Part One - 4 "Slipping"

Slipping

Wynnewood, USA

November 27, 2008

10:00am.

The morning hits my eyes with forceful brutality, pushing my eyelids inwards so that they stick to my eyeballs. I can feel the heat of Chiqui’s body still curled up at the bottom of the bed, but I cannot open my eyes to her today. I want to stay with my eyes closed for the rest of the day, for the rest of the weekend. I cannot face the possibility that I will have to cook today, that I will have to be with food, and specifically with a recipe whose inception causes me so much pain.

My face is burning; I can feel the stinging tears still clinging to the debris in my sinuses, in my throat. I feel as though I have set fire to my insides, that my body has shriveled up onto itself and is now nesting in the shame of what I did last night.

I feel empty. I’m hungry, I want food.

NO! NO I DON’T!

I know that I cannot wake up today. Just the thought of dragging my exhausted body down the stairs boils the anxiety now living in the hollow cavity where my heart used to be. 

If I eat anything, I’ll throw it up. I know I will.

The breakfast food that I know is in the cupboard dances in front of my still closed eyelids. I push on them with the palms of my hands, as if to banish the image to the back of my brain. I pull my hands down over my face, and scratch the outside of my eyelids with my nails. I am possessed by a fury at myself that twitches in my fingernails and reverberates throughout my muscles.

You got through the entire day, the entire FUCKING day, and you couldn’t even last!

Worthless.

…nooo…

The angry voice booms inside my head and I am squatting, crawling around, looking for a place to hide from it. The judgment dripping from its vicious fangs lands on my face, sticks to my eyes. It slips into my throat and forces me to gag It eradicates any attempt I could make to strengthen myself up, to make it through to day.

I’m sore. My body is aching and cracking. My knees are screaming from the pressure I put on them yesterday by leaning my overfilled stomach on them as I threw up everything I could. I try to shift my head over so I’m not facing the window. The heaviness of the sadness pressing on my eyes pushes me further under my blanket, which I am holding tightly over my head, as I lay curled up, hugging my knees.

“Yuuhuuu, are you awake up there??”

Chiqui bounds off the bed at the beckoning tone of Mami’s voice, and I groan some sort of acknowledgement. Mami hops up the stairs and I pull my covers tighter around my head.

Where is the evidence from yesterday??

Panic heats the space behind my ears for a second until I remember that I took the necessary precautions to hide it before the morning. The evidence typically consists of wrappers, peels, crumbs, or anything left uneaten shoved into a plastic bag.

“Come on, wake up, let’s go downstairs”

I don’t want to move. I’m not ready to go downstairs. I can’t face food right now.

Ohhh, but it will make you calm down…

The emptiness inside of me, where I used to have organs, makes me want to fill myself with food, and then throw it up. It is my mind’s way to grieve over what it has lost; it is my way to punish myself for everything that I deserve to be punished for. It’s the easiest way to suffer without feeling. I am so angry with myself; I wrap the blanket around my throat, cutting off my breath for a few seconds. When colors begin to flash behind my eyelids, I let go and breathe. I swing my legs off the bed, the momentum of which forces me up right. The room takes a few seconds to right itself, all of the walls settling back into the positions into which they have been built.

The blood rushes to my feet and settles in my soles. The carpet prickles, as if the nerves in the bottoms of my feet don’t know how to process it, rendering into static snow in my mind. I pick up my book and shuffle down the stairs, rubbing my sore, swollen eyes into some type of normalcy before I reach the kitchen. Danielle is already sitting there, lazily eating her cereal and browsing through a comic book. I grab a bowl, fill it up to a portion bigger than one I know I can eat, drown it in milk, and begin to absentmindedly add almonds, and banana pieces into the mix. My breakfast bowl of cereal is nearly overflowing, but I don’t really notice. I perch myself atop of the counter and begin to shovel it in, barely pausing to breathe. My mind is focused on the book in front of me, and I am not conscious of what I am eating.

I finish before Danielle does, and I immediately feel the rush of sadness, guilt, and disappointment at the fact that the cereal is done.

