One day I walked into the common room at school, and there, scrawled on the wall in angry letters were the words, ‘Christine Wellington is a slag’. I was devastated. Even now as I think about it, I can feel the hot flush that surged through me then, of embarrassment and anger. I’ve got a pretty good idea who it was. Why he did it I have no idea. Of course, such stunts reveal far more about the people who perpetrate them than they reveal about the victims, which is precisely nothing. Still, the hostility of it caught me unawares. That someone should feel so ill of me that he be moved to write it up like that for all to see.
I’m not the sort of person to rise to that sort of thing. On those occasions in my life when I have encountered hostility like that, I have tended to internalise it and to withdraw into myself. It doesn’t happen very often, but this was the most damaging instance, because it changed me for a while.
I was going out with my first boyfriend at the time, Matty Knight. He was in the year below and a lovely, gentle-hearted soul. Over the next year or so I did something that was very unlike me. I fell into a low-key, introverted existence with him. The sixth form became a subdued phase of my life, dominated by A-levels (biology, geography and English), babysitting and hanging out with Matty.
This was when concerns about my body image really started to kick in. It was the early 1990s, and we were being bombarded with images of waiflike supermodels. Just 17 was my girly magazine of choice at the time, and you couldn’t turn a page without Kate Moss or some other delicate sprite teasing you with her perfection. The yearning to look like these apparent goddesses was strong, and came with the equally compelling terror of ever turning fat. I was lucky in that I had never been one to put on weight. I have always adored food of every kind. It took me a while to come to terms with baked beans, but I love them now, which means there is no food left that I would not happily devour. In those days, I used to eat pizza and chips by the bucketload after swimming and when we stopped on the way back from netball tournaments. I never seemed to pile on the pounds.
But the nagging fear remained that one day I might. Coupled with my lust for control, it made me fertile ground for an eating disorder. I had a friend at the time who told me once that she had been experimenting with bulimia. When she explained it to me, it planted a seed in my mind. It sounded pretty disgusting, but here was a way of controlling what you could and couldn’t eat. If ever I felt a pang of guilt over something I had eaten, which was beginning to happen more and more as I reached the age of seventeen, all I had to do was to bring it up again. I tried to think of a downside.
The first time you make yourself sick, you imagine that through this you can have the best of both worlds. No longer do you have to watch how many chocolate bars you eat, or even feel guilty when you do. But the more you make yourself sick, the more it takes its toll. It sounded pretty disgusting because it was. I spent more moments over the following few years than I would care to count doubled up over a toilet bowl, trying to spit the cloying bile and acid from my mouth before it rotted my teeth. My throat would grow hoarse and sore. I quickly realised that I shouldn’t be doing it, that it was an unnatural thing to do, but I persevered because it satisfied my craving for control.
It was a secret. Only my friend knew. Matty would have been horrified, I think. It made no sense. I had a boyfriend I cared about who loved me as I was, but, perversely, that made me even more concerned about keeping a certain kind of figure. He would never have put any pressure on me over the shape of my body. It was all down to the pressure I put on myself. I wasn’t happy about it and I did it despite my self, but there has always been that little voice in my head urging me on to some notion of perfection, urging me to retain control over myself.
It was the same impulse that drove me on at school and that drives me on now as a triathlete. I have to give it everything, to do the best I can. In this case it started out both as a desire to look like Kate Moss and as a fear of becoming fat, the carrot and stick, which are one and the same. Being so competitive and so sensitive to the views of others, I was bound to internalise the images we were being bombarded with. I have always been my own worst critic. People might say to me, ‘You’ve got an amazing figure,’ but I would strive for more. Soon you lose sight of the original object of the exercise – to achieve and maintain a certain look.
Bulimia never worked in that sense, anyway. First, I wasn’t very good at it. Sometimes I would fail to bring anything up, and a crashing sense of disappointment would come over me. Second, the theory of it is flawed – once you’ve eaten something, you don’t just magic it out of your system by throwing it up. I never lost any weight as a result. Yet I continued with it, off and on, until well into my time at university. It didn’t matter that it wasn’t working. It was the illusion of control that had me.
