Chapter Four
The Shadow Girl
By the time my sixteenth birthday came around, the maladaptive high school behaviour had begun
to take a particularly ominous turn. Always somewhat obsessive about body size and weight, such
as comparing myself constantly to other girls and feeling massive beside them, I decided that I
would finally do something about it. Thus began my initiation into the wonderful world of dieting,
a place that would nearly be my eventual mausoleum six months later.
I yearned desperately to look like the lissome Laurie Partridge, beautiful, poised, and most
importantly, impossibly thin. I read in 16 Magazine, the teenage Bible of entertainment rags, that
Dey had once been somewhat plump. Her mother had then insisted that she go on a strict regimen
of lean meats, plenty of fruits and vegetables, and absolutely no fats or sugars. "So that's how she
did it", I marvelled, vowing to follow this perfect physical specimen's example and pare at least
twenty pounds from my hideously obese (or so I imagined) frame. I was heavily steeped in
teenage negativism concerning my sense of self-worth.
Though I wasn't actually overweight, and never had been, I was what my father termed "chunky"
(a word I grew to despise). I knew at a very young age that my father preferred skinny women,
and one of the things that had attracted him to my mother was the fact that when they met, she
had had only one hundred twelve pounds on her five-foot eight inch frame.
As a doleful adolescent who desperately craved Daddy's affection, I wondered then that if I was
really thin, he'd pay more attention to me. That's how young girls' minds work; I was nothing
unique. At five foot three and one hundred ten pounds, I was certainly not Twiggy material, and
thus I set about to transform myself into a sylph-like vision of loveliness. Nothing, I vowed,
summing up every fibre of stubbornness in my tortured teenage soul, would stop me from
achieving this stellar goal.
Mimicking Susan Dey, I immediately cut out anything with any fat or sugar content. These
included all desserts, sugar in my tea and on cereal, and butter on vegetables. Of course, all
snacking was forbidden. It was not as difficult as I thought it
would be; in fact, denying myself treats and fattening foods felt sublimely virtuous and hunger
pangs were something with which I was to feel familiar and happy. It felt good to be in
discomfort, and so my self-abuse manifested itself in hunger and craving. Again, I'd stumbled
upon something to take a bit of the sting out of my emotional swarm of insipid hornets.
To my extreme joy, I lost three pounds that first week, and knew that my chunkiness would soon
be a fading memory. I relinquished my invitation to our Latin teacher, Mrs. Wright's end of the
year dinner for all of us at her place, because she would be serving spaghetti and that was
verboten. I'd recently cut out starches as well, which meant any form of pasta. I simply told her I
had other plans for that Saturday.
My mother was getting a bit suspicious of my eating habits, wondering why I refused all desserts
and was starting to pick at my meals, but I appeased her by saying I was "eating healthier" and
replacing artery-choking sweets with fruit. That must have appealed to the nurse in her, so she
stopped questioning me.
Another strong motivating force for my stringent dieting was Meike and her drastic weight loss
on the Stillman Water Diet. Appalled that she'd stuffed herself with Maple Buds and accumulated
far too many pounds of blubber, Meike, along with her mother, took up this rather unbalanced
regimen with a vengeance. They ate a cup of oatmeal with Sucaryl for breakfast, a hard boiled egg
for lunch, a small broiled hamburger pattie for supper, plus eight glasses of water per day.
Tired of being called "Aunt Jemima" by mean neighbourhood kids, she possessed an iron-willed
determination. Within six weeks Meike lost twenty-five pounds and was actually on the skinny
side. Ecstatic, she went out and bought a new wardrobe of flashy, mod clothes and suddenly
found herself exceedingly popular.
I bubbled over with jealousy, as the girl was now thinner than I, and I felt absolutely enormous
beside her. So, by the time school ended for the summer, I'd lost seven pounds and knew that I
could adequately compete with "show-off Meike".
Early in July, I visited Karen in Belle River. Although I had my customary wonderful time
swimming, water skiing and spending long summer evenings playing board games with her
ever-tight family, something bizarre was starting to happen. My dieting began to show signs of
becoming obsessive. Since Mom was
over a hundred miles away, I figured that I could easily get away with eating as little as possible.
After all, my weight loss had slowed down ands it was necessary to cut back even further if I was
going to achieve my goal.
I decided to eat only half of what the others did, sticking to my guns about avoiding all sugars,
fats and starches on top of
that. The result was that I ingested very little and began to suffer some ills effects of denying
myself to such an extent. I started feeling weak and dizzy and found that I was starting to think
about food a lot more as it took on an increasingly prominent place in my daily meditation.
I mentally calculated the number of calories in everything that went into my mouth, something
that would eventually make me a virtual slave to numbers. Fearing that my figures might be
wrong, I invested in a brand name calorie counter which told the numbers of every supermarket
product from Cool Whip to frozen entrees.
I carried this valuable volume everywhere and memorized it for hours at a time. I played little
numbers games, like saving up a day's calories in order to splurge on a slice of pizza, for instance.
I would only allow myself to consume six hundred calories a day and my mind ached with fatigue
as I constantly calculated and plotted.
Karen began to voice some concern for my health and asked, "Aren't you getting a bit carried
away with all this dieting stuff?" This happened one night after I'd picked at supper and opted
instead for a dish of sugarless jello.
"What do you mean?" I snapped defensively, not wanting any intruders in my world of denial.
"I'm just being careful. Maybe I want to look more like you and less like a jersey cow. Okay?"
Karen shook her head and fell silent, knowing from past experience that when I took that
unpleasant tone, it was best leave matters alone. Karen despised arguing and raised voices.
I remained in Belle River an extra week, as I wished to make up to my friend for my recent
moodiness and also to continue my strict dieting away from Mom's prying eyes.
