On My Own Two Feet -

It has been two weeks at the residential center and I am still unable to participate in light movement or any activity. I accepted it and disregarded any false misconceptions about compensatory measures being necessary. I convinced myself that if I had a single lingering thought pass my mind, even as a follow-up to my primary intention for introducing activity - to acclimate to the normalcy of life - then it was a good thing that I sat with discomfort and uneasiness. I don’t want to satiate my doubts and cynicism regarding the treatment team having negative intentions. But all I can feel is nausea and gastric discomfort - a fullness that cannot be emptied and also isn’t whole.

I start to feel stale, my age is pulling one up over me. That is to say, I am living with a bunch of young women - emphasis on young, me not included. I feel like Robert diNero in The Intern, except I am a 29-year-old who loses her autonomy, like he does in his career trajectory, to a perky, bright-eyed and thick-maned boss. The recovery coaches, think Oprah’s life coaches, are younger than I am. They are in relationships and own homes. They tell me how to eat a slice of pizza and quiche. They won’t let me use napkins when engaging in finger food meals. They dictate that I dip my apple wedges into the peanut butter. They said I should chomp down potato skins like paper sanding the edges of my teeth.

I am surrounded by talkative clients who read off their pride and joys like the children they don’t yet have. They talk incessantly and cite scholarly literature mandated by their academic institution, in an attempt to prove their entitled intelligence. And the psychiatrist tells my parents I am quiet, in comparison to the incessant chatter delivered in quick succession by the school-going man and women I am forced to be housemates with. It is as if I have dabbled in the risky millennial budgeting world of car-pooling via a mobile phone application.

Yesterday evening, we took a leather-interior automobile with black tinted windows, a visible cross dangling from the rearview mirror, and a windshield decal that read in all caps lock, “Praise The Lord,” booked via an account with a car service. The destination was a bookstore with a cafe inside. There we could purchase censored books, puzzles, a decaf beverage, and a bakery item if we so chose to and so long as we had the privilege to do so. The car arrived late and though the driver promised to wait all of twenty minutes for us, he departed, leaving a group of people seeking to recover from eating disorders, in a parking lot in the thick of summer humidity. We ended up eating our evening snack an hour later than scheduled. I had to acclimate to not adhering to my rigidity and following schedules. I had to acclimate to having my roommate dictate her preferences. I have to bear with gritted teeth hearing these persons listing off their accolades like the bullet point of items on a supermarket list created in the days before their eating disorders.

Yet in spite of all the progress I am making, I cried out my discontent. I cried out. I cried about my poor digestion, my aching gums and teeth, my yellowed nails, and the indented callus on my left pointer finger. I cried out about them, my parents, not trusting me. They wouldn’t hear of me being active. According to her, my mother, I will be cradled, all 60 pounds of me, once again to Westchester, New York. The hot tears spilled from my welled up bottom eyelids. I told them I was unhappy -still. It was not the same darkness that clouded my mental clarity. Instead, it was the dark space far into the distant future.

My father still calls me sad. He is still trying to convince me that I should participate in social work, to keep afloat. I feel like a lost case - lost at sea. My mother still thinks I can drop weight, almost agitated at her not finding it so easy a task to be featherweight.

I notice the new clients are walking around the house, both outside and inside. I notice them going up and down the stairs for no particular reason. I want to scream and shake the staff. And then I don’t because I think that at the end of the day, they will be sabotaging themselves. I am here for me. I am here to recover and I will neither enable nor hinder what anyone else wants to do.

Let me be. Why can’t everyone let me be? “Reshmi, can you come over nearer to the kitchen so I can talk with you?” Sure, I answered, precariously. Is anything wrong?, I asked with a steadied beat. “No. I just need you to finish the crumbs on your plate.” Infantilized? Certainly. Yet, I ate it up, just as I did that snack, over-portioned out of spite, by the recovery coach who caught me off guard about my evening snack being an allergen. I understood the significance of the mandate. When I was ill, very ill, I would leave a little on my plate one day, a little bit more the next, and mores thereafter. The process of leaving edibles on a plate would become a cycle. You can fool me once and twice now, but three times no more thereafter. This is temporary. I am resilient.

I half-expected to see my parents come back in after they walked off. I half-expected my parents to enter through the doors of the group meeting room. I thought I would see them come in after the group had ended. Part of me thinks they are going to come in the minutes before the gong rings for dinner at 6 pm. With every knock on the door, or door opened, I expect to see them. I find myself staring out the window, walking down the gravel driveway, imagining the gray hybrid car parked. They abandoned me then and they abandoned me now. I met with my therapist and thought that I would perhaps have missed their arrival as I sat downstairs in the basement with her, confessing again to being unhappy. She told me that it was a valid feeling. How could anyone be happy showing the toilet bowl to other adults? She understands. I think she understands and that puts me at ease.

I say that I am at peace. I think I am at peace. Piece by piece I feel fragments coming together, coalescing into a whole. I am not damaged. I am whole.

One of the first things a woman on the path of recovery from disordered eating must do is to reframe her concept of who she really is. She must begin to assert, both to herself and the world around her, that she is not defective. She must begin to review and retell the story of her life from the understanding that there is nothing wrong with her, that although she has been hurt, she is not damaged goods. Her disordered eating behavior is not evidence that she is a faulty human being in desperate need of repair. (p.18-19)

I never was wheeled on a stretcher or wheelchair. I always stood on my two feet.

My feet always took the beating. It was jaundiced and white - the blood not circulating toward the end of my feet. My feet has tiger stripes - they are the tattoos I don’t need to etch onto my skin. The stretch marks are my tattoos - my constant reminder of survival. The stripes are akin to a heart rate reawakened. They are akin to the eyes’ capillaries, indicative of blood flow. They are indicative of life.