Rachel Bennett
Ed
I squeeze my jeans shut and suck in my breath as hard as I can. I make my stomach as small as it could possibly be. Then I breathe out. And my gut slowly spills out over the rim of my pants.
I look at myself in the mirror and try not cry. My thick frizzy blond hair is not obeying my commands, my blue eyes are surrounded by dark purple bags, and my shirt will not quite hide the little bulge of stomach poking out from my too small jeans.
I gained weight again.
“Laura, let’s go!” a voice calls from downstairs.
I sigh, time to get this over with.
“Hi, my name is Dr. Andrea Pot, but you can call me Andrea” the woman says to me as she greets me in the uncomfortable waiting room, “You must be Laura.”
I stand up and straighten my large shirt over my jeans, hiding my stomach and nod, “Hi, it’s nice to meet you.” I say politely.
“Why don’t we go to my office?” The women says with a warm smile.
I look her over. She’s wearing black dress pants and a loose maroon blouse and sensible black shoes. Her dark hair is pulled back into a bun and her eyes are covered by dark rimmed glasses. But the thing I notice above all is that she looks fat. What the hell am I supposed to do if my eating disorder therapist is fat? Shouldn’t she be skinny?
I sigh and nod, then follow her down the thin white hallway covered in motivational posters with cheesy lines such as “You are beautiful,” and “Love yourself.”
What the hell is the point of that? You can show me as many posters as you want, there’s no way in hell I’m going to believe you.
I sit on a couch in a roomy, square-shaped, white office. She sits on an easy chair across from me. It doesn’t really look like an office.
“So why are you here?” Andrea asks me.
I look at her like she’s an idiot, “I have an eating disorder,” I say obviously, because I do, I obviously do.
“I know that,” She says with a small smile, “I mean, why do you want to be here?”
Honesty. I take a deep breath. I want to get better and if I lie to my therapist, I won’t, “I’m tired of hating myself,” I say quietly.
She nods and smiles sadly, “You don’t really hate yourself.” she says quietly.
“Yes I do.” I say angrily, what’s the point of being honest if she’s not going to believe me?
“What makes you think that?” she asks me.
“I just do!” I say loudly, ready to stomp out of the office in frustration.
“Really?” she asks.
“Yes! Of course, always there’s this little voice in the back of my head telling me how terrible I am and how little I deserve and telling me all these things I need to do to deserve stuff! I hate that voice and I hate myself!” I stop yelling, panting. Wow, I”m not usually that honest.
“That voice isn’t you.” Andrea says softly.
“Of course it’s me.” I say with an eye roll.
“No, that’s Ed.”
“Who the hell is Ed?” I ask. This is stupid, I should just go home. I really should. Why am I even here? This isn’t going to make me skinny, this is pointless.
“Ed is your abusive husband,” she answers, looking totally serious.
“I’m 16, I’m not married.”
“Ed is your eating disorder.”
I remember my life before Ed and I were metaphorically introduced. My family used to ask me to try new foods and tell me to finish off my plate. They would applaud me as I used to try new foods and flavors. And I always loved trying new foods and flavors. I loved the dance of new spices on the tip of my tongue. And I loved the feeling of warm satisfaction that came with the ache of a full stomach. Food used to be a fun part of my life.
And it wasn’t just food. I used to be so confident and talkative. I would sing songs to people as they smiled and told me how cute I was. I would run around and introduce myself to random strangers. I would say, “Hi, my name is Laura, do you want to be my friend?”
I was cute. The little girl with blond hair and blue eyes jumping up and down to be the first one picked when the magician asked for a volunteer. That was me.
But then I met Ed, and my life changed.
I suppose I first started hearing Ed around fourth grade, at least, that’s the first time I remember hearing him. He was introduced to me by this girl named Danielle who wouldn’t stop calling me fat. I suppose I was rather fat in retrospect, at least, fatter than most nine year old girls. I had a very round face that was extenuated by my straight blond hair. I was pudgy. But I don’t think you could exactly say that I was fat. I think that’s when I first met Ed, and unfortunately it was love at first sight.
He was beautiful and he told me what a beautiful young girl I could be. Model thin, with gorgeous skin, like the girls on TV. Like the girls on the boxes of meals my mom got in the mail. Those pretty young girls who everyone liked. That’s who I wanted to be. The kind of girl who would never be teased again.
And Ed could help me get there.
