Eventually, the inevitable break-up discussion was coming to an end and while I was collected and composed on the outside, she writhed, twisted and fought with me from the inside. I had failed yet again and it tore me up from the inside out.
As I was driven home that evening, a strange transition occurred and when I finally stepped out of the car, I was now someone else entirely. Something had changed profoundly, though I didn’t know it at the time. The conversion was a hushed one; it was delicate and so soft that I had not noticed it. Nevertheless, a metamorphosis had most certainly occurred. It took only moments but in those darkening flashes of time, I no longer stood as a full person. I had evolved into something more complex, something darker. A double-register seemed to form in my mind. From that point on, everything I would see, hear, touch or believe would be registered twice; once by me and then once by her, that darkness inside me.
In hindsight, it had taken many years for my bulimia to develop and it was the consequence of both my personal disposition and a series of rather unfortunate occurrences. Its roots lay in the deepest earth and stretched so far into me that I had grown with it, alongside it, even in it. It did not form in this moment alone of course; let us not lose our grip on reality just yet. No, its foundations had been laid long before this. It would be after this moment, however, that I – that we – would go on to make some of the most devastating choices in my life to date.
The Fast
The process of making the choices I did was an easy one. They were given little thought for consequence and as such were decided upon rather quickly. As long as my goals could be met in a speedy fashion, nothing else mattered. It was a time that allowed little scope for self-reflection. My vision for such things had become greatly impaired; my grasp on exactly who or what I was could no longer be easily defined. Perhaps I just didn’t want to probe that deeply. If I did, I ran the risk of finding nothing. That would have been unbearable.
It is here that I suppose we must ask a most inevitable question: is an eating disorder an uncontrollable disease or is it a chosen lifestyle? This question has been answered in many ways by close companions and by strangers whom I have witnessed debating it through, usually with little knowledge or empathy for the condition itself. I’m sure most would contend the former and so would I to a large extent. It’s difficult for me to believe that I chose this for myself, particularly when it has caused such trauma both to my own well-being and the people around me. At the same time, however, there is always at least an element of choice in such things. Mostly, it feels that though my bulimia was indeed a selected path, it was not I who made the decision. It was made by a determined alter-ego who had by this stage almost consumed me completely. I was at her mercy and as briefly touched upon earlier, I wanted to be. Attempting to for ever control yourself and everything in your life is a very exhausting endeavour. In a sense, I chose to hand over the reins and let her make the necessary decisions that I simply couldn’t bring myself to do. It felt like a wonderfully natural way of going about things and allowed me to alleviate myself from the responsibility of having to ponder over such matters. As a result, the entire transition from the person I’d known before to the person I had become remains a very blurry one and ultimately lost through the distortions of time.
I do, however, remember the day I started a new fad diet. It was only days after the aforementioned evening. More than anything else, I felt an unwavering sense of urgency as if something terrible was sure to occur if I did not begin this diet immediately. To use the term anxious would surely have been an understatement in this case. I was a ball of nerves. The criticality of the moment seemed to swell up inside me until I felt like I was going to choke under the immediacy of what needed to be done. It wasn’t too difficult coaxing my parents into allowing me start it; they had seen me cry over my physical appearance more times than they should have in my life and thought this may finally put a halt to my unyielding insecurities. The diet was simple; I drank three prescribed milkshakes a day and nothing else for a period of two weeks. The challenge of it was less daunting than it should have been, given I had reached a point of sheer desperation. I would have done anything. But by my fourth day of not eating I began to feel the strain of it. It’s around this time that your body slips into a process called ‘ketosis’. I never could get my head around its scientific idiosyncrasies and won’t bore you with them now. What it meant for me, on a very basic level, was that I became extremely lethargic. Though I continued taking the shakes as required, as well as drinking up to two litres of water a day, I just could not find the energy to do very much at that time. My body was heavy and sluggish. I seemed to feel the weight of it more than I ever had before. It was more than just a mere awareness of my own limbs and muscles. It was as if I was trapped within myself. My mind – which before now had seemed capable to venture outside this body and into any earthly or otherwise crevice – was now firmly confined within the boundaries of it. And I thought of nothing else for those two weeks.
‘It will be worth it’, she told me again and again. For the sake of mild discomfort in such a short period of time, I wouldn’t fail so haphazardly. This was easy, I told myself. And I pitied all the people who, like me, were currently endeavouring to lose weight and going about it at a slow or modest approach. I knew that they were doing so because they did not have the discipline I did, nor the commitment. They couldn’t really want it, not the way I did. Otherwise, they would do as I was and would be more successful.
But nobody is like us. Nobody can do what we can. They’re just not that strong, she reminded me.
The two-week diet came and went at an extraordinary pace. In hindsight, it wasn’t even all that difficult to do. Though I wasn’t consuming any food or beverages, I had enjoyed what I came to see as the luxury of those milkshakes. It wasn’t much but it was sustenance nonetheless. I wasn’t aware of what I was capable of doing to my body then and felt a temporary sense of accomplishment. But looking back now, I was naive and in the greater scheme of things, had only just touched the tip of a most complex iceberg. Nevertheless, I was satisfied at the time. In those two weeks I lost in the region of about 13lbs and coasted on an evanescent high of exaltation. It was about more than simply being physically lighter. I felt psychologically lighter, as if someone had finally set a match to all the cumbersome wax in my head and it was melting away, drip by drip. The somewhat superficial benefits helped too. I now had the freedom to dress in a way I couldn’t before, to carry myself differently and to a certain extent, even behave differently.
