Intervention
I sat in the doctor’s office alone. My mother, being the nervous wreck she always is – bless her heart – waited outside. She hadn’t said a word to me in the car but I knew her apparent coldness was simply her way of hiding all her own nerves that I’m sure were bubbling over in her brain the entire journey. When she went to accompany me into the doctor’s office, I had stretched my hand out and said, ‘It’s okay Mam, you wait out here.’ Surprised at this and looking even more terrified than she had done first walking into the waiting room, she sat back down, no doubt convinced of the worst. We both knew what she was thinking but neither of us said it for fear of bringing up a needless conversation until we had spoken to the doctor.
We were at the doctor’s office for the same concerns, but each had our own fears about what we were about to hear. I hadn’t menstruated in months. My mother, too polite and accommodating for her own good to say it, thought I was pregnant; her questions about the disappearance of my period had been growing in the last number of weeks. It had finally reached a point where she was now asking me on a daily basis, ‘Have you gotten your period yet?’ I considered lying to her several times just to put her mind at ease but as I became more and more concerned over the matter myself, I knew I would need her to take me to a doctor at some point. So while she fretted over the possibility that her youngest daughter – only 19 years of age and still in her first year of university – could be pregnant, my thoughts ran in a completely opposite direction. It did cross my mind that being pregnant wasn’t out of the question. But I just knew that this wasn’t it. Call it instinct or just common sense, but I was sure that there was no way my body could be carrying a child in its current state.
It had been just over a year since all the trouble started; a year since those days spent torturing myself in the gym and almost a year since the outbreak of the dieting, the fasting, the bingeing and the purging. My body, I think, had come to a stand still. Whatever was wrong with me, it wasn’t hidden anymore. Both my family and friends had confirmed this over the last number of months. But we’ll look into all that momentarily.
For the time being, I sat shifting my weight from one side of the doctor’s chair to the other. Barely even taking in my surroundings, all I could bring myself to do was study her as she fiddled through my files. She had greeted me in a most cheery manner, having not seen me for a very long time by that stage and apparently totally oblivious to the quiet riot that was taking place behind my eyes.
‘So why are you here today?’ she had asked, ever the professional but still with a welcoming tone of assurance.
‘I haven’t had my period in a while.’ I murmured back at her, assuming she would jump to the same conclusion my mother had before. Whether or not she did, I had no idea. But it wasn’t long before she confirmed that I wasn’t pregnant. You would think this would have made me feel a surging sense of relief. It didn’t. I knew that a girl of my age, who had experienced regular menstruation for years didn’t just suddenly stop in her biological patterns for no apparent reason. Something must be really wrong with me and this is what scared me the most. The silence in the room now was too threatening for me to sit still. I stared hard at her, as if willing her to acknowledge my being in the room. Surely she can feel the tension radiating off me, I thought. As if she had been struck by lightning, she would suddenly realise the urgency of the proceedings at hand and put me out of my misery. Eventually, she looked up very slowly, apparently not alarmed by anything jotted down in my private medical documents.
‘You’ve lost quite a bit of weight since the last time you were weighed here.’ she finally said, indicating a recording of a little under 12 stone. I shuddered at the very sight of the figure.
‘Yeah, I went on a diet,’ I informed her light-heartedly.
‘What was the diet?’
I gave her all the necessary details about the milkshake diet I had been on and midway through, she cut me off saying that she’d heard about it, with an air of disapproval in her voice.
‘You have to be above a certain BMI and body weight for that. Did you gain a lot of weight since the last time you were weighed?’
‘Err, yes,’ I lied, ‘the stress of my final year and all that; I gained a lot of weight.’ If only she knew how I had, by contrast, been dieting and losing weight since before I even turned 18. I was suddenly uncomfortable. It was as if I was expecting something horrific to happen. This office was surely going to be the scene of a most devastating occurrence that would later be reported on the news, with a rather fat picture of me that would make me sick to look at.
Focus, I heard that voice in my head whisper. Pay attention and keep it together. We’ve got this. I believed in what she was saying fully but at the same time, was unsure about how much a person should lie to their doctor, if at all. I would take it one question at a time, I told myself. But, as it turned out I wasn’t given much of a chance to do this.
‘And what’s your eating like now?’ the doctor asked, with direct eye contact and absolutely no hesitation in her voice. Invisible chaos descended over the room and seeped into my pores, rummaging its way around the underneath of my skin. There it was. It was the question I’d been trying to answer in my own head for months, since my family and friends had started watching me with shrewd eyes. My eating was strange, yes; that was an absolutely undeniable truth. And I’d even gone as far as to call myself bulimic on many different occasions in diary entries and on my beloved pro-ED websites.
More than this, what flashed through my mind when presented with this question was not my eating or lack thereof; it was the things I did after almost every meal now and the patterns that dominated every single day from the moment I woke up. I saw the handful of days spent without food here and there, the over the counter laxatives hidden in a box atop my wardrobe, the varying colours of my vomit painted across the toilet bowl and the weighing scales I would pull from under my bed at least 30 times a day. I felt the piercing cold that still blistered in my toes and all around my body, the build-up of plaque and grit that coated the back of my teeth, the scaly peel that laced certain areas of my skin and the throbbing aches that now riddled every joint and bone in my body. I could hear the sound of my mother’s voice crying, This isn’t you, Leanne!, the girls’ words of Leanne, you’re sick breaking through stifled tones and above all else, I could hear that familiar voice now screaming at me, Lie! Lie to her! Lie!
‘Y-yeah’ I hesitated, now evidently flustered. ‘It’s alright.’
She said nothing, which sent my head spinning with pressure. How much was too much to tell her? My thoughts drifted onto the issue of doctor-patient confidentiality but then dismissed the thought before returning to it again several times and each time ultimately deciding against it. Nonetheless, words started falling from my mouth like verbal diarrhoea. I wasn’t sure if I was talking for the sake of telling her something or just for the sake of filling the silence that encroached like a cocoon around she and I. Whatever the reason, the words lunged from my throat faster than any purge ever had.
‘Well actually, I mean, it’s not perfect’ I elaborated. ‘I’ve been under a lot of pressure recently with starting college and that, so I haven’t really had time to think about my eating. I am eating okay, I guess; it’s just a little touch and go at the moment.’
She didn’t look satisfied.
