The Fast

The process of making the choices I did was an easy one. They were given little thought for consequence and as such were decided upon rather quickly. As long as my goals could be met in a speedy fashion, nothing else mattered. It was a time that allowed little scope for self-reflection. My vision for such things had become greatly impaired; my grasp on exactly who or what I was could no longer be easily defined. Perhaps I just didn’t want to probe that deeply. If I did, I ran the risk of finding nothing. That would have been unbearable.

It is here that I suppose we must ask a most inevitable question: is an eating disorder an uncontrollable disease or is it a chosen lifestyle? This question has been answered in many ways by close companions and by strangers whom I have witnessed debating it through, usually with little knowledge or empathy for the condition itself. I’m sure most would contend the former and so would I to a large extent. It’s difficult for me to believe that I chose this for myself, particularly when it has caused such trauma both to my own well-being and the people around me. At the same time, however, there is always at least an element of choice in such things. Mostly, it feels that though my bulimia was indeed a selected path, it was not I who made the decision. It was made by a determined alter-ego who had by this stage almost consumed me completely. I was at her mercy and as briefly touched upon earlier, I wanted to be. Attempting to for ever control yourself and everything in your life is a very exhausting endeavour. In a sense, I chose to hand over the reins and let her make the necessary decisions that I simply couldn’t bring myself to do. It felt like a wonderfully natural way of going about things and allowed me to alleviate myself from the responsibility of having to ponder over such matters. As a result, the entire transition from the person I’d known before to the person I had become remains a very blurry one and ultimately lost through the distortions of time.

I do, however, remember the day I started a new fad diet. It was only days after the aforementioned evening. More than anything else, I felt an unwavering sense of urgency as if something terrible was sure to occur if I did not begin this diet immediately. To use the term anxious would surely have been an understatement in this case. I was a ball of nerves. The criticality of the moment seemed to swell up inside me until I felt like I was going to choke under the immediacy of what needed to be done. It wasn’t too difficult coaxing my parents into allowing me start it; they had seen me cry over my physical appearance more times than they should have in my life and thought this may finally put a halt to my unyielding insecurities. The diet was simple; I drank three prescribed milkshakes a day and nothing else for a period of two weeks. The challenge of it was less daunting than it should have been, given I had reached a point of sheer desperation. I would have done anything. But by my fourth day of not eating I began to feel the strain of it. It’s around this time that your body slips into a process called ‘ketosis’. I never could get my head around its scientific idiosyncrasies and won’t bore you with them now. What it meant for me, on a very basic level, was that I became extremely lethargic. Though I continued taking the shakes as required, as well as drinking up to two litres of water a day, I just could not find the energy to do very much at that time. My body was heavy and sluggish. I seemed to feel the weight of it more than I ever had before. It was more than just a mere awareness of my own limbs and muscles. It was as if I was trapped within myself. My mind – which before now had seemed capable to venture outside this body and into any earthly or otherwise crevice – was now firmly confined within the boundaries of it. And I thought of nothing else for those two weeks.

‘It will be worth it’, she told me again and again. For the sake of mild discomfort in such a short period of time, I wouldn’t fail so haphazardly. This was easy, I told myself. And I pitied all the people who, like me, were currently endeavouring to lose weight and going about it at a slow or modest approach. I knew that they were doing so because they did not have the discipline I did, nor the commitment. They couldn’t really want it, not the way I did. Otherwise, they would do as I was and would be more successful.

But nobody is like us. Nobody can do what we can. They’re just not that strong, she reminded me.

The two-week diet came and went at an extraordinary pace. In hindsight, it wasn’t even all that difficult to do. Though I wasn’t consuming any food or beverages, I had enjoyed what I came to see as the luxury of those milkshakes. It wasn’t much but it was sustenance nonetheless. I wasn’t aware of what I was capable of doing to my body then and felt a temporary sense of accomplishment. But looking back now, I was naive and in the greater scheme of things, had only just touched the tip of a most complex iceberg. Nevertheless, I was satisfied at the time. In those two weeks I lost in the region of about 13lbs and coasted on an evanescent high of exaltation. It was about more than simply being physically lighter. I felt psychologically lighter, as if someone had finally set a match to all the cumbersome wax in my head and it was melting away, drip by drip. The somewhat superficial benefits helped too. I now had the freedom to dress in a way I couldn’t before, to carry myself differently and to a certain extent, even behave differently.

For that very brief period in time, I seemed to reign as any other Queen Bee. From the inner workings of my mind, a hive formed. It was a sacred place and so intricately enclosed, so meticulously encased that it was my mine and mine alone. No one knew it existed. This was how to best preserve this hive inside me, as I knew that even the gentlest whisper could threaten it and it would surely crumble. Inside this place, in the safety of its impenetrable walls, I came alive and drowned in its sacrosanct honey. I sat on a throne of my own making and she, who had always dwelled in the changing shadows of my life, played the power beneath it. She was happy to do so, as always. While I savoured my time atop this throne and revelled in superficial attention and compliments, she churned and laboured relentlessly. You see, more than anything else, she now saw and understood the greater possibilities. It had only been a mere two weeks. But with those two weeks came new ideas. It was clear to both us after those two weeks that I had potential we’d never dreamed of. Before I could conquer the world, I had to conquer myself. After a two-week fast, suddenly this was possible.

***

I am 13 years old. I know most teenagers are known to have very bad skin but mine is exceptionally horrific. I’ve had acne on my face since I was very young and it just seems to get worse and worse as I get older. When I was ten years old, a boy ran up to me in the yard and told me that there’s a solution for people like me called Clearasil Complete and ran back to his friends laughing. But I’m not sure how long I had acne before then. That’s the earliest memory I have about my skin and I don’t like to think about it all that much anyway. Mum always says that this happens to everyone, but I don’t ever remember this with my older brother or sister. My sister Natalie, in particular, has had perfect skin her entire life. I’ve never seen a blemish or mark anywhere on her face. I got the worst parts of the gene pool and both she and I know it.

