to doze in the murky, arctic chill of the over-air-conditioned and dimly lit dayroom.

  Laura is here, though, as are Sarah, Danielle, Sandra, and some girls from the adolescent floor. When I begin my climb up the ladder to the inclined log, Rachel has the other residents shout negative things to me, such as “You aren’t good enough, you’re never going to make it, you’re gaining weight, you have no control.” This is supposed to represent my negative voice, the voice of EDNOS that often haunts my head. I tune the voices out and scamper nimbly up the ladder. I spent my childhood climbing trees, so the ladder climb is effortless.

  I reach the lower part of the inclined log and stand there for a second, as directed by Rachel.

  “How do you feel, Nicole?” she asks.

  “Strong, powerful,” I say.

  “Are you scared that you are up so high?”

  “No, it’s great; the view up here is amazing.”

  “Continue on, then.”

  I extend my arms out to the side for balance. I pretend I am ten years old again, walking across the balance beam at gymnastics practice, putting one foot in front of the other and holding my arms out gracefully. I make it easily to the middle of the log, where Rachel has me stop again.

  “How are you doing, Nicole?”

  “Absolutely lovely.”

  “How do you feel?”

  “Graceful and strong.”

  “Continue on.”

  The sky is azure, there are no puffy cumulus clouds to interrupt this bright blueness, and I am in my own world, high above everything. I want to do an arabesque on the log, but I think that will push Rachel over the edge, so instead I prance my way to the high end of the log. Once I’m there, Rachel has me stop and reflect again.

  “How did you feel walking across that log with nothing to hold on to?” she asks.

  “I felt strong and secure, and like I was suspended above the world. I felt serene.”

  “You have very good balance; I’m assuming this is from your years of gymnastics and ballet?”

  “Yes.”

  Rachel had forgotten about my dance background. She likes to bring up that I have perfect posture, and that I don’t have to be perfect. I wonder if she is advising me to slump, so I turn into an imperfect hunchback. I know that Rachel means no harm, and that she wants to help me get in touch with my emotions and mourn the loss and pain of my past. By breaking me down, she would be able to do that, but I won’t let her. I can’t let my guard down, and I can’t let go. I have seen what happens when I am vulnerable, and I don’t trust Rachel after my psychodrama.

  An Exercise

  IN COMBATING MY PERFECTIONISM AND SUPPOSED OCD

  I told Therapist Elaine that my graduate school GPA is a 4.0, and she suspects that I have some perfectionist tendencies. Then there is the vacuum cleaner incident. I am vacuuming Laura’s side of our room when her sheet gets stuck in the vacuum and starts a minor fire. When I realize the vacuum cleaner is effectively broken, I demand that I be allowed to borrow Second Floor’s vacuum so I can finish my side of the room. RC Evan challenges me to leave half of my room unvacuumed as an exercise in challenging my obsessive-compulsive disorder, which he diagnoses me with at that moment.

  “I think you might have some OCD tendencies,” says Evan, suppressing a smile.

  “I do not have fucking OCD, I’m just organized,” I shout. “Why do you pathologize everything?”

  I have been in treatment long enough to know that I am not going to get Second Floor’s vacuum cleaner, no matter how much I beg, cry, or scream. I decide that if I am going to be treated like a mental patient, I might as well act like one, so I pitch a fit. I run down the hall screaming that all I want to do is vacuum my room, that Evan is a smug asshole, and that I most definitely do not have OCD; everyone knows odd numbers are disconcerting and everyone organizes the contents of their closet by color. All I want to do is vacuum my room. Evan asks me if I realize how immature I am acting, and I respond by throwing both my slippers at him. He pitches my slippers off the deck and onto the shore of the hospital lake that we have all dubbed Lake Bulimia because of the slimy, bright green algae blooms that cover the surface. Later, I sneak upstairs and smuggle the Second Floor vacuum to my room. This act solidifies Evan’s belief that I have OCD, and he leaves Therapist Elaine a message about the vacuum cleaner incident.

  Elaine concocts a therapy mega-assignment to address my negative body image, perfectionism, and OCD. Eliza is assigned the task of picking out a mismatched outfit for me to wear the next day, since this will help her conquer her passivity. I am to have no say in what I am wearing, and I have to wear the outfit all day.

