Secrets for the Mad

by Dodie Clark

  And so I didn’t.

  Every now and again I’d just have a little check, to see what she was up to. Maybe once a week. And then it was every couple of days or so. And then it was every day, and her face turned into something different in my brain. It was probably a mixture of the involvement of the boy, my bad mental state at the time, and the fact that I ‘wasn’t supposed’ to be doing this, but over a few weeks it had twisted into an unhealthy obsession. I know I tend to get addicted to anything very easily: I tap my head five times whenever I think about death, I bite the skin around my nails religiously, and pick at anything on my scalp and back, and whenever I approach the idea that I could train myself to stop these bad habits there is a loud voice that laughs, and shouts ‘AS IF!’. And so I continued to stalk; ignoring the warning signs flashing in my brain and friends who widened their eyes and shook their heads when I confided in them.

  This is embarrassing to share. I feel shame when I read the thoughts I had and the things I did, but comparison is human, and this is something I know a lot of people struggle with.

  Will I ever stop typing your name into the Instagram search bar?

  Will I ever stop logging into my secret account to watch you beam and babble on your Snapchat?

  Am I in love with you? Am I jealous? Are you really as wonderful as my brain tells me you are, and, if so, how do you exist and how am I not allowed to know you?

  I don’t know why it aches so much. And I don’t know what will ever make it go away. I don’t even understand what I want from you.

  My eyes run up and down your face and body, flipping between admiration and intrigue – trying to find a possible way that anyone could ever see you as anything but beautiful. You are honestly like a princess; gentle and delicate, pretty and pastel.

  You inspire me. You make me want to write like you. To be colourful like you. To dance and twirl and radiate like you.

  But.

  You make me want to starve, to look like you. To always look like you, and when I don’t, it hurts. I can’t swap my acne for your freckles, or my wonky smile for your neat white one, and the more I look at you with adoration the more disgust for myself seeps in.

  It’s strange. You can’t be perfect. You must feel as though you have a bad angle for your face that you are cautious to never show, or maybe funny-shaped feet that make you feel anxious about wearing sandals. I want to know about them; but is that because I want to help you feel better about yourself and bond over insecurities, or because I’m so desperate to discover anything about you that is in the slightest bit ugly?

  It’s every single day.

  And it’s so easy to find you. There’s so much of you. Is that why you do it?

  I typed in your name for perhaps the tenth time today. I scrolled, drank, sank, as usual. I very nearly liked a picture, by accident, and my heart dropped to my stomach.

  Of course, half of me wishes I did. So you could see. I just want you to understand. And I want to be as special as you.

  * * *

  This lasted for a while. I continued to compare myself and I poured so much energy into running over brain patterns of ‘I am not good enough’, feeling trapped in a terrible cycle of a short burst of satisfaction, comparison, self-hate and then guilt. I’d clear my search history again and again, but always find my way back to typing her name into the search bar, just as I’d attack my newly healed hands with another session of nibbling.

  Luckily, it came to a peak, and then eased off naturally. Going cold turkey clearly didn’t work for me, and so in little steps I practised not thinking about it, diverting my attention away from social media and being much kinder to myself every time I was too curious to stop. The obsession and fascination slowly faded away, and although I’d still take a little peek every now and again, the ugly thoughts had blossomed into ones of admiration and casual interest. Rather than hurting over our differences, I started to be proud of them; while also starting to notice and enjoy our similarities as well. The flames died down, and she settled back into my head as just someone I used to know.

  And then something wonderful happened. I tried out looking at myself in the way I used to look at her. I looked at my own Instagram, my videos, my art, and I noticed that I too was special, and beautiful. I also put smiles on people’s faces. I love the way my nose looks when I laugh and it scrunches up; my stomach is not entirely flat because I am proud to be a healthy woman; I give a heck of a lot of love away to the people I care about; and I am deep-thinking, objective and empathetic.

  It wasn’t that I became any more magical, or she any less. My insecurities were still very much there, and everything I admired about her was too. But we levelled out in my brain, both to ‘human’. And both to ‘imperfect’. And both to ‘wonderful’.

