My bare face stares back at me in the bathroom's blurry mirror. My eyelashes appear stubby, framing my tired, mud-colored eyes, my eyelids are peppered with stray eyebrow hairs, and my skin is pale and blotchy. It's a face you'd take a while to get used to if you had to wake up to it each morning, but it could be done. Someone, someday, could accept my dull eyes and flawed skin, even if I am only just beginning to. Someday I could wake up this way and be unapologetic. But not now.
My mother didn't think to bring mascara, eyeliner, or foundation for me to hide behind. She only brought me clothes, shoes, books, a hairbrush, and toiletries. The necessities. The hairbrush will have to do. I brush the sleep-made tangles from my long, dirty-blonde hair, wincing a bit at the sharp pain in my scalp the brushing creates. The least I can do is look like I tried to appear presentable. I don't really expect the other patients to do much primping. We are here to transform our tiny, breakable, porcelain doll bodies back into real boy and real girl bodies, not paint our faces and strive to look attractive.
Once the tangles are out and my teeth are brushed, I decide that, without make up or tweezers, my face cannot be helped. I change into a baggy pair of sweats and an oversized T-shirt from a 5K I ran last year, and slip on some flip flops. My outfit hides everything but my forearms, hands, and feet. The rest doesn't need to be defined; I know that, on my third day here, my body is still sickly. It wouldn't do any good to show the others tangible proof of my failed recovery.
I plop back onto my bed and wait for the kindly nurse to return and wheel me to the multipurpose room. A part of me yearns to stretch my legs, to walk the short distance down the hall and not worry about my heart rate falling. But I am a prisoner in my own body; it will not safely allow me the simple freedom of walking anymore. I wish i had known that before I collapsed.
Finally, the nurse arrives pushing a wheelchair, and in the morning light that streams through the window, I can see her name badge. It reads MONIQUE and has a tiny picture of her smiling face. She grins. "Good morning, Claire. Ready to go?"
I get up slowly, in case the dizziness suddenly returns, and sit in the chair.
The cliche, "here goes nothing" couldn't be more suitable, I think as she wheels me down the silent hallway. I smooth the bottom of my T-shirt with my hands, as if it's a gorgeous dress and I'm on my way to a dance. Nervous habit, I guess.
The wheelchair takes a sharp turn and I'm suddenly in the doorway of the multipurpose room. The giant round table is still the center of the room, the cabinets are still orange with peeling paint, and the chairs are still brown folding chairs with little padding. Nothing has changed, except there's a girl seated at the far end of the table, chatting with a nurse. She's wearing a blue, obviously hand-knit beanie, a purple bathrobe, and pink pajamas. Her light brown hair is thin,wispy, and tangled. Her eyes are sea-glass blue and very round, and her skin is several shades paler than my own. I speculate that she is about eleven.
I slowly get out of the wheelchair and sit cautiously in a folding chair. Monique pats my shoulder, we exchange smiles, and she leaves. The girl hasn't acknowledged me yet, for she is still talking, quite rapidly, to the nurse beside her. I can't help but hear her: "So I came all the way here. They don't have places like this back home, and I sure as hell wouldn't have gotten help back in Missouri. It's. ..it's just so much harder, having alcoholism on top of all this.."
An eleven year-old with alcoholism? What kind of place is this? I thought to myself, horrified by this new information. I listen on:
"I mean, I'm twenty-one. No one can tell me what to do. It's all up to me.But I know I have to be here. I can't go on like this." The nurse nods. "I'm proud of you, Annie, " she says softly before getting up and going to the fridge in the back corner.
So she's twenty-one. That explains a lot. And her name is Annie. Annie who once lived in Missouri. I can't believe her age. She looks so fragile, so doll-like, so young. From this close, I can see that her arms are tiny rods protruding from her robe sleeves, and her eyes are sunken in her thin face. She's about two inches shorter than me, from what I can tell.
Annie suddenly turns to me. "Hi there! It's so nice to finally have another person who's off bed rest to eat with! What's your name?"
The peppiness in her voice doesn't match her emaciated looks. It's so unexpected, I stutter.
" I...I'm Claire."
"Hi Claire! I'm Annie. What have you got?"
"I'm sorry?"
"Ana or Mia?"
"Oh...um...Ana."
I've never called it by a name before. I also hated the idea of doing that, it was like saying you were the host of some parasitical, unearthly being.
"Oh. I've got both," she says matter-of-factly.
" I'm sorry," is all I can think to say. It is not a cancer, a terminal illness, a diagnosis received with mournful tears. No one really thinks you're going to die when they hear 'eating disorder'. At least, not at first. Society doesn't think of it as an illness to be saddened by. It's taboo, secret, shameful. Only failed parents have sons and daughters who stop eating. That's what they think. And, I bet, there are people who'd look down upon the grave of a loved one lost to anorexia and think, 'It's their own damn fault.' It sickens me, but i know it's true. The disorder ravages the mind and the body, and sometimes the illness is more mental than physical. I think that's why people don't get it, don't feel sorry for those that are afflicted. But I've been on the outside looking in and on the inside. I'm on the inside now. I understand. Annie could die. I could die, if things took a nasty turn again. So I mean it when I'm sorry, sorry for Annie. Like a cancer patient, her days, in a way, are numbered. Except she, we have the power to make that number almost as large as we please. But though we have some control, the illness is not our fault. She never asked for two eating disorders and alcoholism to be brought into her life. It happened. And maybe she could have stopped it, sometime in the past, but I will not judge her.
Annie erupts in giggles, piercing through my thoughts. "Why are we so quiet?! You'd think this was a bereavement counseling group! Would you like to tell me how you got it? Not that that's a cheery subject, but I'd hate to sit in silence until breakfast arrives."
"Speaking of breakfast," the nurse says, coming over to us, "you're on nutrition drinks for this morning, Annie. You fought yesterday's meals, so this is best."
" Oh, Lillian, I hate that stuff! I promise I'll eat everything on the plate today!"
Annie assures her.
Lillian sighs. "Fine. But only because you've managed to stay off strict bed-rest all week."
Annie grins wide and I see that many of her teeth are a sickly, movie theater popcorn butter yellow. I try not to cringe.
"Thanks Lillian honey. You're the best!"
Lillian saunters off, presumably to fetch our breakfast.
"So," Annie begins, "how'd you end up here? How'd you get Ana?"
Four years ago, I never would have answered such a question with more than a sentence. But now, my response is mechanical, ready. I've already lived the story once through.
"I actually had a relapse. I came here a few years ago the first time. I thought after so long, I'd be stable. But I was still so vulnerable. Things just became too much for me, and it came rushing back. So here I am. What about you?"
She smiles slightly. "You're so brave, sweetie. And me? Well, when I was fifteen, I moved to Missouri with my boyfriend. He was nineteen. Everything was fine for the first month, and then he began getting angry with me out of the blue. He'd get extremely mad if I talked on the phone too long, or if I asked him to drive me somewhere. Little things like that. At first he only swore at me, but then he started hitting me. First just a slap here and there, then it was every day. Once he punched me so hard in the face that I fell down and hit my head. I wasn't unconscious, so managed to drag myself into the bathroom where I locked myself in for the night. He yelled at me to come and eat, but I wouldn't go. I had stopped eating soon after the hitting started, but he didn't know. He was too busy working his shitty fast food job. Anyway, he yelled and yelled at me, but I didn't leave the bathroom that night. I couldn't face him. How could I? How could I eat when he was treating me that way? How can you eat when someone is always telling you that you are nothing?"
My demons started in my head. Annie's came from the outside. I couldn't imagine being verbally told I was worthless, I only heard the words in my mind each time I'd been used and discarded. After hearing Annie's story, mine seems so trivial. Next to what her boyfriend did to her, what happened to me seems like love.
