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The Diet Scene
by Angela
After two months of relaxing summer vacation,
it was back to school for the awaited South View seventh grade.
After a full morning of classes, lunch finally arrived.
Katie walked and took her usual place beside
her best friends Cassidy and Leah. Katie opened her brown
paper bag and pulled out some chicken and fries that her mother
packed for her that morning.
When she glanced up and realized Leah and Cassidy
were staring at her. "What?" Katie exclaimed; they both looked
down at Katie's lunch and laughed then looking back at their
own lunch which was quite small.
Katie was confused. "I don't understand," said
Katie. "God Katie... get a clue. We're in grade 7 now. Boys
are important. We need to look terrific for them! We can't
afford to eat certain things," said Leah as Cassidy nodded
her head in approval. Katie looked at them and said, "Is that
all your going to eat?" and they nodded their heads.
After lunch there was Afternoon classes to go
to. Katie couldn't stop thinking of what Leah and Cassidy
had said. Maybe they were right. So when school was over Katie
walked home.
When she got home she was still thinking about
what her friends had ate and decided they were right. When
her mother, Missy, made some dinner, Katie ate very little.
Missy noticed this and asked Katie why she was eating so little,
saying that it was very unusual that she would eat such a
small amount. After all she usually had such a big appetite.
"Oh, I'm just trying to be a little more careful with what
I'm eating. Speaking of which, would you mind if I start making
my own lunch for school, and you know… have some responsibility
now that I'm in the 7th grade."
Katie's mother was surprised by this, but at
the same time pleased that Katie was choosing to be healthy
and responsible, never once did the thought cross her mind
that this could be the start of something seriously dangerous.
The next day Katie got up early, still thinking
about what was said yesterday at lunch, she decided to skip
breakfast, and packed herself some lunch…
When lunchtime arrived she pulled out her lunch,
hoping that her friends would approve. They did. She felt
happy, excepted and proud that she had managed to rise in
the eyes of her friends, but this was short lived. Leah looked
up at Katie. "You've done well today but tomorrow do you reckon
you could leave this one thing out? It's unnecessary." Katie
was mystified but didn't want to let her friends down, so
she agreed.
The next day at lunch Katie brought less to
eat than the day before. She showed her friends and they nodded
approvingly. "That's so much better." Leah had said to her.
"There's no need to eat so much."
Katie smiled and began to eat her lunch with
her friends. When she got home from school that day her stomach
started to hurt her very badly. She didn't tell her mother
though, because she knew it had something to do with her new
regime. She decided that she'd ask her friends about it the
next day.
At the lunch table Katie asked her friends about
the almost unbearable pain in her stomach." That just means
that what you are doing is working."
And all this continued throughout the rest of
the term. Each day Katie would bring less and less food to
school in search for approval and acceptance. There came a
time when she surpassed her friend's expectations. One day
she arrived at school without her lunch and saw that they
thought this was a good idea, however even they were unsure;
the ones who had started it all.
"Well, the less you eat the better." Katie told
them. "But you have to eat something even if it is only a
little meal. I think it's good that you're taking it seriously
and everything but don't you think you're doing it over a
bit?" asked Leah. "Yeah, Leah's right… you look good and everything,
but come on you're taking this way to seriously."
"Leave me alone you guys!" and Katie stalked
off. The thing was she KNEW that her friends were right. She
KNEW what she was doing was wrong and was hurting her. But
she couldn't stop It had become an obsession.
When she got home from school that night she
went straight to her bedroom. She put on her music and lay
on her bed. As she lay there her mind was racing "how can
I loose more weight? How can I please Leah and Cassidy? How
can I avoid dinner?" these thoughts turned into a harsh voice
shouting at her "what are you on your bed you don't deserve
to be on here get off now". She did as the voice said sitting
in the corner of her room scared and motionless "Don't just
sit there you idiot. Burn those calories. I want sit ups now"
he shouted. Katie didn't know who was shouting but went along
with his demands as she didn't want to fail him like she had
her friends.
She felt like all her life she'd been failing;
everything and everybody. And now she'd found something she
could succeed at, something she was actually good at losing
weight. And the voice in her head that kept telling "you're
a fat loser who'll never amount to anything if you don't do
exactly what I say" didn't help; it was like living with some
insane personal trainer inside her head all day every day.
As the days and weeks went on, Katie was sucked
more and more into the whirlpool that was going on inside
her mind. Every day she ate less and less, and yet the reflection
that gazed back at her when she looked in the mirror did not
seem to change.
Even when she started having to wear an elastic
belt to stop her already tiny pants from falling off her,
she could not believe that she might be becoming too thin;
she did not believe there was any such thing, and even if
she had, how could she have believed it of herself when the
voice was constantly screaming "you lazy fat loser" inside
her head.
She lost interest in everything; music, boys,
make-up, even hanging out with Leah and Cassidy. All she could
think about every day was how little she could get away with
eating and how she could hide what was happening to her from
her friends and family.
