Thin (25 page)

She doesn’t want it to seem like she pays any attention to that kind of thing. She will do anything to make sure that her little secret isn’t revealed.

She never joins in with their office conversations.

‘Did you know that an avocado has more fat in it than a Mars Bar?’

‘I’m on a detox. I’m not eating wheat or dairy or meat, and no alcohol and no coffee either. I feel really good. Everything is more in line. I just feel more in control.’

‘I’m only eating 1,500 calories a day.’

Grace sits silently in the corner and eats her sandwich. She ducks beneath the sounds of their voices talking about the gym, Atkins and what they haven’t eaten for breakfast. She makes loud noises on her keyboard.

Tap, Tap, Tapity, Tap, Tapity Tap, TAP TAP.

She smiles and pretends that she is not interested. She is sure that they are looking at her differently. Sometimes people say things like, ‘You’ve lost weight’ or, ‘That salad looks very healthy.’

She stumbles over a few words, paranoid about every half-comment about her weight and size and what she is eating (no matter how nondescript, no matter how much it was just something to say to pass the time). Still she keeps it inside. It is locked up tight, and no one will get to know her secret plans.

Eventually it becomes impossible not to at least try the diets. She tries them for a couple of days. She does the detox, the Atkins, the ‘drop a dress size’. She does them all, briefly, but she knows that she is not supposed to. She knows that they are a triggering action. She knows that it means that something else is wrong, not her weight, not her shape. Something is revealed at the start of every new decision to do more exercise, to drop a pound. Something starts clicking in her head, and she decides to sit down and try hard to work it out.

Grace picks up a women’s magazine in the corner shop. It always happens like this; she sees the front cover and there is a reference to, ‘My secret eating disorder’ or, ‘How anorexia ruined my life.’

She feels compelled to read them. It is scary to think that some part of her is obsessed by these articles, even though she wouldn’t do anything to purposefully resurrect her eating disorder. It is as if her brain is programmed by anorexia to search out the relevant information, to filter it through at super-speed and she can’t seem to lose the ability to do it. In these confessionals, there is rarely a picture of the survivor involved in this shameful secret; sometimes they even use a
different name to protect their identity. Grace wonders why this would be the case, and why they are made to feel like they have done something terribly wrong. She checks that the article looks interesting and then quickly goes to the counter and buys it. She certainly doesn’t want anyone to think she is buying it for
that
reason. Oh no, she is buying it for the fashion, for the celebrities, not for the eating disorders, they are something that one must lock away!

The worst thing is that the authors say things like:

‘It never leaves you.’

‘Oh yes, it is always a part of you – you can never switch it off completely.’

Grace doesn’t want to believe that. Why do people feel satisfied with that answer? Grace’s guilt and fear are ever-present and they move things in ways that restrict her; they stop things happening in her life, they close things off. She can’t possibly let herself imagine that it will always be this way. She closes the pages of the magazine article. She will have a better ending than that in her story, she thinks, but there is perhaps some way to go before she can get there.

Sometimes I wake up and I can’t remember where I am, or how I got here. It feels like I fell asleep at home and then woke up hundreds of miles away with no explanation. I was inside my world, and then I decided to remove myself from it. I couldn’t cope. I wandered about for a few years following whoever would lead me. It hits me when I least expect it. I am standing in my flat and I am looking at my things: my clothes, my furniture, my space, and all of a sudden I wonder why I am not at home with my family. Then I realize that I will never be there again. I am myself, on my own. I have grown up. I have to go to work and be responsible and move forward, not run away. That is it – over. There is no going back to being a girl. It just takes a while to reorientate, to pull myself together and to focus. I am supposed to be having a great career, wanting to get promoted – a successful young woman – so that people will be able to say:

‘Look at what she has achieved.’

‘She’s doing really well for herself.’

That is what you are supposed to do, I think. That must be why I went to Cambridge. That must have been what I was trying to do at school, before other things took over. I can’t remember what I wanted to be. I remember the question, ‘What do you want to do when you grow up?’

