An Apple a Day (11 page)

What do I love? Oh, foods I haven't eaten for years: pasta shells drizzled with butter and grated Cheddar cheese, the butter collecting inside the shells; doorstep-thick whole-wheat toast loaded with chunky marmalade; tagliatelle and pesto; take-out fries in greasy newspaper covered in salt and vinegar; stir-fries and veggie curries and all Chinese food; freshly baked French bread torn off the baguette and eaten with wedges of melting brie and rough red wine; baked potatoes and baked beans; tacos and refried beans and enchiladas and seven-layer burritos from Taco Bell in Florida; the first new potatoes of the season, piping hot in garlic butter—the tasty, indulgent things we all love. Late at night, chocolate and peanut M&M's mixed up in colorful handfuls. The macaroni and cheese my mum used to make when we were little.

I'm amazed as I write this of the memories that flood back, the flavors I can almost taste, all the foods I might eat if there were no rules. And yet I'm detached as I remember them, because I can't imagine eating them ever again. I just can't countenance allowing myself to. I call them memories because it's so long since I tasted them. Sometimes I walk slowly past the Cornish pasty place in the tube station on a cold winter's day, and I want to faint with the smell that comes out (can smells make you fat?). Of course those are pasties and pies—I admit, I couldn't eat a pie in a million years—but when you're starving the pie smell (potato, cheese, crust) is so warm and delicious, so complex. I still remember how
good fish and chips used to taste. As children, on family vacations, we'd share a large bag of fries in the backseat of the car, or on vacation at the seaside. The greasy bag, the salty, crispy potato wedges, the taste on one's lips, the warmth of food . . .

Looking back at what I've just written, I see that my favorite foods are simple, you might even say childish. It's as if I missed out on developing adult tastes because I developed anorexia just as I was becoming an adult.

“But what do you actually eat?” That's the other question everyone asks when you have an eating disorder. Fruit and vegetables mostly: apples, oranges, bananas, broccoli, asparagus, spinach. A lot of muesli and probiotic natural yogurt. Sometimes, for a treat, whole-wheat pita bread and low-fat hummus. More recently, perhaps buoyed up by the first days of spring, I've embarked on some new food experiments: Super Wholefood Couscous from Marks & Spencer, three-bean and tomato soup. Tom and I have been out in his garden, planting some April bulbs. New life, a new season—and it reminds me I have to stay focused on my challenge, I have to keep expanding my food horizons.

* * *

Back in Oxford, I was eating very little. For me, anorexia really did start like that: first just cutting out treats, then cutting out all fattening foods, then skipping entire meals—seeing the scales drop and my jeans getting looser. I was a mess of emotions I couldn't even start to acknowledge. Compared to the breakup, anorexia was bearable: the discomfort of being hungry all the time was nothing compared to the twisted pain in my heart. And anyway, I felt very badly in the wrong: I had been rejected and it was my fault. Not allowing myself to eat was a start.

I can't honestly trace the line between a diet and anorexia. There must be an invisible threshold, and I don't know when I crossed it. I suppose this is the heart of the matter: why most people can go on a diet (and either keep the weight off, or regain it) while others spiral into the madness of a full-blown eating disorder. All I know is that once it started, anorexia very quickly took off. In all the buried hurt and shame, it seemed I had found something that worked. I could control this. And the self-annihilation accelerated from that point on.

When I started university I weighed 133 pounds. When I left I weighed 77 pounds.

* * *

My memories from Oxford are broken and intense. When I look back, I can tell which year it was not from events or the actual date, but from the way I was feeling.

First year: party animal, lots of boyfriends, not much work, getting stoned on weekends with friends at Balliol and Corpus Christi, starting to lose weight, looking good. Second year: much thinner, joining the gym, a few close friendships, more alcohol than food. Third year: withdrawal into the library and my rooms, exercising obsessively, working constantly, reading, writing poetry, eating almost nothing, a lot of doctor's appointments.

That downward spiral—of my body, my mind, my grip on life—was visceral, unlike anything I've ever experienced. It's exhilarating and terrifying, watching everything fall apart. I had rigid control and no control. I don't know what I was thinking—I wasn't trying to starve myself to death; I don't remember a game plan as such. I didn't want to die, but I knew I was badly caught. I didn't know where it would end.