I don’t know why I’m back in this damn office. I must be masochistic or something. Why the hell am I sitting in a room talking about some stupid imaginary husband? I guess I feel I have to keep going back. Especially after I made my mom agree to send me to therapy.
“So, Ed told you how to look beautiful.” Andrea say with a sad frown after I finish telling her about Danielle.
“But there was no ‘Ed’” I say frustrated, “There was just me.”
Andrea nods, “Yes, but you changed the way you thought about things didn’t you? You told me that yourself not five minutes ago.”
“Well I changed the way I thought about food.”
“Was it really just food?” she asks skeptically.
“No, I guess not.”
When I first met Ed, I didn’t really know who he was. He was simply a new voice in the back of my head. At first he would only make small comments, like when I was in class and raised my hand to answer a question, he would tell me to put my hand down. No one likes a smart aleck he would tell me. And more than anything I just wanted to be liked, I didn’t want to be the weird girl that sits in the corner and reads her books. Not anymore. So I put my hand down.
Than he started making little comments about the way I dressed. He would tell me that my shirt was too tight, that people would see my belly. They would know that I had a big dessert last night. They would make fun of me. I didn’t want them to make fun of me. So I would change into a loose shirt that would hang over my stomach, hiding any other the chubby roles that might be there.
And because of him I started to make some pretty good friends. I would hang on to the ends of large cliques of popular girls. That girl who sat at the end of the rectangular popular table, but I was at the popular table. Ed told me that I made it, that he was proud of me for being there. After that, all I had to do was lay low and hide my dirty secret. The secret being that I was fat.
It was around sixth grade when the voice started to get really bad.
I looked around me and saw that now there were two types of girls. There were the thin ones with beautiful clear skin. And the awkward thick ones with bulging stomachs, chests, and acne covered faces. I was lucky enough to be the latter.
Of course everyone’s body was changing; some were just faster than others. Mine changed really fast. It felt as though one day I went from being a normal girl, to suddenly being a fat and ugly awkward looking girl. I started to have to wear glasses, and braces, and my forehead was so full of acne you could barely see my skin. My mom taught me how to put on makeup. She would always say that it made my skin look more even. She told me that if I didn’t wear it than I didn’t look really good. Ed seemed to agree with her so I would wear make up pretty much all the time.
Soon other girls started to date a few boys, but none of the boys ever looked at me. It was because I was fat. I knew it was because I was fat. No boy would ever want to date me.
That’s when I first started seeing and actual image of Ed. He was a translucent image, not something I really saw literally, but an image. He was perfect boy. The one who I wanted to be with. Gorgeous with dark brown hair and amber eyes. Smooth skin and a muscular frame. The boy I wanted to call me beautiful.
He never called me beautiful.
But he told me everything I had to do to become beautiful. He taught me how to eat little tiny amounts of food in each sitting and how to deal with the slight empty feeling in my stomach. He taught me to love the empty feeling. But most of all, he taught me to count calories.
To focus on each number and track every crumb that entered my body. Every crumb that could add on to the lines of fat cells beneath my skin.
He told me how many calories I could eat each day. One thousand one day, if I was good and exercised, but only five hundred if I didn’t.
I must never eat desert, or candy, or cookies, or sugar of any kind. Never touch the bread basket at restaurants. And Halloween was over forever,
I followed every one of his rules and I became beautiful.
My weight dropped through seventh and eighth grade and people would comment on how amazing I looked. My mom always bragged about how much control I had. How beautiful I looked.
I got contacts and my acne cleared up. My waist was thin and I felt good. Confident.
But it was never enough. I kept losing weight and it was good, but I didn’t know how to stop.
Then I reached what I suppose you could have called my goal weight. At that point I was five feet five inches and one hundred fifteen pounds. It was a good weight. But I couldn’t stop losing. Not so much because I didn’t want to, but more because I didn’t know how to. It was as though I had two choices, to over eat and gain weight or under eat and lose weight.
And losing weight would always be better.
“Do you know how much do you weigh now? If you don’t mind my asking.” Andrea says at our next meeting.
“Why do you want to know?” I ask ashamed.
“I already know how much you weigh,” she says gently, and it was true, they had weighed me after our first appointment, but they wouldn’t tell me the number, “I just want to know if you know.”
I look at the ground trying to keep from crying, “I weigh 185 pounds” I say quietly.
“And how does that make you feel?” She asks.