  For a long time I was desperate to be someone else. I didn’t realise that was what it was – but you cannot be happy with yourself if you desire to swap every feature inside and outside yourself that you don’t like with someone else’s. You must love yourself first, and learn that only you can give what you have given to the world – and that makes you special.

  And then you can admire people and become inspired by them, and borrow things that you like as an extension for your already amazing existence.

  *Although this section I’ve written for the book isn’t about Bethan, I wanted to show that even at the age of sixteen I was comparing myself to someone else.

  FORKFULS OF SALAD

  You’re seven, and you’re holding a smooth stick-like plastic Barbie, sprouting bright blonde hair from her tiny head. You pinch her waist between your forefinger and thumb, and hold her sharp shoulders in your hands.

  You’re thirteen, and you’re reading Mizz magazine. They tell you how to get ready for a date by choosing a denim mini skirt, pairing it with a cute tee and some lip gloss, and you stare at the pink girl with a crop top and a bare, flat tummy.

  You’re fifteen, and you’re watching cartoons where every female character has collarbone lines etched in, their necks and heads separated by a carved jawline.

  You’re seventeen, and you’re scrolling down Tumblr. You drink in grey images of thin skin on bones peeking out from oversized jumpers, ruffled socks that hang loose on legs that look like tent poles with tags that read #beautiful #girl #art #cute #sexy.

  * * *

  From an early age we are taught that there is no other option; if you want to feel beautiful then you must be skinny. You might get the odd chubby character now and again, but it’s outweighed by the overall imagery of tiny women with no rolls or the natural tub that sits over your womb to protect your reproductive system. If a picture showing those features is posted, it’s seen as a statement – an idea, a wish of what we want to be seen as beautiful.

  So when we are brainwashed to believe what seems to be ‘The Truth’ – that you must have long, skinny arms and legs, a visible collarbone, no natural fat under your jaw or on the lower half of your stomach, to match anyone who is on TV or in magazines or the female characters from cartoons – you start to believe that if you don’t have that, you are ugly. It is wrong, and you feel shame.

  Don’t tell me my eating disorder is for ‘vanity’ when I am surrounded by a world that is shouting at me to BE SMALLER.

  * * *

  The obsession with calorie counting and the promises I’d make to myself – not to eat until the evening, or to throw up the pasta I’d stuffed myself with – became so loud and rude in my head that on my US tour in 2016, I took the opportunity of an unfamiliar environment to start from scratch, and not eat. We’d stop off at a restaurant in the afternoon for a late breakfast and my eyes would immediately jump to the salads and soups on the menu. If there was nothing like that, I’d order eggs and toast, or the lightest sandwich I could find, and nibble and pick until it looked appropriate for me to push it away. I’d count my meals up in my head in hundreds, never allowing myself to reach a thousand per day, and I’d get into bed, my stomach aching and my
pride glowing. The pounds dropped off me, and within a month I’d almost lost a stone. My arms stuck out of my body like twigs and my skin pulled tightly around my ribs, and I convinced myself that I was enjoying it. I took pictures of myself with my arms raised in the air so everyone could see my tiny waist, but when I was alone my arms were wrapped around my stomach, hands squeezing the fat that still remained, my mind screaming ‘more’.

  My friends would sip sodas and I’d wonder how they could ever waste calorie room on liquids. I would accidentally eat a few sweets before realising they’d amounted to what a more filling dinner could have been, and I’d walk around with hot guilt and anger at my carelessness, insisting with a fake smile that ‘honestly, I’m stuffed’. I’d got used to the fact that standing up made me light-headed, and I’d wait a while for my vision to return before catching up with everyone who’d already danced away. The calorie-counting shouts in my head got louder, and I’d wake up with yesterday’s score flashing red in my head: ‘NOT GOOD ENOUGH. DO BETTER.’