For that very brief period in time, I seemed to reign as any other Queen Bee. From the inner workings of my mind, a hive formed. It was a sacred place and so intricately enclosed, so meticulously encased that it was my mine and mine alone. No one knew it existed. This was how to best preserve this hive inside me, as I knew that even the gentlest whisper could threaten it and it would surely crumble. Inside this place, in the safety of its impenetrable walls, I came alive and drowned in its sacrosanct honey. I sat on a throne of my own making and she, who had always dwelled in the changing shadows of my life, played the power beneath it. She was happy to do so, as always. While I savoured my time atop this throne and revelled in superficial attention and compliments, she churned and laboured relentlessly. You see, more than anything else, she now saw and understood the greater possibilities. It had only been a mere two weeks. But with those two weeks came new ideas. It was clear to both us after those two weeks that I had potential we’d never dreamed of. Before I could conquer the world, I had to conquer myself. After a two-week fast, suddenly this was possible.
***
I am 13 years old. I know most teenagers are known to have very bad skin but mine is exceptionally horrific. I’ve had acne on my face since I was very young and it just seems to get worse and worse as I get older. When I was ten years old, a boy ran up to me in the yard and told me that there’s a solution for pe
ople like me called Clearasil Complete and ran back to his friends laughing. But I’m not sure how long I had acne before then. That’s the earliest memory I have about my skin and I don’t like to think about it all that much anyway. Mum always says that this happens to everyone, but I don’t ever remember this with my older brother or sister. My sister Natalie, in particular, has had perfect skin her entire life. I’ve never seen a blemish or mark anywhere on her face. I got the worst parts of the gene pool and both she and I know it.
I pleaded with Mum to do something to help me. We went to the doctor and I was given Minocin, a prescription drug to help clear my skin. I’ve been taking it for quite some time now. My skin is better, but still not perfect. Sometimes I look in the mirror, very closely at my face, and I wonder what it would be like if I could simply take a few layers of it away. I imagine taking a scalpel to one of my ears and carving a very definite line from one ear to the other, all along my jaw. From there, I would peel back the top layer of skin, then the second and then the third, until all my acne was gone and my face could heal under a new blanket of immaculate parchment. I would never do it though. I get weak at the sight of blood and would undoubtedly faint once the smell of it hit my nostrils. But the temptation is there. Quite often, I get angry at the sight of my own face. In all its hideousness, I think it looks like a mistake and in many ways, I wish I could punish it for looking so grotesquely unnatural. I wonder if other people have these thoughts; if they look at themselves as I do, see a monster looking back at them and pray that one day, they’ll be strong enough to kill that monster forever.
Maybe it’s just my mood. I’ve been feeling terrible of late, like I’ve been sucked into a vacuum of complete sadness and I can’t pull myself out no matter how hard I try. I suppose, I’ve started to give up on trying anyway. My family have noticed it too and keep passing comments like, ‘You seem very down lately.’ If only they knew how bad it has really gotten. Mum is keeping a very close eye on me; she watches everything I do now and I feel like I’m just waiting for one big explosion to happen. I’m not surprised she’s so concerned though. I have been having a lot of trouble with the girls in my class. Mum says they’re bullies and was in the school last week talking to my teacher about it. They don’t understand it’s my own fault though. If I wasn’t such a teacher’s pet and a know-it-all, then the girls would like me. I try really hard to say things I know they want to hear but it doesn’t help make me popular. If anything, it seems to make things worse. They recently found out that I told on them because Mum contacted the school. Last week, a girl hit me in the face and said, ‘Now go tell your mummy that!’ and Mum went back to the school about it. I heard her and my teacher talking about everything that’s been happening. I overheard something about calling the Gardaí into it. I hope that doesn’t happen because I just want to forget everything. But now Mum won’t let me out of her sight.
She can see that something is wrong with me. I always knew that something wasn’t right about me and now everyone else knows too. I am crying in my room and she bursts through the door. She asks me what’s wrong but I don’t tell her because I can’t. I cry a lot now and I don’t know why. When I look in the mirror, I always need to cry even more. She starts going on about the Minocin drug; I don’t know what she’s talking about. Eventually, she says it has a great deal of side effects that she didn’t want to tell me about. She knew how upset I would be if I wasn’t allowed take them and didn’t want to scare me. She mentions something about damage to my liver and other serious sounding things. But what I hear over everything else is the word ‘depression’. The drugs can make you depressed. I was depressed and this was part of the reason why. It was why I had been crying so often and why Mum had been observing me so closely. It can’t be easy being my mother. I would hate to have a daughter like me and I know my sadness and inability to be like everyone else must break her heart. If I could just be normal, her life would surely be a great deal easier.
