The Hungry Mirror

by Lisa de Nikolits

  I sit down across from her.

  “I mean think about it,” I say. “Do you want to lose your dream? What if you, and I mean ‘you’ in the general sense of women out there, stopped chasing those five pounds? What would the meaning of life be then?”

  I lean forward. “There wouldn’t be any meaning. Once upon a time, for the cavemen, the Neanderthals, it was about survival, the only religion was staying alive. Then came churches, God, and wars and staying alive became infused with Christianity, Judaism, and all the God-fashions of the day. Then the American Dream became the new religion we all lived by; it was all about Good Housekeeping, and being the perfect wife raising the perfect family. And then, because we evolved into a society that has lost family values and longtime traditions, we needed new rites of passage. There was a time when you knew you were a teenager when you had your confirmation in a nice white dress, or you got your first weekend job baby-sitting, or had your first kiss. But now, you know you’re growing up when you worry about the size of your butt.”

  “I should be taking notes for my screenplay,” Brit says, looking worried. “This is good stuff.”

  “Brit! I am trying to tell you what I really think! Don’t worry, I am hardly likely to forget this. I’ll tell it all to you again if you like.”

  “Oh, you’re too funny,” Brit says. She is laughing at my manic zeal but I can tell she thinks I am onto something and not just for her screenplay.

  She thinks for a moment and her eyes light up. “Hmmm, a new jihad. Hey, maybe those suicide bombers do what they do because they don’t have diets and the goal of thinner bodies. That would support your theory in a way. We all have to have a religion. They have their holy wars; we have our body wars. Everybody needs a war to get out of bed in the morning.”

  “Exactly,” I say.

  “So, the five to forty pounds to be lost in weight, that’s our forty virgins in heaven,” Brit says. “We’re all in it for the Promised Land of Thin Rewards.”

  “You got it.” I sit back at my desk. “But Brit, I want to change my religion. I don’t want to be a believer in The Religion of Thin anymore. But look at my Catholic guilt, I can’t even shed that. So how am I going to shed something harder, something more insidious?”

  “I have no idea,” she says. “But we have to try and we have to try to change it for other women too, not just for ourselves.”

  My phone rings and our conversation is interrupted. It is my sister reporting on her weekend visit to my parents. They are so proud of her, she says. She’s thin at last.

  Making your water happy

  COLLEEN SAYS SHE NEVER EATS after 7:00 at night. “Sometimes my husband gets angry with me but I can’t eat after then because I’ll get fat. I only drink water after 7:00 and I try to get two litres in before bedtime. Unless we go to the pub in which case I drink James under the table. Of course, if we go to the pub I have to drink a lot of water too because otherwise I have the dry horrors. My tongue sticks to my mouth and it’s disgusting.”

  “All that water would make me go to the washroom all night,” I say. “I am trying to drink a litre a day and I am not used to drinking water at all, so that’s a step up for me.”

  I have decided to try the drinking water thing, even if my scale numbers are momentarily disturbed. My numbers might be better when I am dehydrated but I read that if you drink enough water, you burst through that plateau and then lose even more weight.

  “I learned a very interesting thing about water,” Brit says quickly and I burst out laughing.

  “Whenever she says that,” I explain to Colleen, “it means you are about to hear something very unusual and very entertaining.”

  Brit sticks her tongue out at me. “I was watching this old DVD called What the Bleep Do We Know? Well, it’s not that old, it’s from 2004, hang on a second….” she turns to Google something.

  “Right, here you go,” she says and reads from the screen. “‘It stunned audiences with its revolutionary cinematic blend of dramatic film, documentary, animation and comedy, while serving up a mind-jarring blend of Quantum Physics, spirituality, neurology and evolutionary thought.’”

  She looks up and grins.

  “You see,” I say to Colleen, “never anything half-assed about our Brit. But is there anything specific about this evolutionary mind-jarring DVD that you want to share?”