I always had lots of answers – lots of ideas and I was going to do them. Now I sit at my desk behind my computer all day – this is where I have ended up – and I can’t stop thinking about how much I have changed. I eat like a normal
person, but I don’t feel normal inside. The feeling of being fat, and big, and bulky sits on my body and rings through my brain. There is a loud voice always shouting at me:
Stop eating. Hide away. Go back to your quiet head.

At least I have someone to talk to now, who doesn’t mind if I don’t want to eat certain things. He just says, ‘OK baby, if you really don’t want to, but try if you can.’

Something stops me from self-starving. I don’t want to do that any more. It just means that it is tiring listening to, and then ignoring, the voices. Sometimes I just can’t keep my heart in its place, and it creeps upwards and outwards. I can’t hold in my tears. They seem to seep out of my eyes when I am least expecting it, in a shop or on a bus. They start to fall, and I haven’t asked them to. All the things I kept inside are now starting to overflow.

I know what the whitecoats would say. I can hear it in my head. They would speak to me in a warm putty voice, ‘You are using food as an emotional crux. You are eating and not eating according to how you feel. It is all about your feeeeeeeeelings. How do you feel? How are you today?’

I feel like I have been bashed in the face with my feelings, that is what. All of a sudden I can feel again. All I used to feel was fat, fat, fat. Even when I was all bones and skin and I could see that I wasn’t really fat, not in the medical sense of the word, I still felt it inside. But now how I feel about my shape changes every day:

Thin-shaped
I feel thin-shaped when I have cut down on something – maybe alcohol or chocolate. On these days I can wear anything and I can do anything. I am not scared. It’s an amazing sense of liberation because I can even eat chips on days like these. I go clothes shopping, or miss a day at the gym, or I change my patterns.

Sometimes I get embarrassed because I feel thin-shaped and I think people are giving me odd looks. I have to eat a big sandwich or meal in front of them so that they know I am normal.

Sometimes they comment without realizing (about my thinness).

‘You’re OK, you’re thin. It’s easy for you,’ they say.

‘Look at you, nice and thin.’

‘What are you? About a size ten or something like that, lucky you!’

It makes me uncomfortable. I try and point out my fat bits. I tell them that I am actually bigger than they think, I laugh it off, I try not to react or I act like it is totally normal; that they would think I am thin, of course, because it is the way I have always been.

I have been made to believe that thin-shaped is bad and I should hide it. When I go to the doctors because I have a cold or something, it is evident that they know things about me. It flashes up on their computer screen like a big red alert, ‘Anorexia nervosa’. I have to explain that I am an ex-anorexic (in case they need to know), not a present, current one. Then I want to close my mouth. I want to STOP IT UP so it can’t tell on me any more.

I don’t look too thin, do I?

I am normal, you know. You couldn’t tell, not if I didn’t tell you about it.

If I’m sick when I have been too drunk, that also makes me feel thin. I don’t make myself sick any more, but sometimes I drink too much when I am out with my friends, and my body can’t handle it, just like anyone else and I am horribly ill. I pull on some trousers the next day, and I feel great. Even if I have eaten a big, fatty meal in a restaurant where you can’t measure things at all. It’s all about the feelings, you see. One day of food has gone from
inside, and I feel like a different person. That’s just the way I feel.

Fat-shaped
Get dressed. Fat trousers. Reflect on imperfection. Screw up face. Lots of inside shouting. Frame thoughts, and spin them inside my tumble-dryer head. Come out overheated. Fear failure. Mentally slap self about. Try harder. Be smarter. My heart beats in my mouth.