“Ashamed,” I whisper, “Like a failure.”
“Why don’t you tell me a little about how you gained the weight?”
In high school the work became hard and my life became stressful. I was in the AP crowd. The clique of over-achieving smart people who wanted to get into top notch colleges. And to do so I took the hardest courses that my school had to offer.
And in doing so I suppose you could say I sort of overloaded myself with work.
It’s really hard to watch your weight when you’re staying up until four in the morning studying.
And sometimes, I might go a little over the calorie limit for the day, like maybe 1800, or 1900 calories. It really wasn’t that bad. But I still slowly began to gain weight.
And then Ed would get really angry at me.
If the number on the scale went up, he would yell at me. He would scream in my head for hours and tell me how stupid I was to disobey him. To ignore all his rules. How dare I let myself gain any weight. He always told me I was a failure.
I was a failure a lot in ninth grade. I gained weight back slowly but surely. Pounds inching up and up on the scale. Eventually I couldn’t stop myself from eating anymore. In my head I would just say “Fuck it, if I’m going to eat a lot I might as well enjoy it.” And I would eat and eat and eat.
And Ed would yell at me, and berate me. And tell me that I didn’t deserve to be happy. Not if I was going to allow myself to be fat.
By the end of ninth grade I would stand naked in front of the mirror and Ed would be there, staring with me. He would pinch at the belly rolls and groan with disgust. That’s why you have no friends, he would say to me, they see that. They see how disgusting you are. How ugly. Who would want to be friends with someone like you? I would stare at myself and stand as straight as possible, lengthening my stomach as I sucked in. There, now if I could hold that for the rest of my life everything would be okay. But of course I couldn’t, and I wasn’t.
“So you began to binge?” Andrea asks.
“I suppose,” I say, looking at the floor as I try to suppress the intense shame boiling in my stomach.
“Have you ever purged?” she asks.
My head snaps up, “I’ve never thrown up.” I say quickly.
“That’s not what I asked.”
In high school the relationship between Ed and me continued to get even more violent. He was with me all the time, following me everywhere I went, commenting on everything. But most of all, he commented on food. Everything I put in my mouth had a number and Ed would never let me forget about the number. As the numbers grew larger he would whisper them into my ear making sure that I knew that they were adding up slowly, making my body grow.
And when I rebelled against Ed and decided to eat, it would get dangerous. It was one day towards the end of ninth grade when everything exploded for the first time. I was fifteen years old. He had barely let me eat anything that day, because he told me the number I reached the day before was far too high. I sat in my bed and tried to focus on my textbook, I needed to get good grades. But my brain was full of cotton balls and the words kept blurring as if the textbook were written in dry erase marker. Finally I couldn’t take it anymore and I wobbled down the stairs to the kitchen.
Ed must have been taking a nap, because I didn’t hear his voice for next hour or so as I quietly shoved the majority of the snack foods in our pantry down my throat. I don’t remember exactly what I ate, but it was a lot. Fruit-rollups, Special K bars, Zone bars, fruit snacks, little packets of gushers, bowls of sugary cereal. I remember basking in the delicious sugary tastes and feeling no regret as each empty calorie filled my all too empty stomach. Ed was nowhere to be seen.
I heard footsteps on the stairs and froze. My mom walked into the kitchen.
“What are you doing?” she asked me, looking me over with disapproval in her eyes.
“I was hungry.” I said guiltily, refusing to make eye-contact.
“Did you eat all of this?” she asked, almost dangerously, looking into the nearly empty pantry.
I suppose my silence was answer enough because that’s when the lecturing started.
“You know you’re overweight Laura, you can’t just eat like this. It’s not good for you. And you were doing so well on your diet; I know that you’re better than this...”
This went on for five minutes or so before I trudged up to my room, my bloated stomach bulging pregnantly from my pajama pants.
I entered my room and curled into a ball on my bed. That’s when Ed returned.
He stood over me and started shouting all the things that my mom was thinking, but would never say. You’re a fat bitch! You don’t deserve to live you damn failure! If you can’t do this how do you expect to do anything in life!
I cried and tried to argue with him. It was only one night, one bad night. It didn’t mean anything in the long run.
But it did he argued angrily and if I didn’t fix it right then, then I would never be beautiful. Never have friends. I would never be loved.
I needed to get all this crap out of my system. That’s what I needed to do. I needed to get this disgusting food baby to disappear. Ed told me what to do.
