I ate ice cream and a hamburger at lunch today. I tried to do what Heather taught us in Mindfulness Group, to focus on the sensation of the food and how it tasted, but it was hard. I kept thinking about Ali and whether she’s plotting her revenge. If she’ll put poison into my food or get all the other girls to turn against me. If they’ll hate me like Josie does.
Maybe that’s what’s always going to happen. People will be nice to me … until they realize what I’m really like. How boring and un-special I am. Then they’ll abandon me. They’ll find new friends and new things to do.
I kept thinking about Mom and how she refuses to stop dieting.
I kept thinking about everything wrong in my life. Then I felt guilty about feeling so angry. Compared to some people, I have small problems. I have a home. I have money to buy things. I’m not abused.
I still hurt, though.
I tried to think about how the ice cream was creamy and cold.
How the mint was sharp on my tongue.
How the hamburger was juicy and the lettuce crunched in my mouth.
I didn’t do a good job, even without Ali there to stare at me.
All I can think about is how I shouldn’t have eaten them. How my body feels different. But body changes are okay, right? It’s okay for my body to find where it’s meant to be.
Right?
Ice cream and hamburgers are normal. Not freaking out about them is normal.
Right?
Willow says “normal” is eating when you’re hungry and stopping when you’re full. Eating what you want when you want it and listening to your body. It’s eating too much sometimes because you really like oatmeal cookies. It’s not eating a big breakfast because you’re in a hurry but then making up for it with a bigger lunch. It’s salad and French fries and broccoli and meat sauce. It’s parties and treats and being honest.
But if that’s normal, then the world isn’t normal. Mom weighs herself all the time. Talia and Camille are always talking about their “thigh gaps.” Even Josie tries to find the best angle for selfies so she doesn’t look fat.
How can I eat “normally” when everyone else is doing the complete opposite? How can I eat a full meal for lunch while everyone around me is having a salad? I can’t eat five times as much as everyone else. I just can’t.
This all makes me so angry. The world won’t change. My family won’t change.
My face is hot and my breath is coming fast. The medication they put me on in here has been helping with my anxiety, but today I feel like someone lit a firecracker in my chest. It’s sizzling and sparking and about to burst any second.
I checked my e-mail again. Emerson still hasn’t written to apologize for acting weird. There was nothing from Josie, either. All I had was an e-mail from L.L.Bean, from when Mom used my e-mail to buy herself a new pair of slippers.
Even my junk mail isn’t for me.
The more I think about Emerson, the madder I get. I’m not contagious. She doesn’t need to tiptoe around the hospital like she’s going to get chicken pox or break something. (Or break me.)
The more I think about Josie, the madder I get. Okay, fine, I skipped her birthday party. I lied. But she’s done mean things, too. She let out the class hamster in fifth grade and blamed it on me.
The more I think about Mom, the madder I get. Why can’t she stop dieting? I’m her daughter. Are a few pounds more important than me?
The more I think about Dad, the madder I get. I’m his daughter, too. Not a stranger or a character in a story he’s reading, one he gets to close the book on whenever he’s sick of her.
I’m even mad at Julia. Because she has something that lets her soar through the sky. She has something she’s good at, something she loves.
I don’t have anything.
Sizzle. Spark.
I know the way to get rid of this anxiety before it bursts into a Fourth of July celebration. I know how to feel better. I just can’t do it in here.
Ali isn’t talking to me. She ignores everything I say in group and pretends I’m not even in the room. This is worse than how Talia used to treat me at school. At least I knew how Talia felt about me. She told me. She told everyone.
With Ali, it’s just silence. Cold silence. I bet she hates me.
Of course she hates me. All my friends hate me eventually.
I had meatloaf on my menu for dinner tonight. I’ve never had meatloaf before. Mom doesn’t like it, so she’s never made it.
“It’s important to try new things,” Willow said. “To form an opinion for yourself. Or even to change your opinion on things you’ve convinced yourself you don’t like.” She gave me that super-annoying look she’s so good at. “I’m sure you don’t know anything about that.”
Willow is so obnoxious.
Here’s my opinion: meatloaf is gross. It’s mushy and tastes like wet dog food. And here’s the worst part—even though I hated it, I still had to eat all of it. I couldn’t even leave a crumb. Apparently that’s considered “eating-disordered behavior.”
“That’s total crap.”
I can’t believe I actually said that out loud in the middle of the dining room! I never swear. And, okay, I know crap isn’t technically a swear, but Tyler Holt gets in trouble for saying it in class all the time.
“Riley.” Heather’s voice was a warning. “Please don’t speak like that in here. If you have a problem, you can address it after dinner in a check-in.”
Ali smirked at me from across the table. I bet she was thinking I’d back down and be a Goody-Two-shoes.
