"I've reason to believe we all will be received in Graceland." ~ Paul Simon

Off and on over these weeks, the lyrics from Paul Simon's Graceland have been running through my mind.

Particularly:

...losing love
is like a window in your heart
everybody sees you're blown apart
everybody feels the wind blow...

I looked down today and could have sworn I heard the wind howling through a great chasm in my middle.

Yesterday, a newcomer to my story sent me questions after reading my blog. The questions focused on details I generally keep out of reach – even from myself, in some cases. Nevertheless, I mustered concentration and objectivity last night, answered each and every one with honesty...and woke up feeling ripped apart and vulnerable.

In came the gusts of this cold December day.

It took me most of the morning to find my beloved needle and thread and begin to sew myself back together again. Closing up and in; shutting down and out. I was reeling from the realization I'd created an image of myself crawling, fleshless and depleted, through my house on hands and knees. These are the moments only I know about.

I shared, too, the intimacy of eating during my illness, when every bite was sacred to my soul and conducted in perfect solitude. Yet I touched on the brutality of the food itself: how oatmeal choked and rice cakes suffocated. How I couldn't open my mouth to take a bite, but had to force food between my teeth with my fingers. How I tolerated eating by tuning out, and how I couldn't continue if interrupted. How I'd go to restaurants with my neat little stack of tupperware and watch everyone else eat what was set before them without so much as a thought. And how some of these habits continued for years even after my treatment had ended.

My answers also quantified my weight loss and my treatment length. I painted a picture of myself that was neither pretty nor desirable: a skeletal creature who today wears heels and sparkles; a past that was dim, dry, and deadly, compared to a boisterous and confident present.

I awoke this morning to wonder: What does all of this mean to someone who knows only the shiny side of the coin? Will this information tarnish the luster of today?

With each interaction, I continue to question the impact of this process on my life. Will it crush relationships or make them stronger? Will I one day get to the end of the story and wish I'd never told it? Will it somehow reach people fighting this disease and will it help?

The memories that were once mine alone, protected and secure, are now in other people's minds, seeping into their thought processes. My private rituals are now creating pictures and narration, mutating perhaps, in the imaginations of others.

I realized today how much power this story still has over me and how much further I have to travel before I am free. There are still pieces of this puzzle that terrify me with their very existence, and yet the landscape is not complete without them.

In October of 2001, I wrote: "When did this person emerge? She feels unfamiliar, living beneath my skin yet she has made herself more than comfortable. In fact, she feels downright home, nestled in my layers, nudging aside my organs, lazily inhabiting my insides. She is a monster, a beast. Impish, detestable at times." Then frantically underlined twice, "Who is this being?"

And this, nearly two years later: "Fear is what I felt before, when my heart spoke a rapid rhythm, and shook inside my chest. I just don't know what the fuck is going on."

Later that year: "I think I'm still so hungry...I just don't know it anymore."

I can talk about the illness as if I'm watching it play outside on the lawn, with a kind of fondness and distance – a grown-up sense of pride that I've been there before, but have since moved on. Then I open these pages and peer into that world, and my fondness disappears. My familiarity fades until I'm looking at someone I've never met before and want banished from my property immediately.

I did art projects while I was in the hospital. They were intended to be quiet meditations, perhaps reflections, on what we were learning. I see the pictures I colored during those weeks, the patient and diligent strokes of someone who craved distraction.

During group sessions we used art to express ourselves, too. I've held onto a portrait of a woman sitting naked against a gray backdrop, eyes aglow, hair shiny, skin thick with protection.

At one point, I was asked to bring in two pictures of myself – one before the illness, the other during – and draw a path between the two. Inside the path I wrote my thoughts as I progressed from one image to the other. The words leaving my high school senior portrait say, "If my thighs were smaller I would have a perfect body." The words arriving at my sick photo are, "I will not get better. I would rather die."

On another piece of paper I glued over 80 cut-out mouths arranged from closed on the left side to wide open on the right.

At the top of another paper is written, "Who do I want to be?" followed by a list of all the things I didn't think I was: a patient listener, an inspiring writer, a dreamer, a woman who knows herself.

When I see these representations of my illness, and how much work went into each of them, I close the curtains and step away from the window. I don't want to see what's outside anymore.

There are layers here. I can share the surface: skin, hair, eyes. I welcome the pieces just below – my hopes, desires, determination – for their eventual success in bursting forth. The building blocks of my illness, which I've always understood but kept close, are tender yet acknowledged. What lies at the core of it all, however, remains untouched.

In many ways, I am still holding tight to the mountain of my illness. Backlighting its peaks to show their width and height, as I've done here, has been frightening enough. Stepping out in front of the mass and shining a light on its vastness is the work I have yet to do.

I hope, when I arrive at the end of this strange and uncomfortable journey, that the hole I continue to sew shut remains closed forever. And maybe, just maybe, the healing process of someone else begins.

