By Julia Rice
Spring 2007 Kaplan Award Winner
Females just sit there and think about the stupidest things. They get emotional when they don’t need to be. They have boobs and hips and can devour an amazing amount of food. They analyze the facts, but what’s worse is they analyze their feelings. They will analyze what is said, how it’s said, and most importantly, what isn’t said. They spend hours on what they’re going to say. They find the exact words in order to convey the perfect message. They try to seduce. They think that if they say things just right, you will fall in love with them. They seethe in their own misery when it doesn’t happen. They have created their own problems. One major problem they have is feeling fat. When normal eating doesn’t work, alternative solutions must suffice.
Liz, Margaret, and Michaela all want to be skinnier, and like any algebraic equation, they have each found the answer using a slightly different method. There are many ways to manipulate x to get the answer. For Liz, her answer is found somewhere in the mean, the average. Margaret’s answer is 105 lbs, while Michaela’s is 102 lbs. Algebra is not easy, but when you finally solve the equation, there’s a moment of quite jubilation. Maybe a little relief. You did it, and it feels good. It feels good enough to keep going, because there are always other problems to solve.
I met Liz without her pants on in a forest. A group of friends decided to go camping in Eugene and the plan was to take two cars. Her car arrived earlier in the day so she pitched tents earlier, and started drinking earlier. By the time my car showed up it was pitch dark and everyone was already blatantly drunk. I thought she was way too loud for me, annoying really. After a couple hours, when I actually started listening to what she was saying (or rather yelling) I started to like the girl. She was funny! She was blunt, sharp, and witty. She was about a head shorter than me and twice as loud as me. She was short and curvy. Our relationship was a typical college friendship in which we were too busy during the week to hang out, but during the weekend nights she was always found by my side. The only thing between us was a bottle of wine or Sparks, which we deemed battery juice because of its amazing jolting effect.
One drunken night we found ourselves in the bathroom taking a break from the dance party we started. She told me that she barely ate during the day because she wanted to lose weight. She wanted to look like a hot girl, and not best friend Liz. I told her I understood. I told her that if she got too skinny, I would say something. “Coffee,” she said, “I drink lots and lots of coffee. Then on weekends I drink as much as I want to. Smoking is what I do too.” Liz has lost some weight, but I have not said anything to her yet. Besides, it’s awkward bringing up drunk conversations when we’re sober.
Binge eating feels good at the moment. It pacifies and consumes. There is no thought at all. It’s the action of scarfing food in and washing it all down with orange juice. There is an intense hunger in which binging is justified. The regret comes later and it will be miserable. A complete failure. There will be a depression so low, but at that moment it doesn’t matter. Food is the drug. The future is acknowledged, but at that moment there is no choice. It’s about running to the next available food with a sick skip in the step. There is happiness right before giving in. It’s been waiting all day, the 1000 calories at midnight is necessary. It is needed to survive. Junk food will do because it’s quick and not too filling. Besides, fiber really clogs the system for days, kidney beans are the worst. Water isn’t necessary either. The first thought tomorrow morning will be the binge and it will be depressing. The binge doesn’t just leave after that horrible night. It stays for days, however long it takes to get out of the body’s slow metabolism. The metabolism is slow because the nights without a binge are chances for rebuttal. It’s a new start, a fresh one, without any food at all. It is glorious to be weak because the body is finally getting somewhere.
Michaela became concerned with her body during middle school. She met a friend her freshmen year of high school who had found the answer. She showed Michaela how to throw up her food. Having a buddy system is common with many eating disorders. She remembered when, “it got so bad that we had a once a day rule.” I asked her, “So you had to throw up at least once a day?” “No,” Michaela responded, “we couldn’t do it more than once a day.” Michaela was sometimes bulimic, purging three times a day. It gave her sore throats, upset stomachs, and a scar above her knuckle where her teeth would hit when she stuck her finger down her throat.
Michaela was sometimes anorexic, living off a banana for breakfast, an apple and coffee for lunch, and a small meal for dinner. One day she even passed out in class. It was an obsession that would continue on for two years. Once Michaela joined cross country as a senior in high school, she was forced to eat more. She couldn’t afford getting another stress fracture, she has had five. “It never goes away,” Michaela admits, “even to this day I still have days where I think I’m fat and I work out five days a week!”