‘Okay, well, my friends have all jumped to conclusions and think it’s worse than it really is. But they’re just being overly concerned, that’s all.’ I continued on like this for what felt like the bones of about ten minutes or so, digging a hole for myself and then frantically trying to pull myself back out again. Eventually, the worst had happened and I’d managed to let slip the term ‘eating disorder.’
‘So you’re friends think you have an eating disorder?’ she asked, calm as she had been when I first walked in.
‘They think so, yeah.’ I sighed.
‘Do you think you have an eating disorder?’
I shook my head. ‘No. I mean, no I don’t think so.’
I thought she almost let slip a sigh. This woman thinks I’m crazy, I thought to myself. At the time, I think I was teetering around the ten stone mark and in that moment was fully convinced that a person of my weight could not possibly have an eating disorder, not really. One surely had to be perfectly skeletal before anyone could accuse you of having an eating disorder. Yet there I was, bound in curves and creases as I had always been, now having suggested to a doctor that I was anorexic, or whatever the term was. Within the second I had first said it, I was instantly mortified with myself.
Our conversation proved less strenuous than initially envisaged. On the contrary, despite the many doubts that tested my ability to fully indulge in our discussion, I felt a certain ease by then. It was as if saying the term, whether it was true or not, removed a level of responsibility from me. What’s more, I trusted this woman; she had a matter-of-fact way about her that shockingly did not compromise her compassion. Eventually, however, the ease of our consultation lifted and in that small office, I entered a new phase of my disease.
‘Leanne,’ she said, concern in her voice, ‘your ovaries are giving you a clear sign that you’re not getting proper nutrition. If you keep damaging your body like this, you’ll find you’re kidneys will be the next thing.’
‘I’m not infertile or anything though, right?’ I asked, panicked.
‘You keep going the way you are and it’s not impossible.’
I had never been a maternal person. While my girlfriends always cooed and sighed at the sight of a baby, I just never felt that internal draw that so often causes women to obsess over the idea of motherhood. I always put it down to my age. This theory came into contention when, at the premature age of 17, most of the girls around me began to show an interest in any toddler that so much as passed us with their mother.
‘Oh!’ they’d gasp. ‘I can’t wait to be a mum!’
I don’t believe I have ever stated once in my young life that I even really wanted to be a mother, let alone not being able to wait for the day. I suppose, other things just seemed more important than motherhood, so it never crossed my mind to any great degree. But when my doctor confirmed the risks I ran with my behaviours surrounding eating, something buried deep inside cried out for help. It then occurred to me that this wasn’t like any measly few pounds that I could gain and lose again in a matter of days; if I could push my body to the point of losing my period altogether, there was nothing to indicate I would ever get it back. The repercussions of this tolled in my head like a bell.
I was always a little on the dramatic side. I noticed this most with matters of the heart. No matter what the circumstance or whomever the boy, if romantic intentions were put forward to me to any extent, I would automatically start weighing out every possible consequence, both positive and negative. You’re probably thinking that I must scare them away almost instantly. I hardly inform such suitors of these thoughts but yes, I do have that tendency to send them running all the same. At either end of the spectrum, I would take my premonitions to every absolute extremity or possibility. As a result of this, I believe I underwent a phase of stubborn self-righteousness, as no matter what the outcome, I was always reassured that I ‘just knew that was going to happen.’ Furthermore, I think I always had a tendency to lean more toward the pessimistic side and usually went about my daily business convinced of the worst.
In the case of the matter at hand, the only prospect that materialised in front of me was that one day, perhaps a long time from now, I could wake up and discover that I am incapable of having children. This potential outcome, though wildly morbid and probably unlikely given that my doctor was not overly concerned about it, cast a spell over my mind for the days that followed that office exchange. For someone who had never even understood the widespread fixation with babies and the idea of having your own children, the fear of being unable to do so shook me to my core. It brought out in me, even if only temporarily, that most feminine spirit of all women. Greater than the jobs we worked, the clothes we strung on our backs and indeed, how thin our bodies could be, having a child was surely what defined us under the name. And if I was biologically ineligible in any way of naturally conceiving and carrying a child, I halted at the thought of there being nothing to fuel that desperately sought-after sense of definition, both as an individual and now, a woman. All at once, my friends’ chatter of babies and motherhood seemed a little less silly.
Despite the very unhealthy thoughts and feelings of panic that ensued after my visit to the doctor, the effects were only short-lived. Within about four days, I was fasting again, the initial smack of fear having passed quickly. The doctor was referring me to a clinic psychologist, but I didn’t have very much time to dwell on this most momentous ordeal. My weight at the time was up and down. This was something I found extremely upsetting. My disease did not guarantee weight loss and certainly it never guaranteed the physique I so obsessively coveted. Rather, it warranted an ongoing and sleepless battle of loss and gain.
There was no maintenance, you see. Even if I had attempted to maintain a particular weight, it would never have worked. If I hit my given goal weight, it was impossible to simply stay there, as I mostly saw such a pursuit as a way of giving up. More importantly, she would never allow this. She would call me weak, a quitter and a waste of clear potential. Similarly, maintaining always presented the threat of gaining. It was, in a way, just the stepping stone to the latter term. If I wasn’t losing weight, I was gaining at a shocking rate. Bulimia does not take a break. It does not rest or catch up on lost sleep as you ‘maintain.’ I constantly went extremely one way or extremely the other. Moderation was no longer in my vocabulary, not while I shared a life with her. What this resulted in was a bombardment of various ‘Leannes.’ It wasn’t always easy for others, I have since discovered, to tell whether I had lost or gained weight. Of course to me, if I gained as much as two pounds, it carried the weight of the world. But I marked my weight fluctuations from good to bad; eight and a half stone to ten stone and I knew people had seen the difference – mostly due to superficial compliments received from casual acquaintances and people whom I saw very little of. Ten and a half stone or above and I would refuse to leave the house. I couldn’t let people see me that way. That Leanne would be locked away until she could fix herself to the point of being Miss Nine-and-a-Half Stone Leanne once more.
Along with the severe weight fluctuations, my social patterns moved along some warped meridian grid of global scope. The world would just have to revolve around me and my bulimia or else we simply would not participate in it, as was the outcome time and time again. Plans with friends and intended outings would come about only when my bulimia dictated so. Any interactions with others were subject to her will and whether she thought I was acceptable enough to be seen. If for whatever reason I was substandard, she would convince us both of the fact and thus we would lock ourselves away in my room together, wallowing in self-loathing and that usual absence of all worth.
