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Anuj shut the door of his room and rushed to the Netherhall’s computer room carrying Ella’s diary in his hand. He now realised why Ella had entrusted such a personal chronicle of events to his hands. She was asking for help, silently. And Anuj was so cussed that he couldn’t pick up the hint at all.
Anuj was now determined to help Ella, but he realised he knew very little of the disorder. He could save Ella only if he understood what was afflicting her.
Anuj was relieved to find the computer room empty. Apparently everyone was out enjoying the snow.
Phew! What a relief.
Anuj would have hated it if someone stared at his computer screen, a common occurrence among friends in Netherhall.
Anuj grabbed a chair and entered the password to unlock the computer screen. He opened the Google Chrome browser and googled “anorexia, causes and symptoms” and started reading the articles that popped up.
This is how the first scholarly entry defined anorexia: “an emotional disorder characterised by an obsessive desire to lose weight by refusing to eat.”
Anuj was taken aback for a moment. There were certain entries in the diary that did talk about Ella’s obsessive desire to lose weight. Anuj didn’t remember what exactly those entries said. So he opened Ella’s diary to look for clues. And he immediately spotted the one in which she had expressed her desire to cut her calories to 650.
“Oh Ella!” Anuj muttered under his breath.
He next right clicked on an article by Mayo Clinic which described the physical, emotional and behavioural symptoms of anorexics. Ella did show some of the physical symptoms of anorexia such as weight loss, and thin appearance. And she complained a lot about fatigue and dizziness—even in her diary.
Anuj remembered seeing the bluish discolouration of her fingers when she collapsed. Although he had no other way to verify the other symptoms such as osteoporosis, constipation, dehydration, absence of menstruation, low blood pressure..... But wait a minute, dizziness was a sign of low blood pressure. So that can certainly be linked to anorexia.
He then moved on to the emotional symptoms of the disorder. The first symptom talked about severe restriction of food which Ella’s diary too talked about—even though it was pretty vague. The second symptom took him by surprise. It talked about self-induced vomiting.
Something flashed in front of his eyes. He remembered the day when he’d taken Ella to Nando’s on his birthday. After the meal was over, Ella had gone to the toilet. When she’d come back, her mouth smelled of mouth freshener. Her clothes smelled as if she had sprayed some perfume on them.
At that time it had struck him as something which was a little odd. But Anuj could never guess, even in his wildest dreams, that the problem could be far more serious than a stupid attempt to smell nice to him.
Was Ella vomiting out the food she ate and then tried to cover up the stink with some mouth freshener and perfume? Maybe. Anuj had no evidence to prove his theory. But he now very much suspected that this could very well be the truth.
He next moved on to the causes of anorexia. The first one was genetic. That those who have a family history of suffering from anorexia have a higher chance of developing the disorder. A smile creased his lips as Anuj imagined Ella’s parents, who he had never seen, to be thin, emaciated and as anorexic as any anorexic could be. The thought had to be junked as Ella had never mentioned anything about her family; so he couldn’t bring genetics as a cause of her anorexia.
The second cause was psychological, which like genetics didn’t make much sense at first. Though Anuj found an interesting line which said that anorexics have an extreme drive for perfectionism. So if they think they need to lose weight, they will continue to restrict their diet with no limit.
That brought him back to that portion in Ella’s diary, where she had mentioned looking herself in the mirror and seeing herself as fat. He didn’t remember the exact line, so he opened the diary again to read. When he reached that specific para, he highlighted it with a fluorescent pen.
He then moved on to the next factor which was environmental. The Mayo Clinic said, “Modern Western culture emphasises thinness. Success and worth are often equated with being thin. Peer pressure may help fuel the desire to be thin, particularly among young girls.”
Anuj thought for a second. Ella had mentioned her step-dad and a few of her schoolmates calling her fat. Was that the triggering reason?
There was nothing more to the article; so Anuj crossed it out and moved on to the others that Google had thrown up.
He suddenly came across something that raised alarm bells in his head. His heart raced, and he heard a THUD THUD THUD inside his head.
The article was titled, “Jeremy Gillitzer, male eating disorder sufferer, dead at 38.”
“Can someone really die of an eating disorder?” thought an incredulous Anuj.
The article surprised him for one more reason. That men were as susceptible to an eating disorder as women. The articles had a few pictures of Jeremy. The man looked like an emaciated 70 year old man even though he was only 38.
Anuj was disappointed that the article didn’t explain how Jeremy had developed an eating disorder and why did he die? It only said that he weighed 66 pounds at the time of his death. 66 pounds? How much is that in kilos? Wondered Anuj.
He opened another tab and googled pound to kg converter. When the converter showed up, he typed in 66 in the pounds field. He was horrified when he saw the conversion which came to an absurd number of 29.9731 Kgs.
So Jeremy weighed less than 30 kilos at the time of his death. It was impossible to believe given that his height was 5 feet 7 inches.
Anuj gulped.
He moved to the next article which was titled, “I went from hunky model to 6 stone anorexic.”
The article began with two pictures of Jeremy Gillitzer. On the left, was a picture of a good looking shirtless man displaying his muscular biceps, a toned waist and fabulous abs.
On the right, was the picture of the same man. He was wearing white shorts and looked like a piece of a wooden stick—mind you not a full wooden stick—but a piece of wooden stick. He had no stomach and no chest. Just a rib cage—which was so clearly visible—that Anuj could easily count the number of bones therein.
His arms and legs didn’t look like arms and legs. They rather looked like the branches of a rose plant. And he looked—old. Terribly old. A thin emaciated man in his 70s when actually he was only in his late 30s.
The picture reminded Anuj of some black and white pictures he’d seen in his school history textbook of Jewish prisoners working in Nazi concentration camps. The theme was the Second World War and the horrors of the holocaust. Those poor souls looked exactly like this guy. The only difference was that Jeremy’s condition was self-induced.
