Hungry

by Sheila Himmel

  In September 2008, I became horribly exhausted from my extreme bingeing and purging. At the time of this writing, six months have passed. We’ll see. Sometimes I start eating something like chips and have to tell myself to stop. I buy baked chips, for when I really need a salty snack, but, like many salty or sweet treats, there is no satisfying limit to them. I think about bingeing, but know it could ruin my relationship and living situation. I now live in a house with five other people, where there’s very little privacy, and the toilet gets clogged easily. That for sure keeps me from purging.

  7. Know that often you can’t say anything right. If you mention that you think your daughter’s skirt is too short, prepare for a reaction like, “Oh, so that means I’m fat?” People with ED are beyond self-conscious. When I was eighteen and anorexic, I purchased a denim miniskirt and giggled in the excitement of wearing a loose-fitting size 0. When I got home to show Mom, she disapprovingly commented, “Don’t you think it’s a little short?” No, I thought I looked cute! I didn’t want her protective mom reaction. I wanted her to have the same giddy feeling I had to this new skirt and instead of seeing her as my mother, I saw her as a harsh critic. When she said “a little short” about the skirt, I heard it as something was wrong with my body.Mom was very careful about making any comments about my physique. Still, at times no matter what came out of her mouth, she set me off. Or it was the tone or the situation.

  Maybe I’m overshooting this, but it seems mothers and daughters will always be in some sort of competition with each other. Either the mother struggled with weight her whole life and her daughter went the other direction as a thin, beautiful young lady; or you have a slender mom and a dieting daughter and the mom—maybe disapprovingly, maybe she thinks she is being helpful—makes comments about the daughter’s weight, which makes the girl even more internally conflicted and uneasy in her own skin. Maybe they are competing for the same body, or they share clothes, or they act like best friends and get coffee together on weekends and exchange shoes for different events, but really, on the inside, one strives to be better than the other.

  Mom has mostly, as far I have seen, had the pleasure of being on the slender side. People ask me how she stays so thin yet gets paid to eat, and I don’t have the faintest idea. Good genes? Maybe. All I know is I’ve always been envious of her lean legs. Mine get buff. Every time I get bent on exercising, my legs return immediately to my soccer legs, not to those of lean, petite girls like Mom.

  Often Mom makes a comment she means to be complimentary, but I take it in a negative light. If she tells me I look healthy, I take that to mean I look fat. If I’m healthy by her standards, I’m no longer thin and therefore must be fat. Once when I was no longer starving myself but secretly bingeing and purging, she told me I shouldn’t eat so many carrots with my lunch, because they were starchy. I couldn’t understand why she bothered giving me grief for eating a vegetable! Too much cheese I could understand, but carrots?

  Parents, there’s often not much you can do. Your child has an eating disorder and until that is resolved you may have to keep walking on those eggshells or just keep your mouth shut. Whatever the actual words or tone of voice, those of us with eating disorders often only hear:

  You aren’t good enough.

  Everyone is constantly judging you.

  No matter how hard you try you won’t succeed.

  The way you talk, sing, dance, act, paint, exercise, eat, pray all are wrong.

  And of course, someone else always looks better, even your own mother.

  8. Question the experts. Eating disorders and their medical consequences are vast and varied, and I have seen more than enough treatment methods. I know some patients have been helped by psychiatric medicines. My experience with them was terrible. Rather than genetics or a chemical imbalance, I think a lot of my problems were the result of poor nutrition and depletion of oxygen to the brain. My anxiety, depression, and panic attacks subsided with the progress of talk therapy, moderate exercise, and regular eating habits.For so long I just kind of sat back and listened to doctors, nurses, psychiatrists, and various therapists. When I tried to challenge a diagnosis, I felt like I was met with more criticism and patronizing words. Soon enough I just went along with everything. In the end, I got my way and managed to (silently) prove everyone wrong. I don’t need medication or, in more textbook medical professional terms: There is no conclusive evidence indicating my need for psychiatric medication.

  And yet I am often sick. Bulimia does its damage. They were right about that. I have more difficulty breathing when exercising, and digesting food takes a horribly long time.

  Being the patient, I don’t know what my parents went through during those hospital visits. I’m sure the experience gave them nightmares and made them very sad. I never meant to hurt them and although my illness was not my fault, I can’t help wishing I could take it all back and start fresh.

  9. Avoid fitness magazines. If there’s a difference between Fitness and Shape, I don’t know what it is. I fixated on any piece of “expert” advice, reading in the April issue about how to get a bikini-body ready and in May, how to get the best summer body ever. Different titles, same content.Since I read my first fitness magazine in high school, I have been trying to get the best bikini body ever and still haven’t succeeded. Recently I scanned Shape, featuring “8 Minutes to Your Best Upper Body,” “Bikini Body Countdown” (score! another way to get my bikini body!), “Best New Lower-Body,” “Facts About Fat,” “The Bikini Body Diet,” “Carb Lover’s Diet,” “The Best Fast-Food Breakfasts,” and much, much more. Three years ago I was almost certain I had found the best upper-body workout. I was also almost completely sure that I knew the facts about fat. Then I would pick up a magazine that told me I didn’t know anything, and promised to teach me all there is to know. The problem is, the next month there would be something entirely new.

