The Rabbit Hole

After I calmed down and repeated to myself, "this is just edema...this is just fluid, I considered how sick I had become.  At what point did I think it was a good thing to ask your body to function without nutrients.  Why did I hate my body so much, that I was okay with watching my every limb waste away. 

It happened so quickly this year, I suddenly crossed this threshold where I couldn't fight anorexia any longer, and I just gave it my all like I do everything, even if it's to my detriment (understatement). Laxatives, diet pills, purging, starving...and repeat.  I just hate feeling full, I tell Darren. I don't want to get fat again, I say. 

As you fall slowly down the rabbit hole, you transform into someone unrecognizable from just months ago.  

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Your brain is running on empty.  You find small stresses  to be completely horrific. You cry easily, and you pick fights with your boyfriend because you don't think he loves you enough. You blackout every day and yet you still won't admit that there is a problem.  Your reflection in the mirror becomes more and more distorted.  You shop in the kids section because size 0 falls off your hips.  You look like a child.  You are secretly pleased as you slip on yoga pants designed for a ten year old.  Yet you still don't see the danger signs. 

My psychiatrist said that girls like me find themselves living in an altered reality.  We feel invincible, we live in this fantasyland where it's totally okay to continue our rituals and actually rather admirable.  

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We are not sick, other people just don't get it. We think that our emaciated bodies look normal, and on bad days we feel grossly fat. We don't think eventually that this cocoon, this place where we find comfort, is actually killing us.

I had a glimpse of insight when I visited my parents in June.  I could feel the discomfort in their eyes as they glanced at my thin arms and legs and then quickly looked away.  I gingerly step onto the scale in their bathroom.  I haven't weighed myself in ages because I'm terrified of those numbers and their power to ruin or uplift a day.  I step on, stare at the two digit number, step down, step up again...the same number in red light stares defiantly back at me.  I hadn't seen this number since I was....15?...14? I need to eat more.  I can and I will.

I tell my mother this, and she sighs in relief that I have some insight as I speak calmly and say that I didn't realize. I just didn't know.  As the week goes on, my willingness to eat just doesn't happen.  I know I'm too thin, I see my hip bones again....but the scary truth is, I don't actually WANT to see the numbers go up on the scale. As much as they scared me, my brain is so programmed to weight loss, I don't know how to press the reset button.  I eat just to say I have, but it's obvious I can't keep anything down.  My Dad asks me to get help when I get back to Alberta, but I can't stop the anger from bubbling up inside me. I'm sick of thinking about this. I know he means well, but I find myself reacting like a petulant teenager. 

My nephew, my most loving eighteen year old, amazing nephew has a heart to heart with me as we walk slightly tipsy under the moonlit sky to Trav's, the old dive bar in town.  He tells me that he knows. He says that I have anorexia and he needs me to get help and get better because I deserve so much more. He wants me to be healthy, so that I'll be around for a long long time. I say, "I'll try Zaine. Thank you for caring. I love you."  He asks me to promise, and I do, but anorexia is whispering in my ear. Anorexia tells me I can't live without her, I can't cope, I will get fat and ugly, I'll have nothing.  I AM nothing, if I am not thin. 

As my Dad and Zaine drop me off at the airport I suddenly find myself unable to stop crying. The tears fall the moment we enter Winnipeg. I am scared and sad and I don't want to say goodbye. I feel like I'm grieving my family and I don't know why. 

Looking back, I think deep down, the tears kept falling and falling because I was afraid I would keep falling down the rabbit hole...and I didn't know where you landed when you reached the bottom. 

"First, however, she waited for a few minutes to see if she was going to shrink any further: she felt a little nervous about this; ‘for it might end, you know,’ said Alice to herself; ‘in my going out altogether, like a candle. I wonder what I should be like then?’ And she tried to fancy what the flame of a candle looks like after the candle is blown out, for she could not remember ever having seen such a thing," Alice in Wonderland.