I asked Gaelin’s dad to drive me home. I’d had a really good time. I had the chance to end it on a good note. I wasn’t ready for the after-dance party scene.
And Dad was coming home from New York sometime that night. If I left now he could still see me in my dress.
He was sleeping when I got there. I woke him up. I didn’t want him missing the firsthand image of me still dressed in pure formal elegance.
sheila: Ned was sleeping, but not soundly. He heard the door open and there was a brand-new Lisa, glowing and beautiful. She told him all the highlights, from the moment Peggy got there, and how she had worried, and going to Gaelin’s house, more worries. But it had all worked out. “For that night, anyway, it was as if she was better,” Ned recalls. “I could just be the proud father. I remember not even thinking about what tomorrow would bring.”
A year later, Ned and I went to a workshop for parents and caregivers of ED patients, and finally began to understand why anorexia and bulimia aren’t a matter of willpower, that they distort rational thought. But at this point Ned kept saying things like, “You can do it if you try.” He felt Lisa just needed to concentrate and focus on finishing high school. He got angry more easily than in the early stages of her illness. He still took her on walks around the block and listened to what was wrong with each antidepressant, why she couldn’t go to school, how she couldn’t sleep, and the scariest, when she talked about the voices in her head. But he felt betrayed. Lisa used to be on his team, a fun-loving Himmel. Now that she had defected to depression, he gladly let me take charge, and she rarely called him at work. The question “What should we do now?” stayed in my court. We argued, but held each other up. That we weren’t alone was something to be thankful for. We couldn’t imagine how single parents, or parents who dislike each other, dealt with serious diseases.
How do people learn to be parents when things come up that knock you to the ground and then the bottom falls away? When you don’t sleep, but don’t want to get out of bed because the day will only bring something worse than what had already happened?
But after the prom, Ned and I could breathe again. Lisa seemed to have enjoyed herself. I kept a constant alert system in my head—what the bad possibilities were in each situation and what we’d do. It hadn’t come close to being needed.
Although none of us thought of this at the time, maybe we all did our best on prom night. Jake showed up. He didn’t know what to say or do, he didn’t want to make the situation worse, but he wanted to show support by just being there. The anguished parents got ourselves out of the picture, and brought in a loving person who wasn’t drowning in the family drama. I can’t imagine Lisa would have accepted the idea of a bath and candles from Ned or me. And maybe it was better that Ned and I weren’t there to jump into action for Lisa, or fall apart with her. She accepted help but also drew on her own strength. Now she could look back on a wonderful evening and even look forward, to the possibility of others.
But soon, Lisa was hearing voices again.
eleven
College
Lisa would get better in college, Ned and I were telling ourselves. She needed to leave the nest, have a roommate, find classes that rekindled her mind. Getting out in the world would be so much better than staying home, torturing herself—she’d see that right away.
We didn’t know how bad she’d gotten. We didn’t want to look.
lisa: An entry from my journal, dated May 4, 2004:I’m trying to sleep but a swarm of confusion comes in my mind. I lie in the dark, scared of what will come the next day. Every day is a battle with myself to see if I can make it. Every day I fail. The hands that hold me are so strong, and the more I try to break free the tighter their grip becomes. Just let go of me! I’m so young yet I can already feel great desperation, questioning if my life is even worth it. It can be hard to wake up to the mess that surrounds me. I hate feeling like I am not worth it, like I am not allowed to enjoy my last bite, or my drink on a Friday night. I always have to somehow ruin it by self-mutilation—no cutting, just severe and repetitive bingeing and purging. I have never cut myself but I have thought about it, when all I want to do is feel pain, and know that I can still feel, that I am not completely numb.