Jeremy’s skinny picture was so ugly—so ugly—that Anuj felt like throwing up. He felt a violent churn in his stomach and needed to take a deep breath to calm himself. He then read the next sentence of the article—“Jeremy Gillitzer was once a male model with stunning looks and a six-pack. But now his body is so ravaged by anorexia, he can barely stand without passing out.”
Poor Jeremy, Anuj wondered. He was skimming through the article till he found a sentence in the middle of the article in big and bold.
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“I was bullied at school and called ‘Fatty’”
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Anuj felt the pounding of the hammer in his head, again. His heart was beating so fast it made him feel sick. Ella too had mentioned being bullied at school and being called something similar. He opened her diary again and looked for the relevant passage.
There you go, Anuj muttered under his breath. It was her fight with Ebba where she mentioned being called fat. He highlighted the paragraph with his fluorescent pen.
He then went back to the article. It discussed how Jeremy cut his food into small pieces, induced vomiting after every meal, frequently used laxatives and all kinds of dangerous stuff that he believed could help him get to his “desired” weight.
Then Anuj came across another sentence—again in big and bold that hit him like a ton of bricks.
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“I would always find something to be critical about.”
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Yes, “critical” seemed to be the right word. Ella’s diary too was way too critical about herself. Anuj felt that she judged herself too harshly. The article said nothing about Jeremy’s death; so Anuj assumed that the article predated his death.
The article had ended on a positive note. It looked like Jeremy knew of the problem and had started a blog to help other anorexics. Jeremy even mentioned that he had gained the courage to seek the help of a specialist and that he’d gained some weight. He sounded hopeful that he was on the right path to putting behind this dreadful disorder forever.
But alas, the real life story didn’t have a happy ending.
Anuj made a few notes and then moved on to the next article. This one discussed Jeremy’s family background. His parents were divorced and his mother married a carpenter who later on adopted Jeremy.
“The relationship with my step-dad was horrible; he treated me like sh*t,” Jeremy said. “He acted like I was an intruder in his home.”
“Oh no!” said Anuj. Ella too had a step-dad.
The article further read:
“Jeremy was a pudgy kid, still carrying his baby fat, and his weight was a frequent target for his step-father's ire. ‘He'd always say I was fat, or needed to lose weight,’ Jeremy says.”
Oh. My. God. Jeremy’s story sounded way too familiar. Anuj gulped. He wasn’t willing to face the question—the painful one—that was Ella moving in the same direction? He hoped not but looked like she was.
Anuj then found a You Tube video titled, “Boy, Interrupted: One Man's Struggle With an Eating Disorder.”
It was a three minute video interview of Jeremy where he talked about his eating disorder. The internet connection slowed down, and the video took time to buffer.
What kind of a man develops Anorexia? Shallow, self-wrapped, self-obsessed, cold-hearted, emotionally unstable....
Anuj’s head was coming up with all kinds of words—unsympathetic ones—to describe anorexics.
The video loaded and started playing. He looked at a good looking guy who spoke well with a deep masculine voice.
“I’m not trying to lose weight,” said Jeremy in the video. He paused and stared at the camera.
“It just happens that I’ve lost more weight in the last two months because I’ve been exercising more—and—probably not eating enough.”
The video then showed Jeremy rigorously exercising on a stationary bike in a gym. He was sweating and exercising so intensely—that Anuj feared that the guy might have a heart attack.
Jeremy spoke about the stressful events in his life that exacerbated his eating disorder.
“When people tell me how good I looked, it just makes me feel worse,” said Jeremy in a sad tone.
Anuj felt bad for him. Jeremy didn’t sound shallow, self-wrapped, self-obsessed or any other such thing. He sounded so—warm—and so human—with happy moments and sad moments—may be more sad than happy, but nothing so serious as to kill anyone.
Jeremy sounded like a good guy—warm and compassionate. Someone who had been through a lot—and was forced to become mature, a bit early than required. But still he sounded better than the guys and girls Anuj had met in his school and college days in India.
Anuj paused the video. Jeremy’s eyes were intense. Anuj saw a friend in him. A friend who could have been saved. The man deserved to live. He could have been a Hollywood superstar or something else but it was a shame his life ended when he was only 38.
Anuj looked at the comments below the video where others suffering from anorexia had reached out to Jeremy. They were touched that Jeremy wrote back comforting them. His e-mails were warm and friendly, they said. Whoever had interacted with Jeremy, at any level, said the same thing about him. That Jeremy was such a warm guy who deserved much more.
In a very strange way, the guy reminded Anuj of Ella.
A question was suddenly facing Anuj—squarely. It was being posed by the shadow of a hooded man, a monster with no eyes.
Was Ella going to die soon?
He looked at more images of anorexic men and women. They all looked the same. No body. Just skin over a skeleton. That was gross.
He looked at a few more You Tube videos of teenage girls who developed eating disorder. Their stories were similar to Ella. It all started with beautiful looking shy and sensitive girls—who wanted to improve their body image and look more confident.
A question came up to his mind:
How common is death from anorexia?
He googled to find the answer. An article from WebMd popped up. It jolted him upright: anorexia nervosa had the highest death rate of any mental illness. Between 5% and 20% of all who developed the disorder died from it. The longer you had it, the more likely you were to die from it.
The most frightening part was anorexia’s effect on a victim’s heart. As the body lost muscle mass, it also lost heart muscle at a galloping rate. So the heart would get smaller and weaker. This would lead to a weak circulation, a lower pulse rate and blood pressure and ultimately to heart failure.
The research proved—that Jeremy’s death wasn’t a rare occurrence.
Ella was indeed in trouble.
Grave trouble.
