My Secret Life

by Leanne Waters

  ‘You’ve lost quite a bit of weight since the last time you were weighed here.’ she finally said, indicating a recording of a little under 12 stone. I shuddered at the very sight of the figure.

  ‘Yeah, I went on a diet,’ I informed her light-heartedly.

  ‘What was the diet?’

  I gave her all the necessary details about the milkshake diet I had been on and midway through, she cut me off saying that she’d heard about it, with an air of disapproval in her voice.

  ‘You have to be above a certain BMI and body weight for that. Did you gain a lot of weight since the last time you were weighed?’

  ‘Err, yes,’ I lied, ‘the stress of my final year and all that; I gained a lot of weight.’ If only she knew how I had, by contrast, been dieting and losing weight since before I even turned 18. I was suddenly uncomfortable. It was as if I was expecting something horrific to happen. This office was surely going to be the scene of a most devastating occurrence that would later be reported on the news, with a rather fat picture of me that would make me sick to look at.

  Focus, I heard that voice in my head whisper. Pay attention and keep it together. We’ve got this. I believed in what she was saying fully but at the same time, was unsure about how much a person should lie to their doctor, if at all. I would take it one question at a time, I told myself. But, as it turned out I wasn’t given much of a chance to do this.

  ‘And what’s your eating like now?’ the doctor asked, with direct eye contact and absolutely no hesitation in her voice. Invisible chaos descended over the room and seeped into my pores, rummaging its way around the underneath of my skin. There it was. It was the question I’d been trying to answer in my own head for months, since my family and friends had started watching me with shrewd eyes. My eating was strange, yes; that was an absolutely undeniable truth. And I’d even gone as far as to call myself bulimic on many different occasions in diary entries and on my beloved pro-ED websites.

  More than this, what flashed through my mind when presented with this question was not my eating or lack thereof; it was the things I did after almost every meal now and the patterns that dominated every single day from the moment I woke up. I saw the handful of days spent without food here and there, the over the counter laxatives hidden in a box atop my wardrobe, the varying colours of my vomit painted across the toilet bowl and the weighing scales I would pull from under my bed at least 30 times a day. I felt the piercing cold that still blistered in my toes and all around my body, the build-up of plaque and grit that coated the back of my teeth, the scaly peel that laced certain areas of my skin and the throbbing aches that now riddled every joint and bone in my body. I could hear the sound of my mother’s voice crying, This isn’t you, Leanne!, the girls’ words of Leanne, you’re sick breaking through stifled tones and above all else, I could hear that familiar voice now screaming at me, Lie! Lie to her! Lie!

  ‘Y-yeah’ I hesitated, now evidently flustered. ‘It’s alright.’

  She said nothing, which sent my head spinning with pressure. How much was too much to tell her? My thoughts drifted onto the issue of doctor-patient confidentiality but then dismissed the thought before returning to it again several times and each time ultimately deciding against it. Nonetheless, words started falling from my mouth like verbal diarrhoea. I wasn’t sure if I was talking for the sake of telling her something or just for the sake of filling the silence that encroached like a cocoon around she and I. Whatever the reason, the words lunged from my throat faster than any purge ever had.

  ‘Well actually, I mean, it’s not perfect’ I elaborated. ‘I’ve been under a lot of pressure recently with starting college and that, so I haven’t really had time to think about my eating. I am eating okay, I guess; it’s just a little touch and go at the moment.’

  She didn’t look satisfied.

  ‘Okay, well, my friends have all jumped to conclusions and think it’s worse than it really is. But they’re just being overly concerned, that’s all.’ I continued on like this for what felt like the bones of about ten minutes or so, digging a hole for myself and then frantically trying to pull myself back out again. Eventually, the worst had happened and I’d managed to let slip the term ‘eating disorder.’

  ‘So you’re friends think you have an eating disorder?’ she asked, calm as she had been when I first walked in.

  ‘They think so, yeah.’ I sighed.

  ‘Do you think you have an eating disorder?’