I went to the bathroom and shoved six little pills into my mouth and then went to sleep. In middle of the night I woke with a start as a sharp pang shot through my stomach and raced to bathroom to empty out last night’s failure.The next morning I was left with a pleasant feeling of emptiness and success that reverberated through my body and dark bags under my eyes.
“So laxatives were your choice tool for purging.” Andrea says softly.
I nod, “Yeah, It’s disgusting isn’t it?”
She shook her head, “It’s not healthy, but don’t think you’re the only one. I have many clients who do the exact same thing.”
“Really?” I ask, because I honestly didn’t know that.
“Yes.”
We’re silent for an uncomfortable minute.
“So Laura.”
“Yes?” I ask quietly.
“If the feeling of emptiness the laxatives left made you happy, why did you decide to come to therapy? Did your parents make you?”
I shake my head. They most certainly did not I think bitterly to myself.
“Then why?”
This pattern would continue for a long time. I would follow Ed’s orders all day, being as careful as I could, and then at night I would lose control. And then Ed would force me to take those little pills that would make it all better.
It was sick.
I knew it was sick. But I thought I could take care of it all by myself. Ed told me I could. He told me I could stop binging. All I needed to do was stop and focus and listen to him. But still it wouldn’t stop. And my weight continued to grow higher, no matter how many times I purged my stuffed stomach.
My mom put a lock on the refrigerator so I couldn’t get in. It would hang there, holding the stainless steel door shut the tiny dial of mysterious numbers teasing me. I would wander across the hard wood floor to the panty but only find cans of preserved fruits and vegetables, all the snack foods and sweets hidden away from my searching eyes so that only my brothers could find them. But I always found a way to binge anyway. It became a game to me. The rules were that I could only eat so long as no one saw. Not my mom, not my dad, not my brothers, and especially not Ed. If no one knew I was eating like this, than no one would criticize me.
I would eat anything I could get my hands on, from frozen vegetables to frozen bagels. It really didn’t matter what I was eating, I just needed to eat. Only when Ed wasn’t watching.
So I did.
It was in the middle of eating a bag of frozen peas that I realized I needed help. I had an eating disorder. I was sure of that. But to get help, I had to get through Ed first.
He listed all the reasons I shouldn’t get help, and to be honest, they were some pretty damn good reasons.
People would judge me. After all, only crazy people went to therapy.
The therapist couldn’t help me; I was fine, just a girl trying to feel better about herself.
What made me think I deserved help when there were so many other people in the world worse off than me? Was I really that selfish?
It took a long time before I finally stopped listening to Ed and listened to my own common sense. People can’t judge you when you’re dead, I told myself. And if I want to feel better about myself, I should find someone who can help me. And then, yes there are people in the world worse off than me but I feel horrible and no one deserves to feel horrible, even me.
Ed was wrong and I was right. It was time to find help.
The day I finally built up the courage to speak to my parents was a long one. School dragged on for what felt like days and then there were the hours before the two of them came home from work. And of course, that entire time Ed was trying to convince me not to talk to them.
They won’t believe you he told me. They won’t care. Just wait until tomorrow.
He was clinging at any desperate excuse to keep me from talking to my parents, he even went so far as to say they hate you. Which I knew for a fact wasn’t true.
So I ignored Ed with all my might and rehearsed what I was going to say to my parents over and over until I had it down flat. And finally, after dinner, it was just me and them, sitting at the kitchen table.
“Mom, dad, I want to go to therapy.” I told them, my voice was as steady as I could make it.
“What?” My mom asked, a look of surprise and dread on her face, “Why would you want to do that?”
My dad looked thoughtful.
“I think I have an eating disorder.” I said, as calmly as I could.
“You don’t have an eating disorder,” my mom said with a snort.
“I binge every evening and purge every night and then proceed to starve myself in the morning.” I said. starting what I knew was obvious to her. How could she not think I had an eating disorder?
“So stop,” she said in an obvious voice.
My eyes welled up, “I can’t”
“It’s easy,” she said, not understanding.
“Sarah,” my dad finally interjected, “If she thinks she needs to go to therapy, we should do whatever we can to help her.”
My mom frowned, “my daughter is not going to therapy”
There was no stopping the tears now. Ed was right, they were ashamed of me.
My dad reached across the table and held my hand, “Laura, if you think you need help, than I am happy to get you some.” He said quietly.
