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
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Monday, November 23, 2009
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
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
Saturday, November 21, 2009
"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
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
Sunday, October 11, 2009
"Geez, it's dark in here...somebody turn on the lights!"
I nearly died from anorexia in my twenties and have come to refer to that time as "the dark decade."
But, those years weren't all dark. Somehow, amidst living while dying, I thrived in my career, learning how to manage details with a brain that couldn't compute; becoming an expert organizer because, frankly, when your short term memory is shot and your mind can't focus on anything other than surviving starvation, you have to develop tools to keep it all straight.
I also became a mother at the tailend of my twenties, quite by accident, with a body that had, for years, lived in a state of sustained infertility. When I found out I was pregnant, mere months after my last hospitalization and thus "final" medical intervention (as the doctor so forcefully put it as he released me back into the world), I was certain my body couldn't support the life growing inside of me. Instead, the ragingly powerful force of my maternal instinct took over, and nurture that baby I did until out she came, all 7 pounds 14 ounces of her, leaving me 70 pounds heavier than I'd been when she first came into being. That was the turning point for me.
Learning to save your own life when it is threatened by an eating disorder requires stamina. It requires perseverance, trust, steely determination, and a willingness to listen to your own heartbeat and accept that it just might stop for perfectly preventable reasons.
You will die from this, my medical team would say. You will die if you don't turn this around. You will die. And -- when one day my breath stopped coming in and going out and my heartbeat slowed while I frantically searched for my pulse and had to roll over and rock myself back and forth to simulate the involuntary act of breathing -- I thought I had. Thank goodness I was awake when this happened. If I had been asleep...........
Well, we're all going to die. We know this on some level. But grieving your own death while you're still alive, encased in a decade that is supposed to enable self-discovery and growth, brings with it a deeper appreciation of mortality. I marveled, during my feet-peeling years (more on this later), at how other girls in their twenties glowed while I scraped through my days, skeletal frame aching from the slightest contact with anything: clothes, chairs, my mattress...
Oh, the pain caused by the lack of that protective layer of fat I'd taken for granted my whole life! Even cushioned chairs could be too much. Worst of all was the press of my knees against one another, supporting the entire weight of my legs from hip to toes, as I curled into the fetal position at night. I'd wake up with bruises from where my body had made contact with itself as I'd slept. When people talk about anorexia they don't talk about the constant pain -- the inability to find comfort when nothing but a thin sliver of skin separates nerves from the outside world.
Yes, those were the feet-peeling years. When forced off my feet by broken bones or lengthy periods of necessary but deeply resented medical incarceration, the soles of my feet would peel off in thick pads. Years of callouses had built up from the constant strike of the pavement and trails I hiked, ran, walked, and climbed for hours. The peels would curl and roll tightly into themselves before finally letting go. Fresh new skin would then await abuse as soon as the ban on exercise was lifted until, once again, I'd show up to one of my regular appointments, lips cracked, eyes glazed, scary numbers, and the intervention would start anew.
Recovering from anorexia and reprogramming a starving mind is hard work. It can take years. I spent at least one year fighting and denying, the next year passing through valleys of terror as the veil slowly lifted, the next year understanding and growing a baby, the next year struggling to stay a priority when this tiny little creature needed me so much.
Yes, I was the patient in the hospital who knew better than the doctor what my body needed, who gave him a piece of my mind at the top of my lungs in the hallway. I fought to live in the only way I knew how.
Starvation isn't a body state, it's a state of being. Hunger is felt by the body, starvation is felt by the soul.
Sometimes, when I meet new people, I feel fresh shame. I'll wish, deeply, that the dark decade didn't exist. I'll wonder if they can see it in my eyes -- the years I lived in a kind of indescribable terror, a state of body panic that only those who live in starvation can understand. The kind of panic that anorexia turns into toxic fuel that, in my case, could only be expended through hours and hours of exercise; the kind of exercise that succeeds, in collaboration with the effects of hunger, in shutting down all emotional receptors.
This is how people with the type of eating disorder I had endure the slow death of starvation. And this is precisely why people like me resist treatment: they feel that they have found a way to survive something that might otherwise kill them. What they don't realize, because they can't, is that they are already dying. They fight treatment because they fear it will disrupt the balance they've achieved....and they think, with their hungry irrational minds, that without this delicate web of behavior and thought and endurance....and control....they just might die. Treatment, to someone caught in this nightmare, means death. You see, an anorexic person will resist help because she is trying to save her own life. This is why it is so hard, and sometimes ironically and tragically impossible, to chase this demon away...
The exhaustion that comes after hours and hours of exercise, day after day, numbing the incessant hunger, feels like bliss. When the doctors told me to stop exercising, and I knew I'd be left with the constant pain and fear of starvation, I couldn't do it. I'm still not sure, to this day, that my doctors knew what they were asking me to feel when they told me to stop exercising, but thank goodness they persisted. When I wandered into one of my regular appointments completely disoriented, saying I'd just been running and had to stop because I couldn't remember where I was...thank goodness they took the next several weeks out of my control.
