Clandestine Confessions

“Just like every other anorexic. Thinking she can trick us all into thinking she ate by moving her food around her plate. It won’t work on me.”
She was standing by the window, arms crossed, dagger eyes staring right at me.
An angry scowl disguising any compassion this woman had in her body.
–
The malice of her to brashly yell those words.
For all the patients to hear.
Only after walking away from my table.
On the opposite end of the room.
–
It was a deliberate betrayal.
A purposeful violation of my privacy.
A robbing of a choice I had made to keep my diagnosis clandestine for the entirety of my stay.
And there I now was, on my third night of the ward, fully exposed – against my will and rights.
–
All eyes darted over to me, then my tray, then back at me.
The cut up, disassembled pieces of pizza spread around my plate.
Some visible, others underneath the corn kernels.
Compulsion dictated the behavior – to the point I no longer even recognized what I was doing.
I just knew I HAD to.
Or else my mind would let me suffer.
Her words jolted me awake to the awareness of what I had done to my dinner.
–
Shame, pain, fear, anger filled my body.
I wanted to cry.
Scream.
Run.
But I knew the consequences.
I saw the other patients endure them all.
And I knew she knew I knew.
Which made her behavior all the more malicious.
–
It was only a few nights before that I comprehended the severity of that “a” word.
The gravity of the grasp it had on me.
Even though it had been a fixture in my life for the past four years.
I lived with the diagnosis attached to my name but not with an understanding of its depth.
I sat at the table in the dining room on the night of my admission – an apple in front of me.
And a sandwich.
And peanut butter.
And carrots.
And milk.
My mom to my left.
“J, you have to eat something. Please.”
The nurse stood at the door observing.
Patients walked by, peeking in to see the “new girl”, a few entering in to get a bedtime snack.
And all I could do was stare at the food.
Paralyzed by the most powerful fear I would ever know.
Feeling utterly incapable of taking a bite of anything. Ever again.
That sensation still engrained in my soul.
The moment when I recognized this was so much bigger than me.
And was determined to take me out.
–
“Please, J, please.”
“I…can’t.”
It came out in a whisper. Too overwhelmed to even cry.
“Yes, you can. You have to.”
“No…I cannot.”
No truer statement had ever escaped my lips. Every word felt deep in my bones.
What have I done to myself…?
How did I get here…?
Is this my forever…?
God, please, do not let this be it…
–
To feel a fear that petrifies you is a terrifying experience.
Cyclical anxiety.
My own mind was holding me captive – and I had no idea at the time if it was possible to ever break free from the shackles.
–
The nurse came back over to my table and grabbed my tray hastily from in front of me – knocking the cup down, the contents sliding all about.
A deep sigh released from her lungs. Accompanied by a massive eye roll.
All the patients looked away.
Except for Ryan.
We locked eyes from opposite tables – genders separated.
The pain in his visible – the tear falling representing just to what depth he was feeling.
“I am so sorry,” he mouthed.
I bit my lip and quickly moved my gaze down to my lap.
I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t let her have that power.
“You are free to leave,” she said to me. “But do better next time.”
–
Ryan found me at our normal spot a few minutes later.
“So that is why you are here,” he said.
“Yeah…”
“Don’t worry Jenna. We will get through this together. I promise.”
And he stayed true to that word for the next two and a half weeks.
He gave me pep talks before each meal – always trying to make me laugh leading up to walking into the dining room.
He sat with me for all snacks to encourage and distract me – until the nurse would tell him he was “violating” the “rules”…all of which they made up as they went.
I will always remember the first day I completed my afternoon snack about a week into my stay – graham crackers and peanut butter – which earned me a lap around the ward.
All one twentieths of a mile of it….
“You did it!” he exclaimed beaming so proudly. He had been sitting at the other end of the room silently watching, waiting to take his walk to see if I would be able to join him. “Let’s go!”
He chatted my ear off the whole time.
And then tricked the nurses into letting us do one more lap.
“You and I both know there is no way one of these measly laps equates to the calories of your snack,” he said with a laugh once out of earshot of any staff.
And so, this would be our routine every day moving forward.
–
Regardless of how “well” I was doing, the words of the nurse never left me.
She proclaimed an identity over me, and I will tell you with 100% transparency I lived reliant on that label for over 18 years after that moment.
Even if I never verbally claimed “anorexic” for myself, others doing it for me had just as much power – if not more.
I constantly defaulted to the anorexia for a sense of stability in who I was to be.
It was the sure thing that I knew I could be well – I was a master at how to make every belief, emotion, action reflect that identity.
And it is partly why I was so incredibly resistant when anyone tried to take it away from me.
Because I wrapped my whole existence around it.
And I would become so overwhelmed at the thought of the emptiness that would accompany me if I no longer had that title to lean on, to guide me, to be me…
Sickness came with simplicity.
Healing came with chaos.
Because now not only was I facing the hell that was changing externally but also needing to change ALL of who I was internally.
It is no wonder the relapse rate is so high with eating disorders.
–
And it is no wonder I left there more wounded mentally than when I arrived…