The Hungry Mirror

by Lisa de Nikolits

  “I can’t do it,” Kiva says suddenly. “I can’t let mine go. Well, I can let the real girl, the yoga girl, go. She can sit here next to your plasticine girl, if that’s okay with you?”

  “Yes, of course, that’s fine,” I say, although to be honest I feel like she is crowding me.

  “But I need to keep my ideal self,” she says, looking at her ideal self that lies carefully cradled in her hand, with its broken neck and uneven body displayed. “I worked too hard to make it.”

  We walk back to the group. The lunch break is a shorter one than the day before because we have started later and plan to end earlier.

  “And now we are going to meditate,” Ondine says. “Everybody get comfortable on the floor, get pillows or cushions or blankets or whatever you like. Take your glasses off, watches off. I am going to lead you through the parts of your body, you focus on them, see how they are feeling, and see what imagery comes to mind with that body part, how you feel, what you see.”

  I lie down carefully with my head on two pillows, not wanting to ignite the headache that waits in the wings.

  I find it hard to concentrate. I keep thinking about things I want to clean at home, of all the lists that need to be made, numbers counted, meals planned, meetings ahead, feedback to give my sister, what to tell my parents and how to stay cured once I leave the course.

  I try to follow Ondine’s voice and move up my body; we have started at the feet. I don’t have any startling images until we reach the stomach, whereupon a thick black cloud of carrion blowflies explode in my mind, buzzing, whirling.

  Disgusted, I banish them and move on.

  “Now,” Ondine says, once we all sit up, a little groggy, “I want you to take pastel crayons and draw what you just saw. Don’t think, just let it come.”

  Good, because I am tired of thinking, tired of being here, just tired, tired, tired, of this stupid topic, of myself, of the group, of the day. I want it all to be over with.

  Bobby reaches hungrily for the crayon box. Her hand hovers over all the crayons while she decides which ones she wants. I decide not to fight her and just take whatever is left.

  I start drawing. I don’t want to draw flies and so I draw clouds instead, with planets, stars, shooting stars, two huge Isis eyes, a cacophony of pinks, yellow, scarlet, purple, violet, white. I have no idea what any of it means.

  “Now we will link the poems to the drawings,” Ondine says. We are once again seated in the circle.

  Bobby’s drawing is of a bandaged mummy, lying in the same position as her ideal, fallen woman.

  “It’s blurred,” Bobby says, “just like the images in my poem. I am going to go away and study mummies,” she says. “There must be some significance to the way they are bundled up, the way the bandages crisscrossed just so.”

  Kiva has done a scene of her boyfriend standing over her while she sits. He is breaking up with her. Their combined tears a pool on the floor.

  Amelia has drawn her period and her ovaries and yet, as we discuss, her drawing looks a lot like the butterfly in her poem.

  “My period is a butterfly,” she laughs. “I have always hated that aspect of myself so much, that inescapable femininity, that flesh, that blood. But now I am growing to like it. It’s not so bad.”

  “It is the chrysalis of a love butterfly you have, in relationship to your body?” Ondine suggests.

  Roxanne has drawn the northern lights which we all think speaks to her creative spirit; she says she had not thought she was much of a drawer or painter or poet, and yet, she has drawn and painted and written so beautifully.

  “My drawing has totally no link whatsoever to my poem,” I say and I put my colourful stars and planets in the middle of the floor. “I don’t understand it at all. Ondine, you said just draw whatever you like, so that’s what I did but I have no idea what this is.”

  “Let me see your poem again, I think I know,” Ondine says.

  “‘I am the world inside,’” she reads, and she points to my celestial world. “You see, that’s your world inside.”

  I smile. “Okay, I can see that,” I say.

  “So now, we are reaching the end of our course,” Ondine says. “There is a feedback form I would like you all to fill out. But before that, let’s have a go around and see what we think, how we feel now. Then after that, once you have filled out the form, you can all chat a bit and see how you would like to stay in contact, if you would like to stay in contact that is.”