My self-worth was not always measured by just my weight. It extended to every facet of my aesthetical make-up. The problem was that by now – on top of all the insecurities that had existed before – my appearance had genuinely altered due to the bulimia and proved to only deepen the wound of confusion about how I looked. My hair had thinned staggeringly. Since I was a child, my mother had boasted about my locks, which were always full and bouncy even at substantial lengths. Now, it hung from my roots as if the life in it had died. With every time I washed my hair, I pulled out more and more worrying chunks. The drain would clog with the mounds falling from my head. Whereas before I had always let it flow naturally, I now found myself brushing it up, pulling, tearing and flipping it, desperate to give the illusion that there was more atop my head.
My skin was no better. Spots, sores and blisters had formed around my mouth from where my vomit-coated fingers rubbed and writhed against on a daily basis. It was rough and dry, flaking every now and then. I once owned a bearded dragon named Charlie. Like most reptiles, Charlie would shed her skin as she grew. I would go to her tank to feed her and find large pieces of skin lying on the sand, while Charlie sat like a peacock in the corner, an ever so slightly different shade in her colouring. I felt like this was happening to me now. I was shedding my skin as I had watched Charlie do for so long when she was growing. The difference was that the tint of my skin beneath was not changing to anything favourable.
‘You’re grey,’ Anna had told me. It was during one of her relentless lectures about my health. She always used cut-throat statements; I think as a way of emphasising the severity of what she was saying. She had been one of the first to accuse me of having an eating disorder and was by far one of the most vocal of the group. ‘Your skin is grey! Leanne, how is it even possible you can’t see that?’
The truth is, I was a mixture of colours those days. Kate had commented before how my skin looked yellow, even under the usually immaculate make-up I painted over it. It was a bit of everything by that stage. Hearing Anna’s voice, along with everything else that my friends had drummed into my head, I stared into the mirror, examining the splinters of skin that stuck out in random patterns. I scratched at one of them for a while, harmlessly, on the bridge of my nose. I saw some sawdust-like powder trickle down. Finally, a notable piece flaked off from the surface. I tried to get a grip on it with my now blunt index finger and thumb. My nails had stopped growing a long time ago and because I had been in the habit of biting my nails down, they were now constantly below the line of my fingertip. Eventually, I got a hold of the shard of skin. My eyes darted between my reflection and my fingers, as I tore the piece of skin right from the top and down to the bump at the bottom of my nose. It left a red and shiny slit that ran the length of my nose and stung under the exposure. My mother later gave out to me for picking at my skin when she saw both my scratched nose, as well as scabbed spots that had been bleeding only moments before.
I wonder how she would have reacted had she known what was happening inside my mouth too. My teeth, or at least the very frail impression that was left of them, ached between my gums. I started to think they were simply rotting away in my head and always feared the worst upon waking from dreams in which I discovered there wasn’t so much as one tooth left. I developed a bad habit of perpetually rubbing my tongue along the inside of them, as if to test their durability or even their security to the gums from which they grew. If I pushed even remotely hard against them with my tongue, they splintered in pain. Sore to the touch, most things seemed to hurt them now and no matter what I ate during a binge, if it was anything that required chewing, it would inevitable bother my teeth in some way. Even liquids were harsh on them when too hot or cold and would heighten the sensitivity when they hit the nerves running through my mouth.
It was like one very thin thread now held them to my gums and I was sure they would fall out sooner or later with the right push or mid-way through a binge. Maybe they’d fall out while purging, unable to withstand the velocity of my own vomit. Some of them didn’t feel far from it anyway. For weeks now, I was able to wedge the tip of my tongue beneath the bottom of my two front teeth. Decayed and almost dissolving away, they finished abruptly and sharply, leaving a slight gap between where they ceased and my gum began. I had gum disease as well. I knew it, even before a dentist confirmed that it was the worst form of gum disease one can get. You don’t spit that much blood while brushing without there being something very problematic happening behind your lips. I wished I could do more for them; if not for their good health then even for the sake of a decent facade. I’d been a coffee drinker and smoker of about 10 to 15 cigarettes a day and now, to top it all off, had cultivated a mental resistance to mouthwash and chewing gum, both of which I knew had hidden calories. I couldn’t exactly stop brushing my teeth and accepted my twice a day scrub as an unavoidable calorie intake. But I would only make room for the bare minimum, without compromising a lifetime necessity.
Along with my hair, my skin and my teeth, there was something noticeably different as a whole about me. What it was, I still find difficult to put my finger on. I carried myself in a rather contorted way; my shoulders were always hunched, my chest collapsed inwards and I forever had my arms wrapped around my abdominal area, almost nursing it and as if hiding something beneath. My mother says it was my eyes. I knew they looked a little strange, as the girls had argued on many occasions that they looked some off-coloured shade of yellow. In the months prior to writing this memoir, however, my mother broke my heart when she put it quite simply by telling me, ‘You weren’t there. Your eyes had no life in them anymore. It’s like you just weren’t there behind them.’
Whether it was my weight or any of the idiosyncrasies mentioned above, it became harder and harder to be around people. I was just too embarrassed and ashamed of what I had turned into to allow them to see me this way. Some sociable activities were unavoidable, such as birthdays and generally just proving I still existed. But these events were usually agonised over and sent me into a tornado of fasting and purging, attempting recklessly to lose weight even if just for the one night. When I did have to show my face, I was relatively chatty, lively and cool natured. The need for secrecy meant I had to be. I have found this to be true of most bulimics I have spoken with. The fabrication of what you are and the reality are two entirely different people. Hiding the reality was of the utmost importance, as just one night of glory could fuel me to struggle on for weeks thereafter, a refreshed objective in further charging my disease.
The truth is, for all my invented perceptions and lively countenance, I believed I was dying inside, if not completely dead and buried already. The worst part was that nobody even knew it, not fully. They couldn’t have, because it was only I who lingered in that desolated cave of my mind. Bulimics are very often contradictory in this way; they can be social creatures and lead lives of total normality – quite well, might I add – and yet, remain some of the loneliest people inhabiting this earth. The loneliness I endured during that time of my life is something I hope never to experience again.
