I checked into the eating disorders unit at Centinela and stayed for a month. I was one of eight female patients. Our eating disorders ranged from bulimia and anorexia nervosa to obesity. All of our eating disorders were accompanied by depression, despair, denial, rage, and shame. We were medicated with antidepressants and monitored by a psychiatrist who visited twice a week.
The youngest patient was fifteen and anorexic. She weighed sixty-five pounds. This was the third rehab her parents had sent her to. She was defiant and didn’t believe she belonged there. Every day she begged to leave. She had outbursts constantly and was disruptive.
The oldest woman was in her fifties, five feet tall, and weighed over three hundred pounds. She had four children. She was unemployed, on disability, and divorced. Her children had been taken away from her. She didn’t know how to stop eating. She was not functioning. She was severely depressed. She wanted her children back.
There was a beautiful young girl in her early twenties who was addicted to crystal meth. She had started taking it a few years earlier to lose weight and then got hooked. She did not think she had a problem. She said she could stop anytime but that she liked the feeling of being high. She was in sales, a good-paying job, and had been given an ultimatum. That was the only reason she was there.
We had group therapy every day, where we sat in a circle with our facilitator, who was a recovering anorexic, and we talked about our lives and our addictions and what events had brought us to the hospital. We had art therapy classes, where we had to draw what we thought we looked like. I drew a circle for my head but couldn’t draw in my face. I had no conception of what I looked like. I had always adapted to what other people wanted me to be. Without their input, my face was a blank canvas.
We had to learn to eat differently. We had to eat slowly and talk about what feelings came up as we ate. I had never thought about how food tasted before. Food was my drug of choice. I had been bulimic for almost fifteen years. I consumed food quickly so as to not feel. I didn’t care if I stole half-eaten food off someone’s room-service tray that lay in the hotel hallway or picked garbage out of a wastebasket after throwing it out. I would eat at the fanciest, most expensive restaurants with a group of friends, then excuse myself, go to the washroom, throw up, return to the table, and eat again. Not feeling was the only purpose food ever held for me.
I had been obsessed with my weight all my life. I had been chubby as a child but never obese, and yet at age thirteen I was prescribed my first diet pills. Eskatrol, they were called. Little orange pills. Basically, the pills were speed. I took diet pills all through high school. When the doctor would no longer prescribe them, I started exercising compulsively.
It was in my late twenties that I discovered bulimia as a way to control my weight. I was living in Toronto and appearing in the Second City stage show. Our group had replaced the original members, three of whom had left after being cast in Saturday Night Live—Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray. We were at a reunion party with the original cast. Gilda was clearly the breakout star on SNL. Every so often as we talked at the party, she would excuse herself. I asked her where she was going and she said to the bathroom, where she was making herself throw up. It was a way to control her weight, she said. And she wanted to keep slim with all the attention she was now getting on SNL. I thought at that moment, If Gilda’s doing it, then so will I. It seemed harmless to me. I don’t think the disease even had a name, and if it did, I wasn’t aware of it. No one in my circle talked about eating disorders. I rationalized my behaviour by saying I wasn’t the only person to do this kind of thing. I reminded myself of the Romans and the way they ate: gorged, threw up, and gorged again. Throwing up as a way to look and feel good seemed glamorous.
Gilda wrote a book entitled It’s Always Something in which she chronicles her battle with bulimia. I never confided in her that I picked up the practice. I wonder if we could have helped each other. Gilda died of ovarian cancer when she was forty-two. You would think that her tragic death would have stopped my destructive behaviour, but I continued, in silence, through both my pregnancies, and through my marriage.
My eating disorder was a secret that kept me sick for so long. It was not until I got into the hospital and heard like-minded people talk about their addictions that I got the courage to admit my addiction myself.