As well as feeling trapped, I was also in pain. With zero fat, either normal subcutaneous body fat or energy food fat, you're constantly fighting for survival. All anorexics speak of the cold, and I found those winters in Oxford unbelievably hard. Just now I checked the Met Office website out of curiosity, to see if the recorded temperatures for those three Decembers in the late 1990s were any lower than usual; of course they weren't. So why was I colder than I ever knew it was possible to feel?

I recall one night at a friend's birthday party at Maxwell's, a cocktail bar in the center of town. It was crowded with students and well-heated but the cold had penetrated my bones, and I simply had no insulation to keep me warm. I froze in a turtleneck and jeans and boots surrounded by friends in sleeveless tops and skimpy dresses. It had taken all my strength to come out, and I tried to stay, but I couldn't concentrate on any conversation and the tips of my fingers had gone numb. Finally I slipped out into the dark night and walked the two miles home alone along the main road. I could have taken a bus or a taxi, but that would have been “fat” behavior. Anorexia is a process of constant self-punishment: small everyday cruelties, an inability to be kind to oneself or to say,
You're tired, you're cold, just get into a warm cab
. Back in my flat at the student block on Iffley Road I ran the hottest bath I could stand. I still remember how it hurt to sit down, because my tail bone stuck out and grated against the bottom of the bath, and my elbows and knees were sharp against the sides. I was covered in livid bruises from the slightest knock. That night as I lay in the scalding water, pale and paper-light, I thought of my friends back in Maxwell's getting drunk on jugs of Sea Breeze. That was a turning point, of sorts, floating there, wondering how many more winters I could take.

* * *

After months of deceiving myself, deceiving the doctors, gaining and losing the same few pounds, I was driven to make the decision: I would have to try and put on some weight. Although I rarely looked at myself in the mirror anymore, I could see how sick I appeared. I was being seriously threatened with hospitalization. I was put on Prozac—more on that later. Though it wasn't immediate, gradually those little green-and-white pills began to even out the imbalanced chemicals in my brain. More than that, other people's concern was becoming intrusive. Their concern had gone from medium to severe: it was Code Orange now. With phone calls between my tutors and parents and friends, I began to work in my college rooms so I didn't have to face anyone. I was nearly twenty-one, for God's sake; I didn't want their concern. I needed to stay in Oxford, to take my finals. Gaining weight was the only way I could see to avoid the hospitals and keep control of my life.

Then one weekend in April, six weeks before the start of finals, two things happened. On Saturday evening, a visit from an ex-boyfriend, Steven. He was staying with his brother for a few days; we sometimes hooked up when we were unattached and both in London, or I was in Manchester, or he was in Oxford. We hadn't met up for six months or so, and I was aware (as I was all the time, horribly, during those years) that people I hadn't seen recently tended to be shocked at my weight loss. Steven was easygoing and we'd stayed fairly close since our relationship two years earlier: we'd have a few drinks, we'd end up in bed together, or just hang out, but it was no big deal. He arrived around 7
PM
with a bottle of white burgundy and we lolled on my bed for a while, drinking wine and catching up. The radio was playing and “our song” came on: Al Green's “Let's Stay Together.” We jumped up and decided to dance, for old times' sake and because we were tipsy. It's a slow dance, and it was nice just being close, barely moving, holding each other, and nice when Steve kissed me too.
After a minute or so, I put my hand up to his cheek and felt tears on his face. He was crying.

He wasn't kissing me out of lust or passion; all that was gone. Kind, sexy Steve put his arms around me and found nothing but a skeleton. I have tried to erase the words he said, but I can't forget the look in his eyes—a mixture of shock and sorrow. He asked what had happened to me and I said I was OK; Steve said I wasn't, and he left around midnight.