It’s more than just the feeling of being isolated. I was disconnected mentally, physically and emotionally from the entire human race, it seemed; I didn’t even feel part of it. I was a subspecies of the people who walked the streets and went about their daily lives. I was not part of the world they’d built and lived in. I was like a half-formed variety of what they were; a critter that was intended to be like them but was never finished. I was unworthy of the space I took up in that world and the lies I showcased in order to fit in. At long last, I was the living rendition of the monster that lived in my reflection. It was this realisation that sucked me deep into that bottomless vat of depression.
In bed at night was when I felt it the most. A hole had been carved in me and was growing bigger by the day. The physically overwhelming emptiness caused by fasting and purging had permeated right to all seeds of emotion, killing them away. I would have chosen uncomplicated sadness over this; sadness at least retained some purity and a confirmation of some emotion. I would have chosen anything but this. The sensation hurt like hell. That’s where I was and I’d known it for a long time now; I was in hell. I just knew I would die here and when that time came to pass, I would be alone. Even she would have abandoned me by then.
***
I am 15 years old. I’m walking down a long corridor in Dublin’s Mater Hospital. I’ve never been here before because nobody has ever mattered so much to me that I should visit. From the outside, the hospital resembles something along the lines of a university or state building, perhaps. Amidst beautiful grounds of well-kept grass and flourishing flowers, there sits the Mater itself. It has an overbearing presence about it. Though intimidating, it holds in its stance an air of architectural magnificence, as if concealing something truly spectacular from the world in which it dwells.
The only ominous thing about this place is the steps, which run high and very wide, leading you into its heart. The pillars that rest above those steps blockade its front door. They are almost frightening and resemble a stone cage that could hold the biggest and most dangerous of all beasts. As I get a little closer to them, I think how a terrifying monster must live here, deep within the walls.
Inside is a mishmash of old and new; mahogany wood panelling colliding with steel-like floors and desks. It feels wrong, like the original purpose of the place has been compromised somehow and has resulted in an offensive distortion. Very suddenly, I don’t trust this place and I don’t want to be here anymore. It scares me almost as much as the thought of why I am here in the first place.
I’m sitting in a chair that has been designated to me, beside an open door where light spills out into the hallway. This must be the old part of the building. It’s very dark for a hospital and boasts statue after statue of various saints whose names I can’t remember. Fear grips me and glues me to my seat, as I chew away at my nails and tear at the skin around my cuticles. The room spilling out light is quiet, with soft murmurs drifting their way into the hallway. The priest was in there today, I was told. I don’t dwell on this fact and forget it the moment I remember it. I don’t want to think about how many people have died in that room or in that bed. The thought makes me cower slightly and all my childhood fears of ghouls and ghosts are instantly sparked up again. Just as I think I’ll burst out of my seat and run crying down the hallway and back out to the beautiful gardens, it’s my turn to go into the room. I take a deep breath and then hold it for as long as I can.
The decor of the hallway, which resembled that of a church, has abruptly disappeared and been replaced by cold steel and pale blue bed sheets. The room has that clinical smell that only a hospital can have. My sister is weeping and I can tell she is suppressing a somewhat violent sob. All the sombre faces attempt to refigure themselves into faces of assurance. They fail but I appreciate the effort nonetheless. All eyes are on me, my gaze falls upon the hospital bed and I well up with emotion, a heavy lump in my throat and a cold dampness over my heart.
My father smiles at me from his steel bed. I hardly recognise the man bar that smile, which I’ve seen a thousand times before. There are wires everywhere, running in and out of him. On the other end of each wire, is connected to one or more of the ugly machines that flash bright lights and make beeping and buzzing sounds.
‘You okay, babe?’ he asks in a voice that does not belong to my father. I nod uncertainly. I have no words.
I have a very vague recollection of the day my father was struck by a heart-attack. At the time, I had no idea of the severity. He had suffered with heart related problems before, including something called Bell’s palsy, which made one side of his face drop completely for a while. But this was different because he had never looked like this before. Mum had warned me that Dad wouldn’t look ‘too great’ and that a quadruple bypass was a very big ordeal. If only I had known what she meant then; perhaps I wouldn’t be so struck with horror now. I don’t know how my face looks because I’ve lost all sensation in it. It can’t look very pleasing because everyone around me resumes whatever conversation they were having before I entered the room. They’re talking about the priest from today, but I zone out from the conversation.
My father was a man who prided himself on a clean shave. I remember as a child that he had boasted a full beard and for a time, just a moustache. As I’d gotten older though, he was always well-shaved and I never saw so much as one bit of stubble on his face. He was a tidy man and kept everything about him very neat. But he isn’t tidy now and his dishevelled appearance causes me to think the worst. He is half-slumped back on the pillows, too weak to fully lift himself. His salt-and-pepper hair, usually shaved down to a very fine blade, looks almost shaggy now. I can definitely run my fingers through it if I try. I can’t remember ever doing that. His face, now gaunt around the eyes and with hollowed cheeks, has not been shaved in quite a while and grey stubble laces his jaw from ear to ear. His skin has turned a soured cream colour and because of this, his dark brown eyes – the ones he has passed down to me – look big and heavy, as if it is a struggle for his face to even hold them in place, never mind keep them open.
I exchange glances with my sister. When her eyes meet mine, she fills up with tears again. She knows what I’m thinking because out of everyone in this room, she knows me best and can read me like a book. I can’t stand to look at her too long for fear of crying in front of everyone. Along with my aunt and uncle, my dad’s twin is also here. This is in addition to my mother, sister and brother. I have to hold it in for the time being at least. Besides, I’m distracted by the fresh scars I can see on my father’s body. His hospital gown is thrown awkwardly around him and falling off a little.
Poor Mum, I think to myself. She clearly tried to tidy him up for us. When it’s time to leave, I feel a wounding thrash of guilt because in truth, I don’t want to be here anymore. I shouldn’t want to leave my Dad here all alone but I just can’t stand to be in this room anymore and I simply can’t stand to look at him any longer. One by one, we give him a hug and a kiss goodbye. I don’t want to hug him because I’m afraid of hurting him in some way. And when I kiss his cheek I want to cry because I have never kissed his cheek; he always kisses mine and it hurts me to know he physically can’t bring himself to do it right now.
Mum tries to approach the topic gently but you can only be so delicate with such matters before you merely obstruct the truth. She tells us that they’re not sure if Dad will make it and that she wants us to be prepared for the worst. That’s why the priest was there, I finally realise Dad was receiving the last rights.
As we make our way down the steps outside the hospital, I find that I suddenly hate this building. I want to kick it and spit on it for lying. Looking so beautiful on the outside, it stands as a lie to what really happens inside its walls. The beast that it cages is death and it hides it in that superficial beauty I first believed in. Within those walls lies our biggest fear. I saw it all over my father’s face. At the sight of him on that bed, I knew that what people fear the most is our own mortality. My father was now trapped in that fear, hidden behind these walls. He was living inside the beast.
Lying in bed, I can’t sleep. I have never felt this way before. It is the purest emotion I have ever experienced and roars inside me like a train. My chest feels tight and a dark cloud has descended over me. This is what sadness truly is. It is raw, invasive and unrelenting. I cry myself to sleep, hoping I won’t feel this sadness again when I wake.
***
I remember very little of that chapter in my life. The events prior to this memory and after it have surpassed a point of haziness and just don’t seem to exist anymore. My family can’t understand how I have memories from as young as five but cannot remember something from the age of 15. My father made a full recovery over time but still, I remember nothing of it. I have tried very hard but it seems everything surrounding this one memory has been lost in the archives of my memory. I don’t think I’ll ever know what happened in that time. But that day I visited my father in hospital remains a pivotal moment of my young life. It was the first time, I believe, that I truly felt the sensation of raw sadness. It was the most potent emotion I had ever experienced. I thought nothing could be worse than that, until I lost the capacity to feel more or less anything. My eating disorder caused me to slip into a deep depression and I remember during that time wishing I could once again feel the purity of human emotion, even sadness. I have never forgotten either sensation.
In the weeks that lead up to that faithful doctor’s appointment, my life – as well as the one I also shared unrestrictedly with my bulimia – entered a stage of complete turmoil. For one thing, the academia I once prided myself on and defined myself by, fell to shambles. The transition from secondary school to university had proved to be an extremely emotional upheaval. Everyone had talked to such extraordinary lengths about the difficulties in this changeover; so much so, that it almost felt too cliché to admit that I was struggling very badly. On a very basic level, I simply found that I could not keep up with the workload. In school, I had been top of my class in most subjects. Assignments were carried out with efficiency, as well as to a high standard. But in the realms of that campus and all the university had to offer, I found myself utterly lost.
Schoolwork had always consisted of studying facts and writing about them. Its demands extended only as far as regurgitating what you have read onto a page. My school had been in walking distance of my family home and I found a great deal of comfort in both the uniform which we wore every day – free from the inconvenience of having to select clothes each morning and unifying us in school spirit – as well as the Monday to Friday hours that had been so familiar for six years. In university, the demand for independent study reached new levels I had never before experienced. It was more than the study of facts and I think I began to panic right from the beginning when I realised that much of what I would learn in this place would have to be self-taught.
Most days, I barely made it to the campus, lecture halls or the shelved abyss they called the library. Indeed, I barely made it out of bed. The mornings were the worst; I had always been an early riser and while my peers struggled to wake before 1.00 pm, I always found I could never sleep far past 9.00 am. So by every measure, waking for college in the mornings should have been as easy as it had always been. But upon waking, I suffered something more than just the run of the mill tiredness, my body felt like it had been physically arrested by the might of lethargy and malnutrition. I would lie there with my eyes open, watching the clock as the minutes ticked by. I was not fighting sleep or anything else that would tempt most others to remain wrapped up beneath the covers; I simply couldn’t move. My legs and arms were weighed down by invisible chains. No matter how much weight I lost, I just could not lift my body up from the mattress. I felt like the pinnacle of where all the earth’s gravity travelled to. I was submerged under that weight and could not rise.
‘Are you going to college today, Leanne?’ my mother would ask from the door. To say she was concerned at this point was an understatement. More than my physical appearance and the changes in my personality she had witnessed and commented on regularly, she became most fearful with the development of my apparent lack of interest in my studies. This was not like me and could only be the result of something entirely horrendous. Sometimes it was as simple as telling her that a lecture had been cancelled, my timetable had been changed or just that this morning’s lecture wasn’t important at all. But on other occasions, I did not possess even the mental capacity to do this.
‘No, I’m not,’ is all I would say; end of discussion. She would hover at the door a while, silently expressing both her disapproval and her undeniable worry. I didn’t care. If she felt what my body was feeling, she would leave me alone and not question my decision. Besides, I knew that even if I managed to physically present myself in the lecture theatres on campus, I would not be fully there anyway. If I wasn’t sleeping somewhere in the back, I would be scrawling notes at a very slow pace, mentally incapable of digesting what was being said because my brain was just working at too slow a pace to keep up. This was not the kind of student I was and I suppose somewhere in the back of my mind, I just thought it was a temporary phase that would pass once I became comfortable in my new surroundings. The problem was that I just couldn’t get comfortable here; I’d never known university without an eating disorder and it affected my perceptions of the place greatly. Everything about college became related to an ongoing sense of difficulty and a feeling of forever being behind.
More than this, the hardest thing in my transition from secondary school into third level education was having to accept how truly average I was. I had always excelled in one way or another and it defined me in my own head under certain terms as being a person who just did well instinctively. I was top of the class by nature, not nurturing. This had been who I was. Now, however, I was cast into a system whereby my student number was more recognisable than my own name. There was nothing about who I was that classified me as any different or any better than any other person in a lecture hall. In such a large group, I was guaranteed of the fact that many others were better than me. How I qualified what was ‘better’ came in a variety of forms; smarter, prettier, more dedicated, more ambitious, better dressed, or wealthier. It didn’t matter which because all it amounted to was that, whoever they were, they were a better version of me. What all this culminated to was feelings of total insufficiency and pressing mediocrity. Being average, as I then realised I had always been, further instilled the idea of my own worthlessness both in academia and in general.