Swimming began to lose its relaxing, fun aspect and became a means to burn more calories. Thus
the exercising rituals began during that extra week at Karen's. I decided that when I returned
home, I'd swim every day at the Woodcrest Community Pool for at least an hour a day. Biking
would be a good idea as well.
Upon my arrival back in London, Mom seemed distant and preoccupied. This usually meant that
she was having difficulties with Dad or Jim, perhaps both. One evening, she broke away from her
own dark thoughts long enough to mention that my arms looked
thinner. However, she then quickly added that it was probably because of my tan. I agreed,
sighing inwardly with relief and changed the subject.
No-one could find out about my increasingly complicated dieting rituals, especially Mom, who
could be given to theatrical outbursts. I never felt further apart from my family as I did that
summer, as for the first time I was being secretive and even lying to achieve my goal of slim
perfection. Something about it gave me an odd feeling of exhilaration.
As more of my time was invested in calculating calories and exercising, less was devoted to
keeping my room tidy. For the first time, it began to appear quite dishevelled. Always a
neat-freak, I now left dirty clothes strewn all over the floor and let my waste basket overflow with
papers and garbage. Worst of all, I
felt no twinge of guilt for such blatant slovenliness. It just
didn't seem important anymore.
Luckily, I was to travel by plane to Barrington, Rhode Island early in August to spend a couple of
weeks with Aunt Elizabeth
and Uncle Ray. I knew then, with perverse glee, that I could get away with murder as far as
dieting and exercise went. I hadn't stepped on the scale for awhile, as it depressed me when the
numbers weren't low enough. ven so, I knew that I wanted to lose more weight, or at least not
gain any back. That was absolutely imperative, for I thought that this would happen if I didn't
practically starve myself.
When I reached Barrington, a horrifying transformation began to take place. I was no longer
controlling the diet; it was slowly and cruelly manipulating me. It wasn't a matter of choice
anymore, but one of urgent necessity. A new, disturbing element was added to the bizarre
mixture: Fear. It propelled my dwindling body into wild spasms of exercise to such an alarming
extent that my physical movements became forced and exaggerated.
Each morning, I'd get on my cousin Jimmy's bike, accompanied by Aunt Elizabeth on her own
vehicle and peddle ferociously. I searched out steep hills and worked up lathers of sweat as I
steeled myself against the enemies of fatigue and aching muscles. "God, I'm not working hard
enough!" I despaired, grasping the handlebars in white-knuckled panic. I was barely aware of my
aunt struggling to keep up the frenetic pace that I had set.
This free-floating fear became my constant companion and would not loosen its grip on my heart
for months. I was still fat, unspeakably so and those despised pounds were not going to disappear
unless I worked out religiously to the point of near-paralysis.
I began to ignore my body's pitiful signals to slow down, as if switches labelled "Fatigue" and
"Hunger" were permanently
turned to the off position. These distressing feelings were created only to keep me obese and had
no relevance in my world anymore. They were simply cruel obstacles designed for deceitful
purposes.
Accompanying the manic exercise routines was an increase in social isolation. My communication
skills had never been a strong suit. So, as the ritualistic activities enveloped more and more of my
life, my relationship with my cousin, Susan, faded into oblivion.
Susan, nearly two years my senior, was a bubbly, intense and extremely outgoing teenager. She
was blessed with a winning personality and a healthy dose of self-esteem. Sue had graduated high
school that spring, where she'd been surrounded by copious close friends and had thoroughly
enjoyed herself and her overwhelming popularity. Susan possessed an easy, infectious laugh, was
perkily cute, loving and had embraced a multitude of extracurricular activities. These included
gymnastics, in which she excelled.
I'd recall ruminating that this girl was my polar opposite in every conceivable way. I twitched with
envy at Susan's innate ability to care strongly about each and every individual that
entered her universe with effortless abandon and wide-eyed acceptance. She was a tiny,
fine-boned girl who could eat anything and everything she wanted without gaining an ounce. Yes,
I thought dismally, my cousin had it all. It seemed inconceivable
to me that we shared many of the same genes.
Sue hassled me frequently about my paltry eating habits, telling me of her friend, Marcia, who
starved herself to the point of emaciation, becoming quite sick in the process. I countered with an
abrupt, "I'm not like that. Don't compare me to your friends".
After graduation, Sue had studied to become an X-ray technician. She was currently employed at
Miriam Hospital, working at something she loved and garnering a new set of friends. I
accompanied her many days to work, dressed in one of her uniforms and easily blended in with
the medical atmosphere. I watched, with reluctant admiration as she took X-rays of a wide variety
of patients, exuding confidence. My bubbly cousin kibbutzed with them before telling them firmly,
"Don't breathe," then zapped them with radiation.
I didn't particularly like the look, smell and sounds of the hospital, for they caused fingers of
quivering uneasiness to run haphazardly up and down my spine. I trudged throughout this
green-walled, crowded facility, behind my energy-buoyed cousin for eight interminable hours a
day, feeling as though my joints
were composed of gelatinous material and my muscles were shot full of Novocaine. Weakness
and dramatic periods of dizziness overcame me more frequently as the days progressed, but I
staunchly refused to relent.
My diet now consisted of a glass of orange juice for breakfast, a container of non-fat yogurt for
lunch and a bullion cube and small serving of custard for supper. I adhered to this regimen
faithfully, adding an hour of swimming per day along with the three hours of cycling.
The pounds loosened their grip on my frame and disintegrated into delicious oblivion by the
middle of August. I discovered with morbid fascination that I weighed only ninety pounds and it
seemed as though I had achieved my goal. The months of hunger and exhaustion had not been in
vain.
My joy was shortlived, however, as I quickly became obsessed with that now-familiar fear once
more. I can't let myself gain any of it back! I must keep up my strict dieting and exercising
without any lapses or I'll balloon out to one hundred ten again. That would be a fate worse than
death!