  Eliza comes to my room after dinner and searches through my closet and drawers, trying to put together a completely mismatched outfit. Because I don’t wear much other than solid-colored shirts and jeans, Eliza has a hard time finding items that clash. Eventually she decides I am to wear my tan Guess tennis shoes, one black sock and one navy
blue sock, my light blue paisley pajama pants with my knee-length jean skirt over them, and a black belt. I am also to wear a red long-sleeved shirt with a black tank top over it. I am fine until Eliza tells me I can’t wear a bra.

  I am to wear the outfit the entire next day, no matter how uncomfortable I am. I find relief in knowing that we are not scheduled to go on an outing—only the other residents will see me at my mismatched finest.

  Then Recreational Therapist Douglas announces we are going to Barnes & Noble. I start crying and threaten not to go, so Laura says she will go mismatched as well so I won’t feel quite so awkward. Laura wears a blue sundress with a long-sleeved black shirt underneath, and a pair of pajama pants. We roam Barnes & Noble together, two mismatched mental patients on an outing from the institution.

  Revelations

  “Nicole, you have an eating disorder.”

  “Oh my god, Holly, RC Julia says I have an eating disorder!”

  “I’m just here for summer camp,” says Holly.

  We talk about making shirts with CAMP TURTLE POND FOR THE NUTRITINALLY CHALLENGED printed on them, but we don’t get around to it.

  Extended Metaphors

  “This obstacle course symbolizes the road to recovery, with many pitfalls, wrong turns, and traps along the way,” says Recreational Therapist Douglas.

  “Your task is to direct your blindfolded partner through the obstacle course. If they step on a trap or make a wrong turn, they have encountered a setback or relapse. You can’t help your partner unless they ask for help.”

  Holly blindfolds me and shouts out directions when I ask. I step on a few traps and relapse. Douglas tells me to “use my voice” and ask for help. I think this is a lame exercise, and I am tired of extended metaphors for recovery. After participating in my second extended-metaphor-for-recovery exercise, everything was drilled into my head. Use my voice. Ask for help. A relapse isn’t the end of the world.

  Douglas notices my bad attitude and asks if I want to talk about what is bothering me. I tell him no. No one in the group can understand why I hate extended-metaphor exercises so much. I think it’s because I’ve been here too long.

  Fortunately, Douglas gives us a break during our next Recreational Therapy and decides to drive us to Half-Price Books for an outing. The syllabus for my Reading Nonfiction: The Memoir class has just arrived in the mail. I pore over the list and decide I will buy as many of the books as possible at Half-Price Books so I can read them before school starts.

  Armed with my list, I charge into the store, frantically looking for Sartre’s The Words, Andre Aciman’s Out of Egypt, Joan Didion’s Where I Was From, and Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude.

  The store is disorganized, and all I can find is Paul Auster’s The Invention of Solitude and Sartre’s The Words. I track down RC Maria and ask her to help me look for books, but we can’t find any more. How am I supposed to get my reading done? I am low on money since I haven’t worked all summer, so I don’t want to pay full cover price for these books, which I will have to do if I buy them from Barnes & Noble. I begin to panic. Everyone else in the class will have read the books. I will be behind. Everyone will think I am a lackluster and lazy student.

  The other residents have bought psychology books (we are all trying to figure ourselves out) and murder mysteries. Holly buys books only if they have a pink and girlie cover. Laura has bought a slew of new serial-killer biographies that will be confiscated back at the EDC.

  Everyone rolls their eyes at my purchases. They aren’t surprised. I am one of the few residents who have not had to drop out of school because of their eating disorder. Therapist Elaine has posed the theory that school is my identity and that I am too wrapped up in it. I counter that it’s healthier for school to be my identity than for me to identify myself purely as an eating-disordered person. I try to explain that I’m a graduate student and am passionate about writing, which makes me an eating-disordered scholar. Therapist Elaine says she understands that, but she thinks I take my perfectionism with school to the extreme. She is not the only person who has told me this, but I don’t want to think about the consequences of her remark, so I banish it from my mind.

  Sitting at the back table that evening, I am scrawling almost illegible scribbles in my journal while listening to Tori Amos’s Little Earthquakes. I become aware of someone hovering over me, and when I look up, I see RC Evan mouthing something. I remove my headphones and hear him tell me to slow down, relax—I’m getting worked up. Step away from the pen and notebook.