  I shook my head. ‘No. I mean, no I don’t think so.’

  I thought she almost let slip a sigh. This woman thinks I’m crazy, I thought to myself. At the time, I think I was teetering around the ten stone mark and in that moment was fully convinced that a person of my weight could not possibly have an eating disorder, not really. One surely had to be perfectly skeletal before anyone could accuse you of having an eating disorder. Yet there I was, bound in curves and creases as I had always been, now having suggested to a doctor that I was anorexic, or whatever the term was. Within the second I had first said it, I was instantly mortified with myself.

  Our conversation proved less strenuous than initially envisaged. On the contrary, despite the many doubts that tested my ability to fully indulge in our discussion, I felt a certain ease by then. It was as if saying the term, whether it was true or not, removed a level of responsibility from me. What’s more, I trusted this woman; she had a matter-of-fact way about her that shockingly did not compromise her compassion. Eventually, however, the ease of our consultation lifted and in that small office, I entered a new phase of my disease.

  ‘Leanne,’ she said, concern in her voice, ‘your ovaries are giving you a clear sign that you’re not getting proper nutrition. If you keep damaging your body like this, you’ll find you’re kidneys will be the next thing.’

  ‘I’m not infertile or anything though, right?’ I asked, panicked.

  ‘You keep going the way you are and it’s not impossible.’

  I had never been a maternal person. While my girlfriends always cooed and sighed at the sight of a baby, I just never felt that internal draw that so often causes women to obsess over the idea of motherhood. I always put it down to my age. This theory came into contention when, at the premature age of 17, most of the girls around me began to show an interest in any toddler that so much as passed us with their mother.

  ‘Oh!’ they’d gasp. ‘I can’t wait to be a mum!’

  I don’t believe I have ever stated once in my young life that I even really wanted to be a mother, let alone not being able to wait for the day. I suppose, other things just seemed more important than motherhood, so it never crossed my mind to any great degree. But when my doctor confirmed the risks I ran with my behaviours surrounding eating, something buried deep inside cried out for help. It then occurred to me that this wasn’t like any measly few pounds that I could gain and lose again in a matter of days; if I could push my body to the point of losing my period altogether, there was nothing to indicate I would ever get it back. The repercussions of this tolled in my head like a bell.

  I was always a little on the dramatic side. I noticed this most with matters of the heart. No matter what the circumstance or whomever the boy, if romantic intentions were put forward to me to any extent, I would automatically start weighing out every possible consequence, both positive and negative. You’re probably thinking that I must scare them away almost instantly. I hardly inform such suitors of these thoughts but yes, I do have that tendency to send them running all the same. At either end of the spectrum, I would take my premonitions to every absolute extremity or possibility. As a result of this, I believe I underwent a phase of stubborn self-righteousness, as no matter what the outcome, I was always reassured that I ‘just knew that was going to happen.’ Furthermore, I think I always had a tendency to lean more toward the pessimistic side and usually went about my daily business convinced of the wors
t.

  In the case of the matter at hand, the only prospect that materialised in front of me was that one day, perhaps a long time from now, I could wake up and discover that I am incapable of having children. This potential outcome, though wildly morbid and probably unlikely given that my doctor was not overly concerned about it, cast a spell over my mind for the days that followed that office exchange. For someone who had never even understood the widespread fixation with babies and the idea of having your own children, the fear of being unable to do so shook me to my core. It brought out in me, even if only temporarily, that most feminine spirit of all women. Greater than the jobs we worked, the clothes we strung on our backs and indeed, how thin our bodies could be, having a child was surely what defined us under the name. And if I was biologically ineligible in any way of naturally conceiving and carrying a child, I halted at the thought of there being nothing to fuel that desperately sought-after sense of definition, both as an individual and now, a woman. All at once, my friends’ chatter of babies and motherhood seemed a little less silly.