I need more…

The monster in my head is rubbing its slimy dirt-colored belly greedily, dragging my eyes to all corners of the kitchen, showing me what the next thing is that I could eat. I settle on more cereal, it’s the easiest since it is what I have already started on. Mami is still outside with Chiqui, so she wont’ know how much I’ve eaten anyway.

When she comes back in, I have already finished my second bowl, and Danielle has already gone to some other part of the house to occupy herself. I pour myself some coffee as an excuse to remain in the kitchen, and grab a handful of nuts. I hide them under the flap of my book to munch on unencumbered. My stomach is hurting; its shriveled up walls are being forced to stretch now beyond what they can hold after the trauma of throwing up. Normally, I don’t let my stomach rest between binges, so it remains flaccid, and I can refill it; but because I slept, it means that it has had some chance to heal.

The way I am treating it now is as if I were to rip out the stitching from a recently sutured surgery. I don’t care. I sneak in as many morsels as I can, pushing all consciousness away from the moment along with them. I don’t even notice the words that are supposedly rising from the page and into my mind.

I’ve slipped. I know I have, and I am continuing to roll down the jagged hill, barely even trying to grasp at roots and rocks in order to stop the slide. The thought that I now have to create a social circle out of no one, a life out of nothing pushes me further down, makes it much easier for me to ignore my feelings and just stay with the cycle of my illness.

“How about you go do something else?”

Now that the truth has emerged in its entirety, Mami is not as aggressive as she used to be when she suspects that my behavior isn’t up to par. I shrug my shoulders; I can’t move anyway because my book is concealing the nuts that I still have to eat.

Mami shuffles out of the kitchen, and goes to the living room to watch football. It is after all, Thanksgiving day. I slide up to the door of the sitting room, to see that she’s concentrating. She looks almost sad, and she’s been unusually quiet.

“Hey, Mami, what’s the matter?”

She looks at me with a searching gaze, and definitely forces a smile. I should know, I’m the queen of forced emotion.

“Oh, nothing, I just miss your dad. What’s up with you?”

“oh, nothing…”

She turns her attention back to the game and I take this opportunity to sneak down to the basement bathroom. When I walk into it, I notice that I have successfully erased the smell of half digested food from the night before, and I turn on the shower water, as if I am going to step into it. Instead, I raise the toilet lid, and heave the contents of my extended breakfast inside. It only takes a few minutes, since most of it has become liquid.

I step into the shower, dizzy, and already exhausted. I don’t wash my hair because, really, what’s the point? The heater in the house is broken, and the water is quickly growing cold as it flows over my body. I stare down and hug my wet, sore stomach. I crumple to the floor, and sob into my dripping, and now freezing knees.

I step out of the shower and wipe the steam away from the mirror with my forearm. My eyes are red, swollen, and show traces of blood vessels about to burst. My face has broken out in some angry red lesions, from the acid that has splashed on to it.

Well, there’s always tomorrow…

I slap myself on the forehead, hard.

 You idiot, how many tomorrows do you think you’re going to have left like this?

The admonition hurts more than the heavy emptiness that is again settling inside of me, I walk out into the newly renovated basement and collapse on mattress that is currently this room’s single item of furniture. I don’t think anyone has even noticed that I’ve gone anywhere. I can hear Danielle playing with Chiqui upstairs.

I put the same clothes that I was wearing back on; I didn’t wash my hair so it doesn’t even look like I showered. I can do this same thing again if I want. I go upstairs, look in on Mami in the sitting room, and call out to Danielle,

“Let’s go, I want to dye my hair!”

Someone once said to me that when you change your hair, it means that your life is going to change. I can’t remember who said this, not even after I shake my head a few times to try and jar my memory. It must be someone important because the thought is laced with heaviness in my heart, one that sinks into the already heavy vacuum I feel inside.

We ride to the pharmacy; the only place open on Thanksgiving, and I blast techno music and supportive songs by angry female vocalists into the still suburban neighborhood. We take the long way there, driving around and passing all of the houses that my friends from high school used to call home. Most of them are there now; we do have our reunion tomorrow.