I pleaded with Mum to do something to help me. We went to the doctor and I was given Minocin, a prescription drug to help clear my skin. I’ve been taking it for quite some time now. My skin is better, but still not perfect. Sometimes I look in the mirror, very closely at my face, and I wonder what it would be like if I could simply take a few layers of it away. I imagine taking a scalpel to one of my ears and carving a very definite line from one ear to the other, all along my jaw. From there, I would peel back the top layer of skin, then the second and then the third, until all my acne was gone and my face could heal under a new blanket of immaculate parchment. I would never do it though. I get weak at the sight of blood and would undoubtedly faint once the smell of it hit my nostrils. But the temptation is there. Quite often, I get angry at the sight of my own face. In all its hideousness, I think it looks like a mistake and in many ways, I wish I could punish it for looking so grotesquely unnatural. I wonder if other people have these thoughts; if they look at themselves as I do, see a monster looking back at them and pray that one day, they’ll be strong enough to kill that monster forever.

Maybe it’s just my mood. I’ve been feeling terrible of late, like I’ve been sucked into a vacuum of complete sadness and I can’t pull myself out no matter how hard I try. I suppose, I’ve started to give up on trying anyway. My family have noticed it too and keep passing comments like, ‘You seem very down lately.’ If only they knew how bad it has really gotten. Mum is keeping a very close eye on me; she watches everything I do now and I feel like I’m just waiting for one big explosion to happen. I’m not surprised she’s so concerned though. I have been having a lot of trouble with the girls in my class. Mum says they’re bullies and was in the school last week talking to my teacher about it. They don’t understand it’s my own fault though. If I wasn’t such a teacher’s pet and a know-it-all, then the girls would like me. I try really hard to say things I know they want to hear but it doesn’t help make me popular. If anything, it seems to make things worse. They recently found out that I told on them because Mum contacted the school. Last week, a girl hit me in the face and said, ‘Now go tell your mummy that!’ and Mum went back to the school about it. I heard her and my teacher talking about everything that’s been happening. I overheard something about calling the Gardaí into it. I hope that doesn’t happen because I just want to forget everything. But now Mum won’t let me out of her sight.

She can see that something is wrong with me. I always knew that something wasn’t right about me and now everyone else knows too. I am crying in my room and she bursts through the door. She asks me what’s wrong but I don’t tell her because I can’t. I cry a lot now and I don’t know why. When I look in the mirror, I always need to cry even more. She starts going on about the Minocin drug; I don’t know what she’s talking about. Eventually, she says it has a great deal of side effects that she didn’t want to tell me about. She knew how upset I would be if I wasn’t allowed take them and didn’t want to scare me. She mentions something about damage to my liver and other serious sounding things. But what I hear over everything else is the word ‘depression’. The drugs can make you depressed. I was depressed and this was part of the reason why. It was why I had been crying so often and why Mum had been observing me so closely. It can’t be easy being my mother. I would hate to have a daughter like me and I know my sadness and inability to be like everyone else must break her heart. If I could just be normal, her life would surely be a great deal easier.

I cry even harder now, not even trying to hold anything back. Mum fusses and shouts and tells me that I’m not to take the tablets anymore. She tells me I’ll feel better soon, once they’re out of my system. But I don’t think so, I feel like it’s too late now. It’s as if this ‘depression’ is in my bloodstream now and I don’t need the tablets to keep it alive anymore. I’ve seen the monster and now I’m sure of its potential. Had I not seen the existence of that monster in me, I would have never known its many possibilities. But now that I’ve seen it, I know it will be with me for ever.

***

Everyone interprets the word ‘possibility’ in their own distinct way and thus we are all aware of its presence in both our own lives and the lives of others. But it is only when it is cast into the realm of reality that we truly start to believe in its might. The power of possibility champions only when it becomes an actuality in our daily living. As a child, I never knew I was capable of succumbing to such devouring sadness. But once experienced, I knew that such a feeling had the potential to be there always and that even without feeling its existence in every waking moment, it was always possible thereafter. Equally, my bulimia required only the realisation of this word to come to full strength. It was unlikely that I would conquer myself in the manner I so desperately wanted to, but it was now possible. This was all my bulimia needed.

It only took a matter of weeks for this idea to gain authority and I consciously endeavoured to resist food whenever possible. It wasn’t that I didn’t believe I could lose weight through the usual methods of exercise and a modest diet; I knew this to be true, if not by my own standards obviously then by those of others. But the momentum of these tried and tested exertions just wasn’t enough. They couldn’t fill that growing void of nothingness nor satisfy the imposing hunger I felt. Such ventures required endurance, moderation and above all, patience. I seemed to have none of these characteristics. I’m convinced now that I can endure quite a lot but without a visible goal to light my path. More often than not, my commitment will falter and of course, this was the case with most of my weight-loss attempts prior to this time.

Moderation is another facet under which my character falls short. Friends often joke about my somewhat extremist nature. The truth of this only became apparent as I got older. Though it may seem altogether passionate and the trait of a rather romantic individual, my undeniable lack of moderation has proven to be one of my biggest obstacles in life. Whether in relation to my career, my finances, my relationships or indeed my varying pursuits for perfection; my natural tendency to go from one extreme to the other has often left me troubled, weary and completely heartbroken. It has proven to be one of the most self-destructive characteristics I showcase as a person and made the transition into my illness worryingly easy and almost comfortable.

This trait is closely linked with my inability to be patient. Time cannot contend with the speed of the human mind and the rate at which it manifests its brightest and most powerful ideas. It moves too slowly for that. Furthermore, I come from a generation of great velocity, in which everything is carried out at an exceptionally accelerated level. The importance of now is regarded above any other period it seems. Like most of my generation, I have always made huge demands on that ‘now’ and actually go as far as being shocked when such demands cannot be met efficiently. If time wouldn’t wait for me, then I resolved to never wait for it.

‘Losing weight takes time,’ people told me. I would take nothing from time I decided, not when it already gave so little away. Some time was required of course, but I would insist it was minimal.