  I say the group has been very good, and that I have enjoyed it a lot. Amelia says it has opened her eyes and she wants to pursue individual therapy with Ondine. Bobby says it has met her expectations although she feels it necessary to tell us all that her expectations had not been very high at all. Kiva makes a long speech that doesn’t make much sense; it is all about balance and life and pain and growth and the human experience. Roxanne just says it has been wonderful.

  Ondine hands out the feedback forms. I fill mine in quickly, jump up, say goodbye, it has been great and I hope we’ll meet again.

  Then I rush out into the bright sunlight, as though escaping from a cell.

  I drive home in a hurry, go for a walk, have a bath, brush the dog, get things ready for work the next day, and try to read a book.

  I am disconcerted by how hungry I feel.

  The end, the beginning

  AFEW MONTHS AFTER THE expressive art therapy course, I am waiting for Mathew to come home. It is late at night and I sit in my grandfather’s leather rocking chair, with the lamp on beside me. Contrary to my hopes, the course had not resolved my issues with food but it had made me think.

  Freddo is at my feet and the cat is on the sofa, and they both seem to be waiting and every now and then they glance over at me.

  I sit very still, legs crossed, and rock slightly while I look at all the polished perfection, the beautiful flowers, the ornaments, the bookcases, the knick-knacks from our travels. Our beautiful dining room table, the liquor cabinet, the gleaming wood floors.

  There is a commotion at the front door. Freddo raises his head and the cat looks up at me.

  It is close to midnight on a Friday and Mathew is home.

  I listen to him fumble and curse. He finally gets the key into the lock and staggers inside. He looks at the three of us in surprise.

  “You’re still up? Everything okay? Hang on, I must go to the washroom.”

  It is customary for Mathew to get home and rush off to the washroom in an excited flurry.

  He emerges and comes over to us. He kneels down in front of me and puts his head on my knee.

  “Sorry little girl,” he says. “It went on for longer than I thought it would, you know how these things are. I didn’t even get to eat, but on the way home I found the sandwich you had made me, was I ever glad. So thank you for that. You see, I do eat them.”

  He looks up at me. I haven’t said anything, I haven’t touched him. I am just watching him with something like curiosity.

  “Are you angry?” he asks. “ I said I was sorry. I couldn’t help it, they’re one of our biggest clients. They love what you do, by the way, they are a great fan of your new mag and they’re going to run a series of ads on the inside front cover, so you should be very proud of yourself. You see little girl, you did the right thing leaving Pablo.”

  I sigh. “I don’t really care one way or the other,” I say.

  He looks at me. “Are you okay? What’s going on? Hang on a second, let me get my coat off, get a beer and get settled.” He runs his fingers through his hair and gets to his feet. He goes to get changed, grabs a beer and comes back.

  “Come and sit with me on the sofa,” he says. “You’re so far away there.”

  “I’m fine here,” I say.

  He looks at me and decides not to press the point. He grabs a chair from the dining room and pulls it close to me.

  “So what’s going on?” he asks me, and he flashes his incredibly white-toothed smile. He is fond of his nice white teeth.
All the better to bite you with, I think.

  “What would you say,” I ask him, “if I want to have a baby?”

  He looks perplexed. “I’d say you can have one, if you want one.”

  “Not a whole lot of ‘we’ or ‘us’ in that answer,” I say.

  “Little girl, you know how I feel about children,” he protests, “it’s not like my opinion is anything new.”

  “You’re right, it’s not new,” I agree. “This has been going on for a very long time. There’s you over there, and me over here, all quite separate really. I am tired of being alone, by myself over here. Maybe I do want to have children, maybe my needs have changed.” I am looking at him intently. I am hoping he will understand all the things I am trying to say. He is quiet.

  “And,” I say softly, “I know I have my issues, Mathew, don’t think I don’t know. But you do too and if you ask me, we both seem to be getting worse. You are drinking more, I have my food stresses and my body worries and I know that I, for one, am not improving.”