Although before she would never have been seen
dead wearing sweat pants outside the house, now she refused
to wear anything else as they were the only clothes baggy
enough to conceal her scrawny, bony body and protect her from
the sympathetic looks from strangers in the street that she
dreaded most. She didn't need sympathy from other people;
couldn't they see that she had a problem, that she was FAT,
and that she was trying to fix it? Weren't they as disgusted
as she was by the imaginary rolls of fat that made her want
to throw up every time she took a shower? Maybe the sympathy
in their eyes was the same that she had seen in her mother's
eyes when she looked at the overweight waitress in the local
diner: "poor thing, how can anyone let themselves get like
that"? She tried not to notice the increasingly wary look
in her family's eyes every time they sat down to dinner.
Mealtimes were no longer a pleasurable bonding
experience; they had become a battleground. All any of them
were thinking about from the moment they sat down was "what
is Katie going to eat today"?
Her mother had tried everything; coaxing, threatening,
pleading; she had prepared an endless succession of Katie's
favorite meals, only to see her run out of the room in tears
and spend the rest of the evening locked in her bedroom.
She simply could not understand what was happening
to the laughing, confident daughter she'd been used to having;
all she could see was that something was badly wrong.
Then, finally, one day, Katie fainted in social
studies class. She tried to tell everyone she was alright,
but the teacher insisted that she had to go and see a doctor
and the guidance counselor right away.
So that was how she came to be sitting in the
guidance counsellor's office, crying her heart out; the tears
were partly anger at herself for being so weak (surely there
was no way she should have fainted when she was eating enough
to feed a small army), partly shame at her secret being discovered
(for months the voice had been telling her that she could
never tell anyone anything about what she was doing, as they
would think she was weird and stay away from her, or worse
that they would give her a pity she neither wanted, needed
nor felt she deserved) and partly fear of what was going to
happen to her. She was terrified they would make her eat;
couldn't they see that that was the very thing that was terrifying
her in the first place? Eventually, the guidance counsellor
and the doctor came back into the office. The counselor took
her hand, looked into her eyes and said "Katie, you're very
ill. You have a problem called anorexia nervosa, and if you
don't get help it will kill you. The doctor and I want you
to consider going to a place he knows about where they help
girls with this sort of problem" The guidance counselor picked
up the phone to call Katie's parents. Katie was Terrified
of what her parents would say or do.
So that was how Katie found herself in the hospital.
At first everything about it seemed terrifying; the food was
scary (she couldn't believe the amount she was required to
eat could possibly be healthy, and the voice kept screaming
at her that she was a greedy fat pig and had really let herself
go), the other patients were scary (they all seemed to be
so much thinner than she was), even the staff was scary (although
she knew they were only trying to help). Meal times were the
worst; seeing a full plate in front of her and knowing she
had to eat it all made her want to burst into tears and run
away. In fact, the first few times she did exactly that, but
gradually the staff managed to persuade her to stay and talk
about what she was feeling rather than just running away.
But the therapy sessions were hard as well; in Katie's family,
people never talked about feelings, and being expected to
share everything she was thinking and feeling with a group
of people she hardly knew was really hard for her. She felt
uncomfortable having to talk about things she'd never talked
about before; how her grandmother used to hit her when she
went to stay with her over the summer, and how her parents
had refused to believe her and told her she was a "bad, wicked"
child for lying and making up stories like that. Slowly she
became more and more able to talk to her therapist, Karen,
about these things. Then one day, Karen arranged a session
for Katie and her parents to talk about everything. At first,
her parents continued to say that nothing had happened, that
she was making it all up, but finally her mother started crying,
held Katie very close and said "Sweetheart, I'm so sorry.
She used to hit me too when I was a little girl, and I didn't
want to believe that she was doing it to you too and that
I couldn't protect you. Do you think you can ever forgive
me?" They cried and hugged each other for a long time, and
eventually in a very small voice Katie said "mom, I forgive
you".
After that, things slowly started to get better.
Not overnight, and for a long time there were still good days
and bad days. But gradually the bad days became fewer and
fewer and Katie learned how to deal with them when they happened.
Finally, after 6 months, she was told that she was well enough
to go home.
Her first day back at school was really hard.
Walking into the lunch room and opening her bag of chicken
and fries was really hard, particularly when she saw the raised
eyebrow that Leah and Cassidy exchanged with each other when
she finished it. On her way out of the lunch hall, she passed
another table where one girl was saying to another girl who
was just finishing a burger "you know, Kerry, Mike's never
going to ask you out if you keep eating like that". Later
that day, she went up to Kerry and said to her "you know what,
Kerry; you're perfect just the way you are, and if Mike can't
see that he's an idiot. And don't you ever forget that".
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Angela is 18 years old and is in recovery from
an eating disorder. She also used to self-harm.
Copyright Angela.
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