An Apple a Day (4 page)

That amazed me: to think of a GP, a professional working woman, with my column taped to the door of her freezer! One assumes that “grown-ups” with real careers don't get eating disorders, but it's not true.

A psychologist wrote to say:

Your article communicates powerfully the impact of an eating disorder. I wish you all the luck in the world, but if this attempt doesn't work please don't beat yourself up. I do have concerns about this sort of “reality” journalism in terms of the pressure it places on the individual in the public gaze, especially as you've used your true identity. I will follow your online column with great interest
.

A lot of support and encouragement, but that psychologist was right—also a lot of pressure.

* * *

After the weekend in Lausanne when it all felt unreal, after the initial euphoria faded, after interviews on Radio 4's
Woman's Hour
and the BBC World Service, after meetings with publishers—that was when I collapsed. I describe it as a mini-breakdown because that's how it felt. I started crying for the first time in years and couldn't stop. I stayed in my flat for seven days straight. I felt too raw to go outside. I didn't answer the phone or check my emails. I stopped eating—a violent reaction to the decision to give up anorexia—and I stopped sleeping. I took hot baths and read T. S. Eliot (always good in a crisis) and drifted around in tracksuit bottoms—and cried.

It's an amazing thing, to feel the ability to cry returning. That week was bad, but I think those tears were the first step on the road to recovery. With anorexia, you're so frozen and isolated; it's like some kind of locked-in syndrome. You still experience human emotions—regret, envy, despair—but it's all pretty insular, sort of muted. Your body goes into emergency mode: focusing on essentials only, conserving energy, keeping you alive. Just as your periods stop because you can't nurture a baby—your body can't risk getting pregnant—any excess emotions dry up. With so little fuel going in, there's simply nothing to spare.

Growing up, I'd always been extreme—a natural Scorpio. I was “in touch” with my emotions: love and hate, excitement, drama and disaster. As anorexia set in, all that dried up. Those natural ups and downs, female hormones, the premenstrual moods and tears seemed to disappear completely. So when I started crying I was fearful, yes, but it was also a huge release. Finally, I was being honest about this illness I'd been denying for years. Now I was going to have to do something about it.

All those people who wrote to thank me—I should thank them. Despite my mixed emotions, their responses made my selfish desire to get a life seem less selfish. It depersonalized my struggle and gave me a mission. At the heart of anorexia is a belief that you're not really worth a damn. You don't deserve to listen to your body or respond to your hunger: basically, you don't deserve to eat. With all these people reading my story, following my journey and gunning for me, I had a reason to commit to recovery.

Of course, I want to show other sufferers it is possible to get better. The line that really stood out, that I still repeat to myself, was this:
I'll eat if you can
. That's why people email me every week, because anorexia is lonely and frightening, because you need reassurance every step of the way.
I'll eat if you can
. That's the promise I made to all those strangers; that's the promise they're making to me.

* * *

As well as for them, I did it for myself, because I was desperate for a solution. Anorexia is an addiction and a compulsion, a brain disorder and a crutch. When I use the word “addiction,” I don't use it lightly. In my case, I am addicted to hunger.

I set myself the challenge in public because I didn't know what else to do: I hoped it would succeed where everything else—therapy, drugs, and determination—had failed. The question I had been avoiding for ten years wouldn't go away: how long was I planning to starve myself? I've always prided myself on honesty, clarity of thought and expression, but anorexia involves a remarkable amount of self-deceit. As much as I denied the problem, to others and to myself, I couldn't keep looking the other way. Something had shaken me up: the thought of having a baby maybe, finding myself in my early thirties, or just a
longing to take part in life again. I knew that with anorexia I'd stay trapped forever.

And then there was Tom. Even if I didn't believe I could recover from anorexia—even if I didn't want to save myself—I had to think about him now too.

Chapter 2

Love at First Sight?