  We went to the beach one day, and I wore shorts and a crop top. I was half embarrassed about my ribs sticking out – terrified that someone would notice – and half smug, secretly slightly hopeful that someone would ask me if I was okay. We took pictures jumping over waves (until I had to go lie down in the sand, walking back slowly so that the blood didn’t drain out of my head) and I scanned through them, deciding which to upload. In one of them I looked terrifyingly tiny, and it excited me. So I put them all up.

  ‘Did you lose weight? Are you alright?’

  ‘I don’t wanna sound like a downer but I’m concerned, are you eating healthy? You look underweight?’

  ‘Am I the only one who is worried because she is so thin?’

  My stomach squirmed and I swallowed dryly, my breathing quickening. There was the most perfect amount of concern. Just a few tweets. I envisioned the small spoonfuls of scrambled eggs and nibbles of toast I’d had late that morning, and congratulated myself on my work.

  And then . . .

  ‘DODIE you have the most perfect little waist I’m so jealous.’

  ‘This is the CUTEST! . . . also your figure is my all-time goals.’

  ‘I wish a had a body like yours.’

  My heart sank and the back of my neck became hot. I had an audience of mostly young girls, and I had just blasted their timelines with posed pictures of a smiling skeleton. They would be studying my stomach the exact same way I studied the Pinterest tag ‘skinny’, and now they would perhaps be taking second looks at their meals of choice. It wasn’t that being skinny was terrible; nor was being large, or any other size at all. But society favours a smaller torso, and I had contributed to that, showing off a body for the wrong reasons, with girls logging my weeks of hunger as ‘goals’.

  Turns out starving yourself does not make you happy, ever. Your insecurities will not change with your dress size; they cannot be shaved off along with your baby fat, because they actually sit much deeper in your head. Furthermore, if you aren’t fuelling your body and your brain properly, you will sink deeper into obsession and discontent because you won’t have the tools or energy they need to pull you out of it.

  * * *

  So. It would appear to be that the answer to this, for me, is to shout back at the world that screams at me to be smaller.

  What’s the use in strengthening the side that favours stomach pains, guilt, obsessive counting and panic? As well as judgement, jealousy and self-hate. Well, of course, as I mentioned before, it’s difficult to escape the vicious cycle, and we’re rather unfairly outsized (lol) by the media and society. But when friends and strangers watch me chew on a couple of forkfuls of salad for half an hour, I’m joining the world’s screams.

  Here’s how I can start. I will try to ignore the voices in my head that tell me I’m ugly. Before I shower, I will stand up straight in the mirror, and smile at my beautiful self.

  Look at me! My clever, gorgeous body is bursting with life. There’s a heart behind that ribcage that’s dancing and contracting every second. I will look at myself the way I look at my best friend; when they worry about finding romance I know that there will be someone in the world who will adore every feature they have the way I do. I will make that someone me, and make my best friend also me. I should and can worship myself.

  Let me tell you a secret: very few people will stand side on in the mirror and see their tummy as a flat line. The Instagram pictures you and I stare at and compare ourselves to were taken in the morning with a shrunken stomach and were handpicked from a bunch of poses. Our goal should be to be strong, not to be tiny, because let me tell you from personal experience, we cannot achieve true happiness from limiting our calories.

  RAINBOW POISON

  Green, pink, chocolate, blue,

  why do colours of poison look so good?

  Here’s fun in a glass; drink it up now.

  More bubbles, smooth but sharp,

  gulp it down like oxygen in the dark.

  There, it’ll make you feel alive; drink it up now.

  And I didn’t want the night to end,

  this liquid is my best friend,

  I didn’t want the night to end, no.

  Look at me! I’m on top of the world

  – goodbye, strings, I’m a pretty girl.

  And now I know I’ve gone too far; drink it up now.

  Green, pink, chocolate, blue

  – why is rainbow poison so bad for you?

  And now I know I’ve gone too far; drink it up now.

  And I didn’t want the night to end,

  this liquid is my best friend,

  I didn’t want the night to end, no.