Much to my aunt, uncle and cousins' chagrin, I kept my food intake very low and forced the
strenuous work-outs, even as I resembled, as Susan said, "a tiny bird curled up in a little ball".
Happily, I shopped for new clothes, revelling in the sight of a now-svelte body in garments I'd
never had the guts to wear before. "Laurie Partridge, eat your heart out," I smirked, admiring this
unrecognizable thinness of mine in a department store mirror. "Wait'll I get back to school.
Nobody will
recognize me."
The only drawback to this newfound paradise was the constant and all-enveloping tiredness that
muffled my excitement and unabashed gloating. Getting out of bed in the morning became more
difficult. As I lay there on my side, knee bones rubbing against
each other with reassuring sharp friction, I fought the intense desire to vegetate for the rest of the
day. But of course, that was forbidden. There was so much to do to keep those evil calories from
conspiring to transform me back into an unsightly mountain of shivering flesh.
Both Susan and Aunt Elizabeth coerced me to eat more, both obviously concerned that I was
becoming sick and suffering from malnutrition. I made them promise not to mention anything to
Mom, but they must have felt torn and confused. All they knew for certain was that I was
retreating further and further into a self-destructive world and that even I was incapable of
stopping the process.
What stuck most firmly in my mind about that transitional summer in Rhode Island was the way in
which I became less aware of what was going on around me. My senses turned in on themselves
and the outside world faded into a dissolving memory. Many years later, as the process recurred, I
would refer to it as "encompassing myself in my own concentration camp."And what was my
crime? Being a chunky kid in a society that worshipped and paid homage to the sylph.
* * * * * * * * *
I spent all of August with the Holtzes and upon my return to London in early fall, everyone went
absolutely bananas. My family freaked when they caught a glimpse of what used to be their
daughter, sister and granddaughter and they all wondered what I had done to myself. After
putting her arm around me and feeling nothing but bones, my semi-hysterical mother hauled me
onto the bathroom scales and was mortified to see that the number read only eighty-seven pounds.
I smiled inwardly, even as I was given a crass ultimatum: "Eat or you're going into the hospital."
Hospital? I flinched at the mere thought of such a horrifying notion. Surely they were issuing
empty threats, designed simply to scare the hell out of me.
School was about to begin and I revelled in the anticipation of dazzling my contemporaries with
my new look. However, I felt somewhat uneasy about being able to keep up the kind of
energy-charged pace that grade eleven would require along with my exercise routine. I was now
struggling to do the swimming and cycling, as my muscles seemed to be being gnawed on by
invisible, hungry beasts and my blood thinned by camphor. Surely the simple act of refusing food
wasn't producing all this agony?
My head swam in little ripples of undulating seasick waves, blurring my vision and muffling my
ears and produced a constant humming that made it difficult to decipher what people were saying.
I fought the craving for constant sleep, and made the
unpleasant discovery that I was unable to concentrate on anything that I tried to read. What was I
going to do with a difficult subject like physics?
Shoving all those distasteful thoughts out of my head on the first day of school, I decided to bask
in the attention I was
getting for having lost twenty-five pounds. Reaction varied from blatant jealousy ("Geez, how did
you do it? That's fantastic!") to the left-handed compliment ("You sure look better than you used
to.")
Beverly was the sole voice of reason, although I didn't
appreciate it at the time. "Good God, Jane. What the hell did you do to yourself?!"
I brushed my friend's concern off like invisible particles of dandruff from an expensive new suit.
These disparaging comments were not going to dampen my glorious moment in the sun.
That moment was short-lived, however. Even though I'd initially made a positive impression on
my classmates, I felt no more a part of their exclusive world than I had at one hundred ten
pounds. As a matter of fact, it now seemed as though I was encased in some kind of isolation
bubble, peering out at everyone from an antiseptic, untouchable realm that forbade any interacting
or mingling.
Locked in my prison of denial and forced physical activity, I had no energy or thought processes
left over for anything or anyone else. And what was more, I seemed to be condemned here
forever, continually being punished for the crime of striving for perfection in an imperfect world.
Saunders Secondary School, in the fall of 1971, could and would not appreciate what I'd endured
to get where I was at that time.
It didn't know what it had cost me to try to mix in and become indistinguishable from the students
who swished and swaggered so effortlessly through the halls, exchanging meaningful glances with
one another and wearing the close-fitting garb of the divinely inherited.
I still sat alone in the cafeteria at lunchtime, chewing morosely on my egg white and watching
them enjoying the fruits of popularity and inherent coolness, all long-haired, mini-skirted and
bell-bottomed non-conforming teenage chic. Damn them, damn them all.
I made ambitious plans to try out for the cheerleading team, something I'd always wanted but
deemed unthinkable, as well as the volleyball and basketball teams. I was under the mistaken
impression that thinness rendered one virtually infallible and capable of astounding feats of daring
and social occupancy of the shrineof the upper echelon.
Now, at a sleek and glamour-gilded eighty-five pounds, I could even compete with Sandy, and the
other kids would then speak her name and mine in the same staccato breath. Then that smug,
egotistical Jason would be all slack-jawed and oggle-eyed over me too. Sarah was a former
hefty-weight who lost an amazing number of excess pounds the year before and emerged
surprisingly sensual and crackling with the vibrant vivacity of Popularity Personified.
She was thus transformed from a shy, reclusive butt of numerous and cruel fat jokes to the object
of every post-pubescent boy's fantasies. Suave, cocky Jason practically bronzed her discarded
sugarless bubble gum in his embarrassing efforts to win her affections. Well, now I was thinner
than Sarah, so
logically I should now shine as "The Number One Girl Who Had It All and Worked Damned Hard
To Get It".
Reality came thundering down upon me like heavy, dislodged boulders and crushed any hopes for
high school utopia in a dustcloud of sad finality. I failed miserably at cheerleading, volleyball and
basketball, as my movements were all misdirected, spastic energy and lacking any precision and
muscular coordination.
