An Apple a Day (22 page)

I'd sit through meetings and the producers would ask me personal questions and outline their ideas, using words like “hard-hitting” and “unflinching,” and I'd nod and open up, then afterward I'd go and sit in a café and realize that I felt violated in some obscure way. Why let everyone peer into your problems, your family, your bathroom mirror? The things I was revealing to these strangers just seemed inappropriate and undignified: my absent periods, our attempts to conceive, my boyfriend's emotions. Writing about it is one thing, filming quite another.

I'm still in contact with a couple of the producers. They are both independent TV companies making interesting documentaries, but they seem to do it without resorting to sensationalism or fly-on-the-wall nosiness. I've explained the limits of what I'm willing to get involved in and they mostly seem to respect this. For once in my life it's nice to feel relaxed about failure or success; because I don't yearn to be on television, I don't particularly mind whether it happens or not.

I'm reminded of what Ernest Hemingway said: “A writer should write what he has to say and not speak it.”

Anyway, we spent an afternoon making a showreel: explaining my reasons for writing the column, discussing angles for an investigative documentary with my own story as the backdrop. The producer asked lots of questions and two guys stood behind the cameras and it went fine; I didn't think much more about it. Then, a fortnight ago, they sent me a DVD. I felt a little curious: what had they made of all those hours of conversation?

I've heard it said that anorexics should see themselves on film, but never realized quite how powerful the experience would actually be. The final reel, edited down to fifteen minutes, opened with me standing in a park, blue jeans against a green canopy of leaves, uplifting music in the background and the letters of my name spinning across the screen. Then it cut back to me on
their sofa, discussing my “journey” so far. The camera roamed around while I was talking (I didn't remember that), focusing on my thighs in blue denim, zooming in on my hands—they look massive on the end of scarecrow thin arms—my eyes filling with tears at one point, later laughing at something the producer says, all the while looking not like someone who is recovering but someone who isn't well at all.

Objectively speaking I suppose they did a good job—Tom said the film was “beautifully made”—but I won't ever watch it again. The truth is that whatever I feel inside my head, whatever I believe about my own gluttony, I am still very thin. I was shocked at the person on the screen: that's me. That's
me
. What have I done to myself?

When we finally dragged ourselves from the sofa over to the four-poster bed, Tom fell asleep instantly. I was too unsettled to sleep.

* * *

So that was the third thing that happened this week to make me determined to put on weight. This attempt is not like the others, where I reach 108 pounds, then panic and drop back down again. I want to recover, and this time I mean it.

Don't believe me? I'm typing this in the Reading Room of the British Library. Strictly speaking food is banned here, but I'm in a corner and it's quiet today. At home this morning, before cycling here, I had a pot of natural Greek yogurt and a banana. Since I got to the library I've eaten a whole bar of Marks & Spencer milk chocolate and three Brazil nuts. Perhaps that's a strange breakfast combination, but it's forbidden food, don't you see? Chocolate contains fat; Brazil nuts contain fat—they are the very epitome of my fear foods. To gain weight I need fat. To have a baby, my body needs fat. This is a major step forward.

I can't tell you how much I'd prefer to be sitting here chewing peppermint gum or swigging a Diet Coke, all hungry and sharp, instead of wallowing in nuts and chocolate. I can't explain why—maybe that's just anorexia—but I can taste the fatness on my tongue and I long to be clean and empty again. I'm not advocating or justifying that hungry feeling, just being honest.

* * *

I have to believe that I'm not greedy, that I do deserve to eat, that I'm not worthless or fat, that anorexia is just a temporary setback. I have to keep telling myself that it will get easier each time I eat. In the words of the best-selling book, I have to
feel the fear and do it anyway
.

Some of that self-help stuff is quite good, isn't it? I can't pretend I've ever found it particularly effective, but there's nothing like a self-indulgent, empowering, you-can-heal-your-life fest. This is what is currently taped to my kitchen cupboards:

        
•
  
A picture of the Olympic athlete Jessica Ennis torn out of
The Sunday Telegraph
magazine looking strong, not skinny.

