Misfit

by Charli Howard

  And, rather than get better, I slipped back into my old ways. I spotted a birthday cake in the house kitchen one day and began grabbing chunks of it with my bare hands, gobbling it down like there was no tomorrow while nobody else was looking, then threw it all up afterwards. When our housemistress threw a DVD night to celebrate the end of exams, with sweets and crisps and pizza and so many other wondrous things, I slipped out halfway through and threw up plates of that, too.

  Because going to university was what you did, I reluctantly applied to Leeds University to study German and politics. I got in, much to my family’s delight, but not mine. I’d been on a campus for the last six years of my life and I’d hated it. On top of that, studying a course that didn’t interest me for a further three years was my idea of hell.

  I was due to go to Leeds in a week. Everything had been bought – pots and pans, a new duvet, new clothes. But the idea of yet again being pressured into something I didn’t want to do made me feel sick. I’d never experienced this level of anxiety. My skin was bubbling with angst and stress. I wanted to rip my hair out or pull my nails out with pliers. My gut was telling me going to Leeds was wrong, wrong, wrong, yet everyone in my family was thrilled that I was the first person in my family to go to university. If I quit, I’d be letting my entire family down – again.

  But a few days before we were due to drive up there, my driving instructor had to stop the car. I literally couldn’t breathe at the steering wheel.

  ‘I’m not letting you kill us,’ he said. ‘What’s going on? Your nerves are through the roof.’ He made me get out of the car – my legs were shaking like jelly – and drove me home, telling my parents I needed to rest.

  Soon, my anxiety turned into rage. I was sick of being told what to do. For once, I wanted to feel in control of my life and my destiny. Besides, I was eighteen now. I was an adult. I therefore knew everything. Right? I wanted to be a model, I’d been working on getting to my goal weight for years – what good would a degree be to me? I needed to be thinner, not better educated.

  ‘I’m not going,’ I said a couple of days before. ‘I’m moving back to London to achieve my dreams.’

  And so that’s what I did. I ran away from all the problems in my head, when in reality they were still lingering there, following me like a bad omen.

  Let’s cut to the chase and say that the year following my departure from school is one of those parts in my history I’m choosing to brush over, just like I have a few other points in my story. I’ll talk about them one day, but it was a very, very difficult time.

  I can also tell you that because I didn’t get professional help for my childhood anxiety, depression and eating problems, dealing with very adult situations threw me over the edge. I may have been eighteen, and I may have felt like I was capable of being an adult, but I wasn’t. I was just as fearful and not in control of my life as I had been as a child.

  The last thing you need when you’re a jittery, insecure mess is to surround yourself with people who don’t really want the best for you. Unfortunately, that’s what I did. My so-called ‘friends’ only liked me when I was crazy and silly on a wild night out, but they didn’t really have my back. True friends stick by you no matter what; these friends would stick by you if it gave them a fun story to tell.

  But I wanted to be a model. I’d never wanted anything so desperately before. I’d gone to London with dreams of getting down to my goal weight and being signed, whisked away from my boring life, proving to my parents that I didn’t need university. But life doesn’t work like that, and the reality was worse than I could have imagined.

  When was I going to learn that I was never going to find happiness in a pair of size-six jeans? That my obsession with starving myself was only making everything else in my life worse? I was addicted to abusing myself. I was addicted to people telling me what I already thought – that I wouldn’t amount to anything, that I was a bad person who deserved horrible things to happen to her. Luckily, I managed to get out.

  I knew I was dangerously close to the edge, so I staged a Grand Escape. The one thing I wanted more than anything was to be with my mum. And so that’s where I went. My mum was living in the north of England by this stage, and when I got home I never wanted to leave. I’d hurt her, I’d done bad things, but I wasn’t bad. I wanted to be good again.

  This is the part of my story where every issue, problem, argument, mean comment or bad memory exploded in my brain like a puff of smoke, causing me to have a breakdown. What a bundle of laughs that was!

