Thin (11 page)

The doctors and the well-wishers try to make me see things through their eyes, as if mine can’t be trusted. I can’t let that happen because I can’t see round the corner of their plans. With my way I know where I am going; I know that with every pound/stone/kilo/ounce that comes off, things feel better. The other way will feel bad. It will feel worse every day with every extra pound/stone/kilo/ounce that they make me put on. They will have to
make
me do it, because I won’t concede.

I don’t usually like breaking the rules like this. I don’t like getting told off. I got told off once or twice at school for putting on make-up or for wearing a round-necked
jumper instead of a V-necked one, and I didn’t like it. I tried to smirk and smile, and be disobedient to fit in, but I didn’t know how to do it, it’s not in me. Now people are treating me like a naughty girl. I let everyone down. I ruined their plans for me. I made everybody cry. But I didn’t mean for it to happen like this. I am not very good at fighting with the outside. The fight is inside, and it is with myself.

My English teacher from school even calls me up at home and asks me why have I done this to myself (people do, they can’t help but wonder). It is really embarrassing because I was always a really good student. He sounds vexed because I have spoiled things. The school sent me a book token with a special bookplate: a prize for being the best English A-level student. I wonder if they gave it to me as a badge of sympathy. I stuck the bookplate into a new, crisp, hardback book, but I don’t seem to be able to read it now. My teacher is kind, but I don’t want him to be like that, full of sympathy and confusion because I am quite clear, not confused. And he asks me, ‘How did this happen?’

And I tell him, ‘Well, the doctor thinks it is because I am a perfectionist.’

I think that this is a good interpretation of me, and one which my teacher will be pleased with (clever girl, I think to myself), but instead he says, ‘You wouldn’t think you were a perfectionist, not by looking at your handwriting.’

Then he sort of laughs a bit, because he is uncomfortable (I think), but he also thinks that he has made a good joke. I don’t laugh, because I think he is right; I don’t dot the ‘i’ on perfection and perhaps I should try harder to do so. I really should work on my handwriting. Then we say goodbye, and I think that this is all mixed up. I have left school, and I should be at university now. Then my teacher speaks to my mum, and it is embarrassing, for him to be
talking to her about me, because I am no longer a school girl; that girl in the uniform is behind us both.

‘Get well soon,’ he says.

‘I will,’ I say.

The plan is as follows:

Exercise = 40 minutes a day
Reading = 2 hours a day
Television watching = 8 hours a day
Eating = 20 minutes a day
Sleeping = 10 hours a day
Thinking = 2 hours a day
Cleaning = 1 hour a day

I don’t like to be disturbed. I like to be in this place, at this time, that is how I like things. Please do not try to move me. My Cindy Crawford aerobics video keeps me sane, and yet I have to practise it while everyone is out of the house because they think it is damaging me. I alternate between the two forty-minute workouts. I know the entire sequence, every word that is said and every beat of the music:

‘This exercise is really great for this little muscle in here’ (model points to top of thigh, I point to top of my thigh), ‘and one, and two … and twenty.’

I think it must be one of the better videos, because you actually feel it deep in your muscles. I don’t dare try any other tapes in case they don’t work, and then I will have wasted my exercise time. I think that if it hurts, it means that it must have some impact. NO PAIN – NO GAIN (or weight loss, in my case). I feel such satisfaction when my muscles ache and pulse with pain, and when it feels as though I am tearing my heart out. It is the first thing I think of in
the morning and the last thing I think of at night. I think about it all day in between, too. I don’t understand why they try and stop me doing it. I am making myself fit. I sometimes wonder if they know that I start exercising the very second they leave me on my own. As I watch the car pull away, I jump into my cycling shorts and press ‘play’. Sometimes they seem to come back just to check on me. This is so frustrating. I have to stop the tape, pull off my trainers and hide them behind the sofa, run to the bathroom, wipe the sweat from my face and pretend I have been lying there on my bed (like the way they want me to be), doing nothing. They want me to do nothing, so that I don’t use up any energy. My bottom is hurting from the hours I have spent lying and sitting down. I need this workout to refresh me. I need this to make me feel something, otherwise I feel disgusting and heavy and flabby.

They prefer it when I read. ‘Reading is motionless,’ they tell me. ‘Reading can help you relax.’

I sit there, pen in hand, analysing the text. I do not relax when I read. I think of achieving. I think of how I need to be better, and know more and be more intelligent. I now have doubts about going to Bristol University where I should be right now. I was only going there because of its Olympicsized swimming pool and the gym’s easy access – all so I could make sure I got plenty of exercise. I know they say I won’t go to university anyway, not even next year, but I don’t think like that. I can’t think like that, like I can’t eat chicken and potatoes. I have been reading about Cambridge University. This seems like the ideal place for me. Now this illness has happened to me, it must be this way for a reason. If I have to be away from university for a year, missing out on all the things that my friends are doing, then when I go, I want to go to the best place possible. So I sent away for the prospectus. The college at Cambridge that I like has a
gym actually on site – it’s ideal! Of course, they are all speechless. Mouths drop. Eyes bulge. Tears form. They don’t even congratulate me on making such a brave decision. They almost refuse to take my application form to school to get a reference from my old sixth-form head of year.

‘Of course,’ they say, ‘we will have to ask him to mention your illness on the form.’

‘Of course!’ I say.

My form is perfect. I have typed and retyped and retyped and retyped it. It is neat and tidy and faultless. He can mention my illness if they want, but my perfect form to Cambridge is in the post.