        
•
  
A photograph of my nephew Theo sitting on the floor in Katie's house in France—he's about six months old, wearing a pair of tiny blue pajamas.

        
•
  
An image ripped out of
Runner's World
magazine of a female athlete drinking a bottle of water and holding weights: a fantastic body, toned but muscular, not waif-like.

        
•
  
A visualization which I'm supposed to repeat as I drink my morning coffee: “Imagine your ovaries ready to release a healthy egg. Allow yourself to heal; give your womb the nourishment it needs; give your unborn baby the chance to live . . .”

You get the general idea—I'm trying to surround myself with images of positive strength: women who are strong and sexy (not thin and weedy), affirmations to encourage PMA (positive mental attitude). And baby Theo is there to remind me just how much I want a child of my own.

Apart from the affirmations, what else am I doing? I'm confronting the “full” feeling as part of this process. When you starve yourself your stomach shrinks; that's a well-known fact. Therefore my stomach is rather small, so it's going to be uncomfortable eating more at first. This was never going to be pain-free. I've spent fourteen years getting into this mess, so I can't expect to undo all that damage instantly. I feel full as I sit here in the library. I hate feeling full, but if I'm going to make progress now I have to accept the sensation of fullness.

I'm not letting me bullshit myself anymore about food. What kind of bullshit? The chocolate debate is a good example. I used to love chocolate and have been considering eating a few squares before bed, maybe with a milky drink. It would be a relaxing way to wind down at the end of the day with my bedtime reading, eating a few chunks of delicious chocolate—lots of women do that in the evening, right? But then I started thinking about all the caffeine, and how it might stop me sleeping (a two-ounce piece of milk chocolate contains around 25 milligrams of caffeine, which is why insomniacs are advised to avoid chocolate as well as coffee before bed), and I decided I'd better not risk it: a classic dodge on my part. Instead, with this new-found determination, I thought,
To hell with it, I'll eat the chocolate in the morning
. It doesn't matter when, just get it in. Chocolate may be an unusual breakfast but it doesn't matter; the point now is to gain weight.

According to Tom, “fruit is not a meal.” I'm struggling to get my head around this one—it's tricky when you're hard-wired to think that a banana equals breakfast and an apple equals lunch. No, apparently fruit doesn't count. He keeps saying I should have a whole-wheat roll with every meal, but I find yogurt or soup or beans much easier to eat than threatening, carbohydrate-heavy bread products. Liquidy things. Why is Tom so obsessed with bread and meat?

In a rash moment, probably brought on by the unaccustomed sugar rush in my bloodstream, I decide I should simply double the portions of everything I eat. Now that would be bold. Could I do it? I zip my laptop into my backpack and nip out to the piazza of the British Library, stopping to pick up my black decaf Americano at the Last Word Café. I find a quiet corner of the courtyard, away from the traffic noise of the Euston Road, and call my mother at home in Camden. I apologize for interrupting her morning's writing and update her on my milk chocolate achievement. (What is this? I'm thirty-three years old, and I'm acting like a child telling her mummy she ate up all her greens.) I ask what she thinks about the double-portions strategy. Mum is encouraging but a little skeptical, which is understandable, given my past form. She reminds me that “the quicker you put the weight back on, the less painful it will be.” She's right; I need to act fast.

But this is only the beginning. Right now I feel giddy, even manic—I'm eating chocolate and feeling super brave. The fat and sugar in my veins are making me wild, hungry, I want more and more, chocolate and sex and sunshine; I want to fast-forward this recovery. I'm so relieved to be making a fresh start. And yet, there's plenty of struggle ahead. The worst is when your clothes get tight—I know this because I remember it from the last time around. When I went from 77 to 98 pounds back in 2001, I felt like I was dropping off a pair of Gap Kids jeans at my local
thrift store every week. And so, even as I consume the morning's chocolate ration (trying to ignore the shrieking taunts of “greedy” in my head), I'm anxious about the weight gain to come.