I wonder if I’ll see anyone?

My hair is a dry, multicolored mutt of all the colors I’ve dyed it in the past two years and I’m craving some naturalness to it. I want it to be brown again. I want to be me, not the some fake version that I pour over myself. I pick something that looks the closest to my natural color and we head home,

“Can we take the long way again!?!”

My head is pounding from the music and the seesaw my stomach has been riding on in the past twenty-four hours.

“No. I want to do this before we make dinner.”

Danielle looks disappointed; I think she has something to tell me, so I concede to take the back roads back to the house.

“I’m worried, Yali.”

Shit.

“What are you worried about?”

Danielle picks at the door handle absentmindedly lifting it up, and letting it drop,

“I’m worried about Mami and Papi. Mami is really mad at Papi.”

Phiew…it’s not about me. Another bullet dodged.

“Why is she mad at him?”

“Well, ‘cause she feels alone. I think she really misses him. She’s mad that he’s not here.”

Oh.

“Well, don’t worry, there’s nothing that we can do about it, you know that. Just…whatever, don’t take it personally.”

That’s why Mami has been so tense. That’s why she seems to be in a constant state of disappointment. Damnit. Now what do I do? How am I supposed to fix this!

“Oh...well, I guess you’re right, Yali.”

Once back at home, I find myself in the bathroom again, this time to dye my hair. I mix the ingredients together in the bottle; shaking it vigorously, far longer than the required 30 seconds. The forceful back and forth movement cramps my arm and I like this feeling of tension, and the way it releases when I put the bottle down, and stretch out my fingers.

The instruction sheet always has some convoluted way to arrange your hair so you get an even dye, but I just dump the whole bottle on my head and rub it in like shampoo. The color gets there anyway. It splashes as I scratch my scalp with the force of my action, and hits the walls like the splatter of blood from a shooting victim, like the splatter of vomit when I throw up.

I’m anxious and excited at the change, and the effort I have to muster to sit with it for the time it needs to settle in is more draining than I would expect it to be. I have my book in front of me; I know that it will take about 50 pages for the dye to be ready. When I get there, I wash out my hair, reveling in the dye pouring out with the water, reminding me of the blood in the dentist’s office. I run upstairs to dry it, and when I look in the mirror, my eyes shine brightly against a dark curtain, my hair. It’s still dry, but at least now it’s dark, at least now I feel like I’m a step closer to being whole.

“Heyyy, wow, it looks so good!”

Danielle is standing behind me while I am still competing in a stare-down with my reflection in the mirror in Mami’s room.

“Wow, it really brings out your eyes!”

I pull at my hair, and hide my eyes with it.

“Eh it’s still dry and ugly and too short.”

I pull it back in a ponytail and see that I have spots of dye on my ears and some of my neck.

Whatever

“Let’s go make Thanksgiving dinner.”

Danielle follows me down the stairs, still telling me that my hair looks good, trying to make me happy with it. I call out to Mami to put the chicken into the oven while I prepare my ingredients.

“Now? Right now?”

She calls out from her riveted position in front of the television screen; the Eagles must be winning. Or losing.

“Yeah, Americans have their Thanksgiving dinner at 4pm, we might as well do it like that too.”

We ready the ingredients, and while I’m mashing the spices into the goat cheese, I picture the last time that I did this. The smell of borscht cooking nearby wafts into my nostrils, but the borsht is from more than three weeks ago. Here, in this kitchen, there is only a chicken in the oven and raw pumpkins waiting to be stuffed.

My fingers are covered in the goat cheese, I have given up using a fork and have decided that this is the better way. When I deign the mixture done, I pull them out and examine them; they look as coral does when it has absorbed too much carbon dioxide: white and brittle, with large chunks coming off of it.

Come on, eat it…

I can’t. I wash it off in the sink instead, and wait around for the chicken to be cooked long enough so I can put my pumpkins in. When the dinner is prepared, we set up a makeshift buffet on the kitchen bar.

