By Natalie
Anorexia nervosa is often seen as an enigma by non-sufferers: what could possibly be so compelling about self-starvation that intelligent and sensitive people will sometimes persist in doing it even with the full knowledge that they are killing themselves? It's a question that people have often asked me, with great perplexity, during the thirty-plus years that I've been anorexic.
Anorexia is a reaction to intolerable emotional pressures. Feeling violated, or deprived of control, I turn to a perverse sort of self-control. An obsession with starving and over-exercising gives me something to focus on that is so much simpler than the real problems of life. Deprived of feelings of self-value by life circumstances, I turn to the number on the scales as a measurement of my self-worth. I may not be good at anything else, but at least I can still lose weight.
The psychological effects of starvation help to numb out unbearable emotions. Starving myself outright for a few weeks produces a feeling of detachment and emotional neutrality that can rival an injection of heroin, and like heroin, anorexia is seriously addictive. Always, I wanted to manage another day of zero nutrition, another mile on the treadmill, another pound lost. The 'high' of success, the feeling of enervation from malnutrition and exhaustion, all helped to take my mind off whatever troubles were plaguing me. Nowadays, confined to a wheelchair by the physical effects of prolonged starvation, I can no longer over-exercise myself into comfortable oblivion, but must rely solely on starvation.
A few months ago, my depression took a turn for the worse, as it had done on many previous occasions. I felt overwhelmed by problems of life, by difficult emotions. Things were bad; I was self-injuring daily as a reaction to the terrible black cloud that hung over me. My doctor doubled my dose of Prozac and put me on Valium, all to no avail. At this time, I had been trying to live in a kind of equilibrium with my anorexia, allowing myself a little nutrition daily to try to stave off the death that my doctors have told me is imminent for the last several years. I returned to a full pursuit of my anorexia, embracing it as I would embrace a rescuer who had arrived to save my life. I lived on nothing but water for six weeks; the depression lifted and I felt comfortably numb. The pounds dropped off me; every pound lost added to my self-esteem and confidence. I no longer needed to cut myself to give vent to the terrible emotional torments I had been experiencing. Instead of the wounds on my arms showing the world the pain I was feeling, I let my skeletal appearance and obvious ill-health carry the same message. And so it has been time after time throughout my life: whenever things become too much to bear, I starve myself to regain that false, but so terribly compelling, feeling of control.
Anorexia is my life, my best friend, even my lover. It is unfailingly there for me whenever I need it, constant and dependable. The fact that it is slowly killing me is somehow overlooked for the sake of the short-term benefits that it brings. Not one who finds it easy to express her emotions in positive ways, I turn to using my body to express outwardly what I feel inside. My body is the canvas, my anorexia the artist. The work of art, a walking skeleton that reflects the emptiness, the endlessness, that I feel inside.
I am condemned by my doctors as an anorexic who refuses help, who doesn't want to recover. That isn't so: if there was another way to cope, to control the depression and emotional pain that has always plagued my life, then I could surely give up my anorexia. I do not actually want to die, I merely want to be able to cope with life. In a very real sense, I am "starving to live", not starving to die. But every attempt at treating my anorexia has pursued the target of weight restoration, while neglecting the fact that everybody needs to cope, and my primary coping tool is anorexia. Any such treatment strategy shows a fundamental lack of understanding of what underlies anorexia, and is doomed to fail.
Finally, there is the great myth that anorexia is about vanity, a matter of appearance, "thin is beautiful". Nothing could be further from the truth. I know well that I looked more attractive when I had been hospitalised and forced up to a higher weight; but my deeply ingrained self-hatred and lack of self-value makes me feel undeserving of such benefits. The "skeletal me", obviously ill, disturbing to look at, is the true reflection of my inner being. My anorexia is a fundamental part of my identity; after all these years I have no idea who I would be without anorexia -- certainly not myself.
I know full well that my anorexia will kill me, just as it killed my mother. But I have to accept that as the price
of being able to cope with being alive. All I can do is to try to take a little care of myself, to perhaps moderate
the most damaging effects of my anorexia, so that I can live a little longer, and perhaps reach out to other sufferers
to help spare them from my fate.
Copyright Natalie A Winter, April 2001. All rights reserved.