  His face closes so smoothly it hardly moves at all. But close, it does.

  “And so I am leaving you,” I add, almost casually.

  He nearly chokes.

  “What on earth are you talking about?” he says, his beer forgotten, his expression shocked.

  “You left me alone,” I say and my eyes fill with tears. “We started off quite well and I thought we were a team but you left me alone, and I learnt to be by myself, living with you. So, instead of living a lie, of pretending I have a marriage, I am going to leave you and live with honesty.”

  He is speechless.

  “I know,” he says, after a long silence, “that I’m not a very nice person, that I can be a bit cruel sometimes but can’t you learn to live with that? It’s not like I don’t love you, I really do. Do you want us to get some counselling? Have you decided you want to have a baby, is that what this is about?”

  I laugh even though I am crying. All of my dreams are falling down around me. My beautiful perfect life is being deconstructed and I am the one taking it down, but I can’t stop.

  “No,” I say. “It’s not about having a baby. I can’t learn to live with you being cruel. No one should have to. I don’t even like you very much any more.”

  “But look at everything you’ve done,” he waves around. “All this is because of you. Look at it, look at all your hard work.”

  “I know,” I say, “and I think I should get to keep the house.”

  That’s when he starts crying.

  “But I love the house,” he says, wiping his cheeks. “I love this house.”

  I look at him.

  “Well then,” I say, “you keep it, I don’t care. I am going to bed now and you should sleep in the guest room until I am gone.”

  “But no one will understand,” he says, looking bewildered. “Everybody thinks we have the perfect marriage. I thought we had the perfect marriage.”

  I manage to laugh but all I can see is poor, lonely me, driving around, trying to fill my days with shopping and working and organizing, trying to fill the void in my heart with food, trying to find affection, trying to be rescued from my loneliness, my thinness a cry of agony: “Will somebody please see that I am disappearing? Help me, I’m vanishing.” Earlier that morning, I had stood on the scale, my dreadful old-fashioned brown and cork scale, and the numbers had frightened me.

  I looked down and it was almost as though I were on the edge of a cliff with a choice.

  Jump down, a quiet, compelling voice said.

  But then I won’t be able to get back up, I replied.

  I felt myself falling forward, and I wanted to sway into the fall, to go down, and never come back up.

  But I forced my body weight, such as it was, backwards and I stepped off the scale, my heart beating fast.

  I felt frightened. I was watching myself die. I had thought I was controlling things but it had gone beyond that.

  I phoned in sick and then I went to see my doctor.

  “Can she fit me in?” I asked. “I can wait all day.”

  But I didn’t have to wait long.

  “I have an eating disorder,” I told my doctor, talking while I stared at her chapped, red hands, at her bitten nails. “I don’t eat much really, and then what I do eat, I throw up. I’ve been doing this for years. I can’t stop, and it’s getting worse. Can you help me?”

  I put my head in my hands and cried.

  “Yes,” she said, and she sat down and patted my shoulder. “I can help you.”

  My happy-ever-after

  Mirror, mirror on the wall.

  Who’s the bravest of them all?

  SO I LEAVE MATHEW, get a new home, and a new life.

  I’m not going to pretend any of it is easy or that my life became instantly better after I left. It didn’t. And it is still hard, so hard, but it is, at least, my life.

  It felt odd at first, seeing Mathew at industry functions, but I can’t say I ever missed him or what we had. I really did learn to be alone, being married to him. A lot of people were curious about what had gone wrong; someone told me if Mathew and I couldn’t make it as a couple, no one could. I just laughed and changed the subject. It’s no one’s business really.

  About a year after we split up, Mathew got laid off and for a while he made a big song and dance about being a consultant but he started showing up drunk at events and then I heard he lost a lot of money gambling. It kind of went from bad to worse. There was a terrible story about him falling face first into a tray of wine glasses; apparently he had to be rushed to emergency and stitched back together.