Skipping breakfast was effortless, as I had never really eaten in the morning anyway. During a number of diets, I forced myself to eat something healthy before the day kicked off; usually a fruit salad or very complicated dish I read about somewhere. Even then, I hated eating breakfast. The irony is, I have always seen myself as a morning person and was never able to sleep much later than about 9.00 am. But for all my claims of being a sunny person when first out of bed, apparently my stomach could never quite keep up. Consequently, it was a tremendous relief to consciously decide against food in the mornings. More importantly, it went unnoticed. I was never expected to eat breakfast because I never had and saw that part of my day as somewhat of a free pass.

The rest of my day would prove rather difficult without the milkshakes, or so it seemed at the time. Looking at that time now, I had it easy. If ever I tried to skip a meal now, more than likely, it would be a most futile labour; all my family and closest friends know about my bulimia and would make it impossible for me to do so. But again, we’re racing ahead of ourselves now and best keep to the matter at hand. At that point, they were in the dark about the illness and I was too. So I suppose, I had a substantial degree of freedom. A simple, ‘I already ate’, would usually suffice for a while.

My family has never really been one functioning unit. We tended to unite only in crisis, like when a loved one died and a funeral would follow or when my sister and I fought. But in general, we were simply a collection of five individuals who happened to be tied every now and again by this notion of blood. We slept, worked and operated all at different times and would, in a sense, merely bump into one another along our daily journeys. My father was a labourer who toiled more than he rested and was almost always in the National Rehabilitation Hospital, where he worked. My mother, the binding gel of this collection of parties, appeared to live on another planet most of the time. From working part-time to managing finances, shopping and the overall upkeep of the household, she lived in a world I was happy to be ignorant to. My older brother and sister were both employed and living the usual lifestyles of twenty-somethings, in one way or another. With a new son on the way and his desperation to lay down solid roots, my brother Peter featured very little in this time of my life and lived an hour’s drive away from the family home. In the context of my bulimia alone, what all this meant was that we never ate dinner together. The concept of all these people sitting down together united around a kitchen table to share food was, and still is, a foreign one.

All this noted, dinners were still rather tricky. The temptation to eat would peak in the moments my mother was dishing up a meal, which she would usually prepare for everyone and leave in the oven to be eaten when convenient. I was never spurned by hunger alone, as I knew I could overcome the feeling with relatively little effort. No, I was spurned mostly by guilt. I hated letting my mother down and subsequently would become disgusted with myself for letting her hard work go to waste. At the same time, however, I felt I didn’t deserve the fruits of her dinner time efforts. My father would eat after a heavy day of lifting and being on his feet and thus, had earned his meal when he came home at night. Similarly, my sister and mother were slim-figured and as a result deserved the food in front of them. I, on the other hand, couldn’t seem to contend with these justifications and so resolved to the idea that I just wasn’t worthy enough for these meals as they were.

I’m sure you’re thinking that this is surely the most distorted logic you’ve ever heard and yes, it is. But it was my logic nonetheless and so blindly real that I could do nothing but behave under its dictation. Trying to figure out an escape route from all these thoughts was near impossible. And the only thing left to do would be the most obvious; escape the house itself and eat out. Of course, I didn’t do this. It was as simple as informing my unsuspecting family that I was going out with friends for something to eat and would be home later. Often I was given money for these outings, which I saved to buy cigarettes and to pay into nightclubs when the occasion arose. I would call to a friend’s house, claiming I had just eaten dinner and would proceed with my evening as planned. In the beginning, it was flawless and worked under perfect timing and execution. Naturally, though, it didn’t last. There are only so many times you can tell your mother that you’re not eating at home and only so many times you can bother a friend at home during dinner time. Even without the knowledge of my strange eating habits, others were still mildly suspicious. Or if not suspicious, they were at least curious about the growing eccentricities in my behaviour.

One peculiarity to be seen was my increasing need to be alone. In one sense, constantly being around others was just too inconvenient for me. I had never noticed up until this point how almost everything we do while socialising with other people revolves around food. Whether it was coffee and lunch with girlfriends, drinking on a night out with a crowd or having a movie night with close companions – which would finish with the inevitable phone call to order pizza or Chinese food – it seemed impossible to avoid eating while keeping company. It also demanded better excuses. ‘I already ate’, ‘I’m not very hungry’ and ‘I’ve gone off that stuff’ didn’t really cut it after a time. I was eventually forced to become a little more honest, if not altogether sneakier.

I told friends a half-truth and informed them I was trying a new, very strict diet, in which I ate three meals a day. Obviously, snacking while with friends was unacceptable and this very simple excuse bought me some leeway from their probing questions. It didn’t, however, buy me much with time and I was required to spend as much time with them as I had always done. If not to stay out of the house for longer periods, then simply to solidify a perfect facade that all was well and normal.

If keeping distance from my friends was difficult, it was even harder to do so from my family. Though we were in general a family that enjoyed our space, we lived in a small bungalow and were usually on top of one another. There was only so long I could shut myself away in my bedroom without drawing attention or concern. I used to do that as a child when something was wrong. Throughout my years of bullying, in particular, shame would drag me into a crevice in my bedroom and firmly shut the door behind me. The trait was unmistakable even at the age of 18 and I knew it wouldn’t take long for my mother to begin her interrogative inquiries. I had to be more careful about the way in which I carried myself and conducted my behaviour.

Somewhere in the back of my mind, upon the throne of my internal hive, she seemed to always be one step ahead of me. And rightly so, as she knew better than I and we were both aware of this. Had it just been me living in my own head at the time, I probably would have tactlessly retreated from everyone and everything in my life, as was the usual case in such circumstances of turmoil. But this time would be different because I wasn’t alone. While I sat at the driver seat, she controlled the hands at the wheel and steered me right into the heart of all undesired company. Compared to my naivety, she was a craftswoman and played games with meticulous strategy. And while directing my course was the overall objective, making it as undetectable as possible was part of the game.

