A little doll girl

MATHEW IS OLDER THAN ME. He’s forty-two. I’m twenty-seven. He’s been married before but he doesn’t talk about it much.

After that night at the Lemongrass Café, I started going to functions and parties with him, and everybody thought we made such a great pair.

“She’s like a little doll,” his boss said to him once. Six months later we were married and all my dreams had come true.

I sold my loft and moved into his largely unfurnished Victorian home in the fashionable Annex area in Toronto. I renovated, decorated, adopted a battered old dog and a tiny aggressive kitten. I planted flowers in the front garden: violets, roses, marigolds, pansies, tulips, impatiens, pink and yellow ice plants. The backyard was dedicated to herbs and bushes – a shady, leafy enclave. I hung wind chimes in the sunroom. It couldn’t have been more perfect. A family, that’s what we were.

So on Sunday, the day of our second anniversary, I cancel our breakfast date and eat nothing all day and count Mathew’s calories instead of my own because counting reassures me. I like the quiet recitation of numbers in my mind; it’s like saying the rosary. I encourage Mathew to eat, eat, eat. He’s thin although he’s not what you’d call “health-conscious”; he smokes to excess, drinks way too much, and eats a lot of takeout along the way.

He says he loves me and I think he does, for now anyway. But what if I got fat? Would he love me then? Maybe he would but he’d tease me and squeeze my expanded areas for sure. He wouldn’t like me fat, but in all fairness, what man would?

For me, fat is the worst social crime. It’s an expression of weakness and self-indulgence, a tangible sign of vulnerability.

So Sunday I eat nothing but I think about food all day. Heaven is a never-ending trifle, ha ha.

Of course, come Monday, a binge is inevitable. I eat cookies, a yogurt, a sandwich, an apple, a packet of chips, and a muffin for god’s sake.

I get home and Mathew is still at work. He had a function to go to and would be home much later. Good, I think. Then I try to fill the hole in my stomach with vegetables, huge amounts of them; fill me, fill me, fill me, I beg them. I try to feel full. I try to feel thin. But all I feel is ravenous.

Autopilot kicks in and I head for the kitchen. I am still counting but I know it’s impossible to binge on 200 calories, so I flip on the off-switch of the calculator of my mind and reach for the cereal, the cookies, the cooking chocolate. I dig into the jam for good measure and then spoon Kraft cheese and butterscotch pudding and peanut butter into my mouth, just because I can.

After a while I begin to slow down and start to feel nauseous. The dog has been watching me. He can always sense when something isn’t right. I put him out in the yard and head for the washroom.

The problem is that the toilet in our house is old; it doesn’t flush well. Usually that stops me from at-home binges. That, and Mathew catching me, but I am past caring. I am numb; something else is in control.

I stick my finger down my throat and purge. Like the dictionary says; atone, abrupt removal of, violent evacuation, clear oneself, purify. It is never fun. My eyes bulge, my throat burns, and bits splatter all over my T-shirt. I make a mental note to trash the shirt. I throw up until I can’t anymore, until there is nothing left but the tears in my eyes.

Then I flush and I flush and I flush. I go back to the kitchen and I clean, sweep, dust, wash, and polish. There’ll be no evidence. I go back to the washroom and flush again. Then I go back to the fridge and rearrange what’s left so it looks undisturbed. Then I go and flush again. I floss my teeth and clean my face. I haven’t changed out of my T-shirt yet and it smells disgusting. I wear it on purpose while I clean; its stench my punishment while I atone and repent.

It’s all made so much worse by the fact that I’m a spiritual individual, unashamed to admit I’m a believer.

I say it like spirituality is a weakness, something I should hide, something I should be ashamed of, because so many people believe God is a naïve fiction, a fairytale figure designed to comfort the hapless who won’t take responsibility for getting themselves from one end of life to the other.

But I feel close to the God of the universe, Creator of the stars and all that is good, and I hate myself for purging because it’s an anathema to my faith and the fundamental affirmation of life. It’s a violent act of self-hatred, but that doesn’t stop me, no. I feel bad about it; sure I do. That’s why while I clean I apologize to the purest of angels, “I am sorry,” I say. “I am so sorry.”

Images of Jesus, crucified, come to mind.

“Why was He so thin God?” I ask. “Are we all supposed to be that thin?”

Well, thin is one thing, I think to myself in the silence of the post-purge shame, purging is another.

I just need to exercise more discipline, get it right, stop this nonsense, Just Stop Doing It.

Whenever I think Just Stop Doing It, I think of Jane Fonda. I remember an article in which she talked about having recovered from bulimia and she said something about having given it up cold turkey. I always remember the feeling of incredulous envy that washed over me when I read those words. Cold turkey. Like the quick, clean amputation of a diseased limb.

But Jane did acknowledge the powerful force of the addiction, characterizing it as a disease of denial, the consequence of living a lie, of not being authentic and faking it, intrinsic to which was becoming a woman and then rejecting femininity. But, I tell myself, I am not living a lie. I need to Just Stop Doing It. If I remember correctly, Jane admitted it was sheer hell; that cold turkey was no walk in the park on a summer’s day. Maybe I am getting my leotarded leg-warmer clad pal confused with someone else but regardless, I know what I have to do. JSDI.

My stomach is swollen. My throat burns.

I am going to stop, too. This is my last time.

I worry I have left a trace; was there anything I overlooked while cleaning? My heart races in a disturbing way and I am exhausted but I feel better. I do, yes I do. I am not driven by hunger anymore, not right now anyway. And I feel safe as I look into the toilet and see that it has been flushed clean.

If Jane stopped, just like that, I will, too.

If tomorrow is a good day, I won’t be hungry. If I am a good girl, I won’t be hungry.