  Despite the very unhealthy thoughts and feelings of panic that ensued after my visit to the doctor, the effects were only short-lived. Within about four days, I was fasting again, the initial smack of fear having passed quickly. The doctor was referring me to a clinic psychologist, but I didn’t have very much time to dwell on this most momentous ordeal. My weight at the time was up and down. This was something I found extremely upsetting. My disease did not guarantee weight loss and certainly it never guaranteed the physique I so obsessively coveted. Rather, it warranted an ongoing and sleepless battle of loss and gain.

  There was no maintenance, you see. Even if I had attempted to maintain a particular weight, it would never have worked. If I hit my given goal weight, it was impossible to simply stay there, as I mostly saw such a pursuit as a way of giving up. More importantly, she would never allow this. She would call me weak, a quitter and a waste of clear potential. Similarly, maintaining always presented the threat of gaining. It was, in a way, just the stepping stone to the latter term. If I wasn’t losing weight, I was gaining at a shocking rate. Bulimia does not take a break. It does not rest or catch up on lost sleep as you ‘maintain.’ I constantly went extremely one way or extremely the other. Moderation was no longer in my vocabulary, not while I shared a life with her. What this resulted in was a bombardment of various ‘Leannes.’ It wasn’t always easy for others, I have since discovered, to tell whether I had lost or gained weight. Of course to me, if I gained as much as two pounds, it carried the weight of the world. But I marked my weight fluctuations from good to bad; eight and a half stone to ten stone and I knew people had seen the difference – mostly due to superficial compliments received from casual acquaintances and people whom I saw very little of. Ten and a half stone or above and I would refuse to leave the house. I couldn’t let people see me that way. That Leanne would be locked away until she could fix herself to the point of being Miss Nine-and-a-Half Stone Leanne once more.

  Along with the severe weight fluctuations, my social patterns moved along some warped meridian grid of global scope. The world would just have to revolve around me and my bulimia or else we simply would not participate in it, as was the outcome time and time again. Plans with friends and intended outings would come about only when my bulimia dictated so. Any interactions with others were subject to her will and whether she thought I was acceptable enough to be seen. If for whatever reason I was substandard, she would convince us both of the fact and thus we would lock ourselves away in my room together, wallowing in self-loathing and that usual absence of all worth.

  My self-worth was not always measured by just my weight. It extended to every facet of my aesthetical make-up. The problem was that by now – on top of all the insecurities that had existed before – my appearance had genuinely altered due to the bulimia and proved to only deepen the wound of confusion about how I looked. My hair had thinned staggeringly. Since I was a child, my mother had boasted about my locks, which were always full and bouncy even at substantial lengths. Now, it hung from my roots as if the life in it had died. With every time I washed my hair, I pulled out more and more worrying chunks. The drain would clog with the mounds falling from my head. Whereas before I had always let it flow naturally, I now found myself brushing it up, pulling, tearing and flipping it, desperate to give the illusion that there was more atop my head.

  My skin was no better. Spots, sores and blisters had formed around my mouth from where my vomit-coated fingers rubbed and writhed against on a daily basis. It was rough and dry, flaking every now and then. I once owned a bearded dragon named Charlie. Like most reptiles, Charlie would shed her skin as she grew. I would go to her tank to feed her and find large pieces of skin lying on the sand, while Charlie sat like a peacock in the corner, an ever so slightly different shade in her colouring. I felt like this was happening to me now. I was shedding my skin as I had watched Charlie do for so long when she was growing. The difference was that the tint of my skin beneath was not changing to anything favourable.

  ‘You’re grey,’ Anna had told me. It was during one of her relentless lectures about my health. She always used cut-throat statements; I think as a way of emphasising the severity of what she was saying. She had been one of the first to accuse me of having an eating disorder and was by far one of the most vocal of the group. ‘Your skin is grey! Leanne, how is it even possible you can’t see that?’