For a while, she did this very well and I found myself catering both to her demands and the social standards of everyone else. I started living two lives; the one in my head that fed off both my thoughts and my body, and then the one I was required to live. The latter was little more than a pretence, a necessary fabrication that enabled me to operate in my secret hive as I pleased. I had been playing a juggling game for weeks now, since I had finished the milkshakes and I was getting better at it. Of course there had been slip-ups. There were times when I simply couldn’t find a way out of eating but I was reassured each time that tomorrow would be better. At first, she was soothing in this way. Every time I steered off-track, she would scorn me most severely with stringent words and undesirable truths before finally comforting me, telling me that every mistake would only accelerate me forward in my ambitions. More importantly, I started to understand that her somewhat brutal manner and verbal persuasion were crucial to our goals. It was as if I needed to be stripped of everything I had been before then. If she could break me down enough, then I would have no choice but to do everything she wished of me. If you make anyone – even yourself – feel bad enough about what they are, they will undoubtedly attempt to remedy the situation and ‘fix’ themselves. This was the doctrine she and I worked under for the duration of our relationship.

But wait a moment. What sane person would agree to such terms? Firstly, I don’t think I was particularly sane or of the right mind at the time anyway. And secondly, she made it easy to commit to her. I have felt alone most of my life. Please don’t misunderstand me; I come from a supportive family, have some of the closest friends one could be graced with and have seen boyfriends come and go over the years. And yet for all this, I have rarely felt truly connected with another person. Typical of any contemporary teenager, I have never belonged anywhere with much ease or comfort and thus have lived most of my young life in a rather lonely state. So when the occasion arose, I discovered that I was more than willing to give everything to this person I had created in my mind.

Though I’m sure it is entirely strange to take an illness such as bulimia nervosa and personify it to the extent I have over the years, doing so provided me with a friend like no other. She understood all that I was and appeared to know everything I would ever be. She saw every beam of light and every hidden shadow of who I was. What’s more, she loved me anyway. And as my dependency on her existence manifested, so hers did to me. I didn’t just need her; she needed me and the bond was impenetrable. I first heard of ‘suicide pacts’ when I was child. I learned how people, often strangers, would reach out for others who felt as sad as they did and how, from there, they would agree to kill themselves at the same time, as if it would take them away together and they wouldn’t technically have to be alone. I didn’t want to be alone anymore. While I didn’t want to die, I probably would have if I thought I would lose her. But that’s all rather heavy right now and not something I like to think about.

I make no attempts whatsoever to glorify bulimia, but I ultimately succumbed to my illness because I wanted to. I did not consciously agree to the repercussions it would bring, yet I subconsciously immersed myself into the darkest corners of my mind before finally, I just let go. The sensation was freeing. You see people like me don’t just ‘let go’. Since childhood, I held on so tightly to myself that now I often wonder how I could even breathe for all those years. Nevertheless I was convinced that if I let anything go, even for a moment, my world would crash and burn around me.

***

I am nine years old. My sister Natalie and our friend Maeve play together every day. Maeve is more Natalie’s friend than mine but they let me tag along because nobody else will play with me. We each have our own place in our group of three. Natalie is the leader because she’s the oldest and the best at everything we do. We play whatever game she wants to play and do everything she says. I don’t mind because I like to play with Natalie and Maeve, otherwise I’d be by myself.

Maeve is the funny one in our little group. She is Natalie’s best friend and gets second pick of everything. She makes Natalie laugh and so I laugh too. I never play with Maeve when Natalie isn’t here. When we first moved to our new house four years ago, Maeve’s mum told her that she had to play with me. On my first day here, we went into the shed in our back-garden where all the toys are. Most of them were Natalie’s and I wasn’t allowed play with them. I was showing Maeve and another girl some of our toys and reached for one I liked most. When I turned around, the girls had run away. But now I see Maeve all the time because she likes Natalie.

It’s dark outside so we have to play in the house. We’re in our kitchen, which is very small but we like it because the grown-ups can’t see us and we can do whatever we want. One of our favourite games is a racing one. Maeve and I are given a glass of water and a slice of bread each from Natalie. When Natalie shouts ‘Go!’ we must eat and drink as fast as we can and the first person to finish their bread and water wins. I don’t really like this game because it makes me feel sick and I usually never win anyway. We’ve been playing it all night now and Natalie has been putting horrible-tasting things on our bread to make it more fun. But it’s not all that fun; I drank so much water that I have a cramp in my stomach. My sides feel as though they’ve been injected with steel and every time I move, they’re digging at my body. But there’s very little I can do right now. When I play with Natalie, I always have to be very careful about what I say, do and what I show. If I step out of line in any way, she will either scorn me and I try to reduce her ammunition by never losing my myself in the moment and never allowing myself to slip up too badly. When we play together it’s as if I’m clutching a stress ball in my hand. I squeeze it as tight as I possibly can and never let it go. I can’t let it go. I can’t drop it. If I do, my life will be hell and we both know it.

We’ve started playing Twister instead, where we use a coloured sheet and have to place a hand or foot on the given circle that Natalie calls out.

‘Right-hand to red,’ Natalie tells Maeve.

‘Left-foot on blue,’ she informs me. It continues like this for some time before I start to feel really sick. I’m bent over Maeve and our limbs are now awkwardly entwined on the coloured sheet.

‘I have to go to the toilet,’ I say in desperation.

‘Not yet,’ Natalie spits. ‘We have to finish this round first.’

‘But I really have to go.’

‘Not yet!’ she says again. But I can’t hold it in any longer. I give up and pretend to fall over, forfeiting the round to Maeve. Natalie knows I’ve done it on purpose and is not happy with me. I run to the bathroom and knock on the door.