  “Oh yes, thank you,” Brit says. “I nearly forgot. Yes there was this thing that this Japanese scientist found about water. You see, he showed how thoughts affect the shape of water – like if you look at water and think angry things, it goes this terrible shape, but if you look at it and think thoughts of love and gratitude, it gets snowflake shapes. He aimed emotions and thoughts at water, then froze atoms and photographed them. So, thoughts and feelings affect physical reality.”

  She waves her hands around. “Think about it,” she says. “Our body is made up of 70% to 80% of water, our brains are 80% to 85% of water, a fetus is 90% water, so, how we think, and all our attitudes and emotions change the molecular structure of water both inside our bodies and in the water of what we eat and drink. So Colleen, you must think happy thoughts when you drink your water, and you,” she says to me, “must think happy thoughts, so all the water inside your body is shaped like beautiful snowflakes and not like angry faces. I am trying to do it too.” She beams at us.

  “But what difference does the shape of the molecules make?” I ask. “I mean, in the end it’s still only water.”

  “No, no, no,” Brit objects. “You’re missing the whole point. The angry water is toxic and angry thoughts are toxic. Don’t you see? We eat the fruit of our words. If we are eating and drinking chaotically structured things, then how can we have lovely harmonious insides and emotions? Water carries energy vibrations of love and consciousness, that’s what the scientist said.”

  “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Brit, I am too tired to have cheerful conversations with my water on top of everything else I have to do in a day.” I am grumpy at the prospect of having to do more work. It is bad enough that I am supposed to drink water, which I don’t even like, now I have to make it feel good about itself first.

  “Did you lose all that weight by using this theory?” Colleen says to Brit. It is true; Brit has lost a good bit of weight over the past few weeks. I suddenly wonder if she’d bought a course of IncrediTrim without telling me, but apparently not.

  “No, I’ve been sick,” Brit says. “And I got depressed so I stopped eating. Tell me, if I take my jacket off, do my breasts look big?”

  “Honey, face it,” Colleen says. “Your breasts are big.”

  I wish that when I get depressed I’d stop eating. The reality is when I get depressed I head straight for the fridge. I am surprised Brit isn’t the same way. I have always thought she was.

  I am still dreaming of the binge I will have when Mathew is away. I have a job interview next Tuesday. My stomach is very sore; my irritable bowel syndrome is with me all the time.

  Brit leaves and comes back from the caf with a big cheese sandwich. It’s not fair. With the amount she eats, she should be obese. With the amount I don’t eat, I should be a twig. She also has long skinny legs which is the most unfair thing of all. But she’s got that ball-shaped head, a double chin, and no neck at all, so I am better off. But then again I starve myself and she doesn’t and she’s not overweight.

  I don’t think I can eat less than I do but let’s face it, there is always less.

  But let’s say I manage to lose all the weight I can. Will I ever be able to forgive life for giving me thick thighs, dimpled knees, and dumpy ankles? Because no matter how thin I get, their shape will stay with me.

  “My weight is shifting,” Colleen remarked one day when we were on our way to a meeting. “It’s moving down my backside and onto my thighs.”

  Colleen is an ex-high-school beauty.

  Poor thing, I had thought. You are just getting a taste of all the things I’ve lived with all my life.
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br />   Colleen is phobic about her reflection in store windows. She’ll do anything to avoid looking at herself and yet at the same time, she cannot help craning to get a glance. And without fail, when she catches sight of herself, she recoils as if struck by the glass.

  I never know what to expect with my reflection, it’s totally unpredictable. So I try to avoid it altogether.

  I just want to be thin so I can be free. It’s got nothing to do with beauty.

  I want to be spared from innuendos and judgments and from people looking critically at me. I want to be free so that no one will look and think, oh, she’d be better if she lost those pounds, or, attractive girl but a bit chunky, or, she could be lovely but her hips are awfully wide. I just want to get away from all the eyes that follow me and rate me. So maybe I do have an eating disorder but what if I didn’t, what then? If I didn’t, I’d be fat. So hey, it’s better the way it is. I’ll control my eating disorder and I won’t be weak or dirty. I will not fail. And I won’t give those judging eyes any food for thought that they might have won while I have lost.