~ Katie

"The body is a big sagacity, a plurality with one sense, a war and a peace, a flock and a shepherd." ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

It's true that I am slowly coming to terms with my eating disorder. The ugliness of my body and my life, and the forcefulness with which I fought against everyone who was trying to help me survive, are things that I'm beginning to allow inside. I know now that so much of what I struggled with was a direct result of the anorexia itself -- the terrorizing adrenaline, the starvation, the stubborn resistance -- and not actually my fault.

But, I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the decisions I made while I was sick, and the memories of all the people I hurt along the way. I just didn't care about anyone or anything, and that hurts me to this day.

People have asked me, after reading my blog, what instigated the illness. I'm still not ready to talk about that, but I will say that it evolved as an antidote to depression. Before the blissful curtain fell, I wanted to live in a closet and collect trash for a living.

Growing up I was a pleaser. I worked really hard to make the people around me happy. I was a hard-working student, I excelled when I wanted to, and my standards were high. Sometimes impossibly high.

When the anorexia started, and shortly thereafter, I was still attuned enough to my family and friends to see the concern on their faces -- their confusion at how such a bright young woman with so much promise could go down this road. At first they complimented me on my weight loss then, as the weight continued to fall off, they grew quiet. Pretty soon no one said anything though my grandma once told me I looked like a "dishrag with pimples." I was horrified at the time but she was right. It makes me sad today knowing how hard she tried to get through to me.

As the anorexia progressed, I began avoiding everyone's concerned gaze and their pointed questions. Just the other day, I received an email from my best childhood friend who apologized for not being able to see through my tough exterior. I assured her it was my fault. I didn't let people in and that was part of the problem. I often look back and think that my heart could have stopped and I would have managed to keep it a secret.

To this day, I consider my tough exterior my greatest strength and my greatest weakness.

Earlier this week, a friend asked how low my body weight got during my illness and I surprised myself by sputtering something about not feeling comfortable sharing this detail. Up until that point in our conversation, I had been answering his questions freely.

During my anorexia I was ashamed that my weight never dropped as low as I thought it should. My weight was the one weapon I used against everyone who said I had a problem. It was the nutritionist who said, when I exclaimed out of frustration that I didn't weigh 57 pounds and didn't need her help, that I'd have already died if I'd only eaten more.

But...I couldn't answer my friend's question. Why not?

I remember sitting in the outpatient program and comparing myself to the other girls. Some were "better" than I was at their eating disorders. They had managed to lose more hair, their skin was more slack, their complexions more sallow, their energy lower. I would argue that I wasn't as sick as some of them, so why was everyone giving me such a hard time? I never weighed 57 pounds, but I wonder sometimes if I would have been less resistant to treatment if my weight had actually gotten that low.

I remember thinking during the worst stretches that the best way to be anorexic was to die from it. That'd show them. I'd have been perfect at it then. Anorexia isn't anorexia unless it kills you, right?

I'm glad I didn't prove myself right.

I wonder today why it took so much to get through to me, and where the doctors found the energy to keep chipping away at my impossibly closed and unreceptive mind. I fought and cried and argued with an absent articulation that certaintly wasn't streaming from a coherent mind, and I wonder sometimes what I actually said.

In trying to understand my stubborn refusal to see the disease, my mind keeps settling on a memory. I was in my lunch group and the team asked us to eat a raisin. They put a small pile in front of us and we were to each choose one. It was okay if we couldn't eat the raisin, but we had to try. During my treatment I went through this exercise twice. The first time, I got as far as putting the raisin in my mouth before spitting it out. The second time, much later, I was able to chew and swallow it.

These days, if I question my illness or doubt its impact on my life, I storm forcefully inside myself and scream, "BUT YOU COULDN'T EVEN EAT A FUCKING RAISIN!" If I need any further convincing I remind myself that I couldn't eat in public, I rode my bike with a fractured hip even though I could hardly walk, I passed out on my metal bed frame and damaged my ribcage, I was hospitalized, I spent YEARS sitting in front of two eating disorder specialists trying to convince them that I was fine while tearing my food into tiny bits and crying when I had to eat it, I lost friends, I railroaded people, I raged through my days, my hair fell out, my skin peeled off in great sheets, I bruised from touch, I was sick every morning, my bones began to disintegrate, my period stopped, my organs declined. At 25 years old I was a frail old person at risk of a heart attack, organ failure...death...

WHAT MORE DO I NEED?

It's interesting (though searingly painful) to journey back into my mind during those years. I thought everyone was crazy and that I should be left alone. But, my boss wouldn't let me work without a doctor's note, I couldn't seem to walk in a straight line, and I daydreamed about milk constantly. And yet, I stared at my naked self in the mirror and still couldn't see it.

I rail against the stigma of anorexia, even today. It infuriates me that the media blames its prevalence on skinny hollywood girls, as if I spent an entire decade suffering and nearly losing my life because someone in a movie wore a size 2. It is horrifying to me that the media puts the height and depth of girls' self-esteem in someone else's hands, as if we don't have significant thoughts and feelings and convictions of our own.