“She’s fine!” my mom said again, shouting now, “Just go on a damn diet! That’s what I do.”
Now I was angry, “And then gain the weight back? That’s what you do too!” I said bitterly.
My mom looked as though I had slapped her.
My dad shifted in his chair uncomfortably, not quite knowing what he should do. Perpetually five foot six and one hundred sixty pounds, he couldn’t understand the women’s world of appearance and weight-loss.
My mom glared at me angrily and then whispered across the table, “If you think therapy is the only way you’ll lose weight, then I’ll agree with it, it just better work.”
I looked at my mom, my anger dissipating, “Maybe we can do it together.” I said quietly.
“What?” she asked.
“Eating disorder therapy.”
“ I. Do. Not. Have. An. Eating. Disorder,” she said angrily, then left the kitchen to go out for her evening run, leaving me crying on the table, my dad sitting across from me.
“She loves you, you know,” he said quietly, “she just wants what’s best for you.”
“I know.”
“That was really brave of you,” Andrea says quietly.
I nod, tears making their way to the corner of my eyes.
“You think your mom has an eating disorder?” She asks, changing the subject slightly.
I nod, “She’s been on diets as long as I can remember, but she always gains the weight back.”
Andrea nods, “Sometimes people need to figure it out for themselves like you did,” she says quietly, and you can’t help her until you’re better.”
“So what should I do,” I ask. Up until now, we had only talked about the past and what has happened to me, she had yet to give me something that I need to do to get better.
Finally she gives me an assignment and until our next appointment, I have to do it.
Every time I eat something I have to write down every thought that goes through my head. That is easier said than done. I have been doubting every morsel I put in my mouth for so long the thought process has become almost automatic. Eat this, don’t eat this, you should eat this, you’re hungry, you’re fat. It can go on for hours before I finally put that first bite in my mouth.
Also it’s really hard to write down thoughts to write down when I’m at school. I’m in tenth grade now and I’ve been seeing Andrea for almost four months and it’s been helping. But I’m still really stressed out and I do not like eating at school.
So after a long time of thinking I take a pen and write something like this.
I don’t want to eat this, it’s fattening, it’s disgusting. It’s greasy. I’ll feel sick after. But it’s so delicious, I’m so hungry. I’m fat. Everyone hate’s me. I’m a failure.
When I next come to her office, Andrea gives me a highlighter.
“Ok Laura, here’s what you’re going to do, I want you to take this highlighter and highlight every thought that you think belongs to Ed.
I nod and complete the task than hand her the highlighter.
She gives me a Darth Vader mask in return.
“What is this for” I say, honestly confused.
“This is so you can read the Ed’s lines and realize that they don’t belong to you, they belong to the Dark Side,” she says, making her voice all deep as she says “Dark Side.”
I laugh, “This is ridiculous.”
“Just humor me” she says with a smile.
And I do. And as I read the lines I become even more confused. These words, these insults have been a part of me for so long. I don’t know what I would do without them. This criticism has been the definition of me for as long as I can remember.
“Andrea?” I ask quietly as I am about to leave for the day.
“Yes Laura?” she asks in return.
“If I’m not my eating disorder.... If I’m not Ed, than.... Who am I?” I ask her.
“That’s what we’re going to find out.”
To separate myself from Ed, Andrea would help me decide what goals belong to Ed and what goals belong to me. This is easier said than done. At this point in my life Ed has become a part of me. His thoughts are one with mine. Everywhere I go I hear him in the back of my head whispering to me what I should do. And I always listen. Always. He is always right after all.
But slowly Ed and I begin to fight more often. He will tell me to starve myself for the day and I will tell him no, I don’t want to. I want to feel better about myself. I don’t want to starve.
But then he would call me fat and ugly and I would cry. And then I would starve myself. Because even if Ed was wrong, he was still there, he loved me. He would make me loved. He always told me that.
“This is progress,” Andrea tells me as I tell her about how Ed still keeps making his way past my defenses and causing me to hurt myself more.
“How?” I nearly shout, frustrated.
“Because you’re beginning to understand that Ed’s voice is not your own, that’s the beginning.” she tells me with an encouraging smile.
“It’s hard,” I say quietly, “I feel like I’m not getting anywhere.” I sigh, “Sometimes, I just want to give up.”
“That’s normal,” Andrea says, “Who do you have to support you?” she asks suddenly.
“To support me?” I ask, “Um, no one?”