  Porky little star

  “I LOVE YOU MY PORKY LITTLE star,” Mathew says, and he hugs me closer. He is spooned into me in bed. I have my back to him. His hand is resting on my stomach.

  “What did you say?” I ask him, frozen. “What did you just say?”

  He mumbles something.

  “Tell me,” I insist. “What did you just say?”

  “You are, um, my little star.”

  “What kind of star?”

  He refuses to answer and falls asleep.

  The next morning, after a sleepless night, I ask him again. “What did you say to me last night?” I ask him.

  “I have no idea,” he says. “You tell me, what did I say?”

  “Don’t pretend like you don’t know,” I say angrily. “You called me your porky little star.”

  He laughs.

  “It’s not funny,” I tell him. “I’m very upset. Is that what you think? That I’m porky? I feel terrible now, hugely fat. If you think I am fat then why don’t you say so instead of pretending like I am not and then telling me in your sleep?”

  Mathew says he’d never use the word “porky” and refuses to talk about it anymore.

  Great. The day before an interview, too. Just what I need. I’ve applied for a job with a group of business magazines, I am hoping a calm, well-organised, professional environment, the polar opposite to my current world of myriad trauma. And I was trying to get all psyched and ready but now Mathew has upset me terribly and my irritable bowel syndrome is in full glory—I am in pain and swollen from head to toe. I am so swollen I even have a double chin and that’s not usually part of my woes. I guess it serves me right for thinking bad things about Brit and her chin.

  I go out at lunchtime thinking I may buy a new skirt for the interview. I find one that looks good but it is a bit tight. Depressed, I study the label. Medium, it says. I am inconsolable. But then I realize it’s a medium for an eleven-or twelve-year-old girl. I am in the children’s section. So then I feel a bit better.

  Mathew and I are going to dinner and the theatre tonight. I’d rather have a root canal.

  Work is bad. Everybody is quite hysterical all the time now, it’s not just Kenneth. There are industry rumours that the mags might fold soon. Even Pablo looks glum.

  Thin Lisa is off with pneumonia.

  I have another interview coming up, as well as the one tomorrow. That one is a write-off; it’s with the fashionista diva who wanted me to have a personality test. I can tell you now I’m just not superficial enough for her to want me around. I might as well not go to the interview, but go I will, because I am a fighter and a trier, and it’s what I do. I have decided to stop calling Janet Fat Janet. She is a wonderful person and she’d like to be a good friend to me and it’s not her fault I don’t know how to have a real friend or be one. Not with a person who eats. That’s why Miranda is my friend. She doesn’t eat, even though she’s eating right now, enough for three. But even though she’s eating, she’s not really eating. It’s hard to explain. She says she can’t see me again until the baby’s born. We are unusual friends for sure, but she’s as much of a friend as I can handle.

  My sister’s drinking again. She did the visit to my parents so well that she fell off the wagon when she got back to B.C., just to celebrate. The only thing is, she has now celebrated to the point where she doesn’t fit into the fabulous wardrobe of new clothes my parents bought her for doing so well.

  And the army marches on.

  I am not anything

  I HAVE BEEN BINGEING AND PURGING all night. I can’t stop even though I try.

  I had an argument with Kenneth. The job I was hoping for, with the business magazines, isn’t looking good. I had none of my characteristic fizz during the interview, I felt flat as leftover soda pop, so I am not surprised they weren’t exactly wowed. Mathew is out somewhere, I have no idea where or with whom. My heart is palpitating, and it’s a horrible feeling. I am so tired.

  Am I falling apart? I think so. I am not one of the chosen. I am one of the great invisibles. Sometimes I can’t be sure I even exist. Can anyone see me? I feel so alone. There is no one who can help me.

  Why must I be so alone? Who will rescue me now?

  I must go back to the bathroom.

  You’re too fat

  BRIT COMES INTO WORK LOOKING depressed. She slouches behind her desk, put her face into her hands and groans.

  “How are you today?” I ask, sensing the answer isn’t going to be filled with ringing cheer.