  After all that time of being with him, you’d think I’d feel some kind of compassion but I don’t feel anything at all.

  I took Freddo and the cat with me when I left and sometimes I think they saved my life with their warm, non-judgmental love. The two of them, and a support centre my doctor found for me, a place that offers counseling, where I drag myself to, week after week, borrowing faith and hope from others that there will be a happy ending for me. Or, should I say, a happy beginning.

  My family was relieved when I left Mathew and offered every kind of support they could. I have realized that part of recovering from an eating disorder is learning to communicate within the family dynamic and I have come to know that they love me entirely and are doing their best to understand. Madison has broken up with Greg. She said he just got too tiring and she says she is fine being single, it’s much less complicated and besides, she needs to concentrate on her MBA.

  Miranda and I lost touch. I saw her baby once but we drifted apart. Last I heard, Dr. Lit was back on the scene and so was Sanjiv. And, she is still entangled with Nate.

  And Brit, my lovely Brit, I have no idea what I would do without her. She says she never knew how tortured I was, that I hid it so well. She’s still living with Chris and he still dresses her every day. She is nothing short of fabulous and undoubtedly one of the angels in my world.

  And I continue, baby-stepping forward and taking it one day at a time, still working at finding my place in the world and trying to not condemn myself for having these issues in the first place.

  Counsellors and therapists all say the same thing; it’s not your fault. It took a while for me to really hear what they were saying, and then to believe it.

  I can look at myself now and understand. And I am almost free.

  I am off to join Brit for dinner. She says she’s got a new idea for a screenplay, it’s kind of like a Thelma and Louise thing, only they don’t go over a cliff. They save the world and enjoy their happy-ever-after alive and well, probably on a ranch in New Mexico. She says she’ll explain when she sees me. I smile and head for the door.

  Acknowledgements

  To all the incredible women I have met, who struggle and fight, fall down, get back up again and refuse to give up.

  Thank you, Dad, for saying I have a nice turn of phrase. Mom, Lolly, my eternal best friends. Thanks to my lovely Bradford
for love and lessons in fine art.

  Thank you, Luciana Ricciutelli, my editor at Inanna, for the gift of your presence in my life and for your passion, attention to detail, and knowledge of what’s needed, when.

  Information from the following websites has been used as inspiration for fiction-related content:

  –www.campaignforrealbeauty.com (Dove facts and figures)

  –www.edreferral.com, www.caringonline.com (for celebrities with eating disorders and resources for individuals with eating disorders)

  –www.goddessgift.com (goddess information)

  –www.hollywoodbackwash.com (celebrity gossip)

  –www.thinspiration-pictures.blogspot.com

  –www.bulimiaresources.org

  –www.whatthebleep.com (for “Making Your Water Happy”)

  –www.dear-god.net (prayer website)

  –www.showsmart.com/robsugar (weight loss coach)

  –www.slimshotdiet.com (weight loss product example).

  –www.biblelife.org, www.takingamerica.com, and various sites in response to Google searching “What would Jesus say?”

  Countless thanks to Sheena’s place for help, and support:

  www.sheenasplace.org.

  Expressive art therapy: various sites on www.byregion.net/index.shtml, www.isis-canada.org, various community programs hosted at St Joseph’s Hospital, Toronto, as well as Sheena’s Place, Toronto (www.sheenasplace.org).

  Thanks to Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D., for WOMEN WHO RUN WITH THE WOLVES, copyright © 1992, 1995 by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Ph.D. Used by permission of Ballantine Books, a division of Random House, Inc.

  Many thanks to Dr. Kelly Klump, Ph.D., FAED, Associate Professor, Department of Psychology, Michigan State University, klump@msu.edu, for her kind permission in allowing me to use the information contained in these papers, and for checking that I got it all right.

  “Differential Heritability of Eating Attitudes and Behaviors in Prepubertal versus Pubertal Twins” by Kelly L. Klump, Matt McGue and William G. Iacono. Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). ©2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.