I don’t like the way the pumpkins look; they’re lopsided, they’re not stuffed all the way, they’re ugly. The ones I made before were better looking. I feel like I want to cry, but it would be strange to do so here. We pile our makeshift Thanksgiving meal onto our plates. Mami and Danielle exclaim at my recipe,

“Wow…it’s so yummy! Great job!”

I don’t believe them. I think that they are just saying it to make me feel better. When I eat what is on my plate, I can’t taste anything. Maybe I should just eat more, then I will taste. Soon enough, I find that I have eaten more than what I am comfortable with and I search for a way to go into the bathroom again. I mentally search the three bathrooms in my house. There’s the bathtub upstairs, I can pretend to be taking a bath. I wait around with Mami and Danielle for a few more minutes, helping them clean up the plates, and when they are both sufficiently occupied, I go upstairs, and run the water.

Relief…

This time, I am no longer ashamed, I am furious, I am absolutely seething at the thought of how I am wasting this weekend. These rare opportunities that I have to bond with Mami and Danielle, and I’m blowing them all away, wasting them like the food I consume, like every minute of my life that has been flushed down the toilet.

When will I stop?? When will I stop??

I heave out into the toilet again. This time, it isn’t on purpose.

[Talking To Myself]: PART ONE -2 - "The Roller Coaster"

The Roller Coaster

Wynnewood, USA

November 26, 2008

I open one groggy eye at the sounds of Chiqui’s pleas for attention. Her yelps rise an octave with every minute that I don’t respond. I’ve been sleeping since I came here, leaving New York a few hours after my therapy session. Still partially hidden below my covers, I can see her golden haired body shifting on her back legs and her tail thwacking the carpeted floor of my high school bedroom with anxious waves. She either wants to pee or get on the bed. I am not about to take her out; the dim light peeking in through the single window informs me that it is not yet time to be awake. I tentatively extend my arm out towards her, because by this point she has sensed that I’m responding to her whining.


As per our ritual, she greets my attempt at affection with a torrent of forceful licks extending from my fingertips to my elbow. When she determines that I have received the appropriate amount of affection, she raises a paw and nudges my still-extended arm to demand her share. I reach towards her head, bent forward in anticipation, and systematically massage the velvety fur behind her ears. When she’s had enough, she rises and circles the foot of the bed. She stops only to bite an itch at the base of her tail. By now, I know that the next step in her ritual consists of sitting at the foot of the bed, fidgeting from one side to the other while the threat of a bark vibrates from her vocal chords. My role in this situation is to groggily pat the bed, giving her permission to climb and curl up at my side. Even though we perform this dance every time I come home, she still hesitates and needs a few more convincing pats of the bed. Once she’s curled up, I indulge in the added warmth of her body on the bed.


I wake up to Chiqui’s demands to be taken out and walk down the twisted carpeted stairs into the main portion of the house and edge towards the room where my mom and sister are sleeping. Our furniture hasn’t arrived yet, so we are making due with air mattresses and miscellaneous temporary plastic seating. My mom and sister are lying on opposite sides of the bed, Danielle with her mouth slightly open and her eyes flickering back and forth beneath her slumbering eyelids. One look at them tells me that it will take less time and effort for me to actually walk Chiqui than to try and wake her up. I leave the room, and head down the stairs, where I see that Chiqui is already pacing by the front door. I shove my still sleeping and pajama-ed feet into one of the pairs of heavy brown boots haphazardly strewn by the door. Danielle and I wear the same shoes, but different sizes, so it takes a few tries to get the right boots on.


After the frigid walk outside, Chiqui gingerly trots over to her food bowl and I pour her a generous portion. She refuses to eat it until I add the obligatory two dollops of cottage cheese. Mami is sitting in the kitchen now, pondering her breakfast, and as per protocol, inquires what Chiqui did outside.


