My Secret Life

by Leanne Waters

  There is a misconception that anorexia and bulimia are the same thing. They’re not. To a certain extent, I’ve often wondered if one exists without the other, as both retain similar behaviours. But I would never refer to myself as anorexic, mostly because I have never looked anorexic. A poor reason to define one’s illness but it’s just how my head works or at least did for a very long time. The truth is, bulimics such as myself tend to be an average weight. I lost and regained in the region of about 50lbs within a matter of two to three months. This pattern continued over and over again for two years. But I never slipped too much below average weight or indeed above.

  In this way, bulimia satisfied all it needed to internally but never showed so much as to land me in hospital or worse, in trouble with the people around me. Evidently, it all came out eventually. That goes without saying. Before that, however, it enabled me to live a dual life in absolute secrecy. Of all eating disorders, bulimia is one of the most invisible. She was my invisible self and together we lived a hidden life. She taught me to be a master of secrecy and I had never felt so empowered as when with her. It was the perfect illusion.

  I cannot put a cap on this era in my life. It’s impossible to say when an eating disorder begins unless rooted in a particular trauma which, as we have ascertained, was not the case with me. In terms of behaviours, my habitual tendencies had begun to change around the age of 17. I would have moments of weakness that led to episodes of vomiting but they were few and far between. It was vomiting, not purging. What made me note this distinction, I don’t know. But I never saw it as anything more than a ‘once-off’ occurrence that coincidently occurred more than just once. It was not until I had turned 18 that I started really hearing her in my head and more importantly, that I started listening. Christmas was on the horizon and, refusing to straddle behind the game even before the gluttonous season itself began, I vowed to make use of the new gym pass that lay in a drawer beside my bed. Finding the motivation wasn’t difficult when reminiscing on childhood emotions and events, as we have briefly touched upon.

  I had not known what it was to look forward to sports days in school, or to wear a belly top and pretend to be the given pop star of the time. Rather, I was the very poster girl for obesity in children. Unable to run very fast or for very long, I dreaded physical activities in school with tremendous angst; often claiming to be sick or, in the case of an annual sports day, not even turn up. And so, despite the very concept of exercise resurrecting haunting memories of a fat girl lagging behind and forever being picked last, I charmed myself into entering a gym.

  ‘Mum, have I put on weight?’ I asked my mother one day.

  ‘Oh Leanne, I don’t know.’ She sighed. It was the usual sigh that had been present since I first started wanting to lose weight as a child. Having been slender her entire life, my mother didn’t understand my concerns. She tried to sympathise. But more often than not, she was exasperated by the very concept.

  ‘It’s okay to be honest, I don’t care. Just tell me.’ I contested.

  ‘Alright, fine. Yes, you’ve put on a little weight. But sure, you just need to exercise more and eat properly. I’ll never understand this weight obsession with girls today.’

  It was all the incentive I needed. If Mum had noticed a weight gain, surely everyone else had too and were trying to spare my feelings. I would not be the victim of their pity. I would not allow myself be seen as a failure. This thought in mind, I was slightly less encumbered on my first day in the gym. Instead, I was consumed by an unparalleled feeling of determination. Moments into my first workout, however, I felt that I had been humiliated even before my inevitable scarlet cheeks had time to flourish. Instantly, I tried to make excuses for my failure. I had not worn the correct clothing, so it was impossible to exercise properly. I had not fully clipped my hair back and therefore my fringe was sticking to my forehead. Had I eaten a meal before I came to the gym? Of course I had; that’s why I was getting cramps. And everyone knows you simply can’t exercise if you have a cramp.

  Yet for all my justifications, I could not drown out that small voice at the back of my mind. Lies, she whispered. Lies. Her voice was all too familiar and not easily ignored. Upon brief consideration, I realised she was right and crumbled internally; not only for my inability to perform physically, but also for my attempt to excuse such a failure. The transition from my former state to the latter was a quiet one and took only moments. Yet its consequences were felt deeply and most severely. I left the gym and my zealous ambitions behind me and walked home.