‘I’ll be out in a minute,’ my Dad calls. I groan in urgency as I bob from one foot to the other in the hallway. Natalie and Maeve have appeared at the kitchen door and are laughing at me as I dance around the floor. The wait seems to last longer than it should and I can feel my panic and anxiety growing. I’m aware of my whole body now and have stiffened up so tight that my muscles are throbbing. I’m looking at Natalie and Maeve when I hear the bathroom door creek. There is a second noise behind me and in the moment I start to rotate, I see Natalie’s face light up like a cat about to pounce on an unsuspecting bird.

‘Leanne, come HERE!’ she shouts in a frenzied voice. It takes only seconds but in those passing moments, everything slows and I can’t help but walk toward her as she gestures me. I let that ball in my hand go and ignore the unlatching door behind me. The moment I reach my sister, her face changes and contorts itself into a smile, followed by roaring laughter. I hear darting feet on the floor behind me and veer around to see my older brother sprinting past my father and into the bathroom. As Dad shuffles away rather confused, I run to the door and begin screaming and banging on it.

‘Mum!’ I call. As Natalie and Maeve cry with laughter, I burst into tears of total panic and desolation. I am screaming at myself in my own head. I let the ball drop. That ball that kept me composed and in one piece was all I ever had to keep myself and I let it drop. Mum comes rushing out asking what’s wrong, only to see me still hopping around outside the door.

‘Peter, get out of the bathroom. Leanne needs to use the toilet now’ she yells at my brother. But it’s too late. My body has gone weak and limp. I feel the shame and degradation creep up my face, sizzling now with the heat of the moment. My legs are numb except for one feeling; the sensation of hot liquid running to my feet and my toes, burning into my skin as it goes. The bathroom door unlatches and the moment has passed. I stand in my spot calmly. I am lifeless and suddenly very small.

‘Oh my God!’ Natalie screeches. ‘Look Maeve! She wet herself!’ The two erupt uncontrollably and proceed to fall onto the floor, clutching each other in their fit. They were only young girls joking and messing about, but it had a huge impact on me. My brother pulls an awkward facial expression but can’t help having to suppress a laugh before going into his room. Mum merely sighs; she must pity me so much and now she has to clean the hallway.

‘Go and get changed Leanne’ she says gently. Deflated and drained, I walk into my bedroom. My trousers are damp and ice cold now and I wish the ground would open up and consume me. I dropped the ball, I think to myself. I dropped that bloody ball.

***

It had been almost two months of on-off fasting before I really started to notice changes in my body. If I still carried that proverbial stress ball in my hand, I still clutched it as tightly as ever. The slim physique was of course the most evident change. Whereas before I had always justified my unbearable reflection with the usual intentions of bettering myself, I now enjoyed the pleasure of uncompromising reassurance. For every failure noted, I now had the tools and power to change anything I wanted. My chest no longer felt fraught under the weight of an iron clad and my body seemed to move in the same rhythm as my thoughts. It was as if all the weight had been shifted from my body and into my head. When my limbs moved, they felt loose and unrestricted. For every fibre that unwound itself under my skin, a cerebral knot tightened somewhere in my mind; it secured itself and locked in the given loss, as if in a feeding frenzy. The sensation experienced by my body as I continued to lose weight nourished the fattening demons that blockaded my head. Strange things started going missing.

First, it was the crease that fell mid-way up my back. Somewhere near the base of my ribcage and hovering not too far north of my hips, there once lay a modest crease. It reminded me of the brushwork of Renaissance painters who sought to capture the quiet beauty of the feminine form. But the crease went missing in those months and left behind only the faintest hint of its past existence. Along with it went the sallow strip of flesh that ran so smoothly over my knee caps. It was replaced instead with a seemingly irregular scattering of bone protrusions and cobbled surfaces. I also lost some of my smile. My laughter no longer managed to reach the folds around my mouth and the wrinkles that ran from my nose and down my cheeks could not cement themselves into my face as they had done before.

For everything we lose, however, we usually gain something else for better or worse. I grew bones I did not know were there. From my toes to my ankles, five solid strings attached themselves and resembled a spider’s web up my foot. My stomach almost fell inwards and was concave in comparison to my ribs, which had apparently grown in size quite substantially. In bed at night, I would place the palms of my hands firmly against the broadest space taken up by those ribs. The skin that concealed them clung to their wave-like structure for dear life. It strapped itself around them and under my hand, I felt them rise and fall beneath the thin sheet of vellum. With every breath, my stomach disappeared further beneath my ribs and they slid against my interior walls like a snake on the sand.

I was suddenly more aware of my bones than I had ever been before this point. Mostly, this was due to the fact that they seemed to ache very often. By now, the disease of my mind had abandoned its roots in the corners of my skull and infested its way to the marrow of my bones. She wanted me to feel her everywhere and now my entire body knew about her presence. I didn’t sit in one position for very long at any given time; my back would weigh down on the bones beneath it until I was so uncomfortable I’d have to assume a different position. At night, my knees would rub against one another like chalk on a blackboard and I slept with a pillow between them for fear they would wear away.

My skin, once soft and smooth around every turn, looked aged. It looked like every cigarette I had ever inhaled began to exhale back onto my exterior canvas. It wafted out of every pore and left a dry and haggard ash-stain in its path. My lips paled and my face lengthened uncomfortably. As dark circles formed an encasement from my brow to my cheeks, my eyes faded in tenacity and indeed, lost any if not all indication of the life behind them. Somewhere in those months, I think I slipped away beneath them. Hiding beneath whatever I could in order to shield myself was something I was always good at. Slipping under the radar was my forte and I enjoyed the protection it provided.

***

I am 17 years old. After two fleeting years, Stephen and I broke up only days ago. I think I knew that it had been coming for a while and just didn’t want to believe it. I’m about to go to a birthday party and am sick to my stomach. The source of my upset is not that I miss Stephen. Surprisingly, it’s not as bad as I thought it would be. No, the main reason for my being so melancholy is because I miss the person I was when with him. After so long of being with someone, it’s as if I became that person’s interpretation of me. Everything I was could be wrapped up in what Stephen alone saw in me. He was like a safeguard, hiding me from everything I was afraid of. Now, I have nothing to hide behind and no radar to slip under and lie low.