My social life in the sixth form suffered from a combination of the writing on the wall, and the importance I attached to my studies and my relationship with Matty. I did go out. De Niro’s nightclub in Newmarket was a regular haunt on Friday or Saturday nights, but I didn’t drink and so I was the designated driver. I was, and still am, an appalling driver. My accident-prone nature extended to that as well. The very day I passed my test I went round to Matty’s house in Mum’s car. I drove into a ditch. Hadn’t quite worked out how the headlights worked. A bit later I wrote off Mum’s car altogether by driving into a butcher’s van.
I left school with three As at A-level and an A* (they had just introduced the star system) for the geology GCSE I had taken as an extra subject. I’d applied to Oxford, but they put me in St Hilda’s, an all girls’ college, and I knew even before the interview that I didn’t want to go there. I walked in and this woman with glasses on the end of her nose asked, ‘Christine, what is science?’ I wasn’t very good at thinking on my feet back then. Everything I had achieved had been through hard graft; I was uncomfortable having questions fired at me that I couldn’t prepare for.
They didn’t accept me, but I can’t say I was disappointed about not going. The rejection certainly hurt, though. Other than the first time I tried to qualify as a lifeguard at Bury St Edmunds pool when I was sixteen, I had never failed anything.
My dad drove me to all the universities I’d applied to, and I chose Birmingham. We used to go on canal holidays as a family – Dad is passionate about them – and I remember one that took us through Birmingham when I was fourteen or fifteen. The canal goes right through the university grounds, and my mum and I were walking along the towpath at one point. Through the trees I could see this beautiful courtyard of red-brick buildings, dominated by a huge clock tower, which turned out to be ‘Old Joe’, the tallest free-standing clock tower in the world.
‘That looks amazing,’ I said to Mum.
Dad told me it was the campus of Birmingham University.
‘I want to go there one day,’ I said.
When the day came, my dad dropped me off. Neither of my parents had been to university, so this was a poignant watershed for me and, in a strange way, for my family. I will always remember my dad’s parting advice: ‘Just seize every opportunity you have, embrace every experience. Make a mark, for all the right reasons.’
I threw myself into it from the start, and I thrived. I was a rare example of an eighteen year old who didn’t drink, but you would never have known it if you hadn’t watched carefully. University was a chance to snap out of the lull that I had fallen into over the past year or so. I was at the forefront of all the usual student antics. Wednesday night was Sports Night at the student union. Having joined the swimming club, it was one of the highlights of my week. I may not have been drunk like everyone else, but it’s amazing how high you can get on those other types of spirit – exuberance, joy and a love of friendship. And lashings of Red Bull and Coke.
As ever, studies took precedence over everything else. My geography degree inspired and enthralled me in equal measure. I was privileged to be placed in a tutor group led by the wonderful Dr Jon Sadler, who remains a
friend to this day. The biogeography of small invertebrates was his bag. Mine was economic geography, so there was not much of an overlap there, but he proved a wonderful support and sounding board. I was on a mission, and he provided me with all the encouragement I needed. The dash between lecture theatre and library was one of my chief sporting endeavours at university. As soon as the lecturer had said his bit I was out of there, straight to the library to be the first to check out the journals and photocopy the articles. I was quite selfish in that regard – not that there was ever much competition to be the first to lay hands on the relevant edition of the Journal of Economic Geography. As always, the competition came from within. Something inside me was constantly driving and driving and driving. I had to make the most of it; I had to make the most of me. There could be no slack, anywhere, not in my time, not in my head, not across my skin. If there were any, the guilt wouldn’t bear thinking about.