W
hen Tom and I met I wasn't looking for a man and I certainly wasn't looking for love. To be honest, I wasn't even in the mood to go out—it was a drizzly February evening and I'd been at the office since 7
AM
. At that time I was Commissioning Editor at a London publisher (I've been in publishing since the age of twenty-one, mostly in psychology and the humanities). Work had been the usual round of exasperating meetings, and I wasn't in the mood to be chatty or sociable. All I really wanted was to cycle home, take a long hot bath, and spend a few hours reading before bed. I have no idea what had impelled me to agree to the blind date in the first place; I didn't have time for myself, let alone a new boyfriend.

A mixture of curiosity and politeness overcame my reluctance—it would be rude to cancel on this guy at the last minute, and I was a little bit intrigued. Also, why on Earth had I been set up? The matchmaker responsible was my mother's best friend's daughter Leo; I hadn't seen her for years—hardly a close confidante. I wondered what it was about him and me that had made Leo think the two of us should meet.

I decided to go along, but just for one drink. If he's an oddball or boring, I'll simply make conversation for half an hour and then excuse myself, I thought as I changed in the ladies' room at work.
My midnight blue silk top with dark blue jeans (smart but also sexy, in case the date went well), a spritz of perfume and some fresh makeup, and I was ready to go.

That night, weaving my way through Hammersmith Broadway in the rain, I wasn't exactly nervous, just slightly uneasy. I didn't know what to expect. To be honest, I assumed that any guy who suggested meeting for a blind date in Hammersmith would be a loser. I had no idea meeting Tom would change everything.

I pushed open the glass doors of the Lyric Bar and paused for a moment. Three or four men glanced up but I had no idea which one I was looking for. It was probably no more than a minute that I stood there, but it felt like ages. Then a bespectacled young man rushed up, waving a book, and I knew this must be Tom. He was small and neatly dressed, and looked somehow familiar. Kermit the Frog, or Casper the Friendly Ghost? No, the broadcaster Andrew Marr, that was it, the glasses and the ears, a kind of geeky seriousness. He wore a pale blue shirt under a navy cashmere sweater, and a pair of blue jeans. Good leather shoes, I noticed.

Our first exchange was the usual flurry of introductions and apologies:
Are you . . . You must be . . . I hope I didn't keep you waiting
. . . and then an awkward moment, standing at the bar while he bought me a glass of wine. Then we sat down at a table in the corner; the lights were low and there was classical music playing quietly. Tom was halfway down a bottle of Peroni, I saw, so he must have been here a while, or maybe he was just nervous.

After a few sips of our drinks we both began to relax and warm up. The first topic of conversation was, of course, this blind date—we both confessed to having deep misgivings about it in advance, and it turned out we had both wanted to cancel. This broke the ice, and from that point on there were no silences. At one point, waiting at the bar to buy another round of drinks, I remember smiling to myself and thinking,
So, that's Tom. It could be worse.
It was hardly a
coup de foudre
; I didn't want to rip his clothes off or elope with him, but I was enjoying the evening. I'd abandoned my plan to climb out through the window of the ladies' restroom.

That first date ended in the not-so-romantic surroundings of the Hammersmith tube station. The fluorescent strip lighting was an unwelcome contrast to the mellow atmosphere of the Lyric Bar and the mood was somewhat broken. People jostled past us by the entrance to the Piccadilly line and we were awkward again as we said goodbye. Tom scrabbled to find a business card and couldn't, so I gave him one of mine. I sat on the last train home, wondering what I thought of him, whether I wanted to see him again. I was unsure.

My mum, my best friend, my sisters texted and called:
So, how did it go? What's this Tom guy like? Do you think he's the one?
I didn't know what to answer.
We talked a lot
, I remember telling them. Turns out we haven't stopped talking since.

* * *

I don't know when I fell in love with Tom; maybe it happened gradually, over those first few months. We spent more and more time together, and traveled a lot, and slowly our lives began to merge. We made plans that stretched further into the future, in that tentative way of early relationships. We discussed ideas and read each other's writing, we shared books and music, we met each other's families. Both quite cerebral people, we began to open up. But I never intended to share my “problems,” especially not when it came to food. If I'm honest, I still massively resent the intrusion into my personal issues. Except of course it's not just
my
problem.