There is something scarily deceptive about starvation. It can trick you into thinking that weekly shots, blood draws, vitals checks, hospitalizations, broken bones, and infertility are absolutely normal. The disease can so encircle you that such an abnormal existence seems normal. I remember finding a greasy napkin on the ground while running through a local picnic area one day. The visceral urge I had to press that dirty napkin to my lips, hoping to absorb some of the grease, was my survival instinct sending me a desperate message. There was nothing abnormal or even strange about the urge. I was starving, after all.
People in their twenties typically date, explore new ways of thinking, go to grad school, start families, begin their careers... People in their twenties with anorexia spend years in social isolation, find ways to work around a total loss of cognition in order to keep their jobs, lose vital connections with friends and family, and, if they're lucky, fall into treatment (in my case because the doctor who diagnosed my fractured hip became suspicious) and then spend years arguing about eating a raisin or adding 5 nuts to the quarter cup of oatmeal they've agreed to eat each morning before their 10 mile run.
People in their twenties with anorexia get into disastrous relationships and make bad decisions because they've alienated all the people who would, under normal circumstances, dispense listened-to advice. People in their twenties with anorexia lose more than just the opportunity to experience what their peers are experiencing, they lose the ability to care which is why it is so, so, so, so, so hard to reframe an anorexic mind.
I know these things. I was that patient. I heard my mother cry, sitting across from me at a table in the hospital, enclosed in a room with windows looking out onto the nurses' station, begging me to listen to my doctors. The vacant stare was mine. The periods of resistance and the cracks of horrifying clarity were mine. I know all of that.
But...
What do I do with it now? Where does it go? Where do all of those years go? Those thoughts? The pain and the memories that still haven't found a home and float at the periphery of my mind day after day?
As I've worked to rebuild my life, becoming a mother in the process, I've struggled to find a place for the dark decade in the story of my life. The shame is abating, slowly. Acceptance of the term anorexia is approaching, but finding a place for it in my life, and in my friendships, and in my understanding of my own power and influence, is difficult.
The dark decade is something I keep hidden from most people. It only comes out during periods of duress, for the most part. I never calmly share the story. Sometimes I tell the story in anger. Like, when someone is needling me about food or about eating, I'll fire off a humorous but aggressive warning to back off. Or, I'll allude to the fact that I practically have a PhD in nutrition and exercise science. You can't sit in a room with eating disorder specialists for hours on end, year after year, and not come away with a one-of-a-kind education on how the body functions and what it needs to survive.
I find it morbidly amusing when someone starts talking to me about nutrition. They'll share the latest on protein and carbs and fat...and I'll want to laugh. Don't talk to me about losing weight or about how to eat right, I'll think to myself, I'm an expert on those subjects. Don't talk to me about vitamins -- I've had them injected right into my backside in order to stay alive.
But, I really can't say these things because, in saying them, I'll expose the fact that I was once a card-carrying anorexic. And this confuses people who think, as most of society does, that anorexia is a phase teenage girls go through in order to lose a few pounds. Nope. Anorexia is a disease that many women live with their entire lives, enduring internal conversations about one more bite of yogurt, battling exhaustion to work off the banana they were too "weak" to resist. It is a type of horror, a soulless negotiation between the mind and the body, that invades every second and every thought.
I decided, once I was well enough to make such decisions, that I couldn't live my entire life with a mind full of conversations like these. That doesn't mean they don't still arise when I'm tired or stressed or anxious. You may see me at a party refusing to eat anything, accepting only a glass of ice water and a few carrot sticks from the vegetable platter. That's because something is overwhelming me, and my natural tendency following the dark decade is to slip into that "blissful" state for a while until I can endure whatever is going on. Sometimes, if I'm feeling shy, I'll refuse to eat in front of people, or I'll cancel dinner plans, choosing instead to come home to my couch and my TV so that I can eat in private in an environment of distraction. The ability to share a meal with someone in a restaurant is something I still celebrate.
These days, I live a normal life with a slight tilt to it. Once you get to know me, you'll begin to see the tilt. Near the end of my treatment, my doctors told me I'd recover but would probably live with "quirks." Yep, I'm a bit quirky.
I'm proud of myself, and I'm proud of what I've overcome. I've channeled all of the energy that once went into sustaining the disease into building the woman I knew, even during the darkest days of the dark decade, I could one day become.
But, amidst all of this healthy and skillful channeling lies an unsettled piece of myself that needs to put the dark decade to rest. Keeping quiet about the past doesn't seem to have buried the years I would prefer never to revisit; rather, a shamed attempt to hide those years has kept the memories fresh and present. And so, perhaps it is finally time to do what those closest to me have suggested I do for so long: put it out there. Live it. Write it. Be it.