My problem with my flesh wasn't that it made me look different than hollywood actresses, it was that it represented the building blocks of a self that I loathed. The media's insistent correlation between hollywood and anorexia is an oversimplified, offensive excuse that succeeds only in infantalizing women (pardon the soap box moment). When anorexia struck me I was a successful college student who didn't care for a second what size jeans Jennifer Aniston wore. The media doesn't want to touch the real vulnerabilities that trigger this illness. It is so much easier to put a pretty, if emaciated, face on the whole thing and call it a day.

Maybe if I had known that anorexia affects all kinds of girls and women (and men), even the type of woman I was becoming, I would have been less ashamed and more inclined to accept help. Instead, I looked at the word and at what it meant to me and I refused to be aligned.

I see when I look back on my hospital writings that the hatred I felt toward my flesh wasn't aesthetic, it was far, far deeper than that. My disease -- and the pain that it caused me and my family, and the nature through which it changed the course of my life -- wasn't about clothing size. I am appalled at the suggestion that women kill their bodies in order to look like someone else. The tidal pull that forces so many of us out to sea, and drowns some of us in the process, doesn't come from a magazine or a movie...it comes from within. Maybe that's what's so scary about anorexia: nothing stronger than ourselves can pull us down.

And yet, nothing stronger can pull us out.

~ Katie

Mother, n., definition 7: A creative source; an origin.

The day before I found out I was pregnant, Rich and I were driving north to my dad's house in Petaluma. We exited the freeway near the waterfront and, as we approached the stoplight, saw a mother duck and her ducklings crossing the road in front of us. To my astonishment, cars continued onward – maybe unaware of the duck and her babies, but maybe not – and one by one, in slow motion it seemed, hit the ducklings.

The mother duck did not turn around, hesitate, or stop, but hurried on her way as quickly as she could, leading her babies toward the water on the other side of the street.

I could not believe what was happening. I screamed, "GET OUT!! GET OUT!!" to Rich, "DO SOMETHING!!" He scrambled out of his seatbelt and dashed into the street, holding up his hand to stop traffic. The mother duck was halfway across the street by this time and Rich slid along beside her with his hand out until she and her remaining babies reached the other side.

She had started her crossing with a dozen ducklings and had less than 5 by the time she finished.

I had my head down on the dash and was sobbing uncontrollably when Rich got back in the car. "WHY DIDN'T THEY STOP?!" I cried. "DIDN'T THEY SEE THE BABIES?!" I wept and wept and, even when we reached my dad's house, continued to weep.

This was the first time since anorexia had stolen my emotions that I'd felt anything so deeply. It had been just over 6 months since my last hospitalization and the world and my life were taking on dimension.

I was well into my illness when 9/11 happened and my routine didn’t even falter. I watched the news from the gym that night, the next morning, and each morning and night thereafter. I was affected by the tragedy but it didn't puncture my heart the way the ducklings did. It couldn't. There was no getting through to me then.

The day after we watched the ducklings cross, I stood in a bathroom stall gaping at a positive pregnancy test. After two more positive tests, I called Rich down from the floor above and we met in the hallway outside my office. I couldn't even begin to process the fact I was carrying a child – not with the fear of a heart attack still so present. "I can't be," I kept saying, "It's not possible." And I called my doctor.

I walked a lot during my pregnancy in order to process the changes going on in my life. I had spent years in motion and wasn't able to be still with my thoughts or feelings. During those months, I walked through my fear of losing the baby. I walked through the fact that our first sonogram showed two heart beats and the second showed only one. I walked through the positive triple-screen test indicating a high chance of Downs Syndrome. I walked through the subsequent genetic analysis and termination counseling. I walked through my anger at a stranger suggesting I take the life of my child because she might not be "right." I walked through my helpless fear that our child might be born with the heart condition associated with Downs. I walked to give myself the strength I needed to deal with whatever was to come.

Adela was born with meconium poisoning to the base of her trachea. Upon her delivery, a rush of doctors and nurses entered the room at the urgent call of the midwife. They skirted her tightly wrapped little body through my line of vision before racing her to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where she would spend her first days. Amidst the chaos in the delivery room and the emotions streaming from my mother, sister, and Rich, I called out to the doctor who had hovered over her before she was rushed out, "Does she have Downs Syndrome?" He looked at me in total surprise and said, "No, she doesn't."

I sat with Adela over the next couple of days as she went from incubation and oxygen support to resting in my arms with needles and monitors taped to her tiny little feet. One of the nurses told us that someone must have been watching over our child because...eventually...they were able to give her a clean bill of health and release her to our care.

Knowing this child now, with all her feistiness and charm, I can't believe I ever worried about her. But, I did (I still do!). I felt every emotion a pregnant woman and new mother would feel. I felt everything. Tidal waves crashed over me day and night – an overabundant rawness caused by this tiny new creature who insisted, soon after leaving the NICU, on craning her neck to look around. We called her "Turtle" for the forceful way she took in the world.

Like every new mother, I was awash in the privileges and pains of caring for a newborn. I didn't shower, I hardly dressed, I learned how to breast feed, and I loved this precious child with that indescribable instinctive ache. It took but her first intake of breath to render me second in my life, and I was happy to surrender the top position.

