E.D.U.: the Eating Disordered Underground
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I see them everywhere... members of the Eating Disordered Underground, and I wonder if they too can see it in my eyes. I want to share with you one story of a girl I work with, let's call her Judy.
From the moment I first laid eyes on her I knew. I knew from the skeletal frame, the wispy hair, the bluish color of her dry and often bleeding hands and her inability to sit still for even a second. Looking at her is like looking in the mirror and seeing a reflection of what I was a short time ago. We work as cashiers and I watch her as she reads the food labels, adding information to her calorie-counting brain. Every time I see her I want to say something, I want to let her know that she doesn't have to live this way. I sometimes want to hug her and tell her I'm there for her but I'm afraid of what her reaction would be because I know how I would have reacted when I was in her state. It's scary to watch her deterioration, and sometimes I wonder how she does it: gets up every morning and goes through the greuling routine of relentless exercise and the complete consumption of all thoughts on food. But then, sometimes I look at her with admiration... and feel the all too familiar urge to be like her again. Maybe one day I'll summon the courage to talk to her about it and try to help her... and I just hope that when I finally decide to do it, it won't be too late.
-Alana D
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Lisa, The following story is something that has bothered me since it occurred last year when I was still in high school...
I noticed her the first day of class, but only because she bothered me. It was a class that I didn't want to be in, and her high-pitched giggle was interrupting my grumpy disposition. I turned and studied my loud classmate, and her small frame, cheerleader T-shirt, and darling haircut fed my animosity toward her. We never spoke, even though our assigned seats were quite close. I was academically oriented; she steered more toward mini-skirts and pom-poms. She was a dancer with friends and admirers surrounding her constantly. I was a nerd with only one friend in the class who sat on the opposite side of the room. She hardly needed my companionship. I was annoyed that the assigned seats stayed the same all semester. As the weeks passed, my negative attitude lessened as I watched her more closely. She lacked the snobbiness and ditziness of other cheerleaders I knew.
I had only talked myself into disliking her because she was everything I wanted to be - pretty, thin, and popular. So I hated her. What a waste of a possible friendship.
Later in the semester our class was scheduled to have a three-day lesson on eating disorders. Listening to lectures about EDs has always made me nervous and angry. I despise sitting through the videos that show the scantily clad skeletons lounging in treatment centers, posing in whatever way best shows off their bones.
I get angry because they forget to talk about the majority of us - the "normal-looking" people out in the real world who hide desperately in layers of clothing. Girls like myself who have struggled with anorexia and bulimia for years, and still haven't "acheived" emaciation, but who are dying nonetheless.
I get angry because they usually address only the physical problems, while anyone who has ever dealt with disordered eating knows that the mental hell far outweighs any physical symptom. Mostly I get angry because no one seems to understand.
The first day of the discussion, I concentrated all my energy (as much as 10 Cheerios can provide) in an effort to keep a strong blanket around my emotions, but a few tears escaped my numbing veil and fell silently on my desk. Trying to wipe them away, I succeeded in smearing the ink all over my page of notes. As if I needed them anyway. Don't we all basically have a degree in eating disorders? I glanced around the classroom in an attempt to find a distraction from the rather triggering movie. I noticed that she wasn't taking notes either. In fact, she was so pale and shaky that she couldn't have written a single word had she wanted to. I watched her frantically trying to shrink even further into her oversized sweatshirt, an attempt to hide from the world that I was all too familiar with. She must have felt my stare, because she looked up and we made rather blurry eye contact. I knew. She knew. For a matter of seconds we silently shared the frenetic fear, and the depth of pain.
We still didn't talk, but we watched each other constantly. She became even thinner as the semester wore on. I could see the dark circles under her eyes hidden by makeup, and her purplish freezing hands. Her silent screaming echoed in my head each time I saw her in class. Why didn't I say anything? Perhaps I was jealous of her thinness and her sickness. It sounds crazy, but ED people probably understand.