  But of course, fifty experts give you fifty different plans, and then they change. It all becomes a mumbo-jumbo of information overload that is impossible to keep up with, but I tried. Pretty soon there was very little that I felt comfortable eating because at one point in one of my magazines I had read something “bad” about each food. One issue told me to get forty-five to sixty minutes of cardio a day; the next said no, lift weights.

  I now realize that dieting and exercise are extremely individual, and what works for one person may not be beneficial for another. Making peace with my sweet tooth has been a good example for me. I have read over and over again that deprivation leads to bingeing and if we are truly craving something, the best thing to do is wait fifteen minutes and if that craving is still there to give in to one serving and enjoy every bite. Recently, however, I stumbled across this nutritionist’s advice in a fitness magazine article on (surprise!) the bikini-body diet:

  Many people have something sweet after they eat and I’m not in that habit—I think it’s a habit you can get out of. One thing I do enjoy in summer is some ice cream. I go out for it so I don’t have it tempting me at home. [When] I get the real thing—maybe four times over the summer—I have a small scoop and enjoy every bit of it.

  Four times over the summer? A small scoop? Is that not still deprivation? The summer is three months long and so she basically has half a cup of ice cream once a month. What happens if she craves the ice cream in between? Does she wait four weeks?

  For a long time I lived in fear of dessert. I thought that if I had just one bite I would immediately blow up. However, I do remember one time, when I was still deep in my anorexia, my friend’s family threw a graduation party for me and a bunch of our friends. Mom had bought an ice cream cake. At first, I was determined not to have any. But as the time got closer to cut the cake, and I saw all the guests, especially my friends, enjoying their food, I somehow let myself go a bit and realized that maybe a piece of ice cream cake wasn’t going to hurt me. And so, I had a piece and not just any slice but a corner slice with extra icing. And then, a surprising thing happened:
I enjoyed it! I loved every slow bite. I didn’t get fat. I probably could have had a piece of ice cream cake every week and I would have stayed the same size.

  10. Carry on with your life. I remember when eating out was fun. I enjoyed scanning the menu for the most deliciously complex-sounding meal, trying new ethnic cuisines, and knowing just what I wanted in my burrito every time we went to La Bamba, the great taqueria near our house. As a kid, I got ridiculously excited when Dad caved in and bought Frosted Flakes instead of Cheerios. The year had a rhythm to it, when the Blenheim apricots came and Dad’s favorite ambrosia melons, with the grand finale of potato latkes at Hanukkah and his holiday fudge. Before my senior year in high school, Thanksgiving was something to look forward to, not dread, as were Friday-night pizza dates with my friends. I remember giggling over pounds of sour candy and splitting fresh-baked cookies at the mall. I used to ask for french fries with my tuna melt. I loved family dinners, where we’d all practice our signature facial expressions—I did an adorable puppy, Dad touched his tongue to his nose—and talk about our days at school or work, and I’d joyfully describe my newest career aspirations. I always had something exciting to talk about, something I saw in my future or an achievement I’d made in school.I miss all of that, and hope to get it back.

  seventeen

  You Get to Sit Down

  Years ago, when everything was splendid, Ned and I read a lot of John Cheever stories. Many of them delighted in the dark side of suburbia, where the residents lied, drank, slept around, and realized that no one really loved them and that they’d wasted their lives. We were so unlike these characters. We were blessed, along the lines of the Crutchmans of Shady Hill. As Cheever begins their story, “The Worm in the Apple”:The Crutchmans were so very, very happy and so temperate in all their habits and so pleased with everything that came their way that one was bound to suspect a worm in their rosy apple and that the extraordinary rosiness of the fruit was only meant to conceal the gravity and the depth of the infection.

  Exactly. When we were the Crutchmans of Palo Alto, I could think, “Life is sweet. We’re very, very lucky, and temperate as well. We don’t squander the happiness that comes our way. We work hard, contribute to the community, maintain good values. And we’re raising kind, ethical children (a girl and a boy, like the Crutchmans). People tell us they are jealous of our perfect family.”

  In Cheever’s Shady Hill, jealousy of the perfect Crutchman family takes flight like this:Their house, for instance, on Hill Street with all those big windows. Who but someone suffering from a guilt complex would want so much light to pour into their rooms?

  Uh-oh. Maybe that was the clue we missed. Our “midcentury modern” house has floor-to-ceiling glass. Also a flat roof—perhaps another architectural sign of moral decay. Rain puddles up there and pours off in sheets.

  “The Worm in the Apple” continues in this vein, mining every possibility for the Crutchmans’ comeuppance. Surely it will happen, if not when their son fails his junior year of high school and has to repeat, then because their daughter has such big feet. Resentment abhors a vacuum.