No. I can't compare our struggles. The hardest thing you ever go through will never be trivial. You cannot say which is harder because the only struggle you truly know is yours. If it hurt you, if it broke you almost beyond repair, it doesn't matter if what someone else went through seems worse. Just because he never hit me doesn't mean my scars don't run as deep as Annie's.
What fazes me is her voice didn't break once when she spoke. Her eyes are not glassy with tears. She is perfectly composed.
" Of course," she adds, "that was years ago. I got out of there real fast after those six months with him and moved back home. But I've had Ana and Mia ever since. I wish they would have faded away along with the bruises."
Now I feel like crying. But Lillian is back with trays of food on a cart and a nurse behind her is wheeling in another girl.
This girl, or rather, woman, is very tall, and darkly tanned. Her shoulders are broad and appear bony beneath her baby blue pajamas. Her dark brown hair is in a messy bun, and her deep brown eyes are like pits in her thin, angular face. She gets up and takes a seat beside me as Lillian places trays of eggs, toast, fruit salad, and milk before Annie and I.
"Hi," the new girl says with a smile and a slight wave. "I'm Shae."
Annie, who has been grinning since Shae was rolled in the door, replies cheerily, "Today is just like Christmas! Two new people to eat with in one day! I'm Annie, and this is Claire. She's in because of a relapse."
Normally, I would have been offended by having something so bluntly stated on my behalf, but I like Annie. She seems to want to be close to everyone and be open, which is what I've been hoping for.
"Hi, Annie. Hi, Claire. This is my first time here. " She picks up her fork without hesitation, and Annie and I follow suit. I dig in, and wonder if I even belong. The other two girls are slow to bring the fork to the plate, analyzing everything before them. I remember that all too well.
"Nurse?" Shae asks the woman who brought her in. "Can I swap out the eggs for one of those drinks? This is just too much."
The nurse retrieves a bottle from the fridge and sets it before her.
"Don't make a habit of replacing. You need to get used to eating solids."
Shae nods as she bites into her toast.
We eat and drink in silence for a while. I expect Annie to break it at any minute. Surprisingly, it is Shae who speaks up. "So what do you guys do or want to do? I wanna get to know my meal buddies a bit if I'm going to be stuck here a few weeks." She laughs, but it is not bitter.
"I'm going go to school to become a makeup artist as soon as I get out of here," Annie replies in the matter of fact way of hers.
" I want to be a writer." I'm still quite uncertain about what I want, but I'm always praised on my writing, so I assume it's the best answer.
"A makeup artist and a writer. So creative. I wish I was like that. I'm just in law school. Or, I was."
Annie almost spits out her milk. "Just law school?! Jesus, you are smart! How old are you?"
"Twenty-three."
"Well I hope you can get out soon. You've got so much going for you." Annie smiles at her before taking another sip of milk.
"Thank you."
I am the first one done eating. Annie doesn't raise an eyebrow, but Shae is amazed. "Wow. No doubt you'll be the first one out of here. I guess it's easier the second time around?"
I nod. "It's like, because I've known how hard it is to beat this, I'm so much more motivated to fight it off this time. Plus I think I might be a little more resistant to it this time. I know how to avoid it so that it can't completely consume me."
I'm like an escaped animal who was captured from the wild and has been caught again. I know what freedom tastes like, and it seems so much more in reach. I long for it more. And I know how to escape. It's only a matter of getting out again. But before I do, I want to help these girls in any way I can. I cannot watch Annie's life slowly be taken because of a horrible man from her past. I cannot bear the thought of her dying without ever knowing how much she matters, that she isn't nothing. And Shae, though I've only just met her, I wish to see her become a lawyer someday. She deserves it, I can tell. These girls were strangers less than an hour ago, but I'm not afraid to let them get close.
.