“I don’t want a check-in!”
I’m not a Goody-Two-shoes. And I’m not going to let these people run my life. I won’t let Mom or Dad run my life, either. And if Emerson and Josie don’t want to be my friends, whatever. I’ll find better friends.
I’m tired of being ignored. I’m tired of being told what to do. I’m angry and I’m alone. I’m tired of working so hard at recovery and still feeling awful all the time.
Plus, it was the principle of the thing. No one should be forced to eat dog food. Especially when they’re trying to teach us to like food.
“I think you need a check-in.” Heather stared me down.
I stared back. “I’m not a kid! I don’t need a time-out. What I need is for someone to listen to how unfair this is.” Sizzle spark! I was tired of the slow burn. It was time for the bang.
“We can talk later.” Heather looked at the stopwatch the counselors always have during meals. “Halfway through, girls. You have fifteen minutes left in lunch.”
“We need to talk now!” I pushed my chair back and stood up, which is totally against the rules. I felt like Patrick Henry, that Revolutionary War patriot we read about in social studies, the one who shouted, “Give me liberty, or give me death!” I felt like a revolutionary. A revolutionary shouting about meatloaf, but still a revolutionary.
“Riley, do you need an emergency appointment with Willow? Do you need a Boost?” Heather looked at my almost-full plate.
“I don’t need a Boost!” I exclaimed. “I need you to listen to me. I shouldn’t have to finish my meatloaf. I don’t like it.”
“You still have to eat it. It’s on your meal plan.” Heather’s voice sounded bored. I wondered if she’d had this same exact fight before. With Carah or Ivy, those phantom snowflake names.
“But why?” I pressed. “Because that’s what ‘normal eaters’ do?”
“Well, yes.” Heather didn’t meet my eyes.
I pounced upon her uncertainty like a cat on a mouse. I told her that normal eaters don’t finish meals sometimes. “Once Julia opened up a yogurt that had fuzzy mold on it and smelled disgusting. She didn’t eat the yogurt. She threw it away.”
“You’re not Julia,” Heather said.
No, I’m not. I’ll never be Julia. I’ll never be that naturally small. I’ll never be that naturally good. Can’t I have this one thing, then? Can’t I just skip this one meal?
Nope.
“You still have to eat your meatloaf.”
I looked at the other girls. I thought they’d stand up for me and we’d all charge out of the dining room together.
They kept eating, though. They stared at me with fascinated looks, like I was a circus act.
See the Amazing Bearded Woman in ring one!
The Muscled Lion Tamer in ring two!
The Enraged Meatloaf Girl in ring three! See her try not to cry!
“But I’m full,” I said. “I don’t want to eat.”
“Rules are rules,” Heather said. “You can’t trust your body’s fullness cues quite yet. It’s still learning how to deal with a healthy amount of food. You have to give it time.”
I didn’t want to give it time.
I didn’t want to eat wet dog food.
I didn’t want to be “healthy.” I didn’t want to listen to Heather.
I don’t want to listen to anyone.
It’s my life. My choices.
“I’m not having the meatloaf.” I raised my chin.
“Then you can have the Boost.” Heather tapped her manicured fingers on the table, the ones that matched her pretty flowered skirt. I was wearing ratty old sweatpants with an elastic waist. “I’m surprised, Riley. This isn’t like you.”
Who is Heather to say what I’m like? Heather barely knows me. Heather doesn’t know that my favorite book is The Girl Who Drank the Moon. She doesn’t know that I’m the best tree climber in our whole neighborhood or that when I was little, my favorite food was broccoli dipped in ketchup. Heather knows what I weigh, and that’s all that matters to her.
Maybe that’s all that matters to anyone.
“I’m not going to have the Boost.”
“Those are the rules, Riley.” Heather said it so patiently, like she was speaking from a script, like I was a name on a chart instead of Riley, a girl with fears and feelings of her own.
“I don’t care about the rules. I don’t want to have the Boost.”
I’m waiting for a check-in now. They’re making me have one because I “caused trouble.” Because they think I need to “process my feelings.” Everyone just filed by on their way to the group room, peeking at me like I’m a tiger behind bars.
The staff does everything they can to stop us from analyzing our bodies like we’re a science project, from making observations and testing hypotheses like we did before:
If I eat this much, then this will happen.
If I weigh this much, then my life will become like this.
They can’t stop us from seeing ourselves, though. They can’t stop us from seeing each other, our insides and our outsides. Right now, my insides feel just as ugly as my outsides.
It feels good to be ugly, though. It feels good to be mad, to forget about the pain of recovery and think about what everyone else is doing wrong instead.
Heather shouldn’t have tried to make me eat that food.
Mom should listen to me.
Dad should see me.
I should be able to make my own decisions.