I look around the kitchen; today is a day 2, which within the “one day at a time concept,” means that I’ve managed more than 24 hours without acting on symptoms from my eating disorder. Anxiety twitches down my arms and settles in my palms; there are too many options. The voices of the cereal and the bread are fighting for space in mind.

You know you want me, you can’t resist me…
I step out of the kitchen and look at myself in the mirror of the adjacent bathroom. My skin looks sallow in contrast to the pale green wallpaper behind me. what do you want? What could nurture you now? I have to ask myself these questions in order to actually get through a meal. It’s exhausting. Physically singling out the positive voice from the voice of the disorder drains any energy that I’ve woken up with. I fantasize about the days where a meal will be a non-event, where I’ll just eat something, and move on with my life. I run some cold water through my hair, partly to smooth out the sleep from it, but also because a could of steam has settled around my brain, and is rising through my scalp.

Danielle ambles down the stairs in her flannels and a t-shirt from one of her many high school dance shows and yawns her morning greetings to us in the kitchen.

“What’s for breakfast?”

She has it so easy. She shakes out generous amount of cereal into her bowl and lathers it with a blanket of milk. She sets her bowl on the wooden island separating the kitchen and the currently empty dining room. She has to lean forward while standing to eat because we don’t have enough high bar chairs yet. Mami is cleaning the dishes, but I can feel her watching me as I stare into the food cupboard, the items inside throwing out bids at me as if I were a hot item at auction. The granola strikes the highest bid; it offers me itself with yogurt. I know that they are safe choices. I know that I’ll be able to get through breakfast with them, and move on with the day. We’re going shopping today, so I let my mind focus on that as granola, vitamins, juice, pass into my system, presumably to stay.

We are going to the dentist this morning; which sends shivers through my gums and causes my whole head to throb. I hate the dentist, but not because of the same reasons that most people give. I hate the dentist because every time I go, I dread the thought that they will tell me I am losing my enamel, that my gums are receding, or that I might as well get a mold fitted for dentures now. I cringe when they stick their little mirror inside my mouth; I imagine them pulling it out, just to see that it has dissolved from the amount of stomach acid in my teeth.

The minutes in the waiting room thickly settle around my wrists, and they stick to the fishing and hunting magazine that I am absentmindedly browsing through. I’m actually trying to inhale without bursting my the icy grip of fear around my ribcage.

“Yay-lee?”

I feel as if my life has just become a string of doctors’ visits, and I grit my teeth as I force my lips back into what I hope looks like a smile.

“Um…actually, it’s Yali.”

The dental hygienist checks her chart, and looks up at me, still smiling. Her teeth are sort of yellow; and I wonder whether she should have them whitened to work her.  Her wispy graying brown hair is pulled back into a cleverly braided chignon. I wonder how much time it took her to get it like that.

I sit down on the patient’s chair, with all sorts of torture instruments around me and I immediately take in my surroundings. Picks, needles, scrapers are standing at attention around my head, ready to advance into battle in my mouth, ready to hit my teeth with their rapid fire, making my gums bleed, and making my head screech inwardly with the pain.

Directly in front of me is the same Gingivitis poster that every dentist has; the one with the blackened teeth barely hanging on to shriveled gums by their slightly severed nerves.

I bet that’s what my teeth look like.
When the hygienist tells me to open my mouth, I wonder what would happen if I bit her finger and ran away. She picks at my teeth, poking and prodding at my sensitive gums and I can taste the coppery blood flowing into the back of my throat. I want to gag and spit it at her, but instead I sit silently and stare into the bright light overhead. I imagine that it is the sun, and that I can blind myself with it. She pokes around some more, and tells me to rinse.

The water is a cherry color, too bright for my taste; I would rather my blood be a sinister shade of mauve. I have to rinse four times before the water runs clear, and when I am satisfied she tells me to sit back because she is going to clean and polish my teeth. She picks up something that looks like an ancient eye-removal instrument and begins to attack the spaces between my teeth, and the ones near my gums.

I wonder if it’s okay to ask for Novocain during a cleaning…

“So, you’re in New York, now huh? Are you working?”