Walking through my friend’s house, I try my best to move like a shadow. I don’t want to be noticed for fear of someone seeing that I’m missing a vital limb or something else of great importance. The crowd is an unfamiliar one with faces I’ve only ever seen once or twice. I try not to catch anyone’s eye. I don’t want them to look at me because I know they will observe how completely lost I am here. Instead, I retreat to the back of my encircled friends seeking solace and comfort.

‘Have your eye on anyone, Leanne?’ Kate smirks at me.

‘No, I’m only looking. Don’t think I could even if I wanted to.’ As it turns out, this is a lie. Under particular circumstances, it’s so easy so convince ourselves of what we’re feeling rather than face the repercussions of the truth. The truth, in this instance, is that I do want to and there are one or two boys at the party who I have noticed very briefly. But I can’t tell my friends this. If I do, a fuss will be made and a series of Chinese whispers will commence much the same as there would have been when I was 14. I can’t take that kind of glossed-over mortification, let alone the pressure of it all.

Thankfully, this doesn’t need to occur. In little to no time at all, I’m talking to a local boy named Adam. Confident and outlandish, he’s making this conversation easy for both of us. It’s a weight off my shoulders. If nothing else, I know now that I can at least still talk to a member of the opposite sex without feeling utterly foolish. Moreover, I’m in shock that anyone would be interested enough to talk to me for this long. The conversation is typical and wonderful. From school to what we will go on to study and a few brief words on the party, the small talk was all I wanted and needed that night.

I’d had no intention of this night amounting to anything. At best, I wanted simply to come here this evening, trudge through it and go home where I can continue in my growing loneliness. And yet, this is not the case. As I talk with Adam, I’m bubbling over beneath the surface and surprised with myself. Not only am I very attracted to him, but it’s as if his confidence has radiated to my very core. In his presence, a certain ease has descended over me and my worries of before have almost completely vanished. In this moment, I don’t want to hide or disappear. Rather, I want to showcase myself and push this debutante feeling to its full potential.

‘Here,’ Adam says, taking my hand, ‘let’s go somewhere more private.’ When we finally kiss, it’s as if Stephen and the person I was with him, never existed. Beneath the uncertainty with which I walked in this evening, I must have been merely waiting for something to open a bolted door. Now open, I feel confident, attractive and what’s more, I feel sure of the person under my own skin. I don’t want to hide anymore and I can only hope this feeling lasts for ever.

***

At a time when everything about me seemed to go missing, it was difficult for me to remember moments when I stood alone and fully formed in my own head. Before that night, I hid extremely well under the covering shield of a boyfriend. With the realisation that this protection was gone, I knew then that I had to find some other means of guarding myself. As it turned out, the next thing or person I would hide beneath would be my bulimia.

I had lost a tremendous amount of weight, the figure I struggle to remember exactly. It was enough, however, for others to commence with their anticipated comments, some positive and some of less so. Being around people I hardly knew and had little regard for became the highlight of my declining social life. My closest friends, the people I had known and trusted for years and who knew me better than I cared to believe, became unbearable company. Their shrewd eyes were inescapable and insufferable. Our history together and all they knew of me became overwhelming. I couldn’t breathe around them anymore. In the dead heat of their knowledge, it was stifling and completely suffocating. For the time being, I was done with them and all they had to offer. Instead, I felt at ease amongst strangers. I was comforted by how little they cared for me, as it guaranteed my own freedom among them; I didn’t have to work as hard hiding the truth because with these people, the fabrication was enough and easily maintained. When I ventured as far as my local pub with friends, it wasn’t long before I would abandon them and find a less challenging clique.

In this way, I eventually became defined by pretence, or at least I did in public. Self-definition was something I always strived for. I suppose I needed it. As a child, if I didn’t define myself under particular headings then I would have been nothing at all, or so it seemed. Whereas I once classed myself as an academic and a master of intellectual advancement, I now wore the mask of the perfect socialite. In public, my facade was affecting and almost flawless. How I spoke, behaved and carried myself became everything I was. It sounds like a rather hollow existence and if that was everything I embodied then of course it would have been. But my life, under my logic of the time, was extremely fulfilling. I told myself I had everything a person should have and more.

The impeccable illusion experienced by others was only a facet of the person displaying it. Unlike the moronic primates I found in new companions, I possessed something more substantial. I felt superior to their insignificant cares because I just knew that they did not have the mental or even emotional capacity to understand me or even fully understand themselves. They lived a one-track life that was directed aimlessly under one mentality. I, on the other hand, functioned under a dual-ability to live as both the person she wanted me to be and the person they all wanted me to be. Therefore, I was safe in my belief that their superficiality could surely never contend with my own complexity. She convinced me of this and as such, made my one-woman show a triumphant success for a time.

Her presence in my life and in my personal development made everything possible. Of course, I had no way of knowing who or what she was back then but I was moderately insightful enough to know that there was something different about me, even if I couldn’t put my finger on it. On a surface level, I just didn’t question it. Whatever it was, it made my life easier and more manageable. But let’s be realistic about this. I knew then as I know now, along with the rest of the human race, that a person should eat to live. My logic was not so forgiving in that sense and it obviously did not escape my attention that it wasn’t normal to live as I was attempting to. I must have known this or else I wouldn’t have been so desperate to conceal this secret life of mine.

Along with this, I was not so foolish to believe that everyone else lived and worked in the pain and discomfort that had become the norm for me. All memory of how my body should feel had disappeared. I was in a constant state of discomfort, to put it lightly. What most recognise as hunger pains were now excruciating and one of the only sensations I physically felt anymore. It felt like I was eroding from the inside out. Someone had carved a hole in my stomach and filled it with air. Eating steadily changed from something I would prefer to avoid doing to an unimaginable act of weakness. There were days I was convinced if I put anything into my mouth, I would feel it moving through me like an alien intruder that my body was trying to resist. I would feel it at the back of my mouth, chewed and fully-prepped to launch an aggressive assault. I would feel it creeping down my throat, building momentum and stealth. More than anything else, I would feel it grounded to the bottom of my once divinely empty stomach, rotting and stewing. It would begin an assault from that advantageous position and infest its way into my bloodstream, my defenceless cells and the bodily walls that shielded and protected it from being ripped out immediately. It was using my own body against me and as a result, it became all too easy for my mind to register that food was the enemy.