  OVERDRINKING

  Oh dear. Oh dear, oh dear, oh DEAR.

  Well, you’re pretty sure you’re still drunk. You just about manage to pull your eyelids apart despite them practically being glued together from last night’s mascara and sleep gunk. You’re still in last night’s clothes; your bra is cutting into your ribs; and the smell of smoke and beer from your dress is already making you gag. But are you going to throw up? You hope to God not.

  Your mouth feels like an old carpet and your head and heart are pounding. You sit up, and the room lurches around you.

  Yep. You absolutely are going to throw up.

  You do your business, and it’s absolutely horrible. You lie on the toilet bowl after heaving out the rainbow poison from your insides, and you start to cry (or laugh). Honestly, it could be either.

  You tiptoe to the kitchen and pour yourself a glass of water. It slips down and cools your burnt throat, but it sits heavy in your raw stomach and threatens to rise up again. You creep back to your room, hunched over so as not to stretch out your tummy, and you strip out of the disgusting clothes that are hurting you and clamber back into the covers, luxuriating in the feeling of soft, loose material over your skin. You plug your dead – screen cracked, great, wonder when that happened? – phone in to charge, and lean over to grab a face wipe to scrub off the hardened black from your eyelashes. Your phone lights up after a few minutes, and then your heart sinks when you find the missed calls and angry messages from confused friends.

  ‘Babe where did you go?? xx’

  You don’t actually know that, yet.

  There are incoherent messages sent to random friends and a lot of question marks as replies. Your Twitter notifications are full of patronising slanty-faced emojis and ‘look after yourself please!’ replies to flash photos and embarrassing tweets, and it makes you angry, but not because they’re wrong. Because they are very right. You royally fucked up.

  Your life and body are in shutdown mode. Today is a sick day, a time out you shouldn’t have needed to take. Your body is well and truly poisoned, and now you also have to deal with the shame that your intoxicated body unempathetically shoved towards future you. Everything feels terrible, and you mutter the words you believe with every fibre in your body, and yet somehow none of them at the same time: ‘I am never dr
inking again.’

  But you probably will, and that’s okay. You can learn from yourself to make sure you don’t do certain others things again, though!

  If this is happening a lot, and you find it difficult or even impossible to say no to another drink when you’re out, then have a little look at drinkaware.co.uk/selfassessment, or visit your GP for a little chat. There are a lot of different unhealthy relationships with alcohol, and although you might not fit in the stereotyped box, that doesn’t mean it’s not legit. If this sort of thing is happening to you every month or more then it’s definitely time to start seeking help.

  I’ve been here about four times in my life since I started drinking, and the episodes have become further and further apart; because each time it happens, I clean myself up and then re-evaluate everything. Why did I do that? At what point did I go wrong, and how can I not do that again?

  First things first, though. It’s self-care day for your poor body. The first time I was this hungover I googled various phrases like ‘how to stop alcohol poisoning nausea’ and ‘what should I eat when I’m hungover’. I nibbled at ginger biscuits and downed Pepto-Bismol but nothing seemed to stop the need to throw up, so I reached out to one of the ‘popular girls’ from my school, desperate to know what to do.

  ‘This is so random and I’m not even sure if it’s okay to ask this but I’ve still got a lot of alcohol in my system so I’ll blame my weirdness on that!

  You know on Friday you were pretty drunk? When you woke up the next morning, how did you stop feeling so bad? I drunk FAR too much last night, and all I want to do is chunder :/ will it make me feel better or do I hold it in?

  Hellllp, I feel like shit

  Sorry, love you! <3’

  (Excuse the use of the word ‘chunder’ – it was 2011.)

  She replied:

  ‘Awwww dodie! Nonono do NOT hold the sick in! Let it all out because then it’s getting out of your system, I’m never usually sick when I’m drunk, but one time I was awful and paralytic, and I was sick like every 5 minutes. It was awful! Just every time you feel like chundering, let it all out! And drink plenty of water have water next to you all day, and just get rest bubby! You’ll be fine! I love you! <3’