Fragile

by Nikki Grahame

  And one morning I stole some jam from the breakfast table and that night scooped great handfuls straight from the jar into my mouth.

  I even got Mum to send me chocolate bars through the post. And she did it, because she thought it was great that I was eating. One evening I ate nine chocolate bars – 350 calories each! I couldn’t sleep that night I felt so sick, but I kept them all down. I didn’t even feel guilt about eating so much any more, I just wanted out. I wanted to make a go of life.

  As my weight increased I was finally taken off ‘total’ and moved into the blue kitchen, where you could prepare your own food and sit without supervision. I was even allowed out to do work experience looking after children at a nursery in the hope it would help me get a job when I went home. I loved it, and I loved being part of the outside world – although it was still a pretty scary concept to grasp.

  I admit I still waterloaded before weigh-ins to be on the safe side but apart from that I’d given up fighting. For the first time in eight years I handed myself over to the system and let them do what they wanted with me. And it was an incredible relief. I suddenly felt tired, utterly exhausted. For weeks, whenever I could I’d go and lie down on one of the sofas and sleep and sleep. It was as if the effort of all those years of battling had finally caught up with me and I was shattered.

  I still didn’t want to be 45 kilos and I was certain I would lose some of it when I got out of Rhodes Farm, but I was never again going to starve myself almost to death. I wanted to live too much for that.

  On my last weigh-in on my last day at Rhodes Farm, on 19 June 1998, I was 46.7 kilos (7 stone 5 lb). It was the first time my weight had been within a normal range for years.

  ‘I won’t be back,’ I said to Dee as I packed my bag that last morning.

  ‘I hope not,’ she said. ‘But we will always be here for you if you need us.’

  CHAPTER 19

  A NEW STRUGGLE

  Some of the institutions I had been in had been frightening, harsh and lonely. But living in the real world again was the hardest thing I’d had to face yet. Because, however bad it had been in a hospital or a specialist unit, at least I had felt secure there, safe from the challenges and disappointments of the outside world.

  Now it was time to face reality.

  I’d made the decision I wanted to get better, but that was just the start of the battle. Returning home to Tolcarne Drive that summer of 1998, I felt like a freak, a leper. I’d been away from normal life for most of the past eight years and had no idea how to behave, no dress sense, no social skills, no qualifications – nothing. I had missed the vital transition from childhood to adulthood.

  Now I was 16 I didn’t have to go to school any more, so I started looking for a job. I tried loads of places but nowhere was interested in me. Even McDonald’s wouldn’t have me because I hadn’t got a single GCSE after missing out on so much education.

  I must have looked a total mess too. At that point I was a little plump by my standards and my hair was all frizzy and short like a baby’s because I’d destroyed it with so much dye. I had no idea about make-up or what was cool or fashionable and was still wandering around in dungarees and Dr Martens when other girls my age were looking glamorous and trendy.

  Natalie was away at Manchester Met University studying drama, so I was stuck at home with Mum and Tony. When Nat came home for holidays she would take me out with her mates but I was totally socially inept. I had missed out on so much growing up I had no idea what to say to people, and for years the only thing I had discussed with anyone was calories.

  One of my first ‘normal’ nights out was for a drink with Natalie and a big group of her friends. We were in a beer garden and Nat was drinking a pint of lager. ‘Oh, I feel a bit pissed,’ she giggled.

  ‘That’s because Prozac doubles everything,’ I said matter-of-factly. There was a moment of total silence. I looked at the shock and embarrassment on Nat’s friends’ faces and it slowly dawned on me that taking Prozac for depression was probably the sort of thing people in the outside world preferred to keep private. Everywhere I’d been for the past ten years almost everyone had been on Prozac or some kind of drug, and I didn’t realise it was such a big deal.

  Natalie glared at me while everyone else around the table all started chattering at once to fill the silence.