The effect my bulimia would ultimately have on my studies was monumental. It drove away all ambition and more importantly, hindered my potential. Missing classes and lectures as a result of overpowering exhaustion was only part of it. It was like my brain had slowed down; like somebody had cut off the oxygen being fed to it and the cells had started to die off one by one. Processing information seemed an impossible endeavour. When it came to assignments, presentations or whatever else was being asked of me, I found that I simply could not mentally grasp the task at hand. It was beyond my scope and understanding by that time. This terrified me. I knew then that I had truly lost myself to my bulimia. We did not share a life anymore because if this was the case, holding on to what had always been of colossal significance would have remained a priority. No, ‘sharing’ was not in her vocabulary and instead, she now owned my life entirely. Along with my health, my personality, my faith and my happiness, she had now taken my education. It was among the saddest losses during my time being sick. To lose my education was to truly lose myself.
As time continued to drag on, the changes I experienced were of prodigious proportions in my life then and what it would go on to become. The biggest change occurred in my relationship with bulimia. Relationships, regardless of their context or the parties involved, revolve around a level of commitment from both sides. I was committed to my bulimia in a way that I had never been committed to anyone before. And yet, the dynamics of our relationship underwent a period of evolution in which it transformed to a commitment of absolute hatred. I had loved her once, I was sure of it. But during the course of a period that has since become the most blurred and distorted of my memories, I began to question her. This was the first step on a road which would ultimately lead me to hate her. And hate her I did. Her voice was no longer a source of comfort or encouragement or even reassurance. It was now a cage that kept me trapped in my own mind. It was the madness that now consumed my entire life and from which I could not escape. After a while, I sincerely thought I had gone mad.
For all this hatred and regret, however, I could not bring myself to destroy her. I could not be without her and for the life of me, I just couldn’t understand why. It didn’t matter how much we hated each other now – yes, she hated me with the same fervour and passion – because she remained the lifelong friend to whom I was tied to psychologically, spiritually, physically and emotionally. She was my friend. Life without her would surely be no life at all.
***
I am 12 years old. Valentine’s Day is one of the days I dread the most every year. When it comes around, Mum sends me a Valentine’s card in the post and then pretends that it’s not from her. When I was little, I genuinely believed I had a secret admirer because everyone played along. Then when I was a little bit older, Natalie had said to me, ‘You know they’re always from Mum, right?’ I remember feeling deceived and as if everyone pitied me and so, had it out with my Mum. She never sent me a card again.
What I dislike most about Valentine’s Day is when it falls on a weekday because everyone in school has to make a card during arts and crafts. Nobody really makes a card for anybody in particular but I don’t like doing it all the same because it reminds me of being little when everyone gave them to each other. I would never get a card and was embarrassed the entire day. Though we have to make our own cards, a boy in the class named John has brought in a real one from a shop. It’s white with a heart on the front and kisses along the interior. It looks as though someone put on loads of red lipstick and kissed the page from top to bottom. It hasn’t been written on and he says it’s not for anybody and that he doesn’t know why he has it. Now that it’s lunchtime, a few people take an interest in the card. We only have about ten minutes in the classroom before it’s yard time.
There’s a boy in my year called Emmet. Everyone in school knows I like him, including Emmet himself. When the girls in my class see that John has brought a real Valentine’s card today, they start to tell me that I should give John’s card to Emmet. I don’t want to because I know everyone will laugh at me if I do.
‘Nobody will laugh at you,’ one of the girls tell me. ‘It’s Valentine’s Day; it’s what you’re supposed to do.’
But I’m still not convinced. It’s a Friday and the school bullies have been nice to me this week. I don’t want this to end. Sometimes they decide they want to be friends with me and I am always grateful when they do because then everyone else is nice to me as well. I’m afraid not to do what they say because they might stop being friends with me again and then next week will be horrible. They tell me that it’s not like anything bad is going to happen and that it’s the end of the week anyway.
‘If something goes wrong,’ one interjects, ‘you won’t be in school until next Monday so it will be forgotten by then.’
‘Nothing will go wrong anyway,’ exclaims another, clearly impatient now. Since 5th class, she has been what Mum calls the ‘ringleader’ and when she says this, everyone is in agreement.
‘Besides, don’t you think it will be nice for Emmet to get a Valentine’s card? I mean, you do like him don’t you?’
I nod, afraid of the implications of this admission.
‘Well then,’ she continues, ‘this will make him like you. You just have to do it now or else you’ll never know.’
Still unsure of what to do, I take the card from John, who looks nervous for me now. It’s not like he can say anything against the girls anyway but deep down, I appreciate his evident concern. I remove the card from its plastic covering and open it up, looking at all the kisses running down the inside of it. Whoever made this must have really liked kissing.
‘Well go on!’ the ringleader insists. I take the pen in my hand and shakily, scribble down on the card:
To Emmet,
Happy Valentine’s Day.
From, Leanne.
I write his name on the envelope and just as I’m about to tuck the card away into the paper, the girls around me start demanding to see what’s written and telling me to stop hiding it. Even John is interested now to see what I have written and rather suddenly, the card has been snatched from my hand.
‘That’s crap!’ shouts the ringleader. ‘You didn’t even put in any kisses.’
‘You have to put kisses in at the end, otherwise it doesn’t really count,’ another informs me. I refuse and try to grab the card back out of her hand. I’m not quick enough and the other girls form some kind of human wall around her.
‘I’ll put them in for you, if you’re too chicken to do it’, she bellows. I knew this was a bad idea. I want to go back just two minutes in time and not take that pen in my hand. I have a lump in my throat and am scared of what’s going to happen. The girls are all smiling broadly with those dangerous smiles that always set off alarm bells in my chest. By now, most of the boys have taken interest too and are laughing at top volume. There is no teacher in the classroom to protect me and give out to them because all the teacher’s are on their break, with someone walking the halls to keep all the classes in order. I pray in my head that they will walk into our classroom, tell everyone to sit back down in their seats and to stop messing.
I watch as one scratches two kisses beneath my name on the card. Then she shouts, ‘Look! She put kisses in and everything,’ to the rest of the class, holding the card up high like a golden trophy. I feel flustered and then I snap at her, telling her to stop messing around.
‘Oh relax,’ one tells me, ‘we’re only having a bit of fun. Why are you such a buzz kill?’
‘It’s okay, Leanne,’ the ringleader announces, ‘I’ll give the card to Emmet.’
‘No.’ I say, not even stopping to think. A knowing look of insult flashes across her face.
‘Why not? I’m trying to do you a favour here. Are you telling me you’re going to walk up to him yourself and give it to him?’
‘No,’ I mumble.