Stinging from this awfulness, I got up even earlier than usual on Sunday morning and crossed the road to the Iffley Road gym (where Roger Bannister ran the first ever four-minute mile). The gym was deserted. I plugged in my headphones and did my usual hour on the treadmill, then a couple of kilometers on the rowing machine. On the way out, the gym manager stopped me at the front desk and asked to have a word. They were sorry, he said, but they had decided to terminate my membership. It was on health grounds, he explained; they felt perhaps I was overdoing it, perhaps I should give my body a rest. They would of course refund my remaining months. I had never been so humiliated in my life.

* * *

So self-preservation, vanity, desperation, Prozac, pride? Whatever the reasons, and slowly—painfully slowly—I managed to gain some weight. That last summer in Oxford I stayed out of the hospital and took my finals and got a good degree. It was incredibly hard to start eating again, but as I did so, life got easier. (It's hard to imagine if your weight has never dipped that low, but every extra ounce makes an incredible difference to your state of mind and your well-being.)

I was still hovering around 90 pounds, but it was better than 77. I spent the summer traveling alone—Egypt, Italy—did some
freelance work in London, had an interesting relationship with a psychology professor, and I kept on making myself eat. Bread, pasta, anything simple, unthreatening. Small amounts, but enough to keep going.

Every bite was bloody agony. Every time I thought about eating I felt greedy. I felt like I didn't deserve it. I felt like hell. But by the time I started my graduate job in an advertising agency that September, I was stable. I still looked pretty thin but I was out of the danger zone. I was back in the land of the living.

I stayed that way for years, just under 100 pounds. This is what “functional anorexia” means: you have a normal life, a career, a home; you maintain this alongside an eating disorder. I moved from working in advertising to publishing and began to find my niche. I rented a small studio flat in Camden Town, then I bought a one-bedroom flat in Elephant & Castle. It wasn't the most salubrious part of London, but I loved that little flat in a cul-de-sac just off the Bricklayers' Arms bridge. I remember the day the sale went through—a Tuesday morning at work, as usual. The purchase had dragged on for months, and my first brush with mortgage advisors and surveyors and solicitors had been the usual hassle, but finally the estate agent called, “The funds have cleared, the flat's yours. Come and collect the keys whenever you want.”

I jumped on my bike instantly and cycled from my office in Euston to Borough High Street. The estate agent looked surprised to see me because he'd barely hung up the phone. I had the keys, the place was mine. I'd never been in there before, without the estate agent. Feeling like a burglar, I unlocked the front door. The flat was empty and filled with sunshine—just old wooden floorboards and bare white walls and a large fridge. I pulled the bottle of champagne I bought for the occasion out of my backback and plugged in the fridge and set the bottle to chill. I texted Nick, my boyfriend at the time (a Polish stunt cyclist), and my sisters:
I have keys! Come for bubbly at 7
PM
?
Then I cycled back to the office and got on with the rest of the afternoon.

(By the way, that's quite an interesting example of anorexia in action. Do you see what happened there? I'd been up at 6
AM
and biked into work (five miles) and drank my black coffee and eaten my apple, and then maybe a banana midmorning, then I'd cycled over the flat at lunchtime—thereby avoiding any opportunity to eat, I'm always “too busy” to eat—then collected the keys, then cycled back to work, then cycled home at the end of the day, then showered and changed and drank champagne to celebrate . . . so, twenty miles cycling and a full day's work, all rushing and excitement and nothing to eat except fruit. That's how I lived back then—and some days, if I'm upset or busy or unsettled, I still do this now. If there's a choice between taking the tube and cycling, ideally somewhere far away and exhausting, I'll cycle. If there's a chance to miss a meal, I'll take it. Sometimes I don't even make the decision consciously; I'm hardwired that way. This is the way anorexia manifests itself: doing too much on too little—and always, always dodging food.)

I lived in that flat at Elephant & Castle for three years, during which time my weight remained fairly stable. My eating was far from normal—I barely ate in the office, rarely around other people, but my colleagues were used to me by now. I would join them in the pub on a Friday after work, but never for a sandwich in the park at lunchtime: alcohol was OK, food was not. There was a close bunch of us, all in our twenties, young editors and designers. I think I was seen as slightly reserved, aloof—or maybe I'm kidding myself. Maybe everyone knew I was anorexic and talked about me as the skinny one with food issues (I hope not). Anyway, those were happy years, working my way up in publishing.