My chief objective was burning calories and in my obsessive, narrow-fielded vision, I lost sight of
the real purpose of these sports: namely, teamwork and the pleasures of being together with other
kids. My habits of the past several months had rendered me even more socially isolated than ever,
and completely incapable of enjoying anyone's company.
It all smacked of bitter irony: I had lost all the weight in order to gain acceptance by my peers, but
something about the methods I'd employed were unhealthy and repugnant. Nobody wanted to be
around a sick person, I thought darkly. A sick person---could that be possible? Was there
something wrong with me after all, as my family claimed as they wrung their collective hands and
bemoaned my appalling transformation?
As September wore on and the days shortened, I began to notice how incredibly cold I was all the
time. It penetrated every cell, cramping my wasted muscles and making my teeth chatter. I would
walk stiffly about with my body tensed against the discomfort, clamping my jaws and rubbing
clammy skin to erase some of the numbing goosebumps.
To my surprise, I saw that I was beginning to grow fine hair, like soft duck down all over my
body. I reassured myself that nature was seeing to it that I didn't freeze to death. For some reason,
the sight didn't repulse or frighten me, but was oddly comforting and pleasurable.
My bouts of exercising had become sporadic lately and ceased altogether toward the middle of the
month. I was just too weak, tired and drained to do more than drag myself to and from school.
Upon my arrival home, I'd collapse into our black leather lazyboy chair and remain motionless
until bedtime.
I became less and less aware of the clamour and chaos all around me. My parents dragged me
onto the scales every few days, despairing as my weight plunged further and further to critical
levels. Mom implored me to eat, wailing that I was going to die if I persisted in starving myself,
and Dad became moody, distant and grim. He was secretly very frightened but outwardly
uncommunicative.
Jim reacted with fourteen-year-old disgust and revulsion, taunting me that my hands looked
skeletal and that I was acting "really weird." I knew he cared, though, even with his negative
comments. But teenage boys don't come out and say that to their
sister. It was one of the unwritten rules of adolescence.
Studying became futile. I could no longer comprehend anything I was reading and went about my
classes in a semi-somnambulistic
state. I remember sitting in class, but not really feeling as though I was there. I would feel my
bones digging into the hard
seats and be overwhelmed with the cold and was too weak to push a pen across the page.
Karen came to town for the Western Fair, as always, and I recall struggling to keep up with her. I
begged to stay in the Progress Building where it was warmer and was overwhelmed by the
permeating aromas of corndogs, caramel corn and fries that wafted about everywhere.
My hunger had past the point of voracious and had reached a level I'd never experienced before.
It was all-encompassing, a distressing, yet comfortingly familiar companion. It assured me that I
was being "good" and not giving in to the powerful desire to eat.
The best way to describe it was to say that it was comparable to having a metal prong stuck deep
into your leg. Although you knew that it would be a wonderful rush of relief to remove it, you
would no longer be aware that you could feel pain. Pain assured you that you were alive and a
part of the world, and thus, starvation meant that you were empty and thin.
Karen was terribly worried as she saw me shrinking before her very eyes, my clothes hanging
limply as if there was nobody inside them. I talked little to her, not fully aware of her presence and
too overcome with exhaustion to carry on any kind of a conversation. She must have feared for
my life then, as everyone did. I told her that everything was fine, that I would eat when I got back
home. "All the food here is full of fat," I objected.
Throughout this disquieting period of my life, I never thought of myself as suffering from anorexia
nervosa until just before I was hospitalized in October. Even as my weight plummeted to
seventy-five pounds, most of my hair fell out in large handfuls, the calves of my legs swelled
enormously from the edema of starvation and my teeth got alarmingly loose, I maintained
stubbornly that I was not Fiona in any way, shape or form.
Fiona was the daughter of John and Sally Gerard, who were colleagues of Dad's and friends of the
family for many years. Mom has a photo of Fiona and me as little children at Port Stanley, and I'd
spent time with her off and on for most of my life in London, both before and after Halifax.
After Fiona returned from boarding school several years before, her parents were distressed to see
that she was absolutely emaciated and refused to eat. She was later diagnosed with anorexia
nervosa and I looked at my friend with morbid fascination as all her bones protruded out of her
baggy clothes. She seemed oblivious to the way she looked.
By 1971, Lucy was still critically anorexic and had spent a lot of time in the hospital. Evidently
she'd been very unhappy at
boarding school and had kept to herself most of the time. She was unusually bright and a quiet,
kind-hearted girl, and I truly felt
sorry for her. But certainly my problem was not anorexia; it couldn't possibly be.
I was completely unaware of how I looked to others and imagined myself to be much heavier than
the spindly Fiona. Perhaps I had a lot of problems, but she was really sick.
Mom had taken me to various physicians since my return home, including our pediatrician, Dr.
Stewart. I gave him a concocted fairly tale about having stomach pains and he swallowed it,
ordering Gravol and telling me to "try to eat something. You really should weigh more at your
age."
One of the few fond memories I have of this time was of my father taking me clothes shopping.
He'd never done this before, and I noticed that since I had lost all the weight, we'd grown closer.
My convoluted thinking resulted in assuming that this was because I looked so much more
attractive, but the poor guy was worried sick about his little girl.
Perhaps he wanted to spend time with me while I was still alive, for I got the impression that
everyone was becoming resigned to my starvation routine. My family had recently ceased begging
me to eat and let me sit glumly at the table staring at my untouched plate.
My last day of school for awhile was the stuff of which melodramas are made. I fainted during
French class and our teacher frantically sent me to the school nurse. My mom was then called at
work to come and get me. Miss Connaught told me that I desperately needed help after I
sheepishly apologized for causing a commotion during her class.