We were not allowed to exercise at the hospital. After the lights went out, I would lie on the hospital floor at the side of my bed and do sit-ups compulsively for hours. When we went for our afternoon walks as a group, we were not allowed to run or jog—anything that looked like exercise was forbidden. The nurses kept us in line. We were accompanied to our rooms after we ate, to keep us from throwing up. All packages of honey and sugar were rationed. Anything that we could binge on was taken away. We went on outings to restaurants to learn how and what to order and then how to eat what we ordered.
As I write this, I know that to the normal person it all seems crazy. But for those of us who had an unnatural relationship to food, the act of ordering and eating was fraught with profound anxiety. At our first outing to Baja Fresh, a fast-food chain that uses healthy and fresh ingredients, I stared for thirty minutes at the menu and, with my therapist by my side gently supporting me, tried to order. Every item on the menu was the enemy staring back at me, wanting to control and destroy me. It wanted to lodge in my stomach and make me fat and ugly and undesirable and alone and unsafe. I hated ordering. I hated eating what was placed in front of me. But I had no choice. And I wanted to get better. I knew I had hit bottom. I knew there was no place else for me to go. I had to face the feelings that came up while I had food in my stomach, and the feelings that came up when the meal was over. I was in my late forties. I had repressed many feelings. And mostly they started with shame.
My sister, Marcie, always jokes with me that we must have had different parents. We remember our childhood differently. I once asked Marcie if she ever woke up with anxiety. She stared at me in disbelief and answered, “No, never. Why, do you?”
“Marcie,” I replied, “there hasn’t been a day in my life when I haven’t woken up with anxiety. That’s how I start my day. For the rest of my waking hours, I am feeding the tiger!”
For whatever reason—whether it was having a critical and controlling dad or a narcissistic mom, being the firstborn, having an addictive personality, being overly sensitive, or having an unresolved karma from another life—from the moment I came out of my mom’s womb, I needed more. Of everything. To fill me.
I chose food and then alcohol, and only when the unmanageability of my life became greater than the fear of letting the destructive behaviour go was I willing to change.
After I left the hospital, and after another month of outpatient care, I had more slips with my bulimia. But my stay in the hospital gave me the courage to continue on the path of recovery. I realized I wasn’t going to die if I kept the food down, if I put on a few pounds, and slowly I stopped bingeing and purging. I have been in recovery from bulimia for twenty-one years now. And I haven’t had a drink for twenty-two.
In all honesty, my obsession with my weight continues. It’s still difficult for me to eat in a restaurant. I would prefer unwrapping a Lean Cuisine meal and putting it in the microwave to sitting down and talking with a group of people over dinner. I want to get the food thing out of the way so that I can be present for the company I’m with. But I no longer take pills, go on restrictive diets, or starve myself. I exercise moderately. If I have any feelings, happy or sad, my inclination is to stuff them down. But instead I sit with them. I feel what I’m feeling until it passes.
I am grateful to have hit bottom. I pray that my sons will understand after reading this why their mom was not always there for them while they were growing up. I have enormous guilt about the years I spent acting out and hiding. I know both my marriage and my children suffered from the result of my addictions. I hope my sons forgive me, though I know it may take a lifetime of uncovering and facin
g their own truth and pain. I want to believe I did the best I could, like my mom, who did the best she could. My grandmother survived a genocide, and when she died took many secrets with her. I hope I have been able to stop the cycle of secrets in my family. I want my boys to stand up proudly and own who they are, warts and all. Shame passed down through generations is palpable. Authenticity trumps all.
My intention in writing this is to speak the truth, and in so doing, give something back to my sons. Every day, I’m grateful for the opportunity to make up to them the years I took away.
Part Two
My Writing Process
Here’s how I write. First, I obsess. Then, I eat. Then I comb the Internet for travel websites, news websites, and entertainment websites. Then I Google my own name. Disgusted with myself and my career, I call my agent for any work updates. If there aren’t any, I’ll randomly text messages and smiley faces to my friends. Or I’ll search for more descriptive emoticons. Nothing like an animated lobster-claw emoticon to make a point.