  “Look at how you’re gripping your pen,” he says. My fingers are clenched in an angry ball around my black-ink Bic (I write with black ink only; blue is too bright). “Why don’t you come into the office and talk to me about what’s going on?” says Evan. He doesn’t understand that I can’t talk about what is bothering me. I cannot verbalize the stream of ramblings that seemingly pour out of my pen and onto my journal pages. This is a purge substitute. I am purging the thoughts, memories, and voices that pollute my mind. I am purging the voice of my eating disorder, even if only temporarily.

  The staff at the EDC feels that writing is my safe zone. They want to challenge me to express myself in different ways, such as painting, drawing, or other artistic forms. In high school, I loved painting class. I reveled in color and texture, but I could create only abstract paintings, or paintings that incorporated text. During Art Therapy at the EDC, I have the same problem, except I can’t even do abstract paintings (staff says I can, just that my self-imposed standards are too high). Everyone challenges me to leave the realm of words and surrender to the realm of the abstract, but I cannot let go.

  Prelude to Anger management

  It’s s July, and I’m angry all the time. I started this slow burn in mid-June, after my parents flew to Wisconsin to visit, and now I am up to fever pitch, slamming doors and scribbling furiously and illegibly in my journal. I have a bad attitude and take out my anger on Recreational Therapist Douglas when he has us play a Twelve-Steps game (I don’t have a higher power, and this seems to be a problem). When we do a symbolic extended-metaphor exercise in Psychodrama, I tell Rachel that I am sick of extended metaphors and that they’re stupid.

  Between dinner and evening snack, I lock myself in the conference room at the end of the hall because it’s the most private place on the floor. It has a glass door, so anyone can see in, but at least it’s soundproof and has a lock. I sit in the conference room and journal while listening to Dido if I want to calm down or Tori Amos if I’m feeling sorry for myself. If I’m feeling nostalgic and missing Pennsylvania, or just want to cry in general, I listen to the Tom Petty Wildflowers album and the tears drip off the end of my nose and smear the ink in my journal.

  I need solitude to cry. I hate crying in front of the group, and I literally can’t. But in the conference room I can sob as I journal, write letters, and finish my autobiography. Of course, someone inevitably checks up on me. Usually it is RC Julia. The other RCs, figuring that crying is therapeutic, leave me to my own devices. Julia knows better. Her shadow falls over the glass door, and I know she is there before she knocks. If I am crying, she will tell me I need to be around others and I need to get a snack (I usually attempt to hide in the conference room during evening snack time). I will protest that I’m not hungry and just want to be alone, but she will coax me out to the dayroom, where I’ll curl up on a sofa with Eliza or Holly and snuffle, or fall asleep after eating a Cheerios bar.

  The anger spirals into sadness.

  Therapist Elaine wants to know about the anger, and I tell her I don’t know why, I’m just angry all the time, at everything. She asks me to explore that “everything.” When it is clear that my anger has reached a fever pitch, Elaine tells me we’re going to try something different from traditional therapy. There will be no sitting on the sofa in the conference room, wrapped in my afghan. I am to come dressed for walking in the woods.

  Anger Management

  I meet Therapist Elaine
in the RC office. She’s wearing khakis, sandals, a long-sleeved shirt, and a jean jacket. I’m wearing capri pants, a T-shirt, and sandals. Elaine is holding a can of bug spray. I’m intrigued. We go downstairs to the kitchen, and Elaine requests a plastic bag filled with ice cubes. We walk out of the EDC and toward a path that leads to one of the lakes. This summer I have learned that Wisconsin has more lakes than Minnesota.

  “I want you to think about everything that is making you angry, whether it is major or minor,” says Elaine.

  We trudge down the path and are assailed by a swarm of blood-hungry mosquitoes. Hard, white, itchy welts appear all over my feet, and I swat at the mosquitoes, but it does no good. Elaine lends me her jacket to cover my arms; even though it is eighty degrees, I wear it. There is something comforting about Elaine’s jacket; I feel protected and safe in it.

  Elaine and I coat ourselves in a sheen of bug spray while she tells me that I am to throw the ice cubes into the lake. Each time I throw a handful, I am to yell something I am angry about. I like this idea. My bag of ice cubes goes like this:

  I am angry that I’ve gained weight.

  I am angry that I’m spending my summer in treatment.

  I am angry that I have no control over anything in my life.

  I hate Dietitian Caroline because I’m gaining weight and she doesn’t care.

  I’m angry that I’ve wasted so much time thinking about calories, weight, and food.

  I’m angry that I have heart problems at age twenty-three.

  I hate my body.

  I hate Minnesota.