Soon enough I was back on my feet, with my baby strapped to my front, taking walks through the neighborhood: processing, processing, processing. I introduced her absorbent little eyes to the latticework of leaves overhead; her pink little ears to the sound of dogs barking and cars driving past; her cushiony little body to the rhythm of moving through the streets on foot. I needed to breathe that outside air. The movement, the cold winds of winter, the changing colors of the sky – I needed those things to help me understand who I was and what I was to do.

And I felt, with my body full and strong from the pregnancy, a sense of pride in what I'd done. In just over a year I'd gone from the naked hollowness of my illness to a grounded force of female power. The transformation was exact and it was complete.

But it wasn’t permanent.

Time slowly brought me back to the unseen periphery of anorexia. I shed all of my pregnancy weight quickly and some of my struggles began anew. Because I couldn’t find peace in stillness, I fell headlong into an exercise regimen that would drain my energy. I was back to negotiating, structuring, and balancing just to stay on top of things. Silence and rest were alien and uncomfortable to me. I needed motion to be. Just to be.

I still need motion, but it isn't the drug it once was. I still need fresh air, and I still need the perspective that only elevation can give me. I need to feel my heart beating and I need to move through the space I now know we all share.

During my illness I was alone in the world. As close as I came to people, they didn't exist within my universe. They were holograms of beings I didn't care to know. Now I see that the ground I walk on, you walk on also.

Starting this blog has centered me back in my body in a way I haven't experienced since I carried my newborn on my chest. Letting those years take up their rightful place in my life has made me bigger, whole, more complete. When I was pregnant and then the mother of a teeny tiny person, I owned the space my body required. It was mine, and I deserved it.

I hadn’t realized that some of that ownership had ebbed until I was walking toward my office today and felt strangely filled with all the pieces of myself. Even the shameful pieces that I've made walk in my shadow for all these years.

This time, the deserving feeling was not contingent upon my importance as a mother. No – today, while walking along 3rd Street in downtown Chico, I was just a young woman on her way to work, breathing in the cold morning air and looking up at the pale autumn sky. I was taking up all the space I need in this world, and I was proud of it.

~ Katie

"I will be liken to the raindrop which washes away the mountain; the ant who devours a tiger; the star which brightens the earth..."

Last night, just as I was about to publish a "blog closed" post, my phone rang. A good friend had just read my blog and called to say she hoped I'd keep it up. Similar messages came in from two more friends today and so.....I guess I'll keep going. For now.

Last Wednesday, I received a letter declining my application for medical coverage. Adela was consequently declined, too. A separate letter explained the reason: pre-existing health conditions that exceed the acceptable limit. Fractured hip. Counseling. Anorexia.

Denied.

I was breathless for about 30 seconds, then I was angry. Offended. In tears. And ashamed. What kind of mother circumvents health coverage for her child?

My insurance agent and I are now jumping through hoops. Tomorrow, I will fill out a medical risk application because I've been labeled as such. I've worked tirelessly to move past this and suddenly a black and white reminder arrives in the mail with my name on it saying, "We're terribly sorry, but..."

Tonight, to return to the place from which I can write about this, I unearthed my box again. I read more of the little scraps of paper I saved, the carbon copies of my medical records, the intake paperwork and discharge orders. I had to take deep breaths.

I see the order for the bone densitometry test which would indicate osteopenia. The lists of vitamins I was to take for this particular condition: 3 x (750 D+ 1500 Cal +240 Mag + 30 Zinc + 3 Mang +3 Boron).

A quote written in my own handwriting: "Start by doing what's necessary, then do what's possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible." ~ St. Francis of Assisi.

A card from my family that said: "I saw a cloud that was shaped like hope and I hoped it would float your way soon."

A diabetic hospital menu that says: Katie, room AS2, 2400/day.

An "Inter-Disciplinary Master Treatment Plan" on which all of the Milieu Interventions are initialed twice, and 4 of the 7 Medical Nursing boxes are initialed twice with a quote from the patient who was feeling, "more worthy of recovery."

The Nation section of The Times dated August 29, 2003, in which Louise Gluck is recognized for being named the US poet laureate. Circled in red is a quote from a contemporary, "Gluck's poems are strong, crafted, urgent." And another highlighted section: "As a girl, Louise Gluck began writing poetry. She also became severely anorexic." A featured poem ends with, "I deserve credit for my courage."

A caloric value chart that shows standing burns 12 calories per 10 minutes of activity. Dusting burns 22 and chopping wood burns 60.........

When I was around 7 years old I got hold of a National Geographic magazine and looked, for the first time, at faces of starvation. Until that moment, no image had frightened me as much. Bending my child mind around the fact that humans could live in such a state was nearly impossible. Why wasn't anyone taking care of them, I wondered. Who was responsible? What could I do? From there, I grew up feeling very passionate about helping people who lived with less. In college, I planned to join the peace corps and travel to Ghana but this wasn't to happen in my twenties.