This is something it has taken me a long time to accept—this eating disorder isn't just about me. As a fiercely private person, I
felt (and still feel) that I shouldn't have to account for anorexia, that it's my choice to eat or not eat. I'm the one who's hungry all the time—why is that anyone else's business? My father's motto for life, “Never apologize, never explain,” has always been a personal mantra of mine, but this time it won't wash. I can't keep pretending everything's normal when it's not. My hang-ups about food affect things outside of me, especially my relationships.

* * *

Left to my own devices, I would never have discussed anorexia with him. It sort of surfaced naturally a few months after we'd met. Tom is a travel journalist for a national newspaper and we were on a trip, as usual. (That first year together, we spent forty-seven out of fifty-two weekends away from London.) This time we were in Copenhagen to review an exclusive new eco-hotel and spa.

A luxury hotel and spa treatments and a beautiful city to explore? It should have been perfect. But somehow it was one of those weekends that started out wrong and got worse. Maybe it was exhaustion, or lack of food, or my own depressive nature, but I spent the whole time struggling to get back on track. Waiting at Heathrow Airport, I remember standing at the sink in the restroom close to tears. I wondered how I could get through the next five minutes, let alone the weekend. That was unlike me—sure, I go up and down, but I don't do weepy.

The flight out of London was delayed due to fog over the Channel; we arrived in Copenhagen late on Friday evening in a rainstorm. After eating a quick supper we'd picked up (a hot dog for Tom, a banana for me) we unpacked a few things and fell into bed. Tom reached out to touch me, to hold me—he'd been on assignment in Colombia for ten days—to cuddle me goodnight.
But my body was tense and I curled away from him, unable to respond. I didn't want to kiss him, I didn't want to be touched.

We lay there in the dark, me almost falling off the edge of the bed, clutching at the duvet, Tom reaching all the way over. After a few minutes of silence he sighed and said my name out loud into the silent bedroom. I said nothing, waiting, wishing he would go to sleep. He reached up and stroked the back of my neck, teasing at tendrils of hair, and I felt nothing. It was so quiet I could hear us both blinking. I wanted to scream; I wanted to leave.

Finally Tom said, “Emma, please. What's the matter?” I said nothing. “I've been missing you, longing for you, love. I've been away from you for nearly two weeks and all I want to do is hold you in my arms.” This was strong stuff from Tom—in those early days, he wasn't versed in the art of romantic-speak, although he's pretty good now. Still I didn't know what to say. It wasn't about sex, just that I didn't feel close to anyone or anything; I didn't want to be held. I felt I would snap.

We lay there for ages, in silence. Eventually, I reached across and kissed his forehead. I found his hand and we lay in the large four-poster bed, holding hands. After ten minutes or so Tom's steady breathing told me he was asleep. I lay awake, unable to get control of my racing mind. It seems impossible to me that one can be so tired and still not sleep, but I've never learned how to switch off. The hours that followed in Copenhagen were some of the lowest I remember. Strange how you can be lying next to another person and feel so completely alone. I went from exhaustion to anger—looking at Tom's sleeping face, calm and peaceful—to despair. Around 5
AM
I stood up, wound one of the white sheets around me and opened the door to the fire escape. It was cold and still raining. I sat down on the metal stairwell outside.

Before long, Tom appeared in the doorway, fuddled with sleep. He tried to coax me inside, into the warmth, to come back to bed,
but I couldn't move from the chilly metal stairs. I held my head in my hands and he held me. I was dizzy from lack of sleep (not just that night but the many weeks and months before) and unable to speak. Everything seemed hopeless; everything seemed as bleak as the gray morning light. Somewhere Tom's gentle voice went on, explaining how we could change things, how he would help; he rubbed my hands to warm me but I couldn't feel anything. We sat that way for ages, shivering, wrapped in a few thin sheets, his head resting on my shoulder. My clearest memory is thinking,
Poor Tom, this is not the romantic mini-break he signed up for
.