  The Himmels’ comeuppance was easier to find, though not by us. Suddenly, it seemed, we were expelled from the garden of happy families. Lisa’s last year of high school, we thought, was the low point. Discovery of anorexia. Paradise lost. But her first year of college—bulimia and suicidal fear—was far worse. Then we had three pretty good years until Lisa’s most devastating crash, involving people and places we never thought we’d see. The police, a halfway house, a psych ward, are you kidding? Now that our daughter’s illness has been diagnosed and re-diagnosed, tamped down only to flare up in different ways, we cultivate Cheever-worthy jealousy of apparently healthy families. And now that we knew how much luck is involved, we can’t help thinking, “Why them and not us?”

  It gets uglier. It’s not just wanting others to suffer. They have to suffer in the exact same way. I remember feeling this way as a child, certain that every other household lived the Leave It to Beaver life, not that mine was terrible, but I was sure my particular anguish was unique in the world and no one would ever understand. At least once, in elementary school, I wished physical harm to my friends. I had chipped a bone on the ball of my foot and was put on crutches. This was mortifying because it wasn’t the normal sprained ankle or broken arm, and it sprang from no discernible event. My foot just started hurting and I made the mistake of mentioning it. Only time and lack of pressure would fix the foot. Having no plaster cast and no good accident story, I felt like an impostor of the disabled. Even the word crutch (like the name Crutchman) tortured me. Such an unbecoming word. A friend asked what she could do to help, and all I could think was, “If you are really my friend, go chip a bone in your foot so I won’t be the only fool on these stupid crutches!” In the end, my foot stopped hurting as magically as it had started.

  Another ugly Crutchman episode: I met Jim in the dorm freshman year. He was the first guy—ever—I felt like myself with, riding bikes at midnight, getting stoned, gossiping about our dorm mates. I would have liked to call him my boyfriend, but it never happened. After freshman year we had dinner a few times, occasionally saw each other around campus, then totally lost touch. Nearly thirty years later, Jim emailed me at work. I had taken Ned’s last name, mainly because my family name, Highiet, was so hard to spell, but my paper trail made me “an easy Google,” Jim said. We started updating each other, in an alumni notes sort of way. My headline was Lisa’s illness, but otherwise life was good. I’d gone to graduate school but dropped out after one quarter. He remembered my parents, who were both alive at the time. His parents had died. However, he’d gotten a couple of graduate degrees, married a woman who was prominent in her field, retired to write screenplays, and loved to cook and go out to eat. Oh, and he had four outstanding kids, with closets full of scholarships and sports medals. Could my envy get any greener?

  Still, he was going to be in the area, so we planned to meet for lunch. I learned that one of his children had been gravely ill, and that Jim had come out as gay. His wife, he said, “is patient with me.” I didn’t ask what that meant, but it sounded complicated. The little Cambodian restaurant near my office was especially noisy that day, and I didn’t want to shout. I already had a headache. His screenplays weren’t getting noticed, which was obviously bothering him. Maybe my agent could help? We made plans to meet again, but neither of us followed through.

  I wished for worms in his apple and just got a big shameful stain on mine. What good did it do me to find that his life was not the polished work I had pictured? No good at all. I just felt remorse about my own bad character.

  Still, I continued to look for suffering in apparently lucky families. What’s the payoff? Maybe it’s like watching Jerry Springer and thinking, “At least we don’t have that problem,” or “Thank God it’s them and not me.” It’s ugly. But it is one reason—not an admirable reason, but one nonetheless—that people attend support groups. Of course, the good and healthy reasons are to find that others have been through similar trials and to share sympathy and resources. Whatever got me there, thank heaven I went.

  At the first group I attended, parents had been dealing with their children’s serious mental illnesses for ten and twenty years, while I had put in only two. How do they do it? A single mother didn’t know for sure if her son was alive. He didn’t answer his phone and when she went to his apartment, in a sketchy subsidized building for people on State Disability Insurance, nobody appeared to be there, and the neighbors hadn’t seen him. A month later, she still didn’t know. How do people live like that? Another couple returned to the group to report that they could sleep again, after many years, because their son agreed to return to treatment. Ah, that’s how they do it. They stand around, as Annie Proulx put it, and eventually they get to sit down. Oddly, though, I remembered this phrase as being about an admirable character’s stick-to-itiveness, and when I reread “The Bunchgrass Edge of the World,” it turned out I was
very wrong. Old Red, the grandfather who said it, was sick and nasty, and he outlasted everyone through sheer meanness. Does that mean you have to be an asshole to survive? I didn’t have to find out right then. Lisa got stable and I stopped attending groups.

  Three months later, Lisa ran away. I’m sorry I ever thought, “How do people live like this?”

  Back at the family support group, the woman still hadn’t seen her son, but she knew he was alive. He sometimes responded to her by email. A widow with two mentally ill children in their thirties told us about a momentous upcoming court date, about a conservatorship to care for her daughter, and while she was hoping for a good outcome, she rated the chance as fifty-fifty or less, and sighed. “Then I’ll have to find another path,” she said, without losing the sweet sparkle in her eyes. We learned that there is an actual personality disorder, listed in the Diagnosis and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, that causes patients to obsessively file suits and contentiously engage the legal system. I admire the way this woman has learned to shove anger away and save her strength for battle.