I wonder, though, looking back on that pivotal moment, when my experience of the human face went from pretty and shiny to emaciated and grotesque, if I'd somehow unknowingly planted the seeds of my own destructive journey. If nothing scared me more than that, then I find it hard to believe there was no connection between the shame of my early twenties and my gradual slide into that vacant and desperate, but somehow accepting, state.

I eased as slowly into anorexia as I eased out of it. It started with late night walks around my neighborhood when I couldn't be alone with my thoughts. The walks turned into slow runs which grew into long nightly runs. Soon I was treking 8 miles to my college campus, hefting my textbooks and showing up to class breathless and sweating. Somehow, and I can't see the curve of this as clearly, I gradually stopped eating, too. One by one, foods were added to my phobia list. It started with meat and progressed until nothing was left but a handful of basic, uncooked foods that I would rotate.

My weekday routine tightened into morning workouts from 5:30 - 8am, and evening workouts from 6:30 - 9pm. Breakfast was 1 T. Go Lean powder dipped into 1/2 cup of soymilk and eaten off the spoon; lunch was 1 cup of spinach, 1 T. shredded carrots, 7-10 dried cranberries; dinner was 2 rice cakes with cottage cheese. Day after day after day after day after day. I couldn't lift food to my mouth without first tearing it apart with my fingers, and I couldn't eat without reading. I went to the gym on crutches and collapsed against walls when I exercised through colds and flus. I regularly ran into doorframes, spinning myself around, hoping nobody noticed.

I can look at a woman and tell if she has an eating disorder. A hollowed pocket develops just above the curve of her elbow and it remains whether she is moving or still. Eventually, I developed this distinct absence of flesh, and my wrist bones went from being the narrowest part of my forearms to the widest. My shoulders slowly curved inward until my posture looked stooped, I developed deep lines from my nose to the corners of my mouth, and I could curl my fingers into my collarbones and hang my arms to rest. My forehead was fleshy until it was bone.

Anorexia's leftovers are tucked discreetly into my life: the bone loss, the scars, the shame, the memories... But, in dismantling the past in order to share it here, and as embarassed as I am by the whole experience, I am amazed at the spirit I see in myself as I worked my way out of the darkness. My effusive writing, the quotes I collected, the people I admired, my signatures on all the hospital paperwork. I was there. I witnessed it all. I signed my name.

My will to survive, which I can't remember feeling with all the screaming and arguing and running away I did, is evident in what I chose to preserve.

My favorite doctor, who was a kind and gentle soul (and whose last name is my daughter's middle name), encouraged me to say out loud that I was a good person. She told me to throw back my head and announce it to the world. It took me a long time...but I finally did it and what settles me more than anything else today, besides the miraculous bundle of 4 year-old energy that lights my life like a beacon, is that I now take for granted that I am.

I don't need to say it out loud, I don't need to be reminded, and I don't need to prove it....I just am.

~ Katie

(Title quote from The Scroll Marked III)

"Maybe all that we need is to meet in the middle of impossibility..." (Indigo Girls)

The night Rich and I agreed to separate we were laying on our bed, in and out of tears, doing our best to anticipate the decisions that now lay ahead. Toward the end of that conversation I said, "Someday, I may want to write about my illness...and I won't be able to tell the story without also writing about you...is that okay?" He said yes. This Thanksgiving, with the decisions we'd yet to make that night now behind us, I asked him again and he gave me his permission.

Although I was socially and emotionally detached during my illness, the people in my life were familiar: family, friends, co-workers. The people who came along when I entered treatment and recovery, taking an active role in my daily life and decisions, were strangers forcing themselves into my private world.

Rich was one of those people.

We'd been acquaintances for a couple of years, talking during our commute to and from Berkeley on BART, but never more than that. Over time, however, as our commute came to include crutches and long disappearances, our conversations took a less casual course.

I don't remember him ever asking me what was wrong or where I would go for weeks at a time, but I do remember exposing the details of my routine. Specifically, I recall sharing how I'd just been on a run in a particularly isolated section of my favorite regional park when I'd tripped over a root, flipped onto my back over the trail's edge, and skidded down the steep side. Before I reached the bottom of the ravine, I managed to dig my heels in, turn onto my stomach, and crawl my way back up onto the trail.

Days after I told him this story, Rich approached me on the train home with a book about trail safety and told me to read it. Eventually, he began to appear on my regular running and hiking routes, suggesting we go to coffee or to the bookstore instead.

One morning just before dawn, sitting alone in his car at the reservior waiting for me to show up for my run, he attracted police attention. He managed to wave them off just as I drove up, but I was not pleased with his attempt to dissuade me from running and angrily shot out of my car while he called after me.

Something about his persistance, though, finally cracked my resolve and one day, on the eve of another hospitalization, I asked him to spend a few hours with me.

We drove to the Marin Headlands and looked out over the ocean. We talked about the future, about life without this disease, and about my most recent EKG results. My doctor called periodically to check in with me. I was embarassed; trapped as I was between debilitation and treatment, commitment and resistance.