  Humility is something I have a lot of. Today, I relate it to the humbleness that rests with every thought I contrive, every word I utter and every breath I take. It is laced in my skin and is something that keeps my feet grounded to the earth when required. It acts as a prerequisite to everything I do and even keeps me firmly in touch with that inner self that people so often lose under pressure or when tested. The humility I possess today is a result of a practised exploration of thought, feeling and motivation. It was once, however, related to sheer mortification and nothing more. I have been humiliated more times than my pride would care to admit. The consequences of this make moments of embarrassment such as that detailed above all the more significant and all the more deeply felt. The shame that attaches itself to humiliation has never been easy to bear for me.

  ***

  I am very young. Every year for Halloween, my sister and I dress up as witches. My mum is very good at making a witch’s costume. But this year we don’t want to be witches, witches are boring now. My sister, Natalie, is dressed up as an Arabian princess. Her hair is long and silky and she’s wearing make-up. I’m not allowed wear make-up because I’m too little. As the Arabian princess looks for her trick-or-treat bag, I put on my own costume. I am a dice. You know that thing you roll in board games? That’s me. I’m in a cardboard box painted white with black spots on it. My mum has cut out holes for my head and arms. My legs are awkwardly manoeuvring somewhere down below, but I can’t see them.

  All limbs through the correct cut-outs, I proudly turn around to say goodbye to my mum. The blood rushes to my face. Natalie is looking at me through watery eyes and wearing a dangerous smile. She and her friends begin to laugh uncontrollably and I want to cry. I am humiliated. I clumsily rotate to Mum, whose eyes have fallen on my puce-red face with irrevocable pity and what looks like guilt. I want to yell at her for convincing me to be a dice. I want to tear away her painted box and stamp on it. I do neither of these things. To drown out the now hysterical laughter I would have to shout. If I do that, my voice will crack and I’ll flush into tears. Instead, I wince at my mother and move out the front door in a sideways shuffle.

  Natalie is supposed to trick-or-treat with me but she’s walking with her older friends. I don’t mind; I’m glad to be away from them. I have found several other children from the housing estate. I don’t know them but they let me walk near the circle so it appears I’m not by myself.

  I see the silhouette of our neighbour on his bike in the yellow streetlight. He’s one year older than me but thinks he’s too old to trick-or-treat. I don’t like him. He cycles by me as I try to keep up with the other children. It’s difficult in my box because the cardboard is rubbing off my underarms and my bag is heavy with sweets, popcorn, and chocolate. The other children don’t want me to walk with them anyway, so they walk very fast.

  He cycles by me and chants, ‘Leanne the pan, the big fat man!’ He’s been singing that for as long as I can remember. He glides past me again, this time making me spill some of my goodies from my bag. I hear laughing and see that the older boys – older than Natalie – are watching from across the street. I don’t want to trick-or-treat anymore. I abandon my sweets scattered on the ground and carry myself and my bag up the street to my house. The big boys are still watching and I can feel their gaze sizzling on the back of my head.

  I can hear the chain on his bike gettin
g closer. He’s cycling very fast. He knows I can’t cycle without my stabilisers and he likes to show off. He’s getting very close now. I try to walk faster but the box is starting to rub against my neck and my underarms are stinging. He starts chanting again and I begin to cry.

  He cycles by again, this time even closer and says ‘Whoooosh!’ The next time he circles around I start to run. I don’t care about my trick-or-treat bag anymore. I want to go home, away from the big boys and away from the boy on his bike with no stabilisers. I can hear his chain roaring up behind me now and I start to plead with the cold air in front of me to please stop him. Just as I let out a desperate moan from the lump in my throat, I hear the big boys laughing and before I know it, his bike pedal catches the back of my heel.