Did you know that with a colon, a long dash, and a closing parenthesis you can text a face of a liar?
Long nose = liar.
Or try texting a bunny.
It’s a more advanced emoticon, but so cute. You don’t need an emoticon vocabulary to identify the bunny. It really looks like one. Emoticons can keep me occupied for hours.
I committed to writing a chapter this past week. I stared at the computer for two hours the first day I tried to write. I then called 3-1-1 to complain to the City of Toronto about algae on the pond in my backyard. I called Animal Control to complain about an unidentified animal nest in my eavestrough. I ironed my sheets. I made two batches of whole-wheat bread from scratch. I sewed a button on my winter coat. But I didn’t write. That was Sunday.
Monday I woke up and said to myself, This is the day, Andrea. Today you are going to sit and write the chapter that you committed to writing. I made coffee, cleaned off my desk. Positioned my chair so it was just the right height. Windexed my office window to let in more light, and opened a new document in Microsoft Word. I then went to the gym. I worked out for two hours, an hour more than I usually do, in order to stall the inevitability of staring again at the computer. I came back home, took a shower, put on my best writing wardrobe—loose jeans and crisp white shirt—woke up my computer, and took a nap. Monday. Another day of not writing.
It’s Tuesday. Today is the day. I just got a text message from my friend Seth, the person to whom I had committed out loud that I was going to write. His text: “Where’s your new chapter?”
I texted back a sad face. :-( and the words “Trying today.”
He texted me: “I want it by late afternoon. Just write, even if it sucks.”
“I know,” I texted. “Why is it so effing hard? Nothing in my life is that blocked. Not even my rectum.”
Another text from him: “Hilarious. First line of chapter.”
“Too vulgar?” I ask.
“Funny,” he responds.
“Would ‘bowel’ be better?” I ask.
He texts back: “Rectum.”
So I am writing. When I commit out loud to something, I follow through. However, to continue with the rectum metaphor, I’m afraid that what I’m writing is shit.
Everyone tells you not to judge what you are writing. Let it flow out of you, don’t go back and read what you write. So instead I finished that last sentence, walked away from the computer, and made myself an egg sandwich. I just returned to the computer, and then reread what I wrote.
I clicked on Word Count: 529 words. Is that enough for a chapter? Can I text my friend Seth a happy face? :-)
What about a really, really happy face? :-)) (Also known as a double chin in emoticon-speak.)
I’m going to take a nap (a really tired emoticon). %-|
Hmm. I wonder what a self-hating emoticon would look like? I’m going to research that. For three hours.
Then it’s time for dinner. (catch of the day).
Then bed. Then Wednesday. The day of the new chapter.
Here Are Some Other Things I’d Rather Do Than Write
Try on old dresses to see if they still fit
Get a manicure
Get a pedicure
Get a massage
Get a facial
Cut the grass
Water the lawn
Fill in the holes the raccoons dug up
Cut some hydrangeas
Dust my books
Do laundry
Wash dishes
Unloosen my belt
Return emails
Chat with telemarketers on the phone
Floss
Organize my playbills
Listen to my Josh Groban CD
See a movie
See an opera
String pearls
Make an origami hat
Listen to my fountain
Count my change
Pluck my chin hairs
Vacuum
Take a bath
Empty my wastebasket
Talk to strangers
Make lists
Make coffee
Make more coffee
Fluff pillows
Climb the Grand Canyon
Iron my sheets
Play with rats
Someday My Prince Will Come
It’s Wednesday. The day of the new chapter. I just started a fire in the fireplace because I’m sure it will inspire me to write. Isn’t that what happens in movies? Flames flicker as memories are unearthed; dreams, revealed; writer’s block, unblocked. So romantic a notion, if you’re Cate Blanchett.