By that time, I'd lost a lot of hair and what was left was matted and coarse. My face was scarred and cracked, my skin was pale and webbed with veins, my hands were spindly claws -- I was not a young woman. I kept losing my breath while sitting motionless in the passenger seat, and I wasn't sure if I was about to die or if I was about to be saved.

I was about to be saved.

With Rich I'd found enough hope and willingness to carry me through this next phase into recovery, and I would survive.

He visited me in the hospital a week after our trip to the Headlands. I was laying on my bed, wearing my favorite gray shirt and, at one point, I rolled away from him and told him I cared about him. It was astonishing and terrifying to care about anything at all.

From there we began a tentative relationship. He soon knew my doctors and had appointments of his own. He read books about recovery and told me what he learned. When I panicked and cried and threw food in the trash and ran for hours on end he came to my tiny studio apartment. He brought movies and went to the store with me where I paced the aisles, stared at the shelves, and voiced my internal chat: weighing, measuring, negotiating, battling. Every day he helped me make choices.

Slowly but surely, I let him in.

Meanwhile, I was back at work. Re-building. Going in to the office at 4:30am so that I could continue my outpatient program. Doing things right, yet digressing at a moment's notice. My body started rejecting food at this point which set off another round of testing.

It was a slow climb out of that delicate state.

Just a handful of months later, to my utter disbelief, I was pregnant with our child and Rich and I were on the road to parenthood and marriage. I continued the outpatient program for another 2 years but my recovery was put on hold. I switched gears from moving past anorexia to preparing for motherhood and the divide between us grew. Where once we had been teammates, we now were on opposing teams: he fought for my recovery, I fought to forget.

In retrospect, I see why we struggled so much and how we went from allies to combatants. Rich saw my illness; I lived inside of it. Daily, he witnessed the tightrope upon which my existence balanced and fought the minutia of my anorexia with every weapon he had; I re-internalized my choices and fought to maintain the autonomy I needed to conduct my life. He poured himself into continuing my treatment and was met with resistance at every turn. The imbalance in our relationship, caused by our dichotomous demands and needs, was palpable.

Anorexia treatment is appropriately but maddeningly pedantic. It involves a lot of hand-holding and repetition, tears and basal fears. It is an endless conversation between those caught in fight or flight mode and those who see but can't feel the threat. It is adrenaline crashing against calm; a ruthless but necessary deconstruction of everything real and imaginary. It is hard to remain proud when everything from which you derive pride is considered lethal.

Because of this, I never fully surrendered to treatment. I trusted my team and I trusted Rich, and for the most part I did what they said. But I resented them all deeply during those years for what I perceived to be a smothering invasion of my rights. The moment I was free from anorexia's deadliest clutches I restaked my own claim in my life and protected my territory fiercely.

In so many ways, Rich's and my relationship came unhinged the moment our child came into being. I would not be sick and be a mother. I would not be anorexic and be a mother. I would be fine. I would be okay. I would pretend, in many ways, that those years had never happened. Rich, on the other hand, did not feel our work was done and he wanted to finish what we'd started before our daughter was part of our lives. I couldn't go back.

Now, everything has changed.

I see what I've done to myself by keeping those years at an unreachable distance. I see what I have to do now to live a full and abundant life. And I see that the love I give to my daughter must flow through me, not just from me. I accept that I have to let this in.

Relationships are made of a million tiny threads, and it takes the unraveling of as many to undo what two people have built, especially two people who share a child. Anorexia and its power over us in those early days did not undo what Rich and I had. We have come to believe, as we shared on that park bench in lovely St. Helena this Thanksgiving, that the blame for our unraveling cannot be placed on the illness itself but on the fact that it caused us to collide in the first place.

This much we now understand and can agree upon after untangling our worlds, picking up the threads of our own stories, and moving on with our lives.

~ Katie

Did you know your brain needs at least 276 calories a day to function?

I have mixed feelings about writing another post, but the effect of putting this out there has been more positive than negative thus far, so I might as well keep going -- if only for myself...

This morning, before I was fully awake, I was shot through with the knowledge that everybody knows now. At first I felt breathless under the heavy weight of dread and regret. Then I felt calm. Then I felt nothing. This isn't so bad, I told myself. And, after hearing the survival stories of others in the wake of sharing my own, I'm feeling very, very lucky to be in the company I'm in. Thanks for making this safe for me. We're all made very powerful by what we pass through in life.

Knowing this, however, doesn't mean I've embraced this piece of who I am; this dark sliver of self I have come to hide so deftly. I'm coming to think, though, that I may be a little more free of the story's stranglehold if I simply release it.

Onwards...

I reached under my bed tonight, waaaaaay under there, and found the dusty rose-patterned box. Inside the box, I found the plastic bag, and inside the bag I found all the things I'd held on to when it was time to gather up my illness and stow it away: hospital wrist bands including a red one that says "Dairy Products" indicating an allergy I insisted I had in order to limit the foods the hospital staff could feed me; a book called "Hope, Help & Healing for Eating Disorders" in which I'd written, "I am not worthy of my dreams...I have not earned joy..."; a food pyramid chart; a book called "The Healthy Mind, Healthy Body Handbook" that told me to treat myself to a "pleasure diet," HA!; an email to my boss asking to be allowed back after my first medical leave; my laborious and much-hated food journal where I noted, "hungry but not dizzy or confused" at 11am on 12/9/02; a shopping list containing rice milk, vitamin B12, spinach, tempeh, and Go Lean drinks; a hospital intake bag listing a set of keys, a cell phone, and a day planner; my in-patient and out-patient treatment folders; and pages and pages of writing.