Since both my parents worked during the day, I was sent over to Grandma and Grandpa's from
that day on, ostensibly so someone could keep a watchful eye on me. It had been decided that I
would be admitted to St. Joseph's Hospital, as my problem had escalated to the point where my
life was in danger.
Secretly, I was relieved. I hated feeling so lousy all the time, not being able to attend classes and
lying at 619 Talbot Street in a semi-vegetative state for hours. I had developed a keen interest in
cooking after returning from the states and spent hours concocting meals for the rest of the
family.
I was to learn that this was one of the symptoms of anorexia, but at the time I thought it was the
answer to my nagging hunger. I could enjoy all of the aspects of eating without actually putting a
morsel into my own mouth.
Every morning, I cooked scrambled eggs for Grandpa, drawing in the aroma like a dehydrated
sailor sucking up fresh water. It gave me an exhilarating sensation of well-being. As I sat
watching my grandfather enthusiastically eating my finished product, my soul was extremely
gratified.
The days began to dissolve monotonously into one another. During the day, I allowed myself the
coveted reward of consuming a whole digestive biscuit, taking over an hour to let every morsel
dissolve on my tongue. Then, to get rid of the calories lurking in my body, I'd drag myself outside
and walked with slow-motion heaviness down Central Avenue to Richmond Street and back. It
took over forty minutes to do the two-block distance and I
nearly collapsed every time.
Poor Grandma and Grandpa, having to watch this horror show for eight hours a day and
wondering how much longer I'd live. I was so inwardly focused that I never thought of their
sorrow and worry, only that I had to adhere to my daily routine. It was the
epitome of all-encompassing self-absorption. I was sick, selfish and oblivious to my family's
agony.
Finally, a bed opened up at St. Joe's and I was admitted under the care of Dr. Gerald Tevaarwerk.
He was a jolly, easy-going European physician to whom I instantly took a liking. He asked me
some fundamental questions, then spent a lot of time discussing my dietary habits.
Finally, after examining me and writing for a few minutes in his chart, he looked level-eyed at me
and said, "You know that you are suffering from anorexia nervosa."
At this point, I was neither shocked nor indignant, only relieved that matters were now out of my
inept hands and securely ensconced in those of a thoughtful professional. "Yeah, I guess so. This
wasn't supposed to happen."
Dr. Tevaarwerk smiled comfortingly and put a large, warm hand on my withered one. "We're
going to help you here. Don't worry. You're going to be alright." For the first time since this
whole nightmare began, I thought that perhaps there was some hope for me after all.
* * * *
I was put on a behaviour modification program to regain some of the lost weight, a method with
which I was to become very
familiar over the years and grow to despise. Back in 1971, anorexia nervosa was not the
well-known and highly-publicized phenomenon that it is today. Little was documented about the
disorder and treatments were basically experimental and awkward. I was the sole sufferer in our
school's four hundred populace and it was very unusual that I was well-acquainted with another
anorexic, poor Lucy.
It was ironic that I emulated Susan Dey and put her on the pedestal of the artistically and visually
exalted, because it was later brought forth that she, too, had been anorexic at the same time that I
was. Yes, the modern Western World was going to hell in a handcart, accompanied by the sweet
strains of David Cassidy's youthful voice.
I grew quickly tired of the behaviour modification routine. I was supposed to eat something at
each meal in order to receive any privileges. My first privilege was to be able to get out of bed for
an hour a day, even though it was an effort just to roll over. Fear once again reared its repulsive
head and symbolically wired my jaws shut.
I couldn't eat that disgusting Special K they gave me, which would undoubtedly put great rolls of
ugly, yellowish flab on my body and crush the beautiful thinness out of it. Eating was wrong; it
felt insidiously evil, it was a sign of weakness and I hated it. Surely something could be worked
out with Dr. Tevaarwerk to get me out of that prison-like hospital without
relinquishing my hard-earned skinny body. I had gone through so much unspeakable agony and
torment to achieve it. This just wasn't fair!
For a week, I lay in that semi-private room, staring vacantly at the television and feeling too weak
and tired to move a
muscle. My consciousness rolled in on itself, old songs by the Everly Brothers wafted into my ears
and ignited enticing memories of happier, healthier days. I was dying.
I'm not sure what zapped me back into the realm of the living and gave me that initial push to
fumble out of the suffocating chasm and breathe with renewed vigour. It was probably my family's
prayers and their frequent visits to my bedside, forcing me to see that death was not acceptable at
the age of sixteen. Or perhaps it was my intrinsically stubborn nature that awoke from the spell of
psychological suicide and decided that it still had things to accomplish before my time came.
Whatever the catalyst, I lost no more weight after that. I even took a few mouthfuls of food the
next day, something I hadn't done in many weeks.
My recovery progressed fairly rapidly after that and within six weeks I was able to go home for a
few hours. The road was not bereft of a vast number of potholes, however. There were only
certain foods that I would allow myself, like unbuttered spinach, raw carrots and celery,
uncreamed cottage cheese and digestive
cookies. Everything else was forbidden.
A dietician was sent up to work with me and for a long time I was unresponsive to her
suggestions to try different foods. "You people are just trying to make me fat!" I snapped,
dismissing her with a cold stare and defiantly folded arms.
Dr. Tevaarwerk wanted me to be weighed twice a week and with each minimal gain came a step
closer to freedom. I fought him all the way, protesting vehemently when I gained a few ounces
and secretly rejoicing when I lost, even if it meant giving up some privileges. I was confused,
angry and desperate, feeling stabs of guilt whenever I ate and waves of comforting virtue when I
refused. For awhile, it seemed as if I'd never make any lasting progress, for any gained weight was
immediately lost again.
But eventually, I tired of the hospital routine and longed to go back to school. I was very much
afraid of failing grade eleven and having to repeat the year. This began to take precedence over
my desire to be ultra-skinny.