~ Katie
But, those years weren't all dark. Somehow, amidst living while dying, I thrived in my career, learning how to manage details with a brain that couldn't compute; becoming an expert organizer because, frankly, when your short term memory is shot and your mind can't focus on anything other than surviving starvation, you have to develop tools to keep it all straight.
I also became a mother at the tailend of my twenties, quite by accident, with a body that had, for years, lived in a state of sustained infertility. When I found out I was pregnant, mere months after my last hospitalization and thus "final" medical intervention (as the doctor so forcefully put it as he released me back into the world), I was certain my body couldn't support the life growing inside of me. Instead, the ragingly powerful force of my maternal instinct took over, and nurture that baby I did until out she came, all 7 pounds 14 ounces of her, leaving me 70 pounds heavier than I'd been when she first came into being. That was the turning point for me.
Learning to save your own life when it is threatened by an eating disorder requires stamina. It requires perseverance, trust, steely determination, and a willingness to listen to your own heartbeat and accept that it just might stop for perfectly preventable reasons.
You will die from this, my medical team would say. You will die if you don't turn this around. You will die. And -- when one day my breath stopped coming in and going out and my heartbeat slowed while I frantically searched for my pulse and had to roll over and rock myself back and forth to simulate the involuntary act of breathing -- I thought I had. Thank goodness I was awake when this happened. If I had been asleep...........
Well, we're all going to die. We know this on some level. But grieving your own death while you're still alive, encased in a decade that is supposed to enable self-discovery and growth, brings with it a deeper appreciation of mortality. I marveled, during my feet-peeling years (more on this later), at how other girls in their twenties glowed while I scraped through my days, skeletal frame aching from the slightest contact with anything: clothes, chairs, my mattress...
Oh, the pain caused by the lack of that protective layer of fat I'd taken for granted my whole life! Even cushioned chairs could be too much. Worst of all was the press of my knees against one another, supporting the entire weight of my legs from hip to toes, as I curled into the fetal position at night. I'd wake up with bruises from where my body had made contact with itself as I'd slept. When people talk about anorexia they don't talk about the constant pain -- the inability to find comfort when nothing but a thin sliver of skin separates nerves from the outside world.
Yes, those were the feet-peeling years. When forced off my feet by broken bones or lengthy periods of necessary but deeply resented medical incarceration, the soles of my feet would peel off in thick pads. Years of callouses had built up from the constant strike of the pavement and trails I hiked, ran, walked, and climbed for hours. The peels would curl and roll tightly into themselves before finally letting go. Fresh new skin would then await abuse as soon as the ban on exercise was lifted until, once again, I'd show up to one of my regular appointments, lips cracked, eyes glazed, scary numbers, and the intervention would start anew.
Recovering from anorexia and reprogramming a starving mind is hard work. It can take years. I spent at least one year fighting and denying, the next year passing through valleys of terror as the veil slowly lifted, the next year understanding and growing a baby, the next year struggling to stay a priority when this tiny little creature needed me so much.
Yes, I was the patient in the hospital who knew better than the doctor what my body needed, who gave him a piece of my mind at the top of my lungs in the hallway. I fought to live in the only way I knew how.
Starvation isn't a body state, it's a state of being. Hunger is felt by the body, starvation is felt by the soul.
Sometimes, when I meet new people, I feel fresh shame. I'll wish, deeply, that the dark decade didn't exist. I'll wonder if they can see it in my eyes -- the years I lived in a kind of indescribable terror, a state of body panic that only those who live in starvation can understand. The kind of panic that anorexia turns into toxic fuel that, in my case, could only be expended through hours and hours of exercise; the kind of exercise that succeeds, in collaboration with the effects of hunger, in shutting down all emotional receptors.
This is how people with the type of eating disorder I had endure the slow death of starvation. And this is precisely why people like me resist treatment: they feel that they have found a way to survive something that might otherwise kill them. What they don't realize, because they can't, is that they are already dying. They fight treatment because they fear it will disrupt the balance they've achieved....and they think, with their hungry irrational minds, that without this delicate web of behavior and thought and endurance....and control....they just might die. Treatment, to someone caught in this nightmare, means death. You see, an anorexic person will resist help because she is trying to save her own life. This is why it is so hard, and sometimes ironically and tragically impossible, to chase this demon away...
The exhaustion that comes after hours and hours of exercise, day after day, numbing the incessant hunger, feels like bliss. When the doctors told me to stop exercising, and I knew I'd be left with the constant pain and fear of starvation, I couldn't do it. I'm still not sure, to this day, that my doctors knew what they were asking me to feel when they told me to stop exercising, but thank goodness they persisted. When I wandered into one of my regular appointments completely disoriented, saying I'd just been running and had to stop because I couldn't remember where I was...thank goodness they took the next several weeks out of my control.