I cry even harder now, not even trying to hold anything back. Mum fusses and shouts and tells me that I’m not to take the tablets anymore. She tells me I’ll feel better soon, once they’re out of my system. But I don’t think so, I feel like it’s too late now. It’s as if this ‘depression’ is in my bloodstream now and I don’t need the tablets to keep it alive anymore. I’ve seen the monster and now I’m sure of its potential. Had I not seen the existence of that monster in me, I would have never known its many possibilities. But now that I’ve seen it, I know it will be with me for ever.
***
Everyone interprets the word ‘possibility’ in their own distinct way and thus we are all aware of its presence in both our own lives and the lives of others. But it is only when it is cast into the realm of reality that we truly start to believe in its might. The power of possibility champions only when it becomes an actuality in our daily living. As a child, I never knew I was capable of succumbing to such devouring sadness. But once experienced, I knew that such a feeling had the potential to be there always and that even without feeling its existence in every waking moment, it was always possible thereafter. Equally, my bulimia required only the realisation of this word to come to full strength. It was unlikely that I would conquer myself in the manner I so desperately wanted to, but it was now possible. This was all my bulimia needed.
It only took a matter of weeks for this idea to gain authority and I consciously endeavoured to resist food whenever possible. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe I could lose weight through the usual methods of exercise and a modest diet; I knew this to be true, if not by my own standards obviously then by those of others. But the momentum of these tried and tested exertions just wasn’t enough. They couldn’t fill that growing void of nothingness nor satisfy the imposing hunger I felt. Such ventures required endurance, moderation and above all, patience. I seemed to have none of these characteristics. I’m convinced now that I can endure quite a lot but without a visible goal to light my path. More often than not, my commitment will falter and of course, this was the case with most of my weight-loss attempts prior to this time.
Moderation is another facet under which my character falls short. Friends often joke about my somewhat extremist nature. The truth of this only became apparent as I got older. Though it may seem altogether passionate and the trait of a rather romantic individual, my undeniable lack of moderation has proven to be one of my biggest obstacles in life. Whether in relation to my career, my finances, my relationships or indeed my varying pursuits for perfection; my natural tendency to go from one extreme to the other has often left me troubled, weary and completely heartbroken. It has proven to be one of the most self-destructive characteristics I showcase as a person and made the transition into my illness worryingly easy and almost comfortable.
This trait is closely linked with my inability to be patient. Time cannot contend with the speed of the human mind and the rate at which it manifests its brightest and most powerful ideas. It moves too slowly for that. Furthermore, I come from a generation of great velocity, in which everything is carried out at an exceptionally accelerated level. The importance of now is regarded above any other period it seems. Like most of my generation, I have always made huge demands on that ‘now’ and actually go as far as being shocked when such demands cannot be met efficiently. If time wouldn’t wait for me, then I resolved to never wait for it.
‘Losing weight takes time,’ people told me. I would take nothing from time I decided, not when it already gave so little away. Some time was required of course, but I would insist it was minimal.
Skipping breakfast was effortless, as I had never really eaten in the morning anyway. During a number of diets, I forced myself to eat something healthy before the day kicked off; usually a fruit salad or very complicated dish I read about somewhere. Even then, I hated eating breakfast. The irony is, I have always seen myself as a morning person and was never able to sleep much later than about 9.00 am. But for all my claims o
f being a sunny person when first out of bed, apparently my stomach could never quite keep up. Consequently, it was a tremendous relief to consciously decide against food in the mornings. More importantly, it went unnoticed. I was never expected to eat breakfast because I never had and saw that part of my day as somewhat of a free pass.
The rest of my day would prove rather difficult without the milkshakes, or so it seemed at the time. Looking at that time now, I had it easy. If ever I tried to skip a meal now, more than likely, it would be a most futile labour; all my family and closest friends know about my bulimia and would make it impossible for me to do so. But again, we’re racing ahead of ourselves now and best keep to the matter at hand. At that point, they were in the dark about the illness and I was too. So I suppose, I had a substantial degree of freedom. A simple, ‘I already ate’, would usually suffice for a while.
My family has never really been one functioning unit. We tended to unite only in crisis, like when a loved one died and a funeral would follow or when my sister and I fought. But in general, we were simply a collection of five individuals who happened to be tied every now and again by this notion of blood. We slept, worked and operated all at different times and would, in a sense, merely bump into one another along our daily journeys. My father was a labourer who toiled more than he rested and was almost always in the National Rehabilitation Hospital, where he worked. My mother, the binding gel of this collection of parties, appeared to live on another planet most of the time. From working part-time to managing finances, shopping and the overall upkeep of the household, she lived in a world I was happy to be ignorant to. My older brother and sister were both employed and living the usual lifestyles of twenty-somethings, in one way or another. With a new son on the way and his desperation to lay down solid roots, my brother Peter featured very little in this time of my life and lived an hour’s drive away from the family home. In the context of my bulimia alone, what all this meant was that we never ate dinner together. The concept of all these people sitting down together united around a kitchen table to share food was, and still is, a foreign one.
My Secret Life Page 4