The policy of making the most of things applied just as much to socialising. After that subdued period in the sixth form, the sparkle was back. I found a great network of friends in Birmingham. My relationship with Matty didn’t last very long into my time there. We intended to keep it going, but deep down I think I knew that it wasn’t going to last. This was a new adventure. I wanted to make a clean break, I wanted to fly. Even my name was up for reinvention. Until that point, I had always been known as Chris or Christine. At university I decided that I would introduce myself as Chrissie. I wanted it to be the start of a new me, or at least the rediscovery of an old one. I have been Chrissie ever since.
I joined the university swimming team, more for the social side than any sporting ambitions. It was the one area where I let myself off the hook in terms of pressure. With the rest of my life stretched to capacity, the swimming team formed a vital outlet for recreation and socialising, rather than achievement. I swam twice a week and then played a full part in the usual student japes – blow-up sheep, traffic cones, that kind of thing – despite, for the first year at any rate, remaining sober. I don’t know what it says about me that I could have been one of the leading protagonists without the excuse of inebriation! We used to play ‘drinking golf’ round the pubs of Edgbaston, where you drink your pint in as few gulps as possible. I drank Coke. Nobody seemed to mind, and after a few ‘holes’ I was as crazy as the rest of them.
By Christmas, I had a new boyfriend, James Alback. He was charismatic, lively and enthusiastic. There was no danger of retreating into a shell with him around. Our relationship was to last for two years, and there was never a dull moment. We argued ferociously on occasion. Our political views were opposed, and he was very into his clothes and his labels. At the end of our first summer holiday, we went on a ramshackle old tour bus across America from Boston. It was a spectacular two weeks, but James, or Jay as we knew him, wasn’t so keen on slumming it. For me, spending the night under the stars in a sleeping bag was a magical experience; Jay was more bothered about keeping the dirt off his Ralph Lauren shirts! He couldn’t wait to get to San Francisco and a proper shower. Differences aside, though, he represented the kind of spirit I was hoping to embrace. I hadn’t liked the introverted person I had become. I wanted to exude energy and confidence, to be the kind of person to light up a room when I walked into it. You can never know whether you’re managing that, but you do know when you’re not – and I hadn’t been.
My policy was to embrace everything. I wrote for the student paper, Redbrick, on current affairs in and around the university. I was selected for the university council. I was the geography representative to the board. I became captain of the swimming team.
And I became chair of BUNAC, the British Universities North America Club. Through BUNAC I spent most of my first two summer holidays teaching swimming at Beaver Country Day School in a suburb of Boston. They were wonderful times in a wonderful city. I adored teaching the kids and watching them overcome their fear of the water.
At weekends we went to Cape Cod or to watch the Red Sox. I made some great friends. As the only foreigner, I was like a kind of mascot to them. They loved my British accent and were fascinated by my experimentation with sit-ups, which my friend Gabriel and I used to indulge in at the poolside. I was known as Chrissie Abs of Steel.
When you’re in America, it’s virtually impossible to avoid those local specialities – Fourth of July cakes with thick frosting, bagels, jelly, peanut butter – and I didn’t. I was still making myself sick, but it had long been clear to me that that tactic did not work. If I wanted to look good in my swimwear, I needed more, and it was sit-ups that satisfied my lust for self-improvement in Boston. Gabriel was the perfect training partner. She was a co-teacher on that camp. Beneath the laughter and socialising I think we both recognised in each other, even in that first year, a preoccupation with body image. She became a great friend, and is to this day.
Things started to change in my second year at university. First of all, I finally embraced alcohol. I had never found it difficult to resist. Not drinking had made me feel good about myself. I felt healthy and in control. But, of course, at that age, wherever you are, but particularly when you’re at university, you are constantly surrounded by the stuff, and I was intrigued. I just wanted to try it. I literally never had.
I don’t remember when I started, or what my first alcoholic drink was. I suspect it was vodka with a fruit-juice mixer at Old Joe’s, the bar on campus. I liked it. Before long, I was swigging Malibu from a bottle at Frenzy on a Friday night, or buying a bottle of Lambrini with the girls for £1.99 from the local corner shop. I used to go to Cocksoc (the less than salubrious cocktail night at a local club), where for a £5 entry fee you could drink as much as you wanted from dustbins filled with cocktails.