  I was like that all the time, embarrassing poor old Natalie. Despite that, she stuck by me, letting me hang around whenever she was at home. When she was back at uni, though, it was horribly quiet. Old friends from school had moved on and obviously thought it was very uncool to be seen hanging around with a weirdo like me. I had no social life apart from a Christian friend of Natalie’s called Sian who used to invite me out occasionally, on the condition I embrace the Christian way of life, but that didn’t interest me at all.

  And I wasn’t happy about the way I looked either. Although I’d made the decision not to starve myself ultra-skinny again, I still felt too big at just 44.5 kilos (7 stone). One day I went shopping with Mum and cried the entire time because everything I tried on looked so bad on me.

  I joined a gym and spent my days exercising – it was the only thing I knew how to do. I’d walk to the gym in the morning, train, walk home again, then watch telly all evening with Mum and Tony. And that was my life.

  But I was just about in control of my eating, and I was determined not to get really ill again. I wasn’t out of the woods by any means, though. I was drinking high-calorie drinks rather than risk eating anything with fat in it. I couldn’t even bring myself to touch fat.

  I could tell Mum was terrified that with all the knocks I was getting I was about to relapse again. All those years I’d been lying dying in hospital, she had always said, ‘You’ve got to fight, you’ve got to get well, because there’s a world out there for you – a life.’ But then here I was out in the world and there was no life at all – no job, no friends, nothing.

  I’d been home about five months when Dad got me a job through a friend of his, serving breakfast to the homeless at Watford YMCA for £3 an hour. The homeless were only allowed one slice of toast each but they used to try to distract me so they could nick another couple. Imagine anyone trying to pull that stunt on me – the expert at food cheating in communal dining halls!

  I’d get up at six to be there for seven, then work a four-hour shift. But it was really hard because by then I’d developed a phobia about eating in front of anyone. I just couldn’t do it and I would get starving hungry waiting for my shift to end before I could eat. After a couple of months I gave up the job.

  My fear of eating in public was so bad that when I went shopping I’d take a sandwich with me and go into a public toilet and eat it. I had it in my head that everyone would be staring at me if they could see me eating, so I wouldn’t do it.

  After Rhodes Farm I also developed other obsessive-compulsive behaviour. It was a new thing to focus on rather than just calories. I became obsessed with cleanliness and hygiene. Experts would have described my fear of germs as morbid. When Mum set the table for dinner I would have to wash my knife, fork and plate three times before I could use them. Everything became a ritual, a routine. I guess it was another way of feeling in control in my life now that I’d stopped starving myself.

  If Mum ever put my dinner on a plate I hadn’t just washed I would go mental, shouting and screaming like the old days. I was the same about bad smells. I felt they were getting into my body and polluting me.

  Then I got a place at Stanmore College to study for a Business & Technology Education Council qualification in the performing arts. But from my first day there I locked myself in a toilet cubicle to eat my lunch. I was marking myself out as different and as a teenage girl that is always dangerous.

  Within a week the bullying had started. At first I was aware of the other girls staring at my body and whispering. Then they would snigger at the way I looked and the clothes I wore.

  I only made matters worse when I started falling aslee
p in lectures. Because I wasn’t sleeping well at night I always felt exhausted during the day. That only gave the other girls in my class something else to laugh at me about.

  One day we were doing a performance and the girls said we all had to wear hotpants. I didn’t have any with me so I went all the way home on the bus in my lunch break to get them. Then, when we all went on stage, everyone apart from me was wearing leggings. They just wanted me to feel different and uncomfortable – and they succeeded.

  I became really miserable and dealt with it the only way I knew how – by cutting down on what I was eating. Looking back, at this point I should have asked Rhodes Farm for help again but I was terrified that as a returner they’d put me straight on 4,500 calories a day. They do a scheme there where you can return for weekends if you’ve lost just a little weight but I had refused to do that in the first few months after leaving and now my weight was falling fast and I was too scared to go back full time.

  Within weeks I was living on sandwiches made from fat-free crumpets and fat-free soya cheese and Lucozade tablets. I wouldn’t eat anything containing fat.

  After the first term I couldn’t face going back to college, so I packed it in.

  Then I got a job as a waitress at a private health club in Northwood. I loved the work at the Riverside Club, but soon I started to feel excluded again by the other members of staff. I think I must have just been a bit too weird, with my skinniness and my secret eating and my social inadequacies, for them to be comfortable with. I made myself an easy victim for people, although I didn’t realise it then.

  My only friend there was a guy called David, who I’d known since I was ten, from the church youth club, and we had such a laugh together. We’d chase each other down the corridors, waving mops at each other. Once we were in the men’s toilets and I’d climbed up on a sink trying to get him with my mop when our manager walked in. That took some explaining!

  The first Christmas I worked at the Riverside the staff party was at a nightclub in Watford called Destiny. I was so excited because I’d never been to a nightclub before. Mum and I spent hours traipsing around the shops looking for the perfect thing to wear before I found a little black Lycra dress and some black and white platform shoes.

  I really fancied one of the chefs, and that night he and I got chatting. He knew I fancied him and I was just bowled over that he was showing me any attention at all.

  He came home with me that night and stayed over. Mum was cool about it. I think she was just happy I was doing normal teenage things.

  But pretty soon it was apparent things were very one-sided. I wanted to go on dates, to the cinema and nice restaurants. He just wanted to come round late at night after he’d finished work or been out with his mates. It was obvious he was using me. In the end I think he felt guilty about it and after about a month it fizzled out. That hit me really hard and I fell into a dark depression again. I’d spend hours lying face down on my bed crying. I’d lost the man I liked, I had no friends, I was a freak of society and couldn’t see any future.

  I’d worked so hard to get out of hospital and it was all for nothing. Everything in the outside world was so unreliable and scary. I didn’t belong here.

  Even in my misery I was aware I was entering a dangerous phase. I was beginning to think, I can block out all this misery now if I stop thinking about it and focus on not eating, because I’m good at that.

  I knew I needed to go somewhere I’d feel safe and where I belonged – hospital.

  Hospital was where I’d grown up, so I suppose it was just like other people wanting to go home when they’re going through a rough patch.

  I dismissed the idea of Rhodes Farm because I knew it would be mammoth amounts of calories and fat. So instead I rang Dr Lask and on 13 January 1999 I checked myself back into Huntercombe.

  I’d lost 9 kilos (1 stone 6 lb) in the seven months since I’d left Rhodes Farm and was down to 36 kilos (5 stone 9 lb) and suffering from dehydration. I knew that at Huntercombe they would let me do things my way and I was keen to make it work. The dietician helped me draw up a meal plan and I stuck to it.

  I requested therapy with one particular counsellor who was young and cool and they agreed. He was fun but gave me good advice on how to cope in situations I found stressful in the outside world and it really helped.

  But it was while I was back there that my obsession with cleanliness really took hold. I started washing my plates and cutlery excessively and if anyone looked at me while I was washing a plate I’d have to wash it all over again. I wouldn’t allow anyone to touch anything I ate or anything I ate my dinner off.

  After staying at Huntercombe for just over three months I left weighing 39.2 kilos (6 stone 2 lb) and feeling ready to go home and back to my job at the Riverside Club.

  I was still having to nip to the toilet to eat a sandwich halfway through my shift and I survived on cups of peppermint tea with four sugars, but I was better than before.

  I avoided the chef and got on with my work. But then some of the girls I’d been friends with at school got jobs there. I was still too freaky and immature for them to hang around with and they did everything they could to make my life a misery. They’d go to nightclubs in Watford but say there was no way I’d get in because I looked so young. Eventually, though, they agreed I could go out with them one Saturday night.