It makes her sad to see other anorexics; you can always tell who they are. They are the kind of girls that walk around without life in their face. Their eyes are sunken in, they are drained. Being a former anorexic Michaela knows all the secret tricks, “Anyone who eats mustard on celery, you know they’re fucked up. Oh and use hot sauce, spicy foods will make you drink more water.”
Anorexia is control; the feeling of weakness empowers. When the legs are sore from malnutrition, much has been accomplished. Once the hunger pains have been shrugged off finally, finally hunger disappears like an unwelcome guest. It’s hard to get there, but it’s worth the results. Anorexics are like marathon runners who work for a runner’s high. They work for an anorexic high. Life is good when your stomach is flat, and your boobs have shrunk down a half a size. It’s good when your hips don’t purge out over your tight pants. Life is good when you are cold most of the time. Even in the shower it’s great when hair keeps falling out and each individual strand has a new texture, starting from thick and thinning out closer to the scalp. Moods are swung because the body is under high stress. Eventually anemia will creep in and deteriorate the immune system. Chances of catching chronic strep throat increase. Life is good because you are empowered and because you can function without all that food. Food is an unnecessary burden, it is the enemy and thinking about not thinking about it helps. It is hard to quit cold turkey, especially when the stomach is of normal size. Find a barely sustainable approach, and results will appear.
Margaret Read is pale with icy blue eyes. In kindergarten she remembers not only putting on fake make-up and high-heals, but also going on fake diets, just like the big girls did. She started a diet with her friend Amy freshmen year of high school. The diet required each of them to weigh themselves and to compare how much each has lost. “It was a competition for me,” said Margaret, “I always wanted to end up smaller than Amy, not noticing she was a head shorter than me.” Her freshmen year in high school was when she became a full fledged anorexic. The transition between a Christian middle school and a “gangster” high school was rough on Margaret; she had no friends. During lunch hour no one would sit by her, so she would go into the bathroom stalls and wait for it to be over. She couldn’t eat alone in the bathroom, so she didn’t eat. She began losing weight which was her only escape from depression. Hair grew on her body while her heart beat at a faster rate. She would become dizzy, moody, and have heat flashes. She was skinny though, and this was sexy. To tide her over at school Margaret would eat three Sally Field cookies or suck on lollipops. She would have a small dinner at home with her family.
Sophomore year her 5”5 height frame weighed 102 pounds. Margaret said she didn’t know she had a problem until the day she was lying in a mall dressing room, unable to move. The trip to the mall was an all day affair with a Christian leader. Margaret at the time “was a crazy Christian, asking her friends how their relationship with Jesus was on a daily basis.” She didn’t want the Christian leader to become suspicious, so she ate orange chicken and rice for lunch. Her body couldn’t take the food and she was found in a dressing room, paralyzed from the cramps. Her mother came and took her to the doctors. They told her she had grown an ulcer. “That was when my parents became food Nazis, which really didn’t help.” The ulcer scared Margaret enough to never fully regain the height of her anorexia, but she claims she has never gotten over it. Today Margaret admits she’s an emotional eater. When she’s depressed she won’t eat because that is what makes her feel better. When she is in a relationship she might not eat because of her fear of losing him. Weight is easily put on, and off.
Last week we met up at a local sports bar to eat our favorite wedge salad and drink fruity alcoholic concoctions. She brought out a blue pill from her purse and I asked her, “What’s this?” She said, “It’s a diet pill, my friend Lauren is taking them, she’s also bulimic now.”
“Why do you have one?” I asked.
“I stole it when I was drunk at her place last night.” Margaret laughed. “Should I take it?”
“NO!” I replied, “Those things are so bad for you.”
“Yeah,” she admitted, “I’m really glad you told me not to.”
Having an eating disorder means there presently is an unhappiness. Liz, Michaela, and Maggie have all grown up in a society in which they feel inadequate. They live in a society in which excess has taken over. If you eat too much, you should work out every day. If you work out too much, it won’t hurt to splurge just this once. In the United States where time is always found wanting and gadgets make everything faster, it has been allowable to sacrifice the present for the future. What my girls don’t seem to realize is that the future never really comes, we have only the present. You never say today is tomorrow. To be adequate is to be present.
Maggie grabbed the salt shaker that was on our table and used it to smash the blue pill. Tiny specks of blue dust emerged from out of the plastic capsule. Our eyes stared at the damage until the waitress came with our food, and then we began to eat.