It takes a lot of effort for me not to roll my eyes; how am I supposed to answer her exactly if her hands are digging around in my mouth. I manage to respond with something that sounds like

“Ahhggghhaa”

This seems to satisfy her curiosity, because she’s already moved on to the next topic,

“Where did you go to school?”

This time, I wait for her to take her hands out of my mouth before answering,

“New York University, but I finished a almost two years ago.”

She approves, apparently, nodding as she applies some type of substance onto some type of instrument that whirrs when she turns it on.

“I’m going to numb your gums a bit, they seem to be very sensitive.”

What gave it away? The Jacuzzi full of blood in my mouth or my wincing every time you even hover above my teeth?
“Okay. Great.”

The gel she rubs on my gums does not act immediately, but she doesn’t really wait, she continues to pick at the areas below my gums.

“So what have you done since school?”

It must be part of the training: ask patients questions they cannot answer with a simple Yes or No while you are hacking away at their teeth.

I shrug my shoulders at her and she stops drilling for red oil in my teeth long enough so I can spit, rinse, and answer.

“I um…I had to, well I moved to Singapore, to be with my parents, and worked in a few places. Now I’m uh…working in translation.”

I answer her next question before she even has the chance to ask it,

“In Hebrew, Spanish, French, and sometimes Italian and Portuguese”

She lets out some sort of sound that might indicate that she’s impressed, or that she approves, or that she just wants me to sit back with my mouth open so she can finish her job. I close my eyes and I can imagine my teeth hugging each other in fear as the metal spear lunges at them, picking away at their weakened armor, showering them in waves of hot blood.

“Okay, well your teeth look really good, let’s just wait for the dentist to see them.”

When she leaves the office, I let the tears I’d been holding back fall onto my cheeks. This was the most painful cleaning I’ve ever had. I close my eyes and my body immediately relaxes into the chair, seeking relief from my exhaustion.

I’m now walking along Orchard Road in Singapore, excited about something, but I can’t really grasp what. It is nighttime. I think I am going to meet someone. The feeling this person elicits from my memory in this hazy dream is one of warmth; my body feels as if it is being hugged by a strong set of arms. I smell green tea…

I snap my eyes open when I hear the dentist’s shuffled footsteps. He saddles up next to me, and asks me the same redundant questions that the hygienist has already asked me. He pulls out his little mirror, and I want to warn him that it might melt. Still, he takes a long look at all the nooks and crannies in my mouth, poking at some spots, and glances at his assistant's notes.

“Well, looks like your teeth are prefect, my dear. Good job.”

What.
A mixture of shock and relief rushes the blood away from my face, and I feel as if I have momentarily lost feeling in my face. I realize it might not be a great idea to be too surprised, so I hop off the chair, shake his hand, and say,

“Thank You!”

As I walk back to the waiting room to meet Mami and Danielle, the blood that fled my face earlier is now rising quickly back up to my face, dragging along with it anything it can take along the way. I am elated, excited, my teeth are perfect!

Yeah, you’ve fooled another doctor, good job…
For the moment, even this bitter thought cannot squelch my excitement. I swallow it, drown it somewhere inside of me and I feel as though there is a layer of air between my feet and the ground when I walk out of the office.

I drive away from the dentist, not noticing that my speed is edging past the speed limit until Mami stops herself from making a comment. I notice her subtle movement, and try to rein my thoughts back down to the ground. I slow down, and try to find a thought that is closer to Earth. We are going home to feed Chiqui now.

Most of our days when we are at home are ruled by Chiqui’s needs, and today is no different. As we get ready to go shopping, Chiqui announces in a series of unremitting barks that she has to go out again. This time, both Danielle and I are dressed so equipped with our boots and varying winter wear, we step outside. Chiqui, her tail practically lifting her off the ground in excitement lunges at a large stick lying on the ground, and a shared thought passes through mine and Danielle’s mind. We’ve been fooled; our mischievous hairy younger sibling just wants to play.

As we chase Chiqui around our front yard, adrenaline rushes through my