“No one?” she asks surprised, “Your parents?”
I shake my head vigorously.
“Your brothers?”
I think about it, “They’re young, I know they love me and will support me, but they don’t really know what’s going on.”
“Friends?”
“Um... I don’t really have any.”
So my assignment for the week is to make friends. Yeah like I can just do that. Just like that. I’m not that four year old who could be friends with anyone I wanted just by looking at them with my cute little smile. I’m a fat awkward teenager.
Shit, that’s Ed speaking. “I am not a fat awkward teenager,” I whisper quietly to myself.
Yes you are, I hear Ed whisper back.
“I’m not, I can do this.”
I mean, I talk to people at school, but we mostly talk about grades and classes. Not about anything interesting. The people I sit with at lunch will talk about politics and religion and I will occasionally chime and offer my two cents here or there.
Usually I didn’t eat lunch at school anyway. I don’t like it when people are there to watch me eat. I didn’t need them to judge me. So usually I will wait until after I got home to eat some lunch. I will almost always be lightheaded by the end of the day but that was no big deal. That was a perpetual state for me.
So this one Thursday of tenth grade I decide to eat lunch with my friends, or acquaintances, or whatever. I stop in the cafeteria to buy some yogurt and a salad then look around for a place to sit. I see my “friends” sitting at a table eating their lunches and walked over there.
“Laura’s eating lunch today?” Elizabeth comments.
I flinch, “Um, yeah, but I think I’m going to eat somewhere else, I have a lot of work to do.” I can’t do this. I can’t. I hate eating in front of people. I hate talking to people who make me feel like my entire worth is based in my academics and my appearance.
So I start wandering the school looking for somewhere quiet to sit and eat in silence.
I eventually settle on the art room which is usually empty at this time of day. The paint chipped table and the splattered floor is comforting. It’s not perfect. It’s messy. Like me.
Then Jessica walks in.
I’ve seen her around school before. She’s artsy and dorky. Not part of my usual obsessive academic crowd, but smart too. In a lot of AP English classes and AP studio art. I have never really talked to her before, but she’s seems nice. A thin and tiny thing with dark brown hair and thick rimmed glasses. She comes into the art room, not noticing I am there. She goes and pulls a half-finished painting from a portfolio and puts it on a table to start working and moves to get some paints.
When she looks up she notices me.
“Oh, hi” she says surprised, “no one’s usually here right now. Sorry am I interrupting something?”
I shake my head.
“Ok, I’m Jessica by the way, I’m in your English class... I think, aren’t you one of those mega AP kids? What are you doing in the art room?”
“I’m Laura” I say quietly, “I needed a break from reality.”
She chuckles, “I hear that,” she grins, “Step into my TARDIS and let me show you the stars.”
“What?”
She laughs again, “I guess you don’t watch Doctor Who.”
“What’s that?”
She smiles.
“So it sounds ridiculous but it’s about this Timelord who travels though time and space in this tiny blue box and saves people with his companion named Rose but he and Rose just got separated and it was so sad and I cried so hard but it’s so awesome and I love it!” I stop to breath, panting at the end of my run on sentence.
Last weekend I spent two days at Jessica’s house and watched the first two seasons of Doctor Who and it was amazing. I was severely behind on my homework but that was ok, because it was the first fun I’ve had in a long while.
Andrea grins.
“What?” I ask.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen you this excited about something,” She says with a grin.
I frown, “oh, that’s kind of pathetic isn’t it.”
“No way, you’re going to put on the Darth Vader mask if you’re going to talk like that.”
I sigh and take the mask and put it on. After all this time, it still feels ridiculous.
“No why is it pathetic?” she asks.
“Because” I say behind the mask, “I’m not getting excited about getting better or doing well on a test or anything real like that, I’m getting excited about a damn television show. Not even just a tv show! A science fiction show! I’m pathetic!”
“Ok Laura, stop,” Andrea says, stopping me, “remember we were going to learn who you are? Well maybe this is who you are? Maybe you like science fiction. There’s nothing wrong with that. It’s just you.”
“Me?” I ask. I take off the mask, “Is that who I am?”
“Now tell me what you really think.” Andrea says, looking me in the eyes.
“I think, I may be pretty cool.”