  I scream and fall to the ground. My head doesn’t slide out of my mother’s cutting at the top of the box, but instead gets stuck halfway and I can taste cardboard and paint in my mouth. The palms of my hands are bleeding and I feel gravel bits falling off when I try to move them. I can’t get up because the box is too big.

  Suddenly I start crying hysterically and am ashamed of myself. I am ashamed because I screamed when I fell and now I’m crying. I know the big boys can see me and though at a distance, I can still hear the bike chain buzzing somewhere behind. I want to crawl into my mother’s box and never come out again. I don’t care that my underarms are stinging anymore or that my trick-or-treat bag is on the ground. I am no longer a dice. I am a girl in a big box and all I want to do is disappear in it.

  I have no option but to crawl out of the box. I pull my arms in first and then my head. I try to wipe the tears away from my eyes but it makes my hands sting even more. The boy is gone. ‘Look, look! There’s a girl in that block of cheese!’ shouts one of the big boys as I step out. I pick up my mother’s box and my near empty bag and walk home. I won’t tell Mum. I won’t tell her about him, my hands, or the big boys. And, above all else, I won’t tell her that they thought her dice was a block of cheese.

  ***

  The concept of humiliation, for me, has always been an illustrious element of my bulimia. Perhaps this is what has caused my now altered interpretation of it. The main reason for this is because it is something that my bulimia fed off throughout her persuasions. She used it to strip me down until there was nothing left. She would often dig deep to find either a moment or feeling of degradation in my past and succeed in applying it to my present. From there, an exchange of guilt and shame would take place. Until I would inevitably give in to her.

  It didn’t take her long to convince me to return to the gym. We both wanted it and knew above all else that we needed it. Suddenly, I was faced by what appeared to be a battleground. The question of dedicating myself to exercise was not – or at least no longer – about losing weight. It was rooted in the simple fact that I could and would do it. Not only would I do it, but I would be the best. I would be the fastest, the strongest, the person who could endure more than anyone else with whom I crossed paths. This was ambitious given the lack of exercise I had undertaken in recent years. But I found myself stuck on the word ‘endure’. I could endure anything and I would endure everything to get what I wanted.

  My return to the gym was not so horrific as I had envisaged. I worked through whatever humiliation I had created in my head and endeavoured to make use of what I saw as a terrible excuse for a human body. Being a smoker didn’t help. I found myself gasping for breath after a few minutes. The trouble wasn’t continuing on whilst panting and wheezing; it was hiding the evident exhaustion of my lungs from everyone else. It didn’t matter about how much pain I was in, that was a mere inconvenience. What mattered was that no one knew it. I struggled but could hear that old voice in my head saying, ‘Stop now and you know you won’t start again.’ It was never a voice of encouragement, not the kind that tells you you’re doing really well. It was one of utter disgust. I was terrified to let her down. If I did, she’d never let me forget it.

  I didn’t care about this nonsense of ‘warming up’ and doing stretches. Nor did I have any time for lifting weights or doing any form of resistance training. No, my concern was moving as fast as possible for as long as my body would allow. The more I moved, the harder I’d sweat and as each droplet rolled off, I imagined someone peeling away my skin, slice by thin slice. If enough could be peeled away, I would eventually be perfect. This was making me a better person. It was making us a better person. My breathing grew heavier and heavier and with every wheeze I suppressed, my lungs seemed to scrape against an invisible grater and tore away bit by bit. The girl jogging beside me seemed to do so effortlessly. She was a local girl whom I’d seen around town on more than one occasion. She was petite and slender and had a relaxed expression on her face, as if the gym was her home. She appeared to own both the room and more importantly, her own body. My body, on the other hand, was not my own. I would take one stride and it seemed the whole room thundered with the sound of my foot crashing down on the surface beneath it. It was as if I had no control over it or what it did.