  I couldn’t get out of bed. I still couldn’t eat. It was as though I was in a constant daze, where words echoed and nothing made sense. I can’t remember where my dad was in all of this, but he doesn’t feature in my memories of that time. Regardless, I can’t remember a lot from the Year We Do Not Talk About, because it was as though my brain erased parts of it completely, eradicating the visual memories, but leaving the emotional pain behind.

  Over time, I got flashbacks. This went on for weeks. I felt so safe being back home with my family, but numb when it came to thinking about the future and how I’d cope. I’d well and truly screwed up, with no one to blame but myself. I was a lost cause. Forget modelling. Forget being liked. I didn’t care about a single damn thing. I’d be in the shower for an hour staring blankly at the tiles, or curled up in a ball crying endlessly until I had nothing left to give.

  But even though I’d let her down, my mum was the one person who sorted me out. One day, she stormed into my room and told me I was getting a job.

  ‘You’ve got to snap out of this,’ she said. ‘This isn’t healthy.’

  I was on anti-depressants by this point, so getting a job was the last thing I wanted to do. But she sat with me as we looked at the Job Centre website, making me apply for any job that would take me and my qualifications. One job popped up that was very well paid. To say it was niche was an understatement – it was selling water coolers. It wasn’t sexy, but Mum convinced me that getting a job would make me feel better. And you know what – even though it was boring AF, my mum was right.

  I’d distanced myself from the London crowd. I tried to pretend that none of the bad stuff had happened, that I was a good girl. And deep down, underneath all the craziness, I was – I’d just gone off the rails a bit. (Well, a lot.) These ‘friends’ would call me, wanting me to go out partying or raving or whatever, and I’d switch my phone off. I knew from their perspective me going AWOL was a very weird thing to do, even by my standards, but I had to push that period in time to the back of my mind.

  But then I got an email from a particular ‘friend’ and photographer from those crazy months, Ed, telling me to call him ASAP. Ed was one of those friends you were never quite sure was really a mate at all, but if you caught him on a good day it was like you were the bestest friends ever.

  Like me, he was up for doing crazy stuff. Unlike me, he was someone who liked to make people feel sh*t about themselves when they least needed it. (Then again, do they ever need to feel that way?) We’d lived together in a mansion in central London with this random rich man Ed had met online, never paying rent or following any rules. How we got away with that for months on end, I don’t know. It was fun having no parental guidance at first, but eventually it became tiresome. It was a very hedonistic lifestyle, where we thought about nothing bar ourselves. We’d stay in the same clothes for days, go to weird parties and hang out with random celebrities, strippers and drag queens. Male models would randomly crash on the sofa, or a fight would break out between them. The millionaire had a different boyfriend every week, and would have screaming matches with most of them, throwing their stuff out on to the street.

  Although Ed was one of the people I’d distanced myself from since my Grand Escape, this call seemed very urgent. I debated whether or not to call him back – he was probably drunk or high, as per usual, and would want me to join in one of his mad adventures. But I was desperately lonely by this stage. I hadn’t seen or spoken to a
nyone my age in months. So I turned on the crazy Charli I knew he wanted to hear (or, more precisely, the only Charli he was interested in) and returned his call.

  To cut a very long story short, the biggest modelling agency in the country at the time – actually, maybe the WORLD – wanted to meet me. Me! It all started when Ed showed my photos to a friend of his who worked there. (They weren’t friends at all, just people who bumped into each other at parties then bitched about each other afterwards.) Apparently, she just had to meet me; I had such a ‘strong’ and ‘unique’ look. I doubt she would’ve thought the same thing had she seen me in my current state, sitting at the computer in tracksuit bottoms with bad skin and greasy hair tied into a bun.

  ‘So when can you meet them?’ he asked, and I heard him inhaling cigarette smoke.

  I put on the charm all right. I put on the whole ‘I couldn’t give a sh*t’ attitude and met Ed outside the Tube. I’d lied to my work and told them I was ill. Well, it wasn’t like I’d care about skiving off from that dump once I was an international modelling superstar, was it?!

  I hadn’t seen Ed in months, and rather than seeming excited to see me he got straight to the point.

