The Residential Reach -

The metal claw-like contraption sunk down into the stuffed animals and doo-dads. My reflection staredback at me. Time and time again the claw came back empty: empty-handed. The process of trial-and-unforced error was addictive.

Rob, the chaplain at the acute inpatient unit for eating disorders just outside of the city, said that anorexia was an addiction not unlike alcoholism. Rob was tall, dark, and no doubt handsome, but I only saw him as a father, not to be confused with the Roman Catholic use of “father.” Rob was married and had a small son who he openly regarded as perfectly imperfect. I always wondered why people swooned over him, particularly the adolescent girls and young women on Unit 2, all serenely underweight and most likely without a libido.

I told Rob that I faulted myself for damaging relationships, sabotaging possible job offers, forming a wedge between my parents’ love for one another and questioning their altruistic love for me. He replied that I was addicted to running on empty, meaning I had an adrenaline rush from restricting food intake and compulsively burning energy. He translated this self-inflicted destruction as a conduit for seeking contentment, happiness, and peace. Like other addicts, my addiction to restricting food and liquid intake as well as exercise, was a less than savory means for attaining a peace of mind - even if only transitory. With that said, how could anyone fault someone for choosing to be happy? That is not a flaw.

I asked the secular chaplain a pointed religious question: Why is it that people use fasting as a means for attaining closeness with the divine being? I remember my father questioning me with pointed anger: was I trying to be some sort of tree-trunk squatting ascetic? Even more ironically, in Sikhism, fasting is classified as a ritualistic behavior that is not conducive to honoring our self and our life and that such an action was not a means for becoming closer to God. Rob said that some chose to dabble in drugs or perform other harmful actions with the purpose of sacrifice. They claim to see delusions and hallucinations. He asked if I did and already smiling, knew my response would readily be “No.” No, I had not sacrificed anything. I was high off of the flatness, or rather, concavity of my abdomen. I felt light on being lithe. I felt delicately light-footed, fluttering about like the silent batting of butterfly wings, slipping past narrow spaces, and in so doing, also slipping through the cracks.

More than 30 pounds later, I am rounding out. My cheeks have returned in both manners: the face and the bottom half of me. I am aware of my thighs as each foot moves forward. I have a bosom that I again immediately try to hide. Today I put on clothes that though are not pajamas, are for the first time, still forgiving. The lacy bralette, less so. And yes, it is as if I am hitting puberty again. After so many years, I need to wear this undergarment again. I am not happy about my body changing, but I’m also not so viscerally upset. I am disturbed, for certain. I am conflicted by my newly onset womanhood that predates my period’s second-coming. I am conflicted for now carrying extra baggage around. But then I remember, the weight gained is not extra. It is what needs to be there, what always needed to be there, and there is still more left to be received.

I hear the lawnmower outside cutting the grass. I catch glimpses of the man roving around the yard. I avoid his line of sight by any means possible, dodging his periphery from the inside milieu. The whirring of the landscaping equipment rattles me, and after a long time, I’m rattled to the core not because I am so frail as to literally be shaken physically. Now, I am shook by the prospect of roving eyes. Now, there is no going back. My meal plan has increased. I have already asked for my missing required sides with each meal. I have already chosen more carb-saturated snack options and have already witnessed people performing higher level yoga that me, mandated to remain on the floor.

I am excited for my family to see me now. I want to see them look at me with brows furrowed because they are tired out from smiling too widely for far too long. Their brows furrowing will no longer be due to sporting a concerted face caused by concern. And just as I typed that out, I pictured myself in a room, trying in earnest to squeeze into Indian garb that no longer fits my body. I see myself grow frustrated and ashamed, discouraged from making my appearance. Appearance or not, I know it is my presence that is missed. And a split second later, in my effort at describing to you my thoughts as they surface in real-time, I visualize my bedroom that I had not seen for any more than 15 minutes. I came home as a pit-stop to freshen up between inpatient hospitalization for 6 weeks and residential treatment.

Through tears that were for a best friend I had left at the hospital, tears that were for the fear of the unknown, for the hurting and pain both physical and mental, for the sheer bittersweetness of progressing but not yet recovering, I was able to catch sight of my wrought-iron, handmade in India, shabby-chic console-turned vanity table in my bedroom. Underneath was a new pure-bred calfskin patchwork rug worth thousands. The natural gray shades matched the black painted closet doors and rainy, cloudy gray paisley wallpaper from London. I saw my closet organized, my cherry wooden floors clean. The still not yet deflated ‘Welcome Home’ balloon remains on my wall from when my parents met me at the airport after I came back from my first international reporting trip during the depths of anorexia.

I flossed after weeks of not being able. The result? Bloody gums. Before brushing my teeth numerous times, showering even more times, shampooing multiple times while scrubbing my scalp clean, and conditioning for full effect, not to mention shaving newly grown slivers of leg hair so unlike the past when shaving in 5 minutes or less could never be a possibility, I ran into the library room. That’s correct - I ran, my newfound ability to move after weeks of being sedentary and under constant observation, unrestrained. I took the scissors and cut my hospital wrist band and allergy band.

My arm, chunkier now that it can no longer be encircled by my thumb and adjacent pointer finger touching, just has to be extended out. All I have to do is extend my arm, reach out, and grab recovery. It’s right there in front of me. It is right there for the taking. I have said this at least twenty times since right before my hospital discharge and admission to residential. One of the other residents, the only other person older than myself - a beautiful woman blessed with a beautiful family showed me a passage from a book popular in the eating disorder culture, Eating in the Light of the Moon. The old English fairytale reads:

Every evening, just before falling asleep at night, she would lie in her bed and gaze out at the stars through her bedroom window. On stormy nights, they wouldn’t show their faces at all even though she suspected they were still there, hiding behind the clouds.
One of the fairies began dance around her, and with a high, sweet voice said, “Since you are so determined to find the stars, I will tell you how to reach them: If you will not go backward, then go forward.”
They were not easy to climb. But she moved slowly and cautiously, inching her way along. As she became wary she would occasionally lose her grip and slip backwards. It was cold and she was surrounded by darkness, but she pressed on until she reached the top of the arch where she was surrounded by brilliant light. At last! There they were - the stars in the sky! She reached out with her hand to touch one of the shimmering stars. As she reached farther and farther, she suddenly lost her balance, and with a sigh that was half regret, half contentment, she fell, slipping and sliding, farther and faster into the darkness below.
When she opened her eyes, it was morning and she found herself in bed.”I did reach the stars, didn’t I?” she wondered. “Or did I only dream it?”
Then she looked at her hand that was still tightly clenched into a fist, and as she slowly opened it, she saw a speck of stardust. (pp. 24-27)

It’s almost as uncanny that my high school’s motto, in Latin, was: Ad Astra Per Aspera, which translates into, “through hardships to the stars.”