Chapter 11

Just a Tsunami Inside . . .

I
've always been volatile, but over the recent months of early summer I've noticed that the emotional extremes have been getting worse. If it were simply the elation of the high times and the despair of the low times I could deal with it, but it's more than that. Of late I've had episodes of violent aggression, moments of such intense rage that I might do anything: attack someone, jump off a cliff, smash a glass into my face, open the car door and leap out while Tom is driving at ninety miles an hour on the freeway.

Last week, a van driver cut me off on Marylebone Road, then braked sharply at the red lights nearly causing me to crash into the back of him. When I drew up alongside and gave him the finger, he shouted out of the window that “f*cking cyclists should get off the f*cking road” and I was a “stupid c*nt in need of a good f*ck.” Without a second's hesitation I got off my bike, strode over to his window, and punched the door frame so hard that I still can't bend my little finger.

When this anger comes upon me, it's like a switch has been flipped inside my brain; there's no rational cell left in my body, everything is on fire and I can't even think for the red storm that is fogging up my synapses. I fling the pot of yogurt across the kitchen, hurl the dinner plate out of the window, throw my bike
down in the middle of the Euston Road and threaten a van driver. The rage is uncontrollable and I simply don't care about the action or its consequence. It's like a hyperkinetic explosion in my brain. I know these episodes are dangerous; I know I could hurt myself or get into serious trouble. I don't know what's happening sometimes. I don't know myself.

In desperation last week, I emailed my friend Deanne. We first met around six months ago when, in response to
The Times
column, she wrote offering help. She explained that she was not only a professional eating disorders counselor, but also a mindfulness practitioner. I was skeptical at first—the concept of mindfulness has always seemed slightly flaky to me—but agreed to meet. Deanne isn't flaky but she is incredibly calm and thoughtful, a soothing presence to be around. We sat for hours over coffee in the Royal Society of Medicine talking about our lives, and have stayed close ever since.

Emma, stop for a moment. Take a deep breath. You sound so anxious. I understand about this anger. I would lay a bet that you aren't becoming a nasty person, but these feelings are really scary. I don't think you will ever know your nature until you have harnessed the energy in the anorexia to work for you; to trust you will be OK and human, with facets like a diamond. Sometimes these facets look dark if the light is behind you, while the same facet will shine if the light passes through.

Deanne tends to communicate in these wafty terms: “harnessing energy” and “shining like a diamond.” At first it made me roll my eyes, dismissive, impatient; I wanted practical solutions, not new-age abstractions. It was only when I concentrated on what she was actually saying that it began to make sense.

Anger is like a huge room; what you see of it depends on which window you happen to look through. From one window you can see that your rage is a consequence of change in anorexia: when you've bottled up your feelings for so many years they erupt like a volcano.

What's wrong with you? Just a tsunami, Em . . . there must have been an earthquake underneath, so wait and see where the earth settles.

I agree with you that blame is useless; I agree there comes a point when we have to stop blaming anorexia, or our own shortcomings, or past relationships, or fear. The tsunami inside asks to be heard; to be faced, perhaps, and then you will be able to see it for what it is . . . You are on a really wobbly step right now, but I promise there are many other steps ahead. Perhaps consider letting someone help you leap to the next one.

* * *

What was
wrong
with me? “Just a tsunami . . . wait and see where the earth settles.” What beautiful words.

I hope Deanne is right. I hope it's the process of recovery that is causing this instability. The surge of energy—from eating—seems to fuel all sorts of unexpected emotions. After so many years of anorexic numbness I find myself coming back to life in a whirlwind of feelings. And I feel like I've failed in some way, that the eating disorder has beaten me. I know I'm angrier and more impulsive than before; is this just the earthquake doing its thing? Sometimes I simply feel angry at the whole world—for making me confront this, for making me leave the anorexia behind. It's part of me. I feel defeated.