An Apple a Day (14 page)

Wishing you all the very best in your personal comeback. I spent most of my forties and my early fifties firstly driven by and then fighting against my anorexia. I'm fifty-seven now, and while I do still get anorexic thoughts, I'm able to eat, drink AND LIVE in spite of them. A massive motivation has been my grandson who's 20 months old now. I wanted to be well, to be able to help my daughter, to enjoy my grandson and to enjoy grandmotherhood—and to be me. Take care, Emma, Be gentle with yourself—and be proud of yourself
.

V.B
.

April 21, 2011 11:51
AM

You absolutely cannot give up now. Anorexia may always be with you mentally but that doesn't mean you can't keep up all your hard work and gain weight physically. Don't think you'll not be able to overcome anorexia this time round just because you've failed in the past, you're making great progress and you will be able to naturally conceive your own child naturally, not just take the easy way out and opt for IVF, etc. We're all behind you on this
.

C.J
.

* * *

Just as I was close to throwing in the towel, something shifted and my mood lifted. The sunshine helped, and the readers' responses helped, and I was back in the ring . . . I've noticed that life is often this way: when we're about to give up, something happens. Yes, I felt beaten, and yes, I'd started investigating fertility drugs. (Despite what the reader said, that isn't the “easy way out”; in fact going through IVF or other forms of assisted conception can be much more emotionally and physically demanding than
natural conception.) But I'd also received some fantastic support, reminding me there's plenty of fight left in me. My Canadian friend Mike had emailed:

You don't need to think about IVF, not yet—this sounds like a cop-out to me. The truth is there was a time in your life when you were not anorexic; you have to return to that state. That beautiful baby needs to come from you, it needs your genes, you owe it to yourself
.

From Switzerland, my friend Sunray emailed to say:

Your feelings at the moment aren't weird, they're normal! But you have to find a way to succeed, scary or not, because the problem won't go away until you do. You want a family—that has to be your weapon. Use it to make you stubborn. Your future baby needs you to fight the fears
. . .

At
Times Online
, a woman wrote:

I'm at the opposite end of the weight spectrum, trying not to eat cake (amongst other things) so it scares both of us for pretty much the same reason: one bite and I know I'll lose control. Don't worry about IVF for now, just keep thinking of the baby, and keep eating
.

I was seriously considering the fertility drug Clomiphene—my thinking was,
Well, if slim actresses and models can pop it like Smarties, why shouldn't I?
If I honestly can't gain the weight required to get pregnant, and I'm not getting any younger, surely there must be another way? Fortunately, my GP said no. He reminded me that the proper use of fertility drugs was to treat infertility, and said, “You're not infertile, you're underweight.”
And he's right. I can't keep avoiding the weight issue. I suppose that Clomiphene might get me pregnant by stimulating ovulation, but who knows if my body would be able to keep the baby?

And then I got an email from my former psychiatrist, Dr. Robinson.

The recovery process has been likened to getting an Oscar. You don't know if you'll make it until your name is called, then all your anxiety erupts into stage fright and your emotions don't settle down for ages. I say, keep going until your ovary system signals that your body is healthy enough to carry and feed a child
.

Needless to say, my column the following week was much more optimistic. It was written while I was sitting on my balcony in spring sunshine, and I can still recall the sense of adventure, the elation packed into every word.

Chapter 7

Confessions of a Travel Writer's Girlfriend

“W
ow, what an amazing job.” This (after “So what
do
you eat?”) is the comment I hear most often. And yes, Tom's job is amazing—he's a travel writer and hotel reviewer for a national newspaper, so we get to travel the world, exploring fantastic islands and beaches and cities. When we're in the U.K. we spend almost every weekend out of London, traveling to review yet another hip hotel for his weekly column.

Tom and I thrive on perpetual motion. We talk and explore and hatch plans for the future: our books, our columns, our trips, our baby. While he reviews the hotels, I've become the unofficial spa sidekick, submitting (willingly) to beauty treatments and reporting back. This involves facials and body wraps, manicures and pedicures, eyebrow threading and hot stone therapy and massages galore. I've become something of a spa expert, which is pretty funny for the scholarship girl from St. Paul's who could never afford to get blonde streaks in her hair. My latest discovery is eyelash tinting: they paint something onto your eyes and it's like permanent mascara without the risk of smudging or the hassle of makeup remover.

There's no doubt that Tom has a dream job as a travel writer and journalist—although we sometimes long to spend a weekend at home in London, not driving or chatting to hotel managers, or packing and unpacking our bags. Strictly speaking, I'm a journalist too now, with my weekly column—but as usual I feel like a fraud. I suppose I'm still in the uncertain phase of not really knowing how to describe myself or what it is I do, a phase familiar to all those who have stepped out of the daily office environment. It's been more than nine months since I left my full-time job in publishing but, after ten years working in large companies, that dinner-party question, “So what do
you
do?” still makes me hesitate. Just last month, as the April tax deadline approached, I had to fill in an Inland Revenue self-assessment form, and my pen wavered when I reached the “occupation” box.

Leaving full-time employment has been a considerable challenge, both in financial and lifestyle terms; at times I've found it as testing as my simultaneous quest to beat anorexia. We don't realize, I think, how much our professional roles define us, and how much of our self-esteem is tied up with being part of an organization, of a gang, with feeling “useful.” But overall it's been a liberating move and one I don't regret: I felt that a decade working for various corporations had earned me the chance to try something different, to pursue the writing career I'd always dreamed of. Within a month of going freelance I had a literary agent, and within six months I'd finished my first novel. Getting a regular column in
The Times
was just the icing on the cake.