  Beforehand I spent days agonising over what I should wear. I remembered them showing me pictures of when they’d gone out while I was at Huntercombe and one of them was wearing a grey suit. That must be fashionable – I’ll get one of those, I thought. On the day we were going out I went to Mark One and found a virtually identical suit. Later, after I’d spent two hours doing my hair and make-up, I got Mum to drop me at Northwood Hills station to meet the girls.

  As I stepped out of the car I saw two of the girls – I’ll call them Jill and Karen – staring at me, obviously trying to stifle giggles.

  ‘Why are you dressed like that, Nikki?’ one of them asked. ‘We’re only going round to Karen’s house to watch a video.’

  I was mortified.

  When we got to Karen’s we passed round a bottle of vodka. They were saying, ‘Go on, Nikki, neck it – get drunk and let yourself go.’

  I was so naive that I did just that. Soon I was completely out of it and they had to almost carry me back home. On the way I collapsed on the street. All I remember is them falling about laughing as I lay there. They called an ambulance to check I wasn’t dying and paramedics came and looked me over.

  I was OK but once again I felt totally humiliated.

  Not long after that I was desperate to go up to Leicester Square to see the crowds and the fireworks on the eve of the Millennium. I’d heard that the girls at work were all going, so I dashed up to one of them, and asked, ‘Can I come with you for New Year’s Eve?’

  ‘Er, we don’t know what we are doing yet,’ she said.

  Then I rang Jill and she didn’t seem to know either.

  Then I rang Karen and it was the same again.

  Finally our mutual friend David had to tell me the truth: ‘Sorry, Nikki, but I don’t think they want you to go with them.’ I was devastated.

  I was really struggling with life on the outside and not attending my outpatient counselling sessions at Huntercombe as often as I should have done. My eating and exercising were both under control – but only just.

  As well as being so socially immature and out of touch I also looked much younger than other girls. I may have been approaching 18, but I was still living inside the body of a young boy – no breasts and still no periods. So I decided to have a boob job. I knew it was too late for them to ever come naturally now because of the damage anorexia had done to my body. I went on an NHS waiting list before undergoing the operation to boost me from a pancake-flat AA to a more shapely B cup.

  The operation was a bit of a disaster. They put far too much drainage tube inside me and my body rejected it. I had to stay in for six nights while they
sorted it out. It really hurt but when the swelling eventually went down I was delighted.

  I bought loads of new clothes and a fortnight after the op Lena agreed to take me out to celebrate my birthday. I was 18 and finally felt like a woman. For the first time I felt confident about the way I looked. My new boobs also won me kudos and respect from the girls at work.

  In my spare time I had started doing dance classes at Pineapple Dance Studios in Covent Garden. Then I decided I wanted to do it full-time and enrolled on a course at the Gypsy Booth School of Ballet and Theatre Arts near Watford. It was clear that I had a degree of natural talent – like at gymnastics all those years earlier – and I was soon keeping up with girls who had been doing ballet since they were kids. I wasn’t the best, but I was good at it – and that made me feel good.

  And for the first time I made friends who made me feel comfortable and who I enjoyed going out with. That group of friends saved me. We’d go out most evenings and even went on holiday for two weeks to Ibiza.

  For a year everything was brilliant but then history started repeating itself.

  There were more exams and more shows at Gypsy Booth and I could feel pressure mounting on me. There was also a lot of competition for places at the big dance schools we hoped to get into after finishing our course. I dreamed of going to Laine Theatre Arts, in Epsom, one of the best schools in the country, but competition was fierce and that panicked me.

  Meanwhile some of my friends were leaving and going to various colleges. Everything felt uncertain and difficult again and I tried to regain control the only way I knew how – by losing weight.

  I realised that I was no longer dancing because I enjoyed it but because it was exercise and that, for me, was wrong. I would arrive at the college in the morning and do body conditioning for an hour, then ballet, then contemporary, then jazz, and stay until nine at night.