  The truth is, I was a mixture of colours those days. Kate had commented before how my skin looked yellow, even under the usually immaculate make-up I painted over it. It was a bit of everything by that stage. Hearing Anna’s voice, along with everything else that my friends had drummed into my head, I stared into the mirror, examining the splinters of skin that stuck out in random patterns. I scratched at one of them for a while, harmlessly, on the bridge of my nose. I saw some sawdust-like powder trickle down. Finally, a notable piece flaked off from the surface. I tried to get a grip on it with my now blunt index finger and thumb. My nails had stopped growing a long time ago and because I had been in the habit of biting my nails down, they were now constantly below the line of my fingertip. Eventually, I got a hold of the shard of skin. My eyes darted between my reflection and my fingers, as I tore the piece of skin right from the top and down to the bump at the bottom of my nose. It left a red and shiny slit that ran the length of my nose and stung under the exposure. My mother later gave out to me for picking at my skin when she saw both my scratched nose, as well as scabbed spots that had been bleeding only moments before.

  I wonder how she would have reacted had she known what was happening inside my mouth too. My teeth, or at least the very frail impression that was left of them, ached between my gums. I started to think they were simply rotting away in my head and always feared the worst upon waking from dreams in which I discovered there wasn’t so much as one tooth left. I developed a bad habit of perpetually rubbing my tongue along the inside of them, as if to test their durability or even their security to the gums from which they grew. If I pushed even remotely hard against them with my tongue, they splintered in pain. Sore to the touch, most things seemed to hurt them now and no matter what I ate during a binge, if it was anything that required chewing, it would inevitable bother my teeth in some way. Even liquids were harsh on them when too hot or cold and would heighten the sensitivity when they hit the nerves running through my mouth.

  It was like one very thin thread now held them to my gums and I was sure they would fall out sooner or later with the right push or mid-way through a binge. Maybe they’d fall out while purging, unable to withstand the velocity of my own vomit. Some of them didn’t feel far from it anyway. For weeks now, I was able to wedge the tip of my tongue beneath the bottom of my two front teeth. Decayed and almost dissolving away, they finished abruptly and sharply, leaving a slight gap between where they ceased and my gum began. I had gum disease as well. I knew it, even before a dentist confir
med that it was the worst form of gum disease one can get. You don’t spit that much blood while brushing without there being something very problematic happening behind your lips. I wished I could do more for them; if not for their good health then even for the sake of a decent facade. I’d been a coffee drinker and smoker of about 10 to 15 cigarettes a day and now, to top it all off, had cultivated a mental resistance to mouthwash and chewing gum, both of which I knew had hidden calories. I couldn’t exactly stop brushing my teeth and accepted my twice a day scrub as an unavoidable calorie intake. But I would only make room for the bare minimum, without compromising a lifetime necessity.

  Along with my hair, my skin and my teeth, there was something noticeably different as a whole about me. What it was, I still find difficult to put my finger on. I carried myself in a rather contorted way; my shoulders were always hunched, my chest collapsed inwards and I forever had my arms wrapped around my abdominal area, almost nursing it and as if hiding something beneath. My mother says it was my eyes. I knew they looked a little strange, as the girls had argued on many occasions that they looked some off-coloured shade of yellow. In the months prior to writing this memoir, however, my mother broke my heart when she put it quite simply by telling me, ‘You weren’t there. Your eyes had no life in them anymore. It’s like you just weren’t there behind them.’

  Whether it was my weight or any of the idiosyncrasies mentioned above, it became harder and harder to be around people. I was just too embarrassed and ashamed of what I had turned into to allow them to see me this way. Some sociable activities were unavoidable, such as birthdays and generally just proving I still existed. But these events were usually agonised over and sent me into a tornado of fasting and purging, attempting recklessly to lose weight even if just for the one night. When I did have to show my face, I was relatively chatty, lively and cool natured. The need for secrecy meant I had to be. I have found this to be true of most bulimics I have spoken with. The fabrication of what you are and the reality are two entirely different people. Hiding the reality was of the utmost importance, as just one night of glory could fuel me to struggle on for weeks thereafter, a refreshed objective in further charging my disease.