And the travel works well for both of us: as writers, Tom and I just need our laptops. I don't bother to put my suitcase away anymore—when we get back from a trip I leave it in the spare room—and I carry my passport with me all the time. I will often wake up, in an unfamiliar room in an unfamiliar bed, and not know where I am. As a green semi-vegan who cycles everywhere,
recycles everything, doesn't drive, and rarely turns on the central heating, I know this relationship isn't environmentally friendly. In our defense, we always travel to Europe by train, and we offset our flights. In addition to the carbon footprint, I detest flying; if it were possible, I'd never board another plane ever again.

A woman I know, an obstetrician at St. Thomas's Hospital in London, recently told me that if I wanted to have a baby, I should slow down. “You need to relax in order to conceive. Stop traveling, stop cycling, stop staying up all night writing.” I understand this in principle, but I don't know how to put it into practice: slowing down would mean a total change of lifestyle.

When it comes to other people's journalism, because of our own experiences I like to read between the lines: I'm always curious when A.A. Gill, the restaurant critic, refers to his partner as “the blonde.”
Does she like eating out all the time?
I wonder.
Does she get to choose the restaurant?
Have you ever wondered, reading travel pieces in a magazine, what the journalist's other half is up to?

Lots of jet lag for starters (and the odd jet-lagged fight). And airports and rental cars and spa treatments and wine bars and hotels and sunburns and tourist offices. (Tom has an obsession with tourist information centers. If we see one, wherever we are, he has to go in and collect every single flyer and brochure available.) And lots of churches and beaches, art galleries and museums.

And, in my case, lots of food dodging. Turns out it's not easy having an eating disorder when you're a travel writer's girlfriend.

* * *

There are so many ways not to eat. There is straightforward food-avoidance: “I'm not hungry” or “I'll have something later.” Then there's the more refined kind, at which I excel, whereby anything is used as a reason not to eat.

This morning, in a hotel in Edinburgh, I left the breakfast table without eating because the orange on my plate was full of seeds and slightly sour and it had too much white pith and was impossible to peel . . . and the apples were Granny Smiths, and they'd presliced them when I prefer them whole, and the bananas were too green. And so on and so on (while Tom calmly ate his porridge and toast with strawberry jam). I don't know why I couldn't eat something else, but the orange was a disaster and the voice inside (guilt and anxiety) shouts at me, and it all becomes impossible. Something flips in my brain—it's chemical I think; I'm not in control. I've been told that eating might actually help to calm these feelings but I don't know about that.

According to Tom I said, “I can't eat now, I'm too stressed from that orange. Forget it, I'll just have coffee.”

Too
stressed
from an orange? Just another excuse for dodging. Recently I've been having issues with cutlery. If a fork is too large, I can't use it. When we're on the road, I can't eat with a plastic spoon—I mostly carry a small spoon in my handbag but sometimes we forget. (I notice I'm developing a thing about spoons: I have a drawer at home and I've just counted nineteen perfect silver spoons in there.) Plates need to be right as well—I don't mind small plates, but I cannot eat on a large dinner plate. Also temperatures: I can't eat food that's too hot, but if it's gone stone-cold, forget that too. Same with mouth-feel: too hard isn't good (bread) and too soft is hopeless, especially when it comes to pasta. My father is the king of spaghetti, and he always cooks it perfectly
al dente
: he doesn't even need to test it—he can “hear” when pasta is ready just from the sound of the bubbling water in the pan.

The consistency of fruit is also crucial for me: hard green bananas are no good, but overripe (over-sugary) ones are also inedible. Same with apples: bruised or pulpy is impossible. Grapes must be
shiny and firm, no seeds. Then there's sweet with savory—raisins crop up everywhere, and I find any dried fruit with savory off-putting. I don't understand why Marks & Spencer have started adding pomegranates to their otherwise perfect Super Wholefood Couscous, and I have to weed out every single one. When I look at food that is “wrong” I just think,
Well, I won't bother. Forget it
. Baked beans need to be eaten cold from the fridge, with a small spoon, and preferably in a small can.

I'm being flippant, but it's less amusing in practice. In essence, I can't eat normal food like a normal person: this is what anorexia means. To me, these rules make total sense, but they're just another way of avoiding food. It's incredibly stressful for Tom, I know, and of course it stops me from recovering. “I know exactly what you like, Em,” he tells me. “It has to be pure and fresh and totally untouched. I can see from a glance at a breakfast buffet whether we're going to have a problem.” He's right. My food has to be a certain way—and when you travel as much as we do, it rarely is.

* * *

I sound really fussy, I know. But these are the rules that govern me. I wouldn't call it fussy eating; it goes way beyond that. Faced with unfamiliar food that isn't the way I can eat it: I'm not being childish; I simply can't eat it. The sense of impotence when food isn't “right,” when you're starving, is hard to convey . . . Most people get touchy when they're hungry, right? Imagine that hunger and irritability, but magnified, when you really haven't eaten for hours, when there is nothing you can eat. I can only describe it as food rage.

Tom and I have had scenes and food missions and mishaps all over the world. Back in November, not long after I started writing the column, we visited Tanzania: