The Disappearing Girl (24 page)

I met my roommate April before dinnertime. She was tiny; I guessed her height was just under five feet. Her curly ginger hair was cut to her chin and her blue eyes sparkled when she introduced herself. April didn’t look a day over fourteen-years-old. I hid my astonishment over her revelation she was nineteen. She was a sweet girl, offering up my choice of beds despite her being in the room first. I liked the way she laughed; it was deep and came from the belly. I didn’t foresee any conflict arising between us during my stay.

April seemed to sense my unease as we walked down the hall to the dining area. It would be my first supervised meal at River Center. During my stay at the hospital, I picked at the trays of food sent to my room. I guessed the doctors didn’t press the issue since I was hooked up to an IV and I was being checked into a residential eating disorder program. April assured me although we’d be watched while we ate, no one was going to force the food down my throat. It felt like she could see inside my head and understood my nightmare visions of nurses shoving feeding tubes up my nostrils.

I was also told I should squash any thoughts of throwing up after eating. An escort went with patients if they decided to use the bathroom after meals.

A nutritionist had filled me on my meal plan and what to expect as my body adjusted to eating three meals and two snacks per day. However, nothing could prepare me for the overwhelming emotions I felt sitting in front of a plate of food in a room full of watchful eyes. The meal wasn’t extravagant, just grilled chicken with brown rice and steamed broccoli. My brain registered the food as healthy, but I couldn’t bring myself to pick up the fork. I was crippled by my illness, a prisoner to the idea that food was the enemy.

I closed my eyes and took a few long and cleansing breaths. Parker had talked about goal setting, and I suspected that this would be a part of my recovery. I told myself if I could eat that meal, I’d give myself a reward at the end. I decided if I ate dinner, I’d spend my free time downloading every cheesy love song on my iPod that reminded me of Cameron. The thought made me smile and I mechanically pierced a spear of broccoli and lifted it to my lips. I washed the food down with milk and concentrated on eating another piece of food.

I held back tears of frustration as I continued to eat. To an outsider, my behavior probably made little sense. All I had to do was eat. It was a simple enough thing to do. But I had to knock down the mental barriers first.

Making it through my first meal went unrewarded. Instead of downloading songs, I laid curled up on my bed. My arms clutched my stomach tightly as cramps stung my insides. “Are you okay?” April asked hesitantly from her side of the room.

“No, something’s wrong. Please, can you find me a nurse?”

Pity flashed in her eyes, but she complied. A minute later, one of the nurses was escorted by April to our room. “What’s wrong Kayla?”

“I have this horrible pain in my stomach. I’m also feeling bloated. I need something to help stop it. Can I have a diuretic or a laxative?” I moaned out my question.

“Kayla, we talked to you about this when you checked in. Your body needs to get accustomed to eating a regular diet again. We don’t provide medications to get rid of the calories you take in.” Her tone was gentle, but firm. I disliked her at once for her part in my misery.

“This isn’t normal. This isn’t going to make me better,” I cried.

April sank on her knees next to my bed. “You’re going to feel wretched for a while, but it stops. I’ve been here three weeks and my stomach is no longer swelling up like a balloon after each time I eat.”

My inner demons struggled against my will to survive. I was going to get fat. This was what I had signed up for and I’d have to learn to live with it. Eating wasn’t going to kill me, but the hunger could.

The first night, April stayed with me. I appreciated the gesture, because I knew she was missing out on her free time for the evening. She was on the other side, working her way toward a return to her normal life, and still she was willing to reach out and lift me out of my unsettling thoughts.

Recovery wasn’t going to be painless. I was going to have to claw my bloodied and damaged body out of the hole I’d fallen into.

“It gets better, Kayla,” April said as I sobbed into my pillow. “I felt the same way you did when I first came here. I thought no one would get what I’d gone through. But when I started meeting the other girls, I realized I wasn’t the only one hurting. There’s always a story worse than yours, more tragedy than you can imagine. But we all want to get better, that’s why we came here.”

I used my shirt sleeve to wipe away my tears. “Why are you here?”

“Because I wanted to be a prima ballerina,” she said, and she did a brief pirouette around the room. I was able to manage a smile. She added, “Did you ever hear of the diet philosophy of ballerinas? It’s simply ‘do not eat.’” Breathlessly, she fell back onto her bed. “There’s no such thing as a chubby ballerina. I’ve dreamed of being part of the New York City Ballet since I was a little girl, and it was clear early on that food would only get in the way of my dreams.”

“What happened to you?”

“I stopped growing. Ballerinas are beautiful, tall and elegant, and I’m stuck in the body of a ten-year-old boy,” she said wryly. “Everything seemed to fall apart for me at once. I blew a couple of auditions and was told I’d never be good enough to make it as a professional dancer. All that time I wasted on something that wasn’t going to happen. Not to mention the torture I put my body through. I thought about killing myself so many times …”

“Oh, God, I’m so sorry,” I murmured.

She rose up on her elbows and stared at me across the room. “My problem was I let being a ballerina define who I was. Without it, life didn’t make sense. I’m here because I want to know if I can still be happy without dancing.”

“Have you figured it out?”

“Not completely, but I’m learning to enjoy food again and not treat it like it’ll bite me back. I definitely don’t miss being so hungry that I’d put whitening strips on my teeth to keep myself from eating.” She paused and said thoughtfully, “The thing about this place is it lets you escape your real life and figure out how to be happy again.”

“Thanks. It’s nice of you to share all that stuff,” I said awkwardly.

April’s laughter was abrupt. “You get used to all the over-sharing too. Within two seconds of meeting someone, they’re telling you all about how crappy their lives are.” When I didn’t respond, she commanded, “Try and get some sleep. It’ll make things easier on you. Tomorrow, I’ll introduce you to the rest of the gang on the Island of Misfit Toys.”

Chapter Twenty-Eight

The schedule at River Center was regimented. Each morning, I woke up knowing exactly what to expect. Structure was intended to give us the best shot at sanity. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, and snacks were all supervised and at the same time each day. I was expected to attend two group meetings per day along with two individual counseling sessions each week. My mother was attending the family counseling sessions alone for the time being, but I was expected to join her as part of my treatment.

True to her word, April introduced me to the friends she had made during her stay. During group meetings, I’d hear their horror stories and the lengths they went to for thinness. I wasn’t forced to share my past; the staff explained I’d talk during group meetings when I was ready. However, hearing the other girls’ tales did make me feel an instant kinship with them.

It was our own little world inside the River Center. The rules were different there, and it was up to us to learn how to make it on the outside. Field trips involved outings to coffee shops and restaurants. We were lost children who needed to be taught again how to order and eat in public. Back at the center, there were meal preparation classes where we were instructed on how to make healthy, well-balanced meals.

Fun was allowed, but like everything else it was monitored. If I ran too hard on the treadmill, I was told it was time to stop. If I went onto a website that wasn’t considered conducive to my recovery, a staff member told me to get off the site and find another activity for my free time.

Besides being anorexic and bulimic, I was diagnosed by my therapist as having depression and body dysmorphic disorder. My counselor described body dysmorphic disorder as a type of mental illness where a person becomes obsessed with an imagined flaw. I finally understood all the times I thought I saw a reflection of an obese girl in the mirror, it hadn’t been real.

Multiple diagnoses made me feel like I was all sorts of crazy. On the other hand, I thought if the doctors could name what I had, I could be mended. I was prescribed antidepressants, but warned they weren’t a miracle fix and it’d take weeks for the full effects to kick in. I wished for an easy way to be cured. Like whatever was wrong with me could be surgically removed and the despair would be gone instantaneously.

On my tenth day of the program, I woke up feeling different. I decided it would be the day to stop feeling sorry for myself. My symptoms, since I’d begun eating a regular diet, were easing, and I was more energized. My inner anguish over stepping on the scale each morning had diminished. I didn’t see the number, but I accepted my weight was climbing.