The first time I went to the hospital I was a complete novice, bringing only the novel I was reading (For the Time Being, by Annie Dillard). That first night, in a room with a complete stranger, I'd found a pen and written in the margins of the book. I would eventually fill all the margins up to page 138. On page 73 I wrote, "I can't watch their eyes get sad." And on page 116, "When will this be over? What do I have to do to make this be over?"

And then there are the pages and pages of tiny scribbles on plain white sheets of paper, documenting my time in the hospital. On one page I wrote, "I'm scared again...I just talked to my doctor and he's concerned about my weight loss, too. He wants me to eat 600 more calories/day but he wants another dietary consultation. I spoke with Angie, the dietician's assistant, briefly and she said it could just be because everything is out of whack and my metabolism could be going wild, and the anxiety...She said that my body is just getting rid of everything it is taking in. But, it's getting rid of more, too. I told her that I don't want to increase the calories if she thinks everything will even out soon. She said that they'll do what my doctor wants for now and she'll talk with Brian, the dietician I met with the other day. I can't help feeling like they really don't know what to do with me. I guess I should just trust them - I mean, I don't know what to do either. I'm scared. This can't be good for my heart."

There came a point in my treatment where my mind was fully on board and I wanted to get better, but my body would not cooperate. It frustrated me to be committed to recovery while my body continued to die.

And yet, I also remember chastising an attendant one morning during my 4am vitals check (this is when most anorexic patients die due to a drop in heart rate) for panicking at my low blood pressure. Why panic, I said, I'm in the hospital!

I'll never forget being woken up each and every night at midnight and 4am for vitals checks. In all honesty, I was glad someone was checking. It sure beat laying in my bed at home, one hand gripped around the opposite wrist, making sure my heart rate didn't drop below 37 beats per minute. If it did, I was at severe risk of cardiac arrest and was to call the hospital immediately.

There was something soothing about being led down the hall to the nurses' station, half asleep in my hospital socks, and made to step on the scale before having my heart rate and blood pressure checked. If something was wrong, they could help. I didn't worry about having a heart attack because I knew if I did, I was in the right place.

Often, after my 4am check, I couldn't fall back asleep if I'd even been asleep in the first place. So, I'd get my stack of cards and go sit at the end of the hallway, next to the floor-to-ceiling windows, and play solitaire until the sun came up. Sometimes a nurse would come and sit with me. Most mornings I sat there until they called me to breakfast.

Because I was a "special" patient, I literally had to sit in front of the nurses' station and eat. And, I wasn't allowed to leave my corner for 20 minutes after I'd eaten. They'd call me over, deliver my tray, and I'd cry for several minutes. Then I'd eat what I could stomach, a nurse would inspect my tray, encourage me to eat more, I'd cry again, take a few more bites, and then sit for 20 minutes and stare at the clock. Sometimes my family would come during meal times and they'd sit with me in the corner. Sometimes other patients would pass by while I was eating and talk to me. This was a horrible experience for someone who'd spent years eating in total isolation. Being talked to while trying to bring a fork to my mouth was nearly unendurable.

Luckily the hospital staff was somewhat cooperative when it came to my dietary preferences. I ate certain foods prepared a certain way at certain times, and I wouldn't eat any mixed or baked foods. A bowl of black beans, a small cup of raisins, a box of soy milk, and a plate of broccoli. That was acceptable. When the doctor added calories I saw them immediately: a cup of yogurt with honey...something fancy like that. I'd weep when it was time to eat the "extras."

I'll never forget the dietician telling me that if I'd simply eaten more during my illness I'd be dead. My body would have had the metabolism it needed to fully cannibalize itself. I remember feeling the most grotesque sense of pride at this accomplishment. I can't even go there in my mind anymore.

Every once in a while, though, the clouds would part.

One day, just as my treatment was starting to take hold, I was riding in the back of my parents' car on the way to the train station to pick up my brother. I remember being folded neatly into a square in the back seat, like a little packet of bones leaning against the door, but I was laughing. My mom turned around at the sound of my laughter and said, "It feels like we have Katie back."

~ Katie

"Hi, I'm Katie...it's so nice to meet you!"

It's funny the things you share when you meet new people: where you went to college, who you met and fell in love with and married, how old your kids are, what you do for a living. Some of these things I can share. I went to UCSD. My daughter is 4. I work for a non-profit.

But then...my mind touches on the difficult times, nudges them gently to see if they'll budge, but they don't, so I'll skim over the years I spent dying. "Oh," I'll say, "I went to UCSD then worked in Berkeley for almost 10 years, and now I'm here in Chico with my daughter."