I tell them not to interfere. When they start to meddle I just step up the pace. They can’t understand the way I order things. I like things in order. Faultless. I like things done in a special way, or I get into a panic. It is the way I am. I have always been a person of routine. I am a creature of habit. It makes me feel better. I like to know how my day is planned. I know it all inside out. They don’t like this at all. They want to be part of it and so try and give me suggestions of things I should add to make my life more normal, more like theirs. I think this is their way of dampening their own guilt. It’s like my kind of control isn’t acceptable. You can hear it in the voices of strangers when I tell them I don’t drink tea or coffee and, ‘No thank you, I don’t drink alcohol either.’

They find it too difficult. They can’t understand how I can possibly be so restrained.

‘Don’t you miss food?’

‘Doesn’t this cake smell lovely? It would taste so good.’

No thank you. Blocked out, blocked out.

They convince themselves that I must break off from time to time. I must give in and join them in their weaknesses and addictions. But I never break! Really, never. I never give
in. They can’t imagine. They try, day after day, to be like me. That’s the irony. Of course, they don’t admit it, but they are constantly fighting their own battles against the biscuits. It’s what we are told to do. It’s what we should all be doing. I am just doing it to a further degree.

I will stop this when I am ready. I don’t know how, because I don’t really think in that direction at the moment, but I am sure there will be a way out when I am ready. They think I am like other girls and boys who have eating problems, but I don’t see myself like them. I didn’t realize it was such a big thing. I had no idea about anorexia before this or even what it meant. I never aspired to it. I never thought about it before. It is not like I wanted to join this club. Anyway, I am carrying on as normal because I can. Everyone seems surprised. But I have to carry on as normal because that is what I know. This is tiring. Thought is tiring. It is easier to just keep going forward, bit by bit. And to eat my medium-sized tomato to fill me up in the afternoon.

And so the scenario goes something like this.

Dr Whitecoat: ‘How about it if Dad were to make you some cottage cheese on crackers before you go to bed?’

I shrug my shoulders and force a reply. ‘I can’t.’

Mum starts to cry.

Now Dr Whitecoat has made my mum cry and this makes me feel so sick.

‘I can feed myself … you don’t understand … I’m not a child.’

I hardly consent to the words; I don’t like talking to him because then he thinks I am playing along. I hardly move my tongue. I force it back into my throat so that the words get stuck on my lips. My mouth hardly moves.

Dr Whitecoat shifts and smirks. ‘You realize that you won’t be going anywhere if you don’t get better. To tell the truth,
I highly doubt that you will get to university this time next year. And to think of applying to Cambridge, that is surely the worst decision! Have you thought of going to a college closer to home? Then you could continue to come here and Mum and Dad could keep an eye on you.’

Bang. Bang. Bang. Degrading, disgusting doctor, white-coat. He makes me explode.

‘I’m not staying in this fucking shithole and I’m sick of your fucking interference. I can sort this out myself. It is so demeaning to sit here while you talk about fucking cottage cheese …’

I stop myself. Who cares about cottage cheese? They think they know my patterns so well that now they are trying to adopt them for themselves. They are trying to talk in my anorexia language. They really have no idea.

Their other tactician is the nice-lady-dietician. She tries a different approach. Dr Whitecoat isn’t very popular, and he only talks about the feelings side of things, whereas nicelady-dietician is supposed to get to the nitty-gritty of the food business. So this time, it is another hospital and another corridor with brown plastic seats and old ladies. Nice-lady-dietician is a mother; she talks of her two children (who haven’t wrecked their families and who do eat their Christmas dinner) and their successes. Her daughter, who I went to school with (but we don’t mention that), is at university, and she is studying to be a doctor. She is lovely and jolly, and probably fatter than me and very happy. I am glad for the nice-lady-dietician’s jolly daughter, but I am very pleased that I don’t have to eat the nice-lady-dietician’s dinners. I have to sit on some scales, which look like a big potty, and the whole place smells of wee. I can see why they are doing this to me. They want to degrade me. Perhaps they think that if they sit me here like a baby or an old person, I will
feel humiliated into eating. It only makes me feel sick and cold and dirty. I want to get out of my clothes and lie in a boiling hot bath and forget this. I let them do it, only so I can be left alone.

I have made some pretty patterns in my food diary. I have to write down everything I eat and drink. This must include all things such as laxatives (I don’t use these – I am not even sure what they look like – but I wonder if I should). No one believes me when I say it anyway. The nice-lady-dietician is, of course, impressed by the accuracy of my diary. Amazingly, I have managed to do this most difficult of tasks. It feels like school in a boring, easy lesson with a patronizing teacher.

‘Well done, you,’ she says.

I have correctly charted each hour of the week with perfect regularity. I have used the blank page very creatively to make her happy. I don’t like to disappoint. Give me a new challenge and I will rise to the occasion. My diary looks like this:

I don’t mention that the bread is low calorie, or that the soup has only forty calories, or that I water down my skimmed milk. I add in ‘two’ slices of bread to help her think that I am progressing. She likes that. The nice-lady-dietician takes it all in. I think she believes me. I can’t quite understand how she can. She has given me room on these pages on which to write myself some further time to get away from her. I want to keep this space as my own, and so on it I will create another world. I love writing and making nice patterns with words, so it suits me fine to create these lists for her. I lie to keep her out. I don’t want her participation, thank you very much. I let her think she is participating, because otherwise she might become the not-so-nice-lady-dietician and that wouldn’t be nice at all.