  ‘Your hips …’ he said disappointedly.

  ‘Yeah? What’s wrong with them?’

  ‘They’ve got … quite big,’ he said.

  I hadn’t noticed any weight gain when I looked in the mirror. I had tried to stay away from any triggers as much as I possibly could in an attempt to rid the harmful eating patterns from my brain on my own. I found it impossible not to weigh myself if I passed scales. I knew I only had to step on them once before becoming obsessed with them again.

  Perhaps the weight gain was due to the anti-depressants I was on, but my bottom half was still only a size eight, at most. Nevertheless, Ed’s comments didn’t exactly gear me up for my big meeting. I may have been acting like I didn’t care about being signed, but I massively cared. I was PETRIFIED. The Brain Deviant convinced me I was going to mess it up: my one lucky break. Now, though, I actually had Ed’s comments to verify that fact.

  Ed and I went into the agency and met the New Faces booker, who took us into a spare office to chat. My palms were dripping in sweat. Could she tell my voice was quivering? I hoped not. She asked me all the usual questions, like how old I was (Ed told me to lie and say I was seventeen, even though I was nineteen), what did I want to do in the future, did I have a job on the side … that kind of thing. She chewed gum the whole time and didn’t seem to care that much. Well, why would she? I was just one of a sea of girls she’d meet daily who dreamt of making it big.

  I was in there with her for ages, laughing in the right places and whatnot. Eventually she took some photos on a digital camera and went to show them to the rest of the team. After ten minutes of me and Ed messing about, she came back in the room.

  ‘OK,’ she said, still chewing gum loudly. ‘Here’s the deal. We think you’re really strong, but your measurements are too big. I’m just being honest with you.’

  ‘OK,’ I replied, trying not to care, but inside I was mortified. Why the hell had I bothered coming if I was as big as they said I was?! My instincts were right all along. I was DISGUSTING.

  ‘But I’ve spoken to the others, and we looovvveee your face.’ I took what she said with a pinch of salt – she was about as genuine as a Louis Vuitton bag at a car-boot sale. ‘However – if you get down to a thirty-four-inch hip, we’ll take you on.’

  Huh? What? Was she serious?

  ‘Really?’ I said, gobsmacked.

  ‘Yeah,’ she said, completely unbothered.

  Oh my God! My heart was racing. I was ecstatic. For the first time in months, I was beaming.

  ‘How big is a thirty-four-inch hip? I mean, what dress size is that?’ I asked.

  ‘About a UK size six,’ she said, though I now know that it can sometimes be smaller. It all depends on the way you’re built. ‘So – do you think you can do it?’

  I knew losing weight was going to be tough, but, hell yeah, was I up for the challenge! I guess I just hadn’t pushed myself enough last time I was in school – and, besides, I’d got caught out starving myself anyway. This time would be different. This time I had an end goal: a life of success, popularity and happiness. There was reasoning behind my madness. It was my dream job and an excuse to get some control back in my life with dieting.

  ‘I’ll do it in a month,’ I promised.

  I couldn’t concentrate on my job. I was too focused on losing weight, too blinded by the bright future that lay in front of me. We had notepads by the sides of our desks at work and I’d scribble my daily calorie intake in it, carefully making sure I never went over. I didn’t care about selling water coolers anyway. Getting signed to this agency was the biggest thing I’d ever strived for, and I was not going to let anything get in the way. Screw university! Screw education! Most importantly, SCREW THIS JOB! Modelling was my future career, not this tripe.

  I promised I wouldn’t get ill this time – mentally, I mean.

  ‘It’s just a diet,’ I reassured myself, though I wasn’t too confident that I wouldn’t slip back into my old bulimic ways. This was my one shot to make my dreams come true. A month would go by quickly. I had to give it all I had.

  I found a calculator online that told me in order to get down to my goal weight I’d have to eat 800 calories a day. It did come with a health warning, saying this was dangerous, but who cared about health when I could become a model? I’d tried the zero-calorie-a-day diet, so I knew it couldn’t be as bad as that, but I also know it wouldn’t be as easy as a 1,200-calorie diet, either. I was eating something, right? That meant I couldn’t be unhealthy. How hard could it be?