My first overnight pass was a truly bizarre experience. When I entered my bedroom for the first
time in two months, it was as though I hadn't been there for years. From the time I'd returned
from Rhode Island I'd been only partially aware of my surroundings and thus, everything had a
feeling of unreality about it.
Now, much better and well-nourished for the first time in six months, it was as if I'd awakened
from a coma. I sat on my bed, revelling in the familiarity and realizing how homesick I'd been.
Everything was going to be alright, just as Dr. Tevaarwerk had assured me. I would soon be
coming home to a normal life.
I told my doctor that I did not want to weigh more than ninety pounds, so he calculated that I
would be able to eat fourteen hundred calories per day to maintain that.
I returned to school in November, on a day that was dusted by the first snowfall of the season.
Dad would drive me there and back to the hospital in the evening and I was extraordinarily
nervous about jumping back into the fray after such a lengthy and mysterious absence. I weighed
eighty pounds and still looked very gaunt and frail I had hollow cheeks, thin hair and bones
protruding from my stylish clothes, which Dad had helped me pick out.
I felt alienated and set apart from my classmates. The atmosphere at school was so vibrant and
colourful compared to the muffled colourlessness of St. Joseph's Hospital. Moving between the
two realms proved to require more sophisticated adaptive skills than I possessed. On top of all
that, I'd fallen staggeringly behind in my studies.
I decided to drop both physics and Spanish, as I could make up the credits in grade twelve. I
already had an extra one for that year anyway and aside from that, I couldn't grasp the
fundamentals of physics at the best of times, let alone after missing two months of it.
Reactions to my health crisis were mixed. Teachers thought I was suffering from some
life-threatening illness until they learned otherwise and treated me with awkward
over-protectiveness. The students, on the other hand, figured I was strung out on Speed, thus
achieving such a scrawny body. I must confess that I didn't find this assumption too distasteful. At
least it gave me a certain element of coolness and 1970's chic that had never been associated with
me before.
Readjusting was difficult, as I was still very wrapped up in the anorexic experience and obsessing
about food and calories. Not only that, but I had been living a lie for months, claiming that I'd lost
my appetite and thus had been unable to eat for so long. The truth was that I had been riddled
with jolting hunger pangs the entire time, fighting the constant desire to stuff food into my
salivating mouth.
There just didn't seem to be another way to explain why I couldn't eat; the whole experience was
so bizarre. How could I tell everyone that I was simply too terrified to eat anything for fear of
becoming fat? It didn't make sense and would have produced anger and frustration from all
concerned. So I lived this brazen lie, secure in the knowledge that anorexia was something about
which little was known or written.
I had a difficult time at school at first. I felt as though I was in a thick, isolated bubble, watching
the other kids from a distance as they arrived at Saunders each day from their homes. They were
living out their academic lives with spontaneity and rampant energy of normal, healthy teenagers
and were generally unfettered by life and death concerns.
How could I ever attain that level of carefree abandon again? There was nothing typical about my
situation, having my home at the hospital, being monitored as I ate, weighed frequently to
keep privileges and looking like a starving Biafran with large tufts of hair missing. How could this
have happened to me?
For the first time, I thought about how chillingly similar I was to Fiona. She'd always appeared as
a kind of sideshow freak to me, untouchable, mysterious, and frightening. Now I was the
embodiment of these elements. In my relentless quest for
popularity and chic, glamorous sleekness, I had achieved the antithesis and all my suffering had
been counterproductive.
I ate only enough to maintain my weight at eighty pounds, holding fast to the deceitful notion that
I had no appetite whatsoever. My math teacher tutored me after school in Trigonometry, but I
found it very difficult to grasp.
English, with the personable and charismatic Brian Kellow, involved a great deal of catch-up
reading but was manageable. French and geography presented little challenge that I wasn't able to
meet. That left physical education, much desired for the exercise involvement.
Academically-speaking, anyway, my situation didn't appear dismal and hopeless. Perhaps I
wouldn't flunk grade eleven after all.
I hung around primarily with Leslie Stallard, whom I'd gotten to know a bit the year before. She
shared my desire for slimness. She wasn't anorexic, but monitored her eating carefully and was
quite skinny, priding herself on being able to wear the same clothes she had since grade eight.
Leslie was small-boned, with a round, cherubic face, wire-rimmed glasses and large, serious eyes
that reflected a rather sombre nature. She was bright, articulate and we bonded quickly and with a
fierce intensity. It felt good to have a friend who wasn't consumed with seething hormones and
addled with psychedelia and hard rock.
My life had settled into a sense of relative calm, for awhile anyway. Although I still felt like a
freak and had trouble concentration, the raging fears, so prominent in my thoughts for so long,
had abated. Then came the fateful Day of the Dad's Oatmeal Cookie.
I had been released from the hospital after maintaining my weight for a month. One afternoon,
shortly after returning home in early December, I sat down at the kitchen table to do some
studying. As I opened my math text, my eyes fell idly upon a box of cookies on the counter and I
found myself unable to pull my gaze from it. I had loved those cookies at one time and would
think nothing of eating four of them at a sitting. "Despicable fat slob!" I spat at myself for pausing
to lust over junk food. Those days were long gone.
My mind suddenly began calculating calories and energy expenditure. I had walked two miles
home from school, so surely I could eat one cookie at one hundred calories a shot and still have a
hundred to spare. My hands shook as I extracted the forbidden treat from its cellophane
wrapping. My heartbeat thundered heavily in my ears and seemed to strain to escape a taut
ribcage. I lifted the hard, brown biscuit to dry, trembling lips.
Then, in a single, rapid motion, I bit off a tiny piece and turned it over and over on my tongue.
Sucking on it until it was nothing but a mass of pulpy, sugary sweet pap, I squeezed my eyes shut
tightly and swallowed hard. The clock on the kitchen wall hammered the cloistered silence away
and I felt as though I had succeeded in committing a diabolical crime.