Jessica and I become relatively fast friends after our Doctor Who weekend. The world she introduces me to is one I didn’t really understand before meeting her. It is a world where reality exists in science fiction shows and fantasy novels. In lands where no one gives a shit about your appearance and life is about adventure. She shows me this website where people like us, who love Doctor Who and other science fiction and fantasy get together and just talk and get really excited over fictional things. Slowly my world lightens as I begin to realize I am not alone. These people online, and Jessica too, they like me for who I am. The people on the internet have never even seen me, and they still like me.
Of course Ed keeps telling me that that’s why they like me. They’ve never seen how fat and ugly I am. But that doesn’t explain Jessica I tell him. She likes me. He doesn’t really have a come back to that.
Soon I understand all her Doctor Who references.
One day in towards the end of junior year of high school, I start to leave the house to go to the mall with Jessica in an awesome Doctor Who themed tee shirt that Jessica bought me as a present and my mom gives me a critical look.
“Are you really leaving the house in that?” she asks.
I grin happily, “Yes, yes I am.”
Jessica is how I start to learn more about what an interesting quirky person I could be. How I can express myself around someone and not worry about being judged. I trust her.
One night I find myself binging out of the bag of chocolate chips my mom had hidden in the china cabinet. I can’t stop eating until I eat the entire bag. I feel disgusting and sick.
Ed keeps telling me to get off my ass and grab the laxatives and fix my failure. But I didn’t want to. I really didn’t want to. I hate taking laxatives, more than anything in the world. Yes I like the feeling of emptiness that comes after, but the whole process is painful and disgusting.
But he just won’t stop yelling and I just can’t keep fighting back. Not alone. But then I remember that this time, I’m not alone.
So I call Jessica.
“Can you come over?” I ask hoarsely.
“Now?” she asks surprised.
“Please”
I hear voices in the background, what must be her talking to her parents, “I’ll be there in ten minutes.”
When she finally gets to my room I’m lying on my bed cradling a bottle of laxatives to my chest.
“I don’t want to take them.” I say quietly.
“Those?” she asks confused. I have never really talked to her about my eating disorder before.
“I was really bad tonight, I need to purge. I need to take them. But I don’t want to.”
Realization dawns on her. I wait patiently for what I know will be a cold hard slap of rejection. She’s definitely going to be disgusted with me. But the rejection never comes.
“Give them here.” I hear her say.
I look up at her, “What?”
“I said give them here,” she says calmly.
I hand her the pills.
“Follow me.”
I followed her down to the kitchen. God I hate the kitchen. I hate the cold hardwood floors, the silver fridge, and the white closet door leading to the panty. It has been the setting of so many failures.
She turns on the garbage disposal and takes out a pill.
“What are you doing?”
She tosses it in and hands the bottle to me, “your turn.”
“What?”
She looks at me, her eyes soft and understanding. She hugs me, “You can do it,” she whispers.
And just like that, I could. Slowly one by one, we toss each pill away.
I can feel Ed standing in the corner of my brain shaking his head in disgust but I just smile at him, because for the first time ever, I won.
After Jessica leaves I stare at myself in the mirror. I stand there naked and see the little rolls of fat. I pinch at my stomach, watching the gooey, disgusting rubbery blubber lift from my stomach.
Ed won’t leave me alone, he won’t go away. That's what you look like, he tells me over and over again. Fat and blubbery, like a whale.
I can see him in the corner of my room through the mirror, leering at me with his perfect mouth, on his perfect face.
But no! He’s wrong. This is not me. I’m not fat. I’m beautiful because I am me.
And suddenly he changes. No longer is he the beautiful ideal image of a boy, I see who he really is. I see his emaciated body and sunken cheeks revealing thin cheek bones. I see each and every rib protruding from his body. I see the dark bags under his eyes.
He doesn’t want to make me beautiful I realize. He wants to make me like him.
Well I won’t be like him.
I take the hair brush and throw it at the mirror. It shatters.
I can see his face in each of the shards of reflective glass glaring at me. But I don’t care anymore. Because although I don’t know who I want to be, I know I don’t want to be like him.
Jessica and I decide to go the senior prom together as friends. I wasn’t going to go but she convinces me. Telling me that it’s a once in a lifetime chance and that afterward we can have a movie marathon.
When I tell Andrea she is ecstatic.
“You’re going to have so much fun!” she tells me happily.
“Am I though?” I ask skeptically.
“What are you worried about?” she asks.
“Everyone will see me in a dress and know what my body looks like, I don’t want that.” I say quietly.
