75 Pounds

Chapter 7

7

The first time I ever left home for a week was summer camp when I was ten. When I got home, I noticed absolutely ever change inside the house. We had a new brand of toilet paper. The dog grew taller. My mother bought fat-free yogurt. Little things that would have gone unnoticed at any other time, now seemed like the most obvious things in the world.

I didn’t notice anything different this time, besides the fact they had gotten rid of the scales.

I walked gradually into my room, running my hands along the trim of my late oak dresser. My room was eerie, a preserved mummy on the date of burial. It was exactly how I left it. All the way down to the messy bed, from me getting up late that morning.

I remember the day clearly, as if it had happened yesterday and not three months ago. August 25th was the first appointment booked with my physiatrist since my July discharge. The plan was to adjust my medicine – to see if we should keep it where it was, or add to it. My mother and I both knew before we even left the house that he would add to it. Lately I had been practically been jumping out of my skin with anxiety.

My mother had spent the whole week preparing me to be re-hospitalized. At my local out-patient appointments, my weight and vitals kept going down. Discharged at 99 pounds, I was then sitting at about 91.

We woke up at 6 am to leave for the three hour drive to the specialized eating disorder hospital where my psychiatrist worked.

I had just enough time to grab a book before being pulled out the door.

 It’s the same old game. Lectures from my mother during the ride up. You’re not trying hard enough/proving to us that you can’t handle this/making us think you want to be in the hospital/tearing the family apart.  The big bad doctor frowned at the numbers and waved his finger at me. Crazy pills increased when he learned of my demons. A letter of recommendation to be re-hospitalized.

40 beats per minute was a nono.

Little girls who don’t want to eat were an even bigger nono.

My mother pilled me back into the car for another 3 hour lecture-filled drive to my local hospital.

The nurses at St. Patrick’s pediatric unit didn’t welcome me with welcome arms. I couldn’t fool them – they knew my story, knew my tricks. But I fought with everything I had.

It only took nine days of feeding tubes, panic attacks, and lonely wailing before they shipped me off to the eating disorder hospital so I could be closer to my physiatrist. And by the time they finished with me there I was nearly as big as when I started.

My floors are littered with the itty-bitty girl clothes that used to fit me.  I don’t even bother trying them on, as I know exactly how they’ll fit. I want to rip off this new fat and hatch as a beautiful butterfly.

My legs collapse under me and I crumple onto the floor. I hug my knees and the sobbing begins. I don’t even have to worry about crying softly, as the loud rap music leaking in through the cracks from my brother’s room vibrates my insides in a way that makes it difficult to read my thoughts.

I try to remind myself of a time where we were happy. When my  mother had a job, and my father was guilt-free, when I could eat ice cream and my little brother didn’t need his fix.

Part of me reminds me that it actually existed –pictures and memories as proof- yet another doubts it. How could a perfect family become so imperfect?

The tears keep coming as I allow myself to deteriorate. Lost sits beside me, patting my hair but whispering in my ear that he knows it’s my fault. The harder I cry, the more he smiles.