Just before school let out for the year we passed in the hall. I was coming out of the restroom putting my toothbrush back in my purse, and she was going into the restroom pulling her hair up into a ponytail, I assume to keep it out of the way. Our eyes met for a final time, and the deadness and pain I saw in hers wrenched at my heart. I lifted a still trembling hand in a silent greeting, and she returned the hello with a sigh of resignation concealed in a sad smile. The irony was horrible, really. We understood perfectly what was going on, but at the time I felt that there was nothing to say except maybe something hypocritical that wouldn't have helped her anyway. We continued on our way in opposite directions, and that was the last time I ever saw her.
I heard that she had been hospitalized over the summer, and now she is out and doing better. I hope it is true. Katie, wherever you are, I'm so sorry. Sorry I allowed my fear to stop me from possibly making a friend - a friend that could have cried with me and laughed with me. Someone who could have understood.
Hmmm...that bit of rambling turned out to be longer than I meant it to. You don't have to post it at all, or you can edit anything you want if it's too long. Thanks for spending so much time working on the site. I appreciate your honesty. -Tate
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Subject: Eating Disordered Underground
Clients always ask my advice when I'm working at my part-time job in an upscale clothing store chain. They ask about color, style, and fit. Sometimes size.
One day, a woman, with her daughter in tow, approached me with a Small and an Extra Small t-shirt in each hand. It was painful to look at her. Through a chunky ribbed turtleneck sweater, her shoulders were rigid and pointed. Her arms were like the tiny tubes around which gift wrap is rolled. She was oblivious to my knowing look.
That little voice inside told me there was no way she would guess we shared the same secret-- after all, I'm not 'good enough' to look that bad.
But then, she asked me which size I would wear--the small or the extra small. That was the first time I realized that the mirror and my eyes were deceiving me.
It took another member of the Eating Disordered Underground to open my eyes just a tiny bit.
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I am in the 10th grade and in the 8th or 9th grade there is a girl. A girl who is who I am but thinner, sicker, worse. Her name is Emily. Recently, I found it out from my friend who knows her, only because I jealous, envious, yet sympathetic. She's younger than me, but she is where I am, but farther. I've only recently begun treatment for my anorexia. I see her all the time, with her many friends for lunch, but she doesnt EAT. And it isnt just a sickness for food, it's the anorexia talking. Because I used to refuse the food. Now, I can manage a diet soda and maybe some pretzels. But she doesnt even count out change for a diet coke or even an evian. She doesnt let an OUNCE of food pass through her chapped lips. Her eyes are sunken and she has these dark, deathlike circles under her eyes. Her facial bones poke through the pale skin, and her arms and legs are so bony, so frail. It's like looking at a skeleton. And she's one of those people with the potential to be a model-gorgeous, face, hair, eyes, the girl who the guys crush on, only her body is like a skeleton. It's horrible. I, too, go through the feelings of body-hatred she must go through. Her friends tell my friends she's anorexic and "dying...never eats". It's not exactlyjealousy I feel....it's a cross between sympathy and mild, mild, envy..that I'm not where she is. But why would I want to be starving to death? I don't exactly know. I don't. I want to live. I've found friends and support. On the bus ride home, she sometimes takes the same crosstown bus as myself, and I look at her emaciated body, drowning in stylish clothes, dying. I want to take her hand and talk to her over a hot coffee and tell her she'll be okay, but I don't know if she will. She's so young, too. And so sick. We pass the winter New York City streets, and she stares out. I want to know what's she thinking. I feel intrigued, disturbed, envious, sad. I also feel glad that I'm not nearly as sick as she is. Because I've found the meaning of life, just recently, but I've found it and I want to hold onto it, and celebrate Christmas happy and healthier than last years.
-Michele
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lisa,
i have enjoyed your site more than you could know (although enjoyed is a rather strange term to use i suppose) and i know there are so many others who have benefited from it. i wrote this poem a while ago and recently reworked it a little for a seminar i am in at school. feel free to post it if you deem it worthy:) thank you for your e-support:) love, katie
s i s t e r h o o d
I know them.
There's no fooling me -- i see it in those purple shadows
where faces used to glow.
Masquerades aren't as fun if you go everyday --
or if the only one fooled is yourself, besides
I wore that mask to the party last year and frankly
it has become quite cliche.
I recognize these stubborn competitors
lining up for morning inspection with chins high and proud --
circus dogs balancing shiny Cosmo dreams on their noses.
I wish i could say no, I don't know them.
Wish those familiar haunted eyes held depths of
mystery and wonder instead.
If only those eyes, those glassy minds weren't so engrossed in the scrutiny
of each other
of me
of the Glamour girls because really,
this Victoria doesn't keep a secret very well.
But reason is a fear easier said than done
even on days when you've splurged with
three saltines and a canteloupe.
I know them.
Pitiful creatures who got themselves knocked up
by the idea that good things come in only
the smallest of packages.
Maybe if mom and dad had just bought the damn bike
or the horse insead of the sapphire ring
when she was ten -- or a chemistry set even --
for now they march hut to,
fading like distant mirages on the highway oh so proud and each believing
that she will be the one to collect the sweepstakes prize
never realizing that this well-trod path leads simply and quickly
into the transparent horizon
of the latest statistics.
Thank you, Katie, for this powerful poem. -Lisa
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NEW as of 4.8.00 below:
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It's amazing the connection that we have with eachother, and no non ed person could ever understand it..... I know the ED underground... I live it.... along with a few others at my small high school...
She was the main one. The first one. Part of the reason I begun it and continued, and not that it was her fault, but because I was so jealous of her. I had never seen her until the day I noticed how thin she was- not just thin, skinny. So I didn't see the weight loss, but soon it was confirmed. I was in the beginning stages, she as well. Ever day we looked at eachother- stared, knowingly. But it wasn't until she was in the hospital with a heart attack that I knew for sure. But that didn't stop me. And soon I was in the hospital too, with heart problems and concerned parents, and she had returned to school. Finally, one day when we were both back at school "recovering", she came up to me and started to talk to me. Turns out we not only had the same therapist, but practically the same family; we told eachother our secrets and rules, and I drove her everywhere so she wouldn't have to be with her family. We devoloped nicknames for our diseases- and talked about what each day had been like, knowing that people were watching, saying "there are the anorexics... the nasty screw ups". She was one of the best friends that I ever had- until she got way too sick of the gossip at our school and left.
Before she did though, she confirmed another ed siting of mine. I had noticed a girl I didn't really know, older than me and quiet, seemed a little sickly (you know, not so thin, but the eyes, and the worn out appearance). Probably bulimic, I thought, but not judging (how could I? It is my world as well)... I wondered for so long, but I never talked to her.
Pretty soon, she had dropped out, and my other ed friend came up to me one day, described her, and asked me if I knew who she was, because she had met her that day at group (which I had long since quit going to because of my HATE for counseling). Bulimic. I even knew what she struggled with. Strange the connections.
Now my really good friend is gone, and I miss her, but I am too scared to call her because I have heard that she is even skinnier than ever, and I am afraid she would think I was awful if she saw how fat and nasty I am.... besides, I have a new obsession. She is a freshman girl that I noticed recently. Easily the skinniest person at school- and I am SO jealous. We have never said a word, and don't even know eachothers names, but every day when we pass eachother in the hall, there is an eye contact and a knowing grin, saying "I know your pain, I know your struggle, and it sucks". I wonder why no one else sees it so that she gets the help that I have been forced into. I hope it is not too late when they do, but I am to weak of a person and stupid to do anything....... -A
Thank you for your site.... it is the most amazing thing in the world
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Page 4 of the E.D.U. now!
keep writing
keep talking
there is something so important about dialogue
and thank you for giving me your time
I am blessed!
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