Hungry (25 page)

 

 

 

At first I liked the idea of not having a roommate. It was difficult sharing space with another person. Now I had two of everything: closets, dressers, desks, and beds. All filled up quickly. My parents made a special trip over the hill to buy me a little TV set and pillows for the extra bed, so it could be a couch/guest bed. And I did seem to have quite a few guests. I even had a full band (Halifax) stay with me, which should have been a dream come true but they all had girlfriends. They did not know I was a bulimic, nor would I give them any reason to suspect. After the show we went to Taco Bell, where I sat and engaged in conversation but ate nothing. We came back to my dorm room, smoked a bowl, I took a sleeping pill, and we all dozed off.

I kept a steady supply of pot, which I got from this guy who lived in the lower quad. My friends came over quite often to smoke out, but they never stayed long. It should have been the perfect setup, having my own room. But the emptiness produced loneliness, and made even more space for my habits. I started bingeing more frequently, most often alone in my room. After about a month I stopped inviting people over and they stopped initiating meeting up.

My mini-fridge and microwave nestled in the far-left corner of my room. And so, during binges, I’d huddle in that corner, and stuff myself full of whatever I had. I tried not to buy unhealthy food, but that didn’t even matter when it came time to binge. I usually started with cereal, and I’d keep pouring a little more in, never letting the bowl empty. When I started getting down to the last few bites, I’d pour in more milk, but if there was too much milk I’d have to pour in more cereal. This would continue until I got horribly bored and moved on to another food, something sweet and completely sinful such as cookies dipped in peanut butter.

I could almost precisely measure that my cereal binges could account for a serving of seven to ten bowls. One serving could also be seven to ten bowls of Trader Joe’s Cinnamon Cat Cookies or Teddy Grahams, the kinds of cookies you can scoop and eat by the handful. It’s like my hands were on their own—they just wouldn’t stop grabbing cookies and plopping them in my cup of milk. During a binge I seemed to shut down completely. Eating was my way of filling up on emptiness. So there I was on many nights, eating cat cookies in milk with a spoon, completely shut off from my surroundings and myself. Eventually something would click—either something in my head or my body—and I was brought back to reality. Now came my moments of panic and guilt, confusion, disgust, and hatred for my body, for my actions, for losing control.

The only way out was to purge. If it was a weekend, throwing up in the bathroom was easy because if anyone walked in they would think I was throwing up from being drunk. If I wanted more privacy I left the building and hurried to the individual bathrooms by the dining hall. I’d turn on the faucet to drown out the sound of puking, as well as have a steady stream of liquid when I needed assistance with getting the food out.

I eventually purged mostly in my room for complete privacy. I’d take plastic or paper bags, sit in my chair holding the bag open with one hand, and using the other to purge. Then I’d casually take my trash to the Dumpsters outside, as if it was normal garbage.

For a few minutes I was acceptable to myself because I had gotten rid of my binge. But depression quickly rolled back in, burying me in a dark pit of solitude with no one to pull me out. I just cried and wanted to die. I was crying so hard my entire body hurt, and my lungs ached from vomiting and coughing and constant crying. I had no set suicidal plan, no knife, no gun, no jumping off a bridge. But I was alone and it would be easy to take a bottle of sleeping pills with alcohol. No one would find me for a while. I’d probably get some phone calls from my friends and parents but the only people that would get suspicious would be my parents. They’d probably get worried and keep calling and eventually come up to see if I was okay, and I still wouldn’t answer their calls. Maybe they would find my resident assistant to let them in the room, explain the situation; that they had been calling for a few days and I hadn’t called back and now they’re worried and they knocked on the door but I didn’t answer, and I still didn’t answer their phone calls. I would be dead in my room, either on my bed because at least it was a comfortable place for misery, or on the floor in a pool of vomit. The R.A. would let them in my room and they would find me. Their lives would be shattered. Even my R.A would have been shocked. He liked me and enjoyed my company from time to time. News would spread quickly and everyone who knew me would be lost for words because they had no idea I was that depressed. And maybe they would start questioning themselves for not seeing the signs or asking questions when my cheeks were always puffy and I became less and less social. Perhaps that’s what would have happened if I had killed myself, but I never could do it. Something kept me going, and I still don’t really know what it is. Maybe my parents or a distant glimmer of hope.