  “I opened my fridge door this morning,” she says, “and there, staring me in the face was this huge yellow sign. It’s stuck to the drawer the apples are in, at the top.”

  “What did it say?” I encourage her to continue. She has fallen quiet and is gnawing on a finger.

  “YOU’RE TOO FAT,” she says. “That’s what it said, in capital letters. YOU’RE TOO FAT.”

  I am horrified.

  “Chris?” I ask, getting up.

  She nods. “I rushed into his room and shouted at him. He said it was from the front cover of one of those gossip mags and he showed me where he had cut it out. He found the mag in a retro store when he was looking for some stuff for a shoot. The article inside was about the time TV bosses told Kirstie Alley she was too fat and it had this story about how her ‘diet success turned to disaster.’ And there were other dieting stories too, of celebrities who had put on a lot of weight.”

  She digs into her bag, hauls out the chopped-up issue and holds it up for me to see.

  “Oh man,” I say. “If Mathew had stuck that in my fridge I would have killed him and pleaded self-defense.”

  Brit laughs and her mood seems to lift.

  “Brit,” I say, “you are perfectly lovely, exactly as you are.” And she is. I am sorry for all my bad thoughts about her ball-shaped head and necklessness. Brit is really beautiful and I get up and go around to hug her.

  I can tell she is surprised because she starts crying.

  “Now look what you’ve done,” she says. “My make-up will run all over Chris’s Stella McCartney blouse.”

  “Who cares,” I say, “about him or the blouse. He’s an asshole. I’m angry with him. Gosh, imagine poor Kirstie Alley, having to see that on the cover of a magazine, how totally awful. So, what did you do with the sign in the fridge?”

  Brit sighs and reapplies her mascara with a hand-held mirror. “I left it there,” she says. “I figure it might help me eat less. Chris is just trying to help me.”

  I think about all the people in my life who are just trying to “help” me. Yeah, right, I think.

  Clarissa said

  I AM REACHING THE END OF Clarissa’s book. I have bookmarked a page and I keep reading and rereading it because it’s a map of how I got here which, in turn, will show me a way out of this mess.

  TAKE AN ORIGINAL.

  Domesticate her early, preferably before speech
or locomotion.

  Over-socialize her in the extreme.

  Cause a famine for her wild nature.

  Isolate her from the sufferings and freedoms of others so she has nothing to compare her life with.

  Teach her only one point of view.

  Let her be needy (or dry or cold) and let all see it, yet none tell her.

  Let her be split off from her natural body, thereby removing her from relationship with this being.

  Cut her loose in an environ where she can over-kill on things previously denied her, things both exciting and dangerous.

  Give her friends who are also famished and who encourage her to be intemperate.

  Let her injured instincts for prudence and protection continue without repair.

  Because of her excesses (not enough food, too much food, drugs, not enough sleep, too much sleep, etc.) let Death insinuate itself close by.

  Let her struggle with “good-girl” persona restoration and succeed at it, but only from time to time.

  Then, and finally, let her have frantic reinvolvement in a psychologically or physiologically addictive excesses that are deadening in themselves or through misuse (alcohol, sex, rage, compliance, power, etc.)

  Now she is captured. Reverse the process and she will be free. Repair her instincts and she will be strong.

  You see, it’s easy. All I have to do is reverse the process and I will be free. I just need to repair my instincts and I will be strong.

  I read the passage one last time, trying to forge the message into my psyche like red hot coals burning into the swirls and curves of my brain.

  Then I put the book away.

  Waiting

  THE NEW JOB WITH THE business magazines looks like it might happen after all. They called me and said they were really impressed by my passion and energy during the interview and just needed some time to figure a few things out. You would have thought they’d have figured things out before interviewing me, but anyway.

  Mathew is away on a business trip, a client bonding thing. From what I have noticed lately he needs to do less bonding and more working. But I am glad he is away because they will let me know about the job on Monday which means I have the whole weekend to wait, and I prefer to do this kind of anxious worrying by myself. Except that I can’t stop bingeing and purging; I have given up trying. I am out of control.