‘Right, well then it’s settled. I’ll give it to him when we go outside.’
When the second bell rings and everyone starts to shuffle their way out the door, I’m already sick to my stomach. I had a five minute wait before lunchtime was over and it had felt like hours, giving my tummy time to curdle and my anxiety to catch every organ in my body and set them alight. I haven’t said a word or touched any of my food. I want all this to stop now but know it’s too late, everything is out of my power and there’s nothing I can do. I trot outside the classroom and make my way to the yard. I can see Emmet up ahead of everyone laughing and joking with his friends.
I’m going to be the butt of that joke soon, I think to myself.
When we’re finally outside, I sit down on the curb with a few of the girls from my class. They’re all buzzing about the card but I’m not saying a word. Eventually, one of the girls finally seems to notice me for the first time, as if I had just walked over a moment ago.
‘Oh Leanne,’ she says, ‘so I’m going over with the card now, okay?’
Everyone giggles. I don’t reply. I wish I could sink into the gravel at my feet and stay there until all this has passed.
‘HELLO?’ she insists.
‘Yeah, okay,’ I say under my breath. With that, herself and another girl start trotting off across the yard; they’re giddy and nearly hysterical as they leave. Most of the boys are playing football in an empty space in the middle of the yard. I watch as the two approach Emmet mid-match. There seems to be a moment of confusion when all the boys notice what’s happening. A crowd encircles them and soon enough, roars and howls can be heard echoing all around them, bouncing from the concrete walls all the way over to the church beside us. All the boys are laughing, while one of the girls continues to talk to Emmet, who looks down at the card in his hands with a blank expression.
Some apparently outrageous comment is passed and sets the cluster of people off into chaos. While the boys start hopping around Emmet, thumping him on the back, the ringleader glances back at me with a threatening glint in her eye. I’m frantic now and look to Emmet’s face; I can’t tell if he’s smiling or laughing. All I can see is that his cheeks have flared red. He stretches out his arm and tries to give the card back to the girls from my class and that lump in my throat is huge now. I want to cry. The ringleader puts her hands up, refusing to accept it and then she hurries back to the rest of the girls and I on the curb. One or two of the boys from a different class follow. Emmet stuffs the card in his back pocket, still red faced, shoving all the boys off him and eventually resumes his football game.
‘What did you say?’ I ask them upon their return. It’s all I can think about.
‘Nothing, relax,’ she replies. She’s lying. I know she is. Within moments of the lie falling from her mouth, however, a boy called Luke runs up and makes a sudden halt in front of me. Luke is one of Emmet’s friends.
With no warning, he blurts out, ‘Is it true you actually did all those kisses on that card?’ Horror descends over me. One of the bullies had told everyone that I had put on lipstick and kissed all over the inside of the Valentine’s card.
‘No!’ I fret. ‘No, I didn’t! It’s just the design.’
‘Liar,’ Luke laughs.
‘I’m not lying! Rub the card and you’ll see, it’s just the design on it.’
‘As if anyone’s going to touch where your lips have been!’
With this last statement, Luke and the other boys stroll away, holding one another up as they laugh. Yet again, I am the laughing stock of the entire year. I want to stand up and scream at these girls for making me do this and for lying to all the boys about the kisses on the card. But I remain on the ground, afraid that if I stand too quickly the adrenaline I feel now will fade and I’ll crumble and maybe even cry.
‘Why did you lie to them?’ I demand.
‘Oh Jesus,’ she says, rolling her eyes, ‘you’re no fun at all. We’re only joking, have a sense of humour.’
This is the end of the discussion and I know it. If I push the matter any further, she and I will have a fight and then the girls won’t talk to me for ages. That’s the last thing I need now. When it’s time to go inside, I’m relieved to finally leave the yard. As we walk to the classroom, all the boys are still hooting and laughing at me. While Emmet shuffles as fast as he can down the corridor and out of sight, his face still blooming pink as he goes. The walk down the corridor had seemed so long and when I finally sit down, I think I can’t feel any worse than this.
A girl from my class called Shauna walks over to me. She’s a nice girl who is very quiet but doesn’t pick on me. I look up to her and she awkwardly whispers, ‘Ehm, Leanne, you know that card you got off John? Well, I thought I should tell you, he brought it into school today for you.’
My heart plummets with guilt and regret. Not only had I let the girls make a fool out of me again, I had given away my very first Valentine.
‘Leanne, are you coming out with us this weekend?’ one of the girls asks later during class time. I don’t answer because I can’t bring myself to talk to her. I can see it all over her face how much this irritates her and I’m scared again.
‘Leanne,’ she repeats. ‘We’re still friends aren’t we?’
‘Yeah.’ I mutter.
‘So you’re coming out with us this weekend then?’
‘Yeah, I am.’
***
I am very fortunate to have always kept diaries from a very young age. They are usually forgotten until once in a blue moon, I may choose to take a trip back through the nostalgia of my past. It’s ironic; the many times I have read back through diary entries about these girls, I have cursed myself blind. I tell myself that I was a foolish girl for not seeing them for the bullies they were and for not refusing their friendship. And yet for all my self-righteous hindsight, the patterns of history seem forever destined to resurface and replay all over again. My relationship with bulimia during my teens wasn’t that much different to my relationship with these girls.
I both hated and feared my bulimia as I had done with those girls so many years ago. Yet in both cases, I simply could not bring myself to refuse them or let them go. No matter how much my bulimia or those children hurt me, I would always return to them when they called, unable to push them away. It’s difficult now to interpret what psychological mentality I was operating under – both at the age of 12 and again at 18 – to constantly surround myself with people and environments that would hurt me. It seemed a lot of the time I chose to do this. Sometimes I think over that issue of self-worth when I think back on such things. When it came to all the hurt, all the self-loathing and humiliation, deep down I think I chose these things because I felt it was what I deserved.
Under this logic, the most venomous thing in my life has always been me. I was my own worst enemy, choosing to envelope myself with things and people who I knew would cause me pain in some way. It was as if this punishment somehow acted as justification to my very existence, which for the most part, felt unwarranted. I was a prisoner of my own self-destructiveness and I could trace the pattern back years.