We all leave out blanks, but I wonder if the blanks I leave out are the things that keep me lonely -- the very details that leave me feeling so very unknowable at the end of the day. When I say I'm lonely, it usually means I wish I could let people in.

I've always, in some way or another, been afraid of the story of my life. As a child, I hid what I imagined was a circus-like upbringing. As an adult, I see now that lots of us were dealing with divorce, alcoholism...all those kinds of things. So that stuff...no, I don't talk about that. Why should I? We all carry stuff like that.

But now...I'm sitting on the landmine of my twenties and I'm not sure where it is safe to tread. I laugh at myself after a date, after I've gotten all cute and smiley and shared things about myself. The "normal" version. The "happy" version. The version with all the blanks. I still don't think anyone cares to hear about the dark decade...but then that leaves me feeling that no one wants to know me. And so my secrets and I stay hidden, and we never come out to play, and the cycle continues.

Of course, I don't want to work those years into conversation, but then when do I share them? Opportunities arise in nearly every interaction. The dark decade could emerge when a new friend and I are laughing about all the injuries we've sustained over the years. I could mention my brokenness in my twenties, but then I'd probably have to explain it.

Just the other day I was having lunch with someone who recently broke his arm and he was telling me about bone pain. "Oh, yeah," I said, "I had terrible bone pain when I fractured my hip." "You're too young to have fractured your hip!" he said. Well...yes, I am. But, my bones are 80 years old now, you see, so I gotta be careful. I can't say this.

Or tonight, a friend and I were talking about the cold and I was saying I don't care for it. He was teasing me about my intolerance and I said, "Yeah, but sometimes when I get cold, I can't get warm again." Actually, I'm quite afraid of the cold for this reason. Sometimes it seeps in and there is nothing my body can do to warm itself. My hands and face turn blue and black and the only thing that helps is a hot, hot bath. It's just an unpleasant leftover from those years. So, in the absence of this explanation, my friend joked that I just need to sit around and eat butter 'til I put on some weight. I smiled and said perhaps.

I'm applying for a new health plan and just this week had to go through every excrutiating detail of the dark decade with a perfect stranger while the call was being recorded. "And when did you fracture your hip? And how was it treated? And were there any lasting consequences? And when were you first hospitalized? And what was the reason? And how long were you there? And what was your release plan?" And on and on and on and on and on....and I relived every moment as we talked.

It kinda follows me everywhere.

I dropped in on a party last night. Met some new people. They were very nice. We chatted, we smiled. And...I was intolerably uncomfortable, though you might not know it by looking at me. I spent years in total isolation. I didn't make eye-contact with anyone during the dark decade. I hid from the world. And now...when I'm out among people, I feel like I'm falling without a parachute. Things hurt me more than they probably should, so I have a hell of a time opening myself up.

But, I'm trying. I talk about the things I can talk about. I share what I do for a living, I share stories about my daughter... But, I'm stuck when it comes to me.

Everyone seems to have perfectly presentable explanations for their young-adult life transitions: they traveled, they tested different careers, they weren't ready for school, they broke up with a girlfriend.... Me? Well, it started with a naive and terrible mistake at 21, a depression coupled with the onset of anorexia, the first of many hospitalizations, years of turmoil and disastrous relationships, a career that literally held me up when I'd have otherwise toppled, then the birth of a daughter which led to a well-intentioned but unplanned marriage, and now, in the wake of this recent shakedown that left me scraping every nook and cranny of my being for strength, a total mind/body/soul reconstruction at the age of 32. That's not something you can say at a party to people you've just met....even though I'm sure I'm getting the "safe" version of their stories, too....

People ask why I moved to the Chico area, and why I left my enviable job in the Bay Area. How do I say, without mentioning the dark decade, that I moved here to rebuild myself on a cellular level, from the inside out, so that I can be the best mom possible for my daughter? "Oh, it's a great place to live! Less traffic, less people, family nearby. It's great!" Yes, those are reasons, but continuing to recover, rebuild, and live my life in a safe and managable place are the real reasons. And, yes, I've had to make huge sacrifices along the way.

Days like today I think I'm nuts to want to make new friends and perhaps find someone special to share my life with. What do I POSSIBLY have to give, I wonder. Sharing the journey I've been on thus far? Ugh, what a burden! I can hardly stomach my story and its consequences, why would anyone else want to?

But, then I think about everything that I do have...my beautiful and sassy-smart daughter, work that I love, re-established relationships with my family and old friends...and I know that so much of it is a direct result of my strength and determination, and the trust I finally gave to the people who helped me survive.

I am one of the most powerful people I know, as weird as that sounds, because I have stared one hell of an ugly demon in the eye and risen above. I have always possessed a wicked streak of determination and an iron-clad work ethic, both of which I can now apply to my life in healthy ways. I take care of myself and, even though I still get nervous and quirky sometimes, I can be fun when I'm comfortable. And I think, when I cut myself some slack, that I'm one heck of a "good enough" mom :)

So maybe, just maybe, I do have something to offer...

~ Katie