  How could I have let myself get to this point? Was I not the very definition of discipline? Not looking like that, I heard that voice whisper. I would just have to put up with it. Amidst the occasional whispers, the pounding noise of my feet and the squeaking of my inner thighs as they rubbed off each other, I jogged and eventually sprinted until my knees began to buckle. I would not stop until that girl had gone. In my head, we were in a competition and she would just have to quit first. Eventually she did. She relinquished her workout, effortlessly dabbed her forehead with a neat towel and glided out of the room as if nothing had transpired. The audacity, I thought to myself. And in that moment, for no apparent reason other than the contorted justifications that lay somewhere in the abyss of my mind, I wished that girl every bad fortune. The next time I would see her, surely she would be as grossly overweight as I and would never again quit a competition as she had just done.

  We’re not that weak. It echoed around my head again and again. Not long after this, I finally went home with my body aching and muscles beating. It was glorious. For every ounce of pain or discomfort, I felt liberated and there was a sense of validation like never before. I could do this and I could do it well. Naturally, gym attendance increased after this episode. In a very short period of time, I had become a regular. And unlike most regulars, my attendance had escalated from three or four times weekly to daily. Every morning, I cycled to the gym before the sun even had time to wake up. It would only take 15 minutes or so but it was the best part of my day. I felt more at ease in those early morning hours than at any other time throughout my day. It was comforting to be so alone and I experienced a strange sense of authority knowing that as the world slept – or my very little world at least – I was awake, alert and active. Often I would prolong the journey ever so slightly by stopping at the end of my road, just as you came into the town. There was a quiet brilliance about the town when it was empty. The ground still seemed warm from the people who had previously bustled their way around it and buzzed in muted excitement for the coming day. More importantly though, on those dark mornings the town was mine and mine alone. It felt as though it lay at my mercy and was a part of my internal kingdom. I controlled everything on those morning cycles.

  My workouts would cease shortly before school began. They were relatively rigorous and generally finished with a swim. But it still felt insufficient. It wasn’t long before I would begin returning to the gym after school in the evenings. In many ways, it didn’t matter how much exercise I did, even if it was too much. Very rarely would a person say to you – or at least never was it said to me – that you are doing too much. More often than not, it went unnoticed in my case and on the rare occasion it was mentioned, I was congratulated on my hard work. And I cruised on this novelty for as long as possible.

  Looking back, I consider this time as the calm before the storm. The evanescent life before then had bee
n a time of planting seeds and while I trotted along, oblivious to the rapidly developing new mentality, roots had long since started to grow and stretch across the earth beneath me. The potential for such a disease to manifest had always been there and it was now coming to fruition, even if I didn’t know it at the time.

  It was around this point in my life that I started dating again. After a two-year relationship at far too young an age, I had enjoyed my single freedom as much as I could and lived my teenage life as one is expected; care-free and with little or no commitments. Though I reminisce on that first love with tremendous nostalgia and probably rose-tinted glasses, I was glad to be without a boyfriend at such a young age. But along with a changing mentality and growing insecurities, I had begun to crave constant reassurance. This emotional sanctuary was to be found in a local boy with whom before this point I had little or no connection. The son of someone I admired greatly, he appeared to have both the intellectual and emotional stimulation I coveted. The problem with young romances I have found is that they tend either to be incredibly nurturing or else terribly upsetting. There is no middle ground here and being as young as we are, people of my own age are near incapable of being able to judge a romance at the onset. Even still, I am only learning and doing so very slowly. This particular romance, as it would turn out, would be of the latter and would do more damage to my sensitive state than I could have ever imagined. It was impossible for me to know this at the time, however, and like all teenage girls I tactlessly launched my fragile feelings and all the weight they carried in at the deep end.

  It must appear now that I take myself rather seriously. To a large extent I do. But the importance of this romance is not measured in how I felt for the other party; it is rather measured in the effect it would have on my mental condition and how it acted almost as the catalyst to my bulimic behaviours.