By the age of 18, however, some of the pattern had been broken; or at the very least, simply transformed into new methods of self-abuse like bulimia. You see, though I battled a raging eating disorder in the labyrinth of my mind, I was blessed to have the most devoted group of friends. I met most of these people around the ages of 14 and 15. The repercussions of the social misery I experienced before that point would have an immeasurable impact on my life in later years. But after that age at least, I would never again suffer what I had before at the hands of the people I called friends. The friends I met in my early teens were extraordinary souls who brought out the very best in me, while always accepting the very worst without judgement. I never knew people like this existed until that time. I was dazzled by them and forever in awe. To this day, such feelings retain that same tenacity as before and our bonds have been strengthened over the years. They were and always will be the collective heroes of this story.
However, prior to the day of my aforementioned doctor’s visit, it had been weeks since I’d spent a decent amount of time with my friends. I knew they were questioning my absence but no longer even had the energy or the notion to care. Something inside me had changed and I had let them go along the way. I had forgotten why we were friends and more worryingly, I had forgotten why I needed them so much. They knew about my eating disorder long before I ever did and had individually used the term in their many outbursts surrounding the issue. What’s more, they hated it with such a passion that I sometimes wondered if that person in my mind cowered from them in fear. Looking back now, a part of me hopes she did cower.
While that’s very easy to say now, of course the matter was an entirely different thing then. They became annoyances in my life. They were people I had to hide from and lie to because if I didn’t, they would give me and my secret ‘friend’ a whole world of trouble. In order to keep her safe, I had to distance myself from my friends as much as possible. Indeed, I think I lost a friend or two along the way; a regret that still lingers over me today. You would think – as I was convinced would happen – after so many arguments about my eating, so many tears and so many failures, that these people would eventually give up the fight and leave me in the depths of my disease. But they didn’t. In fact, they clung to me like glue, as if letting me go even slightly would cause me to slip through their fingers. In fact, their presence in my life was most apparent at the times I least wanted it, the times she saw it as inconvenient. They threatened her so much because above anything else, my friends were the constant living proof that I could care for something more than I cared for her.
One of the biggest turning points in my illness came with a simple phone call. The girls had arranged a lunch in one of their houses. Like everyone else, I agreed to join them. But when the minutes starting ticking closer and closer to the hour, uncontrollable trepidation set in. If I went, I would most certainly have to eat, as what person attends a lunch and doesn’t eat it? Coming home to purge would be no good because my mother would be home by that time and certainly question what would then be my second shower of the day. I contemplated trying to purge straight away after the lunch by excusing myself from the table, but knew that my friends were now watching me too closely for that. No, it had to be avoided completely.
I rang to say I couldn’t make it because I wasn’t feeling too well. It was an exhausted excuse by now but was all that came to mind in the moments of internal hysteria. They said they would come up to see me instead and naturally – perhaps even too hastily – I refused point blank. Something was different about this phone call. The tone of voice on the other end was wrong somehow and while chatting to just the one person, I could detect sounds of consternation and alarm in the background chatter. I hung up as soon as possible, slipping back onto the sofa with my empty stomach and comfortable in the knowledge that I could sleep until my mother came home.
When the unexpected knock came at the door, I didn’t hear it because along with everything else, my hearing seemed to be numbing away. But when the doorbell rang throughout the house, waking me up with an electric shock. Agitated by the abrupt awakening from my post-purge coma, I knew things were going to get worse when I opened the door to my friends. They said very little, as if afraid I would shut the door in their faces and instead bustled their way past me and into the sitting room. Confused and somewhat resentful about what I interpreted as utter rudeness, I sat down with them in the sitting room, a cold look darkening my wearied face.
‘I know you said not to come up, but we had to,’ one of them said.
‘We’re not here to have lunch, we’re here to talk to you. If we don’t intervene now, we’re scared of what’s going to happen.’
‘Okay,’ I hesitated, the indignation still evident in my expression. ‘What’s going on?’
‘Leanne, you have a problem and we need to talk about it,’ said another.
I already knew it before they had said it. This was about my eating and I was about to be set upon by five or six women. I took a deep breath, but nothing could have prepared me for that moment when finally, there was no escaping what they were about to say.
‘Leanne,’ one of the girls sighed. ‘You have an eating disorder. And we think you know it’s true as well as we do.’
The conversation that erupted at the utterance of this statement was the scariest and most overwhelming of my entire life. In the thick of it, my friends went on to claim that I had lost a great deal of weight and was, in their opinion at least, emaciated. They told me I was sick and that I needed help. They said I wasn’t myself anymore; that not only did I look different, but that my sickness had changed me as a person too. I wasn’t the friend most of them met so many years ago. A number of them welled up as they talked about how they couldn’t watch their friend starve and vomit her way into a hospital bed or worse, into the grave. They interrogated me over and over, relentlessly pushing for the admission that what they needed. They didn’t get it, not fully anyway. I saw the pain in their eyes and heard the exhaustion in their words. It was the first time I ever realised how far down into my own darkness I had brought them.
Something snapped inside me for the worst. I was scared, cornered and under a wave of guilt for what I had done and was still doing to them. I had made their lives, as I had made my own, a living hell. The demons I battled with overpowered me in that moment and I took the cruellest action I think I ever could have. I laughed at them.
They were right in one way though; I had long since admitted to myself that I had an eating disorder. But overcoming denial is a slow process. I could admit that I had a problem to myself, but I still felt the need to conceal it from them, despite the fact that they knew everything anyway. If I admitted it to them, my control over this situation would be gone completely and I couldn’t cope with that. Since that time, however, I have never forgotten the looks on their faces; the tiredness, the desperation, the hurt, the tears and most of all, the concerned expressions that are imprinted all over my memory of that day. On the surface, my friends’ emotional intervention had very little impact. It would be weeks before I ever went into the doctor’s office and for a while, it even drove me further away from them. Yet the consequences of our actions are not always immediately apparent. It can take a very long time for the effects of such events to show themselves. I recall months later, breaking down into tears with the mysterious burden that hung in my chest about that day. Remembering it all with ferocious accuracy, I wept hopelessly with one thought: I’m so sorry.
The truth is, whether it was the late night phone calls, the long-winded talks that would drag on for hours at a time, the shared tears, the endurance of listening to my suicidal thoughts, or simply the many cups of tea that were made; these women, in so many ways, saved my life time and time again. We are a sisterhood of sacrosanct devotion and love that I will be happily indebted to for the rest of my days. I owe these women my life.