I look down on myself, and all I can see are big shapes. I look in every mirror from every angle. Things look big and out of proportion. I feel like I can’t do anything. I am tied up tight inside. I can’t focus on the day. I sit at my desk and wriggle in my chair. I make some new resolutions. I go on the Internet and look up some diet plans. I don’t like my clothes. I don’t get out of my pyjamas, so that I don’t have to see my body at all; I don’t even have to spend two seconds with it. I close my eyes when I go to the toilet. I switch the lights off at all times. I get some photos out and spend minutes looking at each one, working myself out, checking out the dimensions. I bite my nails. I drink water. I chew gum. I run everywhere. I go to the gym and hurt myself. Just little things like that.

I get under my blanket and things are OK. I am OK. I just need to be at home, by myself, to make things balanced again. I lie on the sofa and I work things out and calm down. I make things calm. I start to think things through. I cancel my arrangements because I can’t be with people when I am fat-shaped. Otherwise my balance slips, and I am left in this self-punching mode for a couple of days. It is just too much to take. Sometimes I am just not that strong.

Child-shaped
I’m small and I am scared. Super-anxious. Everything frightens me: the bus journey to work, the traffic on the streets, the people around me, the things I might have done wrong, the planes flying over my head, the Tube stuck in the tunnel, strange streets, strange places, strange people. I am allowed to feel like this, I think. Anorexia is my security blanket: I wrap myself up in my past and that is why I can’t face things; it’s hard for me, too hard. ‘You don’t understand, OK?’ I cry, and then I go home and curl up tight in a ball and escape the outside world, which might tell me that I have failed, or make me confront my anxieties. I’m like a younger version of myself. I daren’t speak to my mum or dad in case I fall back into my childhood tones. I don’t want to do that, not again.

Controlled-shaped
Must get to the gym at twelve thirty. Eyes at clock, eyes at screen. Clock, screen, clock, screen. Time barely moves. Twelve twenty-five. Clearing desk. Open bag. Clearing throat.

‘Just grabbing lunch.’

Don’t tell them that I’m off to run, lift, crunch, sweat. Quick change. Exact routine. Control muscle. Control mind. Body pounds. I feel grounded, whole, secure. Get rid of the inner noises, which need to be drowned out. It makes me feel complete when I bash away at the machines. It is a secret thing. Prepare lunch thoughts. Strut straight to shop. Salad and salmon – look at oil coverage. No pasta – avoid at all costs. Same shop each day, every day. In the queue, all in order. Go home, tidy the flat. Straighten the towels, clean all the surfaces (not a speck of dust!), line up the paper. All straight and secure, all fine.

Out-of-a-shape
I walk up and down, and up and down the aisles of the supermarket. I don’t know what I want. I can’t make anything out. I keep my head down so that no one can spot that I might be in a bit of a panic. I don’t know why I am in a panic. When I was ill, I knew exactly what I would eat and what I wouldn’t eat, and now I’m not so sure. It changes from week to week, depending on how I am feeling. Sometimes I don’t eat wheat, or then dairy, or then I read something about carbohydrates, fish or meat and I change. I take it all in. Still. I scan the magazines for all the latest information. I do make sure I eat enough, though. I never under-eat. I wouldn’t dare any more. I wonder what it might look like on CCTV cameras when I have been walking up and down the aisles for ten minutes and I haven’t picked up a single item. I spot some sushi and I think that would be nice but it’s not what a normal person has for their dinner, is it? Maybe it is, I don’t know. I put it down, and then I pick up some chicken, and some stir-fry, but then I had a big lunch so I don’t want to eat something too big. I put it down. I walk round a bit more and start to feel all panicky, like I won’t find anything that I want. Not here. Not today. I am starting to quick-breathe as if there is no air in my lungs, and then I start to pull at my hair because things aren’t going to plan. The inside shouting starts really loud and so, because I am not concentrating, I bump into a woman, who rolls her eyes. I decide, that is it. I pick up a carton of orange juice and walk to the checkout. I pay for the orange juice, and I run out of the shop, and run run run for the bus home. The bus sits in traffic and I just want to get home so I start to sigh and shuffle in my seat. I just want to get home and look in my cupboards and decide what I am going to eat because then I will be settled and things will be peaceful and quiet.