A hole had been torn in the dam of resistance and great
torrents of water came bursting forth. I devoured the rest of the cookie greedily, chewing just
enough to be able to swallow it without choking.
Then, all too quickly, the morsels were gone and I sat there amid a little pile of crumbs and
wanted more. My appetite, long dormant and lying in wait like a panting tigress, leapt from its
hiding place and demanded to be fed. Pushing all negative thoughts aside, I reached for another
cookie and ate it, faster and more savagely than the last. I kept this motion going until, ten
minutes later, the entire box was gone.
"Oh God, no!!" I gasped in strangulated horror as my stomach stretched with more food than it
had seen in many months. "What have I done?!" Panic wove its spidery legs around each nerve of
my body and propelled me off the chair. Then I launched into a frenetic frenzy of physical activity,
running blindly up and down stairs, flailing my arms to burn more calories and clamping my teeth
down on my tongue to keep from screaming.
I had to get rid of that disgusting mass of sugar and fat that sprawled from one end of my stomach
to the other, creating blubber with each passing second which would gather with laughing
conspiracy on my bones.
I'd never experienced such unbridled anxiety and as the sweat burst out of my pores. My legs felt
like soft sticks of gum as I refused to stop moving until I literally collapsed in a twisted pile in the
bare hallway.
Then, as quickly as the panic attack had hit me, it abated, leaving me with a curiously warm
sensation of grudging acceptance. Sure, I'd eaten far too much just then, but that was only
because I'd denied myself for so long. It was the initial reintroduction into the world of eating, a
brief, passing phase that would not show itself again.
Now I could eat normally, fourteen hundred calories a day and reach my goal of ninety pounds
naturally and comfortably. I would announce to my family that night that my appetite had returned
and all would be well. The nightmare was over.
But it had only just begun. Shortly after the feeling of well-being had settled upon my family and
me, my love-hate relationship with food and eating took a disturbing turn. I became deluded,
somehow, into thinking that I could eat whatever I wanted in unlimited quantities as long as I
kept physically active.
I could consume three substantial meals a day, plus countless snacks, treats and calorie-laden
concoctions, if I traded off the locust-like eating with rapid walking, numerous sit-ups and
push-ups. I even made a valiant stab at jockdom by joining the track team.
This was a beneficial move, for it got me actively involved with other students and provided a
focus for my ambitious spurts
of energy. Everyday after school, I ran circuits in the halls, totalling over five miles each day, then
practised racing, followed by muscle-strengthening exercises. Being light worked to my
advantage, so I became one of our coach's favourite athletes.
I even began developing some friendships through the track
team, but was so focused on calorie-burning as opposed to teamwork that these relationships
didn't ever really go anywhere. It was an extremely egocentric and all-encompassing world I
occupied and I was incapable of breaking away from it.
By Christmas, I weighed eighty-five pounds and was taken aback by the sobering reality that I had
only a five-pound margin before hitting the red-letter ninety-pound mark. I'd been eating with
reckless abandon, so delirious about being able to fill my face to its capacity and escape the
ravaging hunger pangs that had become my enemy.
I remember how hunger had crossed the border from overwhelming to simply normal and regular
sensations of needing food. It had caused surges of fluttering panic as I was forced, by my greedy
masticating, to abandon my "security blanket" of feeling deservedly starved and thus thin and
empty enough to be acceptable.
Losing that gauge left me awash in negative emotions of shame, guilt and self-loathing. I began to
feel fat again, as I had at one hundred ten pounds, and bemoaned my lost skinny virtuousness.
What was happening to me? Why was I relinquishing my perfect body for the love and pursuit of
food, the enemy? It would make me ugly again, and no longer the centre of my father's attention.
For whatever else the anorexia had accomplished, it had gotten me noticed at last and had
somehow united my parents in a common cause: Saving daughter Jane from herself. Even Jim was
less hostile to me and some of his friends even stopped to talk to me in the halls now. This whole
experience certainly had not been entirely bad.
One afternoon, feeling positively hungry and gluttonous, I engaged in a feeding frenzy that
included such formerly banned delicacies as ice cream, frozen Cool Whip, scooped right out of
the container, Pop Tarts, English Muffins with jam and canned rice pudding.
I ate rapidly and thoughtlessly, shutting out all notions of what those calories would do to me, in
favour of continuing the lusty affair between my taste buds and the decadent, nutritionally-bereft
goodies. By the time my parents returned from work, I must have ingested over ten thousand
calories and was in a state of utter chaos.
They found me racing up and down the stairs and watched as I kept up an impossible pace for
over an hour. Then I sat on the livingroom floor and engaged in sit-ups until I thought I would
vomit. Tears streamed down my face the entire time and my body was racked with broken sobs.
This became an all-too-familiar scene at our house: Bingeing
and manic directionless exercise, accompanied by hysteria and
crying jags. It must have been difficult to watch and my father, understandably, grew
short-tempered and impatient. He could not understand why I was eating so much, given that I
only wanted to weigh ninety pounds and it was causing me so much pain to consume food as such
an accelerated pace.
I didn't understand it either at the time, but in retrospect I
believe that my body was simply fighting to regain all of the weight that I'd lost. It was not natural
for me to weigh much under one hundred ten pounds. Craving so much food, and such
high-calorie food at that, was old Mother Nature's way of looking out for herself.
I nervously stepped on the scale the next day and shuddered as it registered eighty-six pounds. I
was almost at my maximum. That was it, I thought firmly. I just won't eat a thing for three days to
compensate for that disgusting binge. This brought a barrage of protests from Dad, who had
gotten weary of the whole anorexic set-up and finally lost his temper at my juvenile behaviour.
