Fighting to live

I will never get admitted in a clinic, anorexic but not dying does not qualify for treatment. I can become as thin as paper, but until I reach a weight they consider dangerous enough, I won’t get in. They want to cure us, but fuel what we want: to be considered so sick people would worry we will drop dead at any moment.  The thinner you are, the less you matter, but the more people worry for you. There is a power in death very few are aware of. Sick people know it more than anyone. I will restrict more, become thinner, and control everyone around me through the power anorexia gives me. Hunger no longer feels painful, it’s just something I have to live with.

I was distracted from my thoughts as my sport’s watch alarm went off. It marked workout time. I raised from the bed and put on my sport clothes, admiring the bones sticking out of my chest and hips. The more I saw them, the more I loved how I looked. I stepped on the scale: 40kg. Good, better than in the morning. I laid down my yoga matt and started counting. A hundred jumping jacks, a hundred leg raises with the left, then the right. Crunches, more jumping jacks, more running around. It did not matter how hard it was for me to exercise, how tired I was after the workout. What mattered was that at the end of every sport session, I could step on the scale and see that I had lost weight: 39,7kg. Progress.

I went to the kitchen, filling up a big glass of water. My reward for the achievement. As I drunk the glass, I wrote on an anorexic girls forum how successful I had been during the day. A flood of messages came as a reply, of girls cheering up for me and sharing how successful and unsuccessful they had been. I was their hero, one of the best ones in the game. We told each other everything. Some of them talked about their struggles, their will to recover and beat anorexia for good. I could not help seeing them as weak. They had not gone through with their mission. They made me feel stronger than they were.

I left the glass on the kitchen table and went back to my room, wanting to get on with some reading. I was re-reading Winter girls by Laurie Halse Anderson. The book talked about the battle of two girls that swore to each other they would have competed to discover who can be the skinniest. In the original story Cassie dies, succumbing to her demons, Lia does not die. I had ripped from the book all the pages that talked about recovery. I just wanted to know about the main character’s journey to death, because it was where I was directed. It is funny how much a book can change meaning when you take away some parts of it. In one version Lia lives, in my version she dies. In my version, I die.

I started to read, but soon was overwhelmed by how tired I was and fell asleep. I was wakened by my phone ringing.

“Yes mum,” I flatly answered the call.

“Sara, something terrible has happened. You have to come to the hospital right now. Do you want me to come and pick you up?” burst out my mum with a shaking voice.

“What has happened mum? Is anything wrong with Emily?” I dared to ask. I could not think of another reason for me going to the hospital, other than Emily being sicker than usual. We had both been anorexics for years. I met her on a pro anorexics forum, we had exchanged numbers, and ever since we messaged almost every day. She was the closest person to a best friend I ever had. We were two sick people backing each other up, comforting and praising each other in our journey. Emily was sicker than I was, she had been admitted to hospital seven times in the past year. Every time she was discharged from hospital, she restricted and purged so much she quickly collapsed, having to go back to treatment in less than a month.

“She is dead.” A thick silence followed my mother’s words. I could not believe it. Emily was strong, the strongest one between us. She could make her weight drop in no time and have no consequences, she knew what she was doing and did it like a master. I took a deep breath, as tears started to fall from my eyes.

“Mum please, come pick me up” I cut the call. The pain was screaming inside of me, my legs started to shake and I had to sit back on the bed. Agonizing spasms came from my mouth as I started bawling. My head pounded uncontrollably, I felt it was going to split open. I grabbed a blade from my bedside table and started cutting my wrist. The deeper I went inside my skin, the better I felt. I had never felt so out of control wen it came to my emotions. Cutting tamed them down, making me feel I was gaining back control. I wrapped a handkerchief around my waist, allowing it to drain all the blood. Emily was no longer with me, and I wanted to join her, but I did not die that day. My mum rang the doorbell and I was still alive.

I stood up, dropped the bloody handkerchief on the floor and went for the door. I grabbed my coat on the way out, wrapping myself inside it. I entered my mum’s car in a state of numbness. She looked at me with extreme concern, but didn’t try to cheer me up. She knew how bad I was already feeling, there was no need for words. The trip to the hospital was one of the worst ones of my life. As the car stopped in the parking, I walked out with the fastest pace my legs could handle. I directed myself to the recovery department, where I generally visited Emily, and all the other patients. She was nowhere to be seen. My mum waited for me on the door, sadness painted all over her face.

“They have moved the body this morning,” she told me, as she hugged my shoulder, leading me to the side of the hospital where Emily was resting. A doctor came next to us, leading us to the correct room in silence. The hospital was filled with the noise of visitors and patients talking, but I could not distinguish a word of what they were saying, they appeared trapped under a bubble, far away from me. We reached the door Emily was lying behind. As it opened on her body, the last bit of hope I held of everything not being real drifted away. Her body was showing from her hips up. Her skin was as white as paper, and her lips were blue from the cold. Emily was even thinner than I remembered her.

For the first time ever since I knew her, I saw her without filters, not as an anorexic, but for the person she was. She was not a hero on that table, but just a person that had suffered too much. In eating disorders there is no magic happening. People don’t stop restricting because others ask them to, or because someone makes us notice that other people in the world have no access to food and we should be grateful. No magic there. What I saw on that table was myself, in Emily’s place, and that vision scared me more than I could anticipate. I dreamed about death so many times I could not count them anymore, but when I was faced with the unromanticized death of my friend, I realized I did not want to end up like she did.

I had been abusing my body for over three years and was exhausted. I realized I was selfish. I could not think only about Emily, the thought of myself kept creeping in. For the past three years, all I cared about was to be in control, counting calories and losing weight. Seeing Emily on that table made me ask myself if I wanted to do this until I ended up just like her, laying on a random table, insignificant. I went out of the hospital with my mum, she hugged my shoulders and brought me back to the car.

“How do you feel?” she asked. I had no answer. I kept silent and she understood. She knew Emily’s death changed everything, it represented a new beginning for me. Without her, I was more alone than ever. The only thing I could see on my side was my eating disorder, but I was so torn between the fear of death, and the fear of having to deal with life alone. I decided I could try setting a new goal for myself: I could try to fight. I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone about my resolution. It was my fight, and I wanted to face it alone. I didn’t know who I was without anorexia, but wated to find it out. I did not know if victory laid at the other side of the battle, but I was ready to fight.