All I want to do in front of the fire is sleep, or stare into space, or fluff pillows on my couch, or sweep up the embers that occasionally pop outside the fireplace screen, or fan the flames, or reposition the logs with my iron poker, or wipe down the mantel so it is free of soot, or eat a pound of 80 percent dark chocolate as the wood smoulders and the sparks fly. That’s what a fire in the fireplace makes me want to do: clean, sleep, eat, organize. Here’s what it doesn’t make me want to do: write.
Shit, fuck, cock, pussy, dicklicker. Sure, judge me and my choice of words. And then you try to write a book. I have nothing important to say. That’s the first thought that pops into my mind. Everyone has said whatever I want to say better than I could say it, even if they have never thought it. I’m a performer. I need an audience. In the moment, right here and right now. When I write a funny line, I want to hear applause. Without it, I am crippled. How can I write a book when each word I write I have to say out loud, pause, imagine a response, acknowledge the response in my mind, gesture to the imaginary audience with appreciation, and then write the next sentence? This book is going to take years. And I’m already a senior citizen.
I now understand the notion of a muse. All the great painters have had muses, nude ethereal models that have been the source of the artists’ inspiration whenever they begin to doubt themselves. That’s not the kind of muse I need—a penis hanging between the legs of a beautiful Abercrombie & Fitch boy will not motivate me to create. What I need is a laugh track piped into my office. Surround sound of whoops and cheers and cackles.
Years ago, in my twenties in Toronto, I volunteered to read books for the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. The book I was assigned was the weighty novel The Brothers Karamazov. I had to read for five hours at a time, in a small, windowless, soundproof room. There was a mic, a table, the book, and a chair. There was no interaction from any human being with the exception of a disembodied voice as I entered the room. “Andrea, we’re recording,” and then five hours later, the same disembodied voice, “Andrea, that’s it for today.” In between those two lines of communication was five hours of solitary confinement.
Here’s what happened to me during the course of reading the six-hundred-page book. As soon as the door of the studio was closed shut and I found myself alone, staring at the print on the page, my entire upper lip slowly became numb. As so
on as I started reading the first paragraph, I felt my upper lip falling asleep, as your arm does if you are lying on it for hours. Just dead weight. My lip dead weight as I pronounced all the Karamazov brothers’ names. The good people at the Canadian National Institute for the Blind never commented on my sloppy articulation.
Fortunately, my upper-lip paralysis has never happened since. There’s a reason for that. Now when I record anything, whether it be commercials, books on tape, or animation, there are glass windows in the studios, and I can see the bobbing head of the director or technician and these visible reactions are all I need to ensure that my upper lip stays mobile and lubed.
Here’s why I believe I was stricken with an immovable upper lip when I read in that windowless, soundproof room, trying to bring the book and characters to life: there was no one cheering me on. I was alone, in my head, with no distractions. And that is not a pretty place to be. My mind, a gridlock of self-doubt, is so powerful that it anaesthetized the very tool I needed to create.
I am certain that my success as an improviser with Second City came from the fact that there was no time for second-guessing as I performed on stage. Thoughts and ideas came into my head, I said them, there was a reaction from the audience, and the audience’s instant validation encouraged my free-floating spontaneity.
I have given real thought to the idea of hiring a young man who loves to laugh, who is a fan, who thinks I’m funny, and have him sit on my couch in my living room as I stand and pace improvising in the moment—delicious dialogue, hysterically funny and uninhibited ideas, free of self-doubt. He records my every word and then he transcribes what I say and, voilà, a book is written. I might do it. But now I’m alone in my office in my little home in Toronto. I see the occasional squirrel and the occasional duck outside my window. I wish they understood English. And were fans. Think of how much I would have written today. A menagerie of animals cheering me on. Wait, isn’t that what kept Snow White working away as she waited for the Seven Dwarfs to come home for lunch? Skunks and birds and bunnies outside her kitchen window kept her company, encouraged her as she swept the floor in her cottage and sang in her sugary-sweet soprano. Her animal muses inspired her as she prepared stew for Dopey and Sleepy and Happy. They made her believe that her Prince Would Come.
Lady Parts Page 8