There is something scarily deceptive about starvation. It can trick you into thinking that weekly shots, blood draws, vitals checks, hospitalizations, broken bones, and infertility are absolutely normal. The disease can so encircle you that such an abnormal existence seems normal. I remember finding a greasy napkin on the ground while running through a local picnic area one day. The visceral urge I had to press that dirty napkin to my lips, hoping to absorb some of the grease, was my survival instinct sending me a desperate message. There was nothing abnormal or even strange about the urge. I was starving, after all.
People in their twenties typically date, explore new ways of thinking, go to grad school, start families, begin their careers... People in their twenties with anorexia spend years in social isolation, find ways to work around a total loss of cognition in order to keep their jobs, lose vital connections with friends and family, and, if they're lucky, fall into treatment (in my case because the doctor who diagnosed my fractured hip became suspicious) and then spend years arguing about eating a raisin or adding 5 nuts to the quarter cup of oatmeal they've agreed to eat each morning before their 10 mile run.
People in their twenties with anorexia get into disastrous relationships and make bad decisions because they've alienated all the people who would, under normal circumstances, dispense listened-to advice. People in their twenties with anorexia lose more than just the opportunity to experience what their peers are experiencing, they lose the ability to care which is why it is so, so, so, so, so hard to reframe an anorexic mind.
I know these things. I was that patient. I heard my mother cry, sitting across from me at a table in the hospital, enclosed in a room with windows looking out onto the nurses' station, begging me to listen to my doctors. The vacant stare was mine. The periods of resistance and the cracks of horrifying clarity were mine. I know all of that.
But...
What do I do with it now? Where does it go? Where do all of those years go? Those thoughts? The pain and the memories that still haven't found a home and float at the periphery of my mind day after day?
As I've worked to rebuild my life, becoming a mother in the process, I've struggled to find a place for the dark decade in the story of my life. The shame is abating, slowly. Acceptance of the term anorexia is approaching, but finding a place for it in my life, and in my friendships, and in my understanding of my own power and influence, is difficult.
The dark decade is something I keep hidden from most people. It only comes out during periods of duress, for the most part. I never calmly share the story. Sometimes I tell the story in anger. Like, when someone is needling me about food or about eating, I'll fire off a humorous but aggressive warning to back off. Or, I'll allude to the fact that I practically have a PhD in nutrition and exercise science. You can't sit in a room with eating disorder specialists for hours on end, year after year, and not come away with a one-of-a-kind education on how the body functions and what it needs to survive.
I find it morbidly amusing when someone starts talking to me about nutrition. They'll share the latest on protein and carbs and fat...and I'll want to laugh. Don't talk to me about losing weight or about how to eat right, I'll think to myself, I'm an expert on those subjects. Don't talk to me about vitamins -- I've had them injected right into my backside in order to stay alive.
But, I really can't say these things because, in saying them, I'll expose the fact that I was once a card-carrying anorexic. And this confuses people who think, as most of society does, that anorexia is a phase teenage girls go through in order to lose a few pounds. Nope. Anorexia is a disease that many women live with their entire lives, enduring internal conversations about one more bite of yogurt, battling exhaustion to work off the banana they were too "weak" to resist. It is a type of horror, a soulless negotiation between the mind and the body, that invades every second and every thought.
I decided, once I was well enough to make such decisions, that I couldn't live my entire life with a mind full of conversations like these. That doesn't mean they don't still arise when I'm tired or stressed or anxious. You may see me at a party refusing to eat anything, accepting only a glass of ice water and a few carrot sticks from the vegetable platter. That's because something is overwhelming me, and my natural tendency following the dark decade is to slip into that "blissful" state for a while until I can endure whatever is going on. Sometimes, if I'm feeling shy, I'll refuse to eat in front of people, or I'll cancel dinner plans, choosing instead to come home to my couch and my TV so that I can eat in private in an environment of distraction. The ability to share a meal with someone in a restaurant is something I still celebrate.
These days, I live a normal life with a slight tilt to it. Once you get to know me, you'll begin to see the tilt. Near the end of my treatment, my doctors told me I'd recover but would probably live with "quirks." Yep, I'm a bit quirky.
I'm proud of myself, and I'm proud of what I've overcome. I've channeled all of the energy that once went into sustaining the disease into building the woman I knew, even during the darkest days of the dark decade, I could one day become.
But, amidst all of this healthy and skillful channeling lies an unsettled piece of myself that needs to put the dark decade to rest. Keeping quiet about the past doesn't seem to have buried the years I would prefer never to revisit; rather, a shamed attempt to hide those years has kept the memories fresh and present. And so, perhaps it is finally time to do what those closest to me have suggested I do for so long: put it out there. Live it. Write it. Be it.
~ Katie
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