It infuriated him that I was so wantonly self-destructive and that even though I'd "gotten my
appetite back" I was no closer to recovering from my food obsessions than I ever was. It was
saddening, exasperating and made him feel helpless and ineffective. He and Mom were forced to
sit back and watch me drowning in misery and self-abusive activities. Where would it all end?
Christmas came and went, punctuated with a heated argument between Dad and me about eating.
He told me that I was afraid to grow up and act my age, and that I should go with the
fourteen-year-olds like Jim as that's how old I looked and behaved. I sulked on the couch, arms
folded defensively across my chest and scowled at the in the inescapable fact that he was right.
In the New Year, a psychiatrist was summoned to help me. His name was Wendell Haim, a
long-haired, bearded hippie who came to the house, sat cross-legged on the floor of the family
room. He then told us that the whole family was sick, not just me. He said he wanted to treat the
four of us.
I thought Dr.Haim was crazier than I was and was opposed to this kind of communal family
therapy stuff. Jim was also adamantly against any "stupid shrink picking away" at his head. For
once I agreed with him, for after all, I was the one with the problem and because of it, everyone
was suffering.
Dad said something to me around that time that hurt me deeply and caused even more feelings of
guilt and self-hatred to well up
in my heart. After one of my emotional scenes, where I ran about the house screaming and crying
my head off following a binge, he said sharply, "Now look. This nonsense has gone on long
enough. There are three other people in this house and I'll be damned if one member is going to
ruin everybody's lives! You'll either get help or you'll be asked to leave".
A thick, salty lump had risen in my throat, threatening to choke off my air. I couldn't believe my
ears. I was being told that if I didn't get better, I'd be kicked out and banished from
my home for destroying everyone. What could I do to stop this insanity?
I agreed to see Dr. Haim, who was the embodiment of the quintessential crazy shrink, making
even his nuttiest patients appear sane. Although I believe that his heart was in the right place and
that he was basically a good person, L. felt that all my problems stemmed from the fact that I
desperately craved love
and affection from a dominant male personality. Since he thought my father was a poor provider,
he took it upon himself to be a "surrogate one".
With his unruly, curly hair, affable grin and khaki clothes, this man was the
eccentric/rebel/misunderstood-but-conscientious/male role model that he imagined that an
affection-starved sixteen-year-old woman/child needed and craved.
Thus he went about trying to "win me over" with a heartfelt poem written for and about me
entitled "The Chrysalis" that made me feel exalted and special. He conducted our sessions over at
his pad that he shared with his live-in girlfriend.
Who knows how long this strange little cerebral affair would have continued, but it came to an
abrupt end one afternoon. I remember it vividly, as if it happened only last week.
I was sitting in my usual place in his den, firmly ensconced in a brown beanbag chair while James
Taylor droned away on the stereo. I'd lost touch with my faithful companion of music during my
anorexic months and it felt warm and reassuring to experience it again. I was as relaxed as I was
capable of being then and waited for Dr. Haim to return from the kitchen, where he was talking to
his girlfriend.
He came in shortly, bringing me a cup of herbal tea, then lit some incense and sat down beside me
on the hardwood floor. There was even a door of beads and a Woodstock poster on the wall. I
was tempted to ask him if he took in American draft dodgers, but decided against it. It wasn't my
nature to be a smartass back then, although my mind worked that way at times.
We sat quietly for a few minutes and listened to the music. I breathed in the musk aroma of the
incense and felt somewhat awkward at the extended "Pinter pause". Just then, Haim leaned
over and started brushing a strand of hair from my eyes. I moved back,thinking that he was
behaving inappropriately for a therapist. The next thing I knew, this hippie shrink was all over me,
pressing his thin, unkempt body on top of me and whispering in my ear, "Just relax. Everything's
okay."
Well, I didn't appreciate these clumsy advances, even if he somehow believed that being
deflowered would help me tremendously and make me feel wanted and loved. I rolled over
quickly and struggled to my feet, exclaiming breathlessly, "I want to go home now. Take me
home, please."
That was the last of my sessions with "Dr. Love". I told my parents that the rest was going to
have to be up to me and that I no longer needed therapy. I felt embarrassed, humiliated and
betrayed. How could a man who wrote such insightful and sensitive poetry be such a lech?
Oddly enough, I began to improve after that incident. My
eating levelled out somewhat and became more evenly balanced with
my workouts for the track team. I even participated in several track meets, never placing
anywhere near first, but running the 880 with an acceptable amount of aplomb.
I stopped weighing myself regularly after hitting eighty-six pounds and far surpassed the
ninety-pound mark by the end of that school year. Weight, calories and numbers faded from
prominence
in my life and my old interests of academe, music, writing, art and piano took the forefront again.
The panicky urgency of burning off calories was abandoned in favour of more cerebral pursuits,
and thus I reclaimed my life.
I'm not sure what caused this transformation, but I think it was becoming fed up with the
superficiality and emptiness of chasing a thin body. My mind craved other stimulation besides that
singular and narcissistic one. Besides, I greatly feared losing the love and support of my family.
Dad's threat had struck fear into my heart, and I knew I would relinquish anything to remain at
home with him, Mom and Jim. Maybe it took this negative, life-threatening experience to make
me appreciate what I had and what I could have squandered.
By that summer, I was back up to one hundred five pounds and though I would have chosen less
weight, I knew that it was simply not meant to be. What was more, I had erroneously thought that
weighing ninety pounds would cause my father to love me more, when in actuality it nearly
alienated him for good. It was an invaluable lesson to learn and I had learned it the hard way.
Unfortunately, it would take twenty-three more years before that would eventually sink into my
thick, stubborn skull.
I would be plagued by at least five more life-threatening episodes of anorexia, along with bulimia,
until the age of forty. I hope that now, as I write this, that this devastating illness will never lunge
viciously at me again. It just takes too much and leaves you with nothing but broken dreams and
spent spirits.