Normally silent during cognitive group therapy, I felt the urge to share with my friends. The goal of cognitive group therapy was to transform negative thoughts and behaviors into positive ones. During the session, the counselor, Mary, was discussing how we had to give up the idea of perfectionism and break away from the all or nothing way of living our lives.

Mary took note of my enthusiastic nodding as something clicked inside of me. “Kayla, did you have something you wanted to share?”

I cleared my throat. “Looking back at the past few months, I’m starting to understand why I wanted to be skinny so badly. I needed to be skinny because to me that meant I’d be perfect in my mother’s eyes. She’s been so unhappy since my father died; I thought if I could just be what she wanted, we’d both find a way to move on.”

“Do you think it made her happy?”

“I thought so for a while. I received so much positive attention when I first lost weight. My mom kept going on about how great I looked, and my friends told me how envious they were of my body. It was almost addictive to hear their compliments. After so much time being told how fat and plain I was, I wanted to hear I was pretty.

“But I think I gave her too much power in our relationship. Why should my weight affect whether or not she’s happy? Being thin isn’t going to bring my father back to life,” I said. I chewed on a hangnail as I felt the stares of the other patients.

Mary sent a nod of approval my way before segueing into another part of the group discussion. I’d been skeptical about the therapy, but I couldn’t deny how good it felt to self-reflect over the destructive nature of the relationship with my mother.

Hours later, April and another patient named Chelsea gathered around my bed. I could tell by their expressions they were excited about something. April wasn’t a major rule-breaker at the River Center, but she did have a tendency to push the limits. One of her new life goals, she’d stated, was to get me to loosen up.

My eyebrows pulled together in confusion as they started to giggle. “Doesn’t the schedule say we’re supposed to be meditating and writing in our journals?”

“Ha,” April barked out. “You weren’t meditating. You had that pining look you get when you’re thinking about Cameron.”

I shut my journal and sat up straighter. “You got me. I was trying to decide if I should write him a letter or not.”

April waved me off. “You could do that any time. I could write it for you if I want.” She teased me in a singsong voice, “Dear Cameron, I’m making my roommate loonier than she already is by going on about how crazy sexy you are. Let me tell you all the dirty things I want you to do to me once I break out of this place—”

I shut her up by tossing a pillow at her head. “You’re a pain in the ass. Anyway, what mayhem are the two of you planning?”

With a sly smile, Chelsea produced a small plate behind her back. On the plate was a brownie with a dollop of whipped cream and a cherry. Chelsea said, “I snagged it from the dinner cart. I figured we could share it.”

Her suggestion sounded innocent enough, but desserts were not given freely at the River Center. Sweets could be a trigger for binge eating, and our nutritional goals included learning the ability to eat them in moderation. The staff decided on a patient-by-patient basis whether you received dessert and, if you did, it was usually only twice a week.

A reprimand was on my tongue, but I reminded myself about the group talk on perfectionism. I had to stop trying to please everyone else and think for myself.

Chelsea broke the brownie into three pieces and handed me the largest section. Taking a bite was practically effortless. The mental hurdles I had to jump over in order to eat had diminished.

“This isn’t even that yummy, but you may be onto something. This is kind of fun,” I mumbled while chewing on a large chunk of the brownie and watching the girls dig greedily into their pieces.

“Wow, I would’ve shoved a brownie down your throat sooner if I knew that was all it took to get you to smile,” April joked.

“I’ve missed this,” I sighed. “I remember sitting around with my roommates, eating pizza and cookies for dessert and just goofing off. I wasn’t always thinking about exit strategies and how I could avoid invitations to dinner.” As an afterthought, I added, “I’m over being the downer of the group.”

“I second that,” April said. “I may not ever be a prima ballerina, but to be honest, I haven’t enjoyed dancing in years. When I get released, I want to do something totally reckless and spontaneous. Like go backpacking around Europe or sign up to work on a cruise ship.”

“I’m going back to college when I get out of here. I dropped out because I had so much anxiety about trying to be social with other students,” Chelsea said. Chelsea was a year older than me and had been at the clinic two and a half months. She had explained after we met each time she was on the verge of release, she experienced a setback that kept her from leaving.