My jaw is so sore from all the puking. I have pimples around my mouth, my hands and feet are swollen, my tummy pooches out from lack of electrolytes. But nothing stops me. I still find some sickening pleasure in releasing the food from my stomach, a grotesque rush.
sheila: One gorgeous spring evening I picked Lisa up at the dorm to review a recently rejuvenated Italian restaurant with a great view (“Dine with the sea lions”) on the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Her roommate had moved out. Lisa’s stuff now easily filled the closets, beds, and all the floor space. The garbage can was no match for its contents. This time, though, a greasy-haired guy in his mid- or late twenties was there, bent over Lisa’s computer. They had met online. Of course they had. What could be more natural? I tried to act glad to meet him, and asked if he wanted to join us for dinner. As if, oh yes, my daughter always invites strangers to live with her and we’re fine with it. I didn’t want to act shocked and annoy Lisa before we even left the dorm. So I asked and he declined. Later I figured out that he wanted to keep a low profile in the dorm, since he wasn’t supposed to be there, and Lisa was bringing food to him.
Hidden on a hill, the UC Santa Cruz campus scatters a dozen separate colleges over two thousand acres of redwood grove and native grasses. A sweeping cow pasture and some old barn buildings are all you can see as you approach the campus. To me it felt mysterious and a little scary, like Brigadoon, the mythical Scottish highland village with a dark secret. Brigadoon’s inhabitants lived in the past and disappeared in the mist. When driving to meet Lisa on campus, I couldn’t shake the fear that she might have disappeared in the fog. There was so little of her at this time.
Even when sitting next to me in the car, she really wasn’t there. On the way to Carniglia’s, I kept myself on a short leash of nonconfrontational questions that bored us both. But we got there without a fight. On the boardwalk, we passed two women and their children, eating fried shrimp in paper cartoons while the women relived fond memories of coming there in high school. The boardwalk, being a hundred years old, is like that for a lot of people. It still has a wooden roller coaster, and now a website featuring “Millions of Memories” about the saltwater taffy and Fun House days.
The boardwalk wasn’t remotely interesting to Lisa that day or any other. Nor were her classes. Bulimia took up so much of her time, and she wasn’t alone. The National Women’s Health Center estimates that on college campuses, up to eighty percent of women students have binged and purged. The physical and psychological effects are horrendous. Following is a list from www.bulimiasideffects.com, a site sponsored by a bulimia treatment center in California. The sponsor has a commercial interest in the subject, but the list is consistent with those of nonprofit agencies. The fact of a website with this address speaks to the ongoing scourge of bulimia.
Other bulimia side effects include difficulty conceiving a child, a larger risk of miscarriage, and premature birth.
lisa: I read lists of the physical effects of bulimia over and over again. I don’t really know why I did it. Maybe to scare myself, and it did scare me. I wasn’t scanning the list casually, thinking, “esophagus tearing, dehydration, la-de-da, muscle cramps, yadda yadda, bloating, hmm . . . that’s interesting.” No, it wasn’t like that at all.
I guess it’s the same with alcoholics who are fully aware that their liver has gone to hell. There is an underlying issue that cannot be resolved by having the shit scared out of you with statistics. Bulimia is an addiction. I could not make it through a day without my drug. It wasn’t that I binged and purged every day, but I was always thinking about it.
I was just not ready to leave home and go to college. I clung to the guidance of my parents, but they weren’t there supplying me with fresh groceries, nor did I have someone to accomm
odate my specific dietary requests. I found it very difficult to go to classes, study, exercise for two hours a day, and remain on a restrictive, meager diet. There was a lot of homework, more exhausting reading than I had ever experienced. Introductory sociology could not compete with hunger pangs. I was always hungry, and being a hungry freshman in college, a foreigner on new ground, blew out my tightly controlled system. I binged, at first not frequently, maybe once or twice a week and always on Fridays.
I started throwing up to alleviate the pain of being full. But I had absolutely no privacy in the dorms so purging proved tricky. However, with practice I got good at it. After a month I was really good at it. Still, it took forever. I’d be in the bathroom for forty-five minutes trying to get everything out until I saw the semblance of something—a “marker” food—that I’d eaten to begin the binge.
Initially, my roommate and I had been close companions, what any college freshman would hope for, but by winter quarter she couldn’t take me anymore.