She smiles, “Well think of this as an assignment than,” she says, “I want you to go to prom and not think about everyone else, and just have fun.”
I sigh, “Ok, I will do my best.”
On Saturday my mom takes me to buy my prom dress. We go to Lord and Taylor's and wander around, looking at dresses, picking up the occasional one I like here and there. Finally we settle on this blue one that I think actually looks pretty good on me.
"Size ten," my mom says disapprovingly.
I can see Ed standing behind her nodding his head in agreement. I could hear him singing the same old song. “You're fat. You're ugly. You shouldn't go to prom, you won't have fun. Everyone will make fun of you.” But I still see him for who he really is, his sunken lips trying to tell me that I’m too fat to have fun. Well, he’s wrong.
I look them both straight in the eye and try my best to keep my voice steady. I say "The same dress size as Marilyn Monroe."
My mom stares at me, shock in her eyes. Ed glares at me. But I don’t care, because I am right and they are wrong.
I walk down the stairs, with Jessica who had come over to get ready with me. Ed follows me down, his light steps making no sounds on the floor. It's not too late to turn back, he tells me. That dress looks awful on you. What are you doing? This isn't you. Everyone there will judge you. They'll see the rolls on your stomach.
"Let's go,” Jessica says walking out the door.
I give a shaky sigh and nod and follow her to the car.
Prom is actually kind of fun.
Mostly I hang out with Jessica and some of her other friends. We talk about TV, movies and books and then dance wildly and badly together.
A bunch of my academic friends are going to Elizabeth's house after Prom. Her parents aren’t home. There will definitely be alcohol.
"Do you want to go to the party with me?” a voice says and I turn around to see a friend of mine, Jason Miller looking at me. He’s cute and blushing a little.
I really don't. I did really like Jason, but I don’t think I would have fun at some crowded after party. I want to be with people who I don’t constantly feel self-conscious around.
“No, sorry, I’m going to hang out with some other friends,” I tell him.
He looks disappointed, “Oh,” he says, “well, I just thought you should know I think you look beautiful tonight.”
At first I’m surprised and then I grin and imagine Darth Vader getting punched in the stomach. Of course I’m beautiful. “Thank you,” I tell him, “Maybe we can go out some other time.”
He smiles and nods and then goes over to his friends.
I go to Jessica's house. We watch old science fiction movies and eat junk food until five in the morning.
It is probably the best night of my life.
When I get home the next day, my mom is waiting for me, sitting at the kitchen table. She has four different diet booklets out in front of her. She is crying.
"Mom! What's wrong?" I asked, alarmed.
"Did you have fun?" she asks me.
"Yes," I say still worried, "a lot of fun actually."
"Laura..." she starts, her voice trailing off to a whisper.
"Yes?" I ask.
"I love you, you know that, right?"
"Of course." I say softly.
“Why do I keep gaining weight back?” She asks me.
I look at her sadly, “I don’t know, but you should know, I love you no matter how much you weight.”
She cries harder. "How's therapy?" she asks.
"Really good," I say.
"Can you tell me about it?" she asks, her voice shaking.
I look at her. Her blond shoulder length hair fell straight down her face and her brown eyes look red and tired. She had just finished Nutrisystem a month or so before, he stomach now fit into the Chanel skirt she’s wearing but I know it’s not going to last. She always gains the weight back.
"Why?" I ask her, curious. Is she finally ready? I wonder.
"You're so strong," she whispers, "I want to be as strong as you."
"Well, first I need to introduce you to someone," I say, looking at the personification of my eating disorder standing quietly in the corner. "This this is Ed."
At my last session of therapy before college, Andrea tells me it was time to divorce Ed.
"Will he go away?" I ask her.
"No," she says, smiling sadly, “like any ex he will always be there, especially when you're having a bad day. He will definitely show up. But now that you know he's wrong, you don't have to listen."
"Easier said than done" I say quietly, "I'm scared, what if I relapse?"
"I know," Andrea says with a small smile, "that's why we're going to find you a therapist near school and also why you have my phone number. You'll be fine."
"Thank you Andrea, for everything."
"You're welcome and good luck."
At home, my mom is waiting for me with a pile of paper. She has recently started going to therapy as well and was doing a lot better.
"What are these?" I ask her.
"Divorce papers," she answers.
"Really?" I ask, surprised.
"I think you’re ready," she says smiling,
"I love you mom."
"I love you too."