The most powerful weapon against it was, quite simply, prevention. Once in my stomach, there were limited cures and the only degree of safety to be upheld was through enduring resistance. I would not do that to myself; she wouldn’t let me, she cared too much. So I would not eat and that was final.

Through such justifications, it gradually became easier and easier to suppress the hunger pains and even tolerate the stabbing intensity of a truly empty stomach. I soon found myself enjoying the pain. It would spark in the lowest point of my stomach, light like a match and blaze until I thrashed in flames. Then it would tear north, shredding my sides and scorching beneath the skin that enveloped my chest. It was more than hunger. My insides screamed at a deafening pitch, unable to fight the devouring emptiness. Soon it was like my body turned against me in desperation. The hollow sting that I nurtured so affectionately began to eat away at me instead. It fed off my muscles and biological insulation. I thought it a most fair trade. The person who lived in my head was the most important priority now. If she was the predator, I was happy for my body to be the prey. I would permit her to feed until fully cultivated. In doing this, I knew I could finally satisfy that impossible hunger which had gripped me so many months before.

Anything I had to give in return for this seemed insignificant; whatever it was, it would be a small sacrifice by comparison. One forfeit made, for example, was bodily. I’m sure that must sound very strange but constantly being cold was something I had to adjust to rather quickly. With little or no nutrition to thrive on, my body temperature dropped rapidly. It wasn’t the same as getting a draught from an open window; the cold had seeped into my bones and stayed there like an anchor on the seabed. It would not be moved and I would feel almost no warmth whatsoever. My hands and feet felt it the most. While no amount of layering could ease the piercing ice that ate at my toes, my fingers couldn’t feel to grip anymore. It had become too painful for my hands to do most things that others surely take for granted as I did before. From making a cup of tea, to dialling a number on the telephone and even trying to write, my hands felt like they were cramping up and just couldn’t work with quite the same efficiency.

The worst memory I have of being extremely cold was at a friend’s birthday party. It was August and given the fortunate weather of late, said companion resolved to throw a barbecue in her garden to celebrate. It had been only a few hours since the party began when shadows started chasing one another on the ground and the sun was remembered only through the amber and pink remnants imprinted in the sky. Darkness fell and with it, the heat of the sun vanished. Heaters and garden lights dotted the gathering of people and I gravitated toward them, unable to focus on much else. As always, I tried my best to stay perfectly in sync with the chorus of conversation around me. Part of being perfect was to always appear so and with this ideal in mind, I thought it best to simply ignore the distraction of my numb fingers and toes. I laughed and smiled, playing my part faultlessly and still managing to avoid the food passing from plate to plate. But my skin prickled so much that it began to sting. My feet may as well have detached themselves from my body and taken a walk elsewhere, while my nose was about to crumble and turn inwards into my face.

‘Jesus!’ someone choked beside me. ‘Leanne, you’re lips are blue! Are you cold?’ I laughed it off uncertainly before making a swift exit from the situation and to the nearest bathroom. When I looked in the mirror, it took a moment to fully appreciate what exactly was looking back at me. Yes, my lips had gone a faded shade of blue-gray and seemed to jump out from my face, which had turned a deathly white. I looked like a porcelain doll, I thought, except for the flawless finish. I had put my make-up on immaculately that evening, leaving no room for mistakes or blemishes anywhere. And yet, something looked different about my face. Something was wrong with it. Aside from the very obvious bizarreness of my blue lips, my complexion was gaunt and hallowed. It reminded me of a cracked painting, damaged through the years of wear and tear. Though you saw no out-of-place contour from my forehead to my chin, the overall composure was ghostly. It wasn’t my face. I stared at my own reflection, convinced that there was someone else in the room with me.

I was so suddenly stricken with panic. My hands had been shaky and uneasy for as long as I could remember, but now they trembled violently along with the rest of my body. My knees clattered against one another and my pores began to release cold perspiration. Finally, my throat started to close up and I couldn’t breathe. Something terrible was about to happen, I was sure of it. With that one fleeting thought, I was mentally committed to the notion that there was no escaping this horrible event that was about to unfold. It could have been anything; the bathroom door was jammed and I was about to faint with claustrophobia or the roof was about to fall in on me. Someone in the garden was about to fall and hit their head because I left my bag thrown on the ground or someone was about to burst in and accuse me of not eating. It didn’t matter what it was. For some reason, in that moment, I was doomed and the reality of this brought me to the floor. I was nauseous, my head was spinning and I wanted to get as close to the ground as possible. I curled up in a foetal position on the tiles; cold, shaking and dizzy. It was as if I was watching myself from the eyes of a third person. I witnessed everything a split-second after I did it. I saw myself get up, pace momentarily and eventually wrap my arms around my knees on the bathroom tiles. I would have cried but the anxiety had paralysed my body. I couldn’t catch my breath long enough to even do so. Without a doubt, I was definitely going to vomit. I closed my eyes for what felt like the longest time until finally, the ominous cloud lifted and I was back in my body and lying on a bathroom floor. The same song that had been playing outside when I first came into the bathroom was still playing now, thumping through the walls. Only minutes had passed.

I eventually stood up – albeit too quickly – and endured the last momentary blinding of my own light-headedness before I was at long last, looking at myself in the mirror again. It still wasn’t me and if anything, the reflection looked worse now than it had a few moments ago. I splashed water on the back of my neck, which made my already freezing fingers throb. After fumbling for some tissue, I dabbed my face gently and took off the glossy shine that now ruined my previously spotless make-up. It was no use and I was too cold anyway. That panicked feeling in the pit of my stomach had not fully retreated and for fear of it surfacing again, I was quick to grab my things, give my apologies to the hostess and leave as soon as I could. In bed that night, I could finally breathe properly once more.