 

sheila:
Every few days we called Lisa, praying she would pick up, and when she didn’t, counting the hours until she called back, or we’d call again and again. We were happy to hear her voice even if she snapped at us or complained about something we said or did, or didn’t say or do. We could deal with her contempt better than her despair. Maybe it was time to take Lisa out of school and bring her home, but to what? We needed a plan. I called psychiatrists who had been recommended as experts in eating disorders. Some called back, but their practices were full. Some didn’t even call back. Then I heard about the UCLA Eating Disorders Program, which had helped a young woman who sounded a lot like Lisa. The friend of a friend had a severely anorexic daughter who left college and went into treatment at UCLA, starting with several months in the locked neuropsychiatric facility. Her mother generously shared their ordeal and hopes. Their daughter was doing well in school again, and though she would always be aware of her eating disorder, she had her life back.

I called UCLA and got an appointment to meet with the director in two months. Lisa and Ned would fly to Los Angeles in July 2004. Ned had an idea that they could go out to lunch, even have fun.

 

lisa:
An entry from my journal, dated May 2004:

July 7, 2004

sheila:
When Lisa and Ned went to check out the eating disorders program at UCLA, they did not have a fun day revisiting Ned’s favorite restaurants. It was Ned’s birthday, July 2004, and they flew to Los Angeles in stony silence, then met the staff. Lisa found the director and the place very forbidding. Maybe she had been expecting summer camp, but by the time the UCLA facility had an opening at the end of August, going there would have required Lisa to miss a good portion of school. She refused to go, and then miraculously got better, even bringing love into her life.

We didn’t know how much Lisa was aware of the long-term consequences of eating disorders. We were just learning ourselves. I was starting to notice well-dressed women in their forties and fifties with very thin, brittle hair and missing teeth. In restaurants I’d watch them order a salad with vinegar as the dressing, and nibble on lettuce and a couple of raspberries. Sometimes I’d find out who they were, and a pattern emerged: accomplished professional, prominent in her field; very thin; insomniac; no children, often no spouse or lover.

 

lisa:
Deep in my depression I doubted any man’s ability to love me, but I was glad to be wrong. In the fall of my sophomore year I took a stimulating course on the history of jazz, and there I noticed a charming yet reserved gentleman who always sat by himself. I surprised myself with my assertiveness, and he was even more surprised, but we hit it off immediately.

From that class on, we sat together, discussed our lives, family, friends, goals, and ambitions. Scott began to drive me home from school, which led to our first date, at a popular Thai restaurant. My heart told me to be honest. As we lay together on his vinyl sofa, covered in dog hair, I confessed that I had struggles with eating disorders and although I worked every day to pull myself through, I did not consider myself recovered.

Scott’s piercing cobalt eyes caught mine and for several moments we just embraced. He said he wanted me to be happy and healthy, and that his attraction to me went beyond physical attributes. He saw a genuine, good-hearted person. He met and was attracted to the real me. He trusted in me to gather my strength. Even though it was going to take time, he would be supportive while I regained a sense of independence. Most important, we discovered balance in each other, establishing a stable relationship based on love, some grief, anger, and sustaining companionship.

Yet even with my incredible relationship I still felt such extreme self-hatred, and most of it stemmed from my eating disorders. I wrote in my journal:

Now, I realize, the love handles and saddlebags were only imagined, but at the time they felt real.

 

sheila:
The first time we met Scott, he was down at the Santa Cruz Harbor, working for a fish wholesaler. Lisa was calling him her boyfriend, but we didn’t know what that meant. Confronted with parents, this blond kid in rubber boots and a bloody apron was properly shy but not stand-offish, warming up when we expressed interest in seafood. When he offered us some soft-shell crabs, Ned and I thought, “How sweet. This guy could be a keeper.”