What alcohol did for me, of course, was to make me even more outgoing than I already was. My friends were surprised when I suddenly started drinking. My parents couldn’t believe it. We drank quite a lot. Very occasionally I lost control, which terrified me. Early on, I got too drunk on wine and was sick everywhere, but on the whole I knew when to stop.
Compared to that other type of vomiting that had been a feature of my life, it was nothing. The friend from home who had first told me about bulimia was now at university herself. She had come across an article on eating disorders as part of her degree. She knew I was still bulimic and she was concerned, so she sent me the article. In it she had underlined key sentences, warning of the short- and long- term effects – insomnia, psychological problems, digestive problems, dental, cardiac, dermatological and hormonal problems. It was a full-on illness. I was shaken by that, but also strangely reassured to know that it was a recognised condition that so many others suffered from. It raised big questions. In the same way as her own experimentation had first sown the seed in my mind, now my friend’s concern was bringing about the beginning of the end.
But it was the second summer in Boston that proved the watershed for my bulimia. Gabriel and I came clean to each other over our obsessions and concerns about body image. I have no doubt that such conditions are so much more widespread than any of those sufferers realise, as they fight their own private battles. The truth is, you only really feel able to talk about it after you have been through it, never while it is actually happening. I have talked to so many friends since who have revealed that they suffered from the same thing.
That summer of 1997, Gabriel and I had some very open and frank discussions about the pressures we were feeling, about the tyranny of body image. Talking to somebody about it proved a great relief, and gave me the confidence to find other ways of tackling my obsession. Thanks to the article my friend had sent me, I was now far less bulimic anyway, but in America I was eating more than I should, or at least more than I thought I should. This precipitated my going for a few runs in Boston. At the swimming pool, I was soon back into the sit-ups. The desire to make the most of my body was still driving me, but at least it was in healthier directions for now. It struck me suddenly and quite forcefully that bulimia was not onl
y irrational and dangerous, it was also disgusting. The sore throats were debilitating, and my teeth were not benefiting at all.
In my third year at university there was no bulimia. The rational side of me took over, as I realised what damage I was doing to myself. I started to put on a bit of weight, but most of all, emotionally I felt a huge weight lift. I was no longer constrained by this mental chokehold.
Pressure is a necessary evil if you want to achieve. It brings with it great stress, but you deal with it, and the redemption comes when you achieve things as a result. It can also be debilitating though, on a day-to-day level, especially if its benefits are illusory. The trick is to understand which pressures are necessary and which ones are the dangerous decoys, the ones that suck the life out of you for no reward. In ridding myself of bulimia, I had identified one of those and cut it out. I wish I could say that I had beaten the emotional urge to push my body to extremes in search of some self-devised notion of perfection. That was to lie dormant for the time being. But, physically, I had beaten bulimia.
The alleviation of the mental pressure was similar to when Brett Sutton started to coach me as a triathlete, nearly ten years later. He lobbied me incessantly to stop thinking and just to follow his orders without question, to trust that he knew what was best and to channel all my energies into the programme he had devised. Surrendering control like that was incredibly difficult for me to do, but when I did let go it felt the same way – like a weight being lifted.
Mentally it is hard coping with the weight of expectation I put on myself. Mentally it is hard trying to be the best the whole time. And I don’t know who I’m trying to prove myself to. There is something inside me – not a voice exactly, but a deep-seated compulsion – that strives for perfection. But it’s my own version of perfection, not to be perfect per se but just to be the best that I can be. That can lead to unnatural and excessive pressure. Sometimes I have difficulty being in the now, being present. I constantly worry, am I making the most out of this, am I making the most out of this, instead of just accepting and enjoying what is.
Life Without Limits, A Page 3