More than anything else, I was physically exhausted and may as well have just run a marathon. I didn’t even care about how cold I was. My body had never felt so small or so fragile. In one sense, it was a moment of ecstasy and I was comforted with soft, almost compassionate, encouragement.

Delicate, she said. The word imprinted on me like the cold before it. I was weak and going numb, but I was delicate. This is what I had wanted. I wanted to lose weight and retain some ounce of delicacy to resemble that of the spider-figured women I had seen in all those flashing images. Suddenly, the lack of strength displayed by my body was counterbalanced with a surging lease of mental satisfaction and might. As I lay in bed, buried under all my layers of clothes and bed sheets, the warmth still could not reach me. It was too late for that now and I didn’t care. I just wanted to sleep, basking in my success and enduring the cold until I could finally slip into a forgetful slumber.

Naturally, I tried to combat the freezing temperatures of my body with excessive clothing and found myself wrapped in layer upon layer, looking rather strange most of the time at home. It also served a dual purpose. Beneath the heavy folds, my body was free to waste away without too much attention. I have always been big-boned – the old cliché – my mother used it to reassure me as a child that this was why I looked bigger than the other kids. She was right to a certain extent. I did have a rather broad frame. It was being shaped liked this that allowed me to get away with the weight loss I experienced. Beneath my baggy clothes, my frame didn’t appear all that different to what it was before. The body that was hidden under these clothes was mine. Eventually, that body would go numb and devoid of all feeling. Soon after, all I began to feel was my brain pulsing between my eyes. With less and less of my body to be seen as time passed, my head became everything I was and all I lived. While I owned my body, my head owned me and somewhere in my consciousness, I accepted it most apathetically.

Though psychologically I felt liberated and powerful while fasting, my mind was of course split in two ways on the matter. On the one hand, I was merely doing what had started to feel natural to me – or at least what I had convinced myself was natural to me. On the other, it is impossible to fully ignore basic urges, no matter how well you have trained your brain. Consequently, I was haunted by food. While my body continued on its degenerative path, my senses seemed to explode from time to time. Particularly my sense of smell. Of course I would not eat whatever food was before me, but smelling it was something entirely different. I started smelling everything. Cooked meals always smelled the most potent and would travel from a hot pan straight to my nose, filling me and testing me. Salty foods would tickle my nostrils; nuts, crisps and popcorn were the main culprits. Such processed foods were packed to full capacity with salty gusto and aromas.

Above anything else, however, fruit would tempt me endlessly. I can sense your bewilderment now. Of all foods, why would someone be most tempted by fruit? I asked myself the same question. My house is and always has been one of full cupboards. My mother’s sweet tooth meant that our kitchen was bursting at the seams with treats and chocolate. Despite this, I showed little interest in these things while fasting. I considered once that maybe I didn’t crave these foods because of their availability. We each want what we can’t have, after all. The problem with this theory is that technically nothing was available to me anymore and there was no reason why my mouth should water at the sight of a fruit bowl and not an open box of chocolates. What made me so desperate for my mother’s fruit bowl, which was always full, was the natural goodness I knew it had. It was as if my body, after so long without proper nutrition, craved natural excellence only.

The smell of fruit was more tantalizing because my body knew it would service it better than anything else. The smell of that fruit bowl screamed of hydration and physical restitution. It also teased my very eyes. I had never noticed before how vibrant the colours were in a fruit bowl. The combination of sight and smell left me ravenous for that fruit. I thought so often of Eve in the Garden of Eden and even fancied myself a modern equivalent. Eve must have been bulimic, I once joked. Nothing could have tempted her more than the sight and smell of that apple and I thought that had I been in her position, I would have tossed eternal life and happiness out the window for just one bite.

Poor woman, I thought. Of course the will against temptation had to fall on her. She never had a chance.

Being surrounded by food became a strange and almost sadistic pleasure for me. While it tortured that part of me that still wanted to live as I had for so many years, I couldn’t stay away from those smells. It made me strong too. Every moment spent around food tested my ability to resist it. When I did so, she fired up inside me like a revved engine. Her vigour and unheralded zeal in those moments was a compelling sensation and I soaked it all in. Of course, there was only a very fine line that wavered between smelling the food and actually eating it; one slip-up and I knew I could lose complete control of myself. I stayed focused and headstrong on the matter.

Smoking helped. It would curb the hunger pains and provided the entertainment that was now missing due to the absence of food in my life. More than just something to do with my hands, I found myself tricked into believing one could survive on cigarettes, water and black coffee if they needed to. And I did.

Over time, fasting became my natural way of living from day to day. I struggled to remember how I could have ever lived any other way but this. The mind can condition the body to do anything. Our bodies are at the mercy of our own mentality. It’s when the problem is in the mind in the first place that the real trouble starts. Although extreme and dangerous, my illness was never about my actions. They were mere manifestations of something bigger. It was about the mind that guided them and the technical faults in its ability to do so. Under this theory an eating disorder is a mentality, albeit an unhealthy one. It is a way of thinking that dictates our life and how we choose to live it. Through the mentality of bulimia or any other illness, the world and our place in it are seen completely differently, as if a new shade has been cast over their original appearance. Through my mentality of the time, everything in the world was seen through a bulimic light.

Bulimia nervosa is a cyclic lifestyle and consists of three main stages, which are repeated over and over. Unaware of the trap I had by now fallen into very deeply, I was in the first stage of bulimia. The behaviours of a bulimic may be documented in their reoccurring fasting, bingeing and purging. For me, this cycle was daily and sometimes even hourly. But looking back, the trend dominated those two years in a much broader way too. I had been fasting on and off for months before I ever considered purging. But after so long without eating – or even just eating properly – I found myself in an uncontrollable state, which had to be remedied. Purging would become an intricate part of my life but I would reach rock bottom before finally getting to that point.