I had come back to our room from one of my two-hour gym sessions when she told me that after I showered she wanted to talk to me. I knew it was going to be something about my horrible organizational skills or that I had done something to annoy her. Anyway, I showered quickly as the communal showers never offered much of a relaxing comfort, and came back to our room, quickly dressed, and sat down to hear what she had to say. Every time she had something to tell me, she tensed up and interlaced her fingers together, fidgeting.
“I don’t know . . . but lately, like, I’ve been getting uncomfortable with how messy your side of the room is all the time and one time I stepped on a piece of gum and, like, and that just really got to me. I dunno, it’s just that our lifestyles are so different. I mean it’s not your fault or anything, but you go to bed way earlier than I do and when I come back I have to remember to be quiet. Then you get up earlier than me, which usually wakes me up. So, I’m thinking it would be best if I moved out. I mean I really like you as a person . . . but we just can’t live together. Do you understand?”
I understood, but I wished she’d said how she was really feeling, like, “Well, it’s just that you’re a crazy bingeing-purging bulimic freak and I don’t know how to live with you.” She knew I was bulimic. I had told her flat-out, and how could anyone not know, watching me wolf down thousands of calories in five or ten minutes?
My bingeing and purging got worse. Often I was purging up to ten times a day. I was almost hospitalized during what had become a monthly visit to the student health center. The doctor ordered an EKG and warned me that if my results came back abnormal she had no hesitation about sending me to the hospital. I barely passed, but it was enough to keep me living where I was and how I was. What I don’t understand is why I gained so much weight. Statistics say most bulimics are slightly underweight or of a normal weight. Sometimes, I did eat normal meals of dining hall food, and my body was holding on to every calorie it got.
Bulimia wasn’t working, but anorexia was definitely harder. It took so much willpower to convince myself that I wasn’t hungry, that food was the enemy, that I was strong for resisting. I made up excuses for why I couldn’t go out with my friends to eat, because if I went with them I would spend the whole time being paranoid about what to eat and how many calories I was consuming. It was much easier just to decline, go to the gym, and come home to my safety foods. Looking back, I can’t believe I survived on such bird food. I would make these terrible creations and convince myself that they were good. I trained my mind to disconnect from what I was eating and respond with “Mmm, yes, this is filling me up, this tastes good. Yes, a quarter cup of black beans over lettuce with carrots, tomatoes, and balsamic vinegar is delicious.” Oh, and if I felt risky, I treated myself to a scoop of Soy Dream.
With bulimia I didn’t have to avoid food and I could go out with my friends. I could order anything I wanted on the menu because it sounded good, tasted good, and was a comfort. If I wanted to have a slumber party and munch on candy and other “bad foods” I could do it. I could be as fucking bad as I wanted as long as I got rid of it. That’s the catch—indulge and then purge. Indulge and I must purge. I didn’t have to worry so much about not being able to go out, or making excuses to get to the gym, because really I could “burn off” the calories with purging. And it became this drug that is so addictive and almost thrilling. Eating is a rush. Actually no, eating is painful, I hated it and still do. But I also hated being hungry. I hated those pangs that mock me, that swirling of liquids in my stomach, the emptiness that just begs to be filled. So of course I felt forced to do something about it. Sure, I had a meager list of foods I didn’t have to purge: a bowl of cereal, fruit, some bread, but even those can become objects to be thrown up in the porcelain goddess. I hated being full. I hated losing control. I hated the feeling of entering the dining hall alone, finding no one to sit with, and being left with that stupid enemy food. Just me and my mocking thoughts that I failed as an anorexic and now I am just a gruesome bulimic! The voice would go off in my head, growing louder and louder and demanding: Purge it, Lisa, stick your fingers in farther, just GO, fuckin’ GO, GO, GO, you little weakling, go! And there it was; it came out, dinner, lunch, breakfast, everything, puked up in the toilet. It was gone, and I was safe. “I’m okay,” I’d say to myself, then . . . take a deep breath, wash my face, head back to my room, collapse on my bed, and cry.
I’ve wondered what it would be like to die. How would people react? Who would be affected and why? Once that year I truly wanted to kill myself. I believe it was a Saturday in October, the month of my birthday, when I decided I needed to die or escape, somehow. I was reading statistics on the web about bulimia and anorexia when I came across Karen Carpenter and ipecac syrup. Ah, there was my solution, ipecac. I would go to the drugstore to buy ipecac and swallow it and let the poison work its way through my body until I started vomiting and I wasn’t going to stop vomiting until I passed out. Looking back now, I’m not sure if I wanted it to kill me or just land me in the hospital. All I really cared about was escaping from my pain.
I put on the blue striped polo shirt I only wore after a binge, and my stretchy stone-washed American Eagle jeans, and sat alone in my fat clothes on the bus, staring out the window and seeing only the reflection of my tear-stained eyes. At the drugstore I went up and down each aisle that had anything to do with health products. I must have spent ten minutes just looking at laxatives. But I couldn’t find ipecac, and I was far too embarrassed to ask. What would I say if the clerk asked why I needed it? Poison control? I left with a bottle of liquid Ex-Lax instead. I later found out ipecac syrup had been discontinued. I don’t know if I was disappointed, but I wasn’t relieved.
At first I liked the idea of not having a roommate. It was difficult sharing space with another person. Now I had two of everything: closets, dressers, desks, and beds. All filled up quickly. My parents made a special trip over the hill to buy me a little TV set and pillows for the extra bed, so it could be a couch/guest bed. And I did seem to have quite a few guests. I even had a full band (Halifax) stay with me, which should have been a dream come true but they all had girlfriends. They did not know I was a bulimic, nor would I give them any reason to suspect. After the show we went to Taco Bell, where I sat and engaged in conversation but ate nothing. We came back to my dorm room, smoked a bowl, I took a sleeping pill, and we all dozed off.
I kept a steady supply of pot, which I got from this guy who lived in the lower quad. My friends came over quite often to smoke out, but they never stayed long. It should have been the perfect setup, having my own room. But the emptiness produced loneliness, and made even more space for my habits. I started bingeing more frequently, most often alone in my room. After about a month I stopped inviting people over and they stopped initiating meeting up.
My mini-fridge and microwave nestled in the far-left corner of my room. And so, during binges, I’d huddle in that corner, and stuff myself full of whatever I had. I tried not to buy unhealthy
food, but that didn’t even matter when it came time to binge. I usually started with cereal, and I’d keep pouring a little more in, never letting the bowl empty. When I started getting down to the last few bites, I’d pour in more milk, but if there was too much milk I’d have to pour in more cereal. This would continue until I got horribly bored and moved on to another food, something sweet and completely sinful such as cookies dipped in peanut butter.
I could almost precisely measure that my cereal binges could account for a serving of seven to ten bowls. One serving could also be seven to ten bowls of Trader Joe’s Cinnamon Cat Cookies or Teddy Grahams, the kinds of cookies you can scoop and eat by the handful. It’s like my hands were on their own—they just wouldn’t stop grabbing cookies and plopping them in my cup of milk. During a binge I seemed to shut down completely. Eating was my way of filling up on emptiness. So there I was on many nights, eating cat cookies in milk with a spoon, completely shut off from my surroundings and myself. Eventually something would click—either something in my head or my body—and I was brought back to reality. Now came my moments of panic and guilt, confusion, disgust, and hatred for my body, for my actions, for losing control.
The only way out was to purge. If it was a weekend, throwing up in the bathroom was easy because if anyone walked in they would think I was throwing up from being drunk. If I wanted more privacy I left the building and hurried to the individual bathrooms by the dining hall. I’d turn on the faucet to drown out the sound of puking, as well as have a steady stream of liquid when I needed assistance with getting the food out.
I eventually purged mostly in my room for complete privacy. I’d take plastic or paper bags, sit in my chair holding the bag open with one hand, and using the other to purge. Then I’d casually take my trash to the Dumpsters outside, as if it was normal garbage.
Hungry Page 18