  The first few days were fine. But soon my mood dipped so significantly that it threw me over the edge. I could barely concentrate on anything at work. Nothing was making sense on the screen, no matter how much I stared at it. Difficult?! This diet was torture. I was absolutely starving each and every day.

  Before my mum dropped me off at work – she says before I’d even had breakfast – I’d start the day off by saying, ‘What’s for dinner tonight?’ Saying those words was another obsession. You see, if I knew what we were eating that night, it would mean I could subtract that amount from my total allowance of 800 calories, then allow myself to eat the remaining calories during the day. God, I was a woman possessed.

  Ed would text me frequently to see how my diet was getting on.

  Amazing! I’d reply.

  The reality was I was beyond moody, beyond starving and either yelled or cried all the time. Not exactly the lifestyle I’d envisioned.

  I hadn’t had time to think how I’d be able to sustain this diet when I got signed. I just thought I’d deal with it when the time came. However, a big fear of mine was knowing that if I started eating normally again – or even upped my intake by a few hundred calories – I’d balloon in weight. This is what happens. Your body tries to hold on to any fat it can save and your metabolism crashes, making it almost impossible to lose anything.

  Not long after, guess what happened at work? I got fired. Yep. My boss had read my notebooks full of my obsessive calorie calculations and how much money I’d saved since working there, which I was going to use to live in London. He cried after he fired me, apparently. He said it was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do because I was a ‘very sweet girl’.

  If only you knew, I thought.

  God, another incident to let my family down. Fired at nineteen! What a failure. However, once I calmed down a bit, I saw this as a blessing in disguise. It meant I could focus on my modelling career that was, quite literally, inches from my grasp. Who needed water coolers anyway? (No one, it turned out. It was the recession.)

  So, each day, I’d wake up at seven thirty, do some exercises in my room, then walk Belle the dog twenty minutes to my grandparents’ house. That was the only exercise I could muster. It felt strenuous, and although I was simply walking I was alw
ays out of breath. The more weight I lost, the harder it got. I ignored the heart palpitations and blue and purple nails from malnutrition. By the time I got to my grandparents’ I’d fall asleep on the sofa – I was sleeping all the time, because my body was essentially shutting down.

  ‘Let me drive you back,’ my grandad would offer.

  ‘No!’ I’d snap, like he’d suggested the worst thing on earth. ‘I need to walk! I need the exercise!’

  The other thing my grandparents had, and which my mum had banned from the house, were bathroom scales: one in the downstairs toilet, and one upstairs. The moment I’d arrive, I’d scramble to the downstairs bathroom, take off my baggy clothes (tight-fitting clothes were never gonna happen) and stand on them naked, stepping on and off repeatedly to check what my exact weight was. Everything had to be removed – how could I be sure a necklace didn’t weigh an extra pound, let alone socks?! Then I’d go upstairs and do the same to make sure the number on both scales matched. I couldn’t be too sure if one was lying to me or not. One, two, three, four, five – on, off, on, off until I had a number I was satisfied with.

  Week by week, the scales were going down. Each time the ticker dropped closer to zero, adrenaline rushed through my body, like I was on a drug high. I’d never felt such euphoria. I was addicted to being thin, and no number was small enough. If the numbers went down, I’d be high on cloud nine. But if the weight stalled, or if the ticker went back up, I would positively lose my sh*t.

  People, especially women, can gain weight for numerous reasons. It’s not as simple as just eating less and expecting the scale to go down. The main reason for weight gain each month is hormones – I think you can gain up to five pounds before your period, sometimes more (yay! It’s so great being a woman). Salt is another ‘false’ weight – eat something salty, and your body will retain water and make you feel squishy. Drinking water can also make you temporarily weigh more. It’s a trick I used to fool the nurses when they weighed me, even though they soon caught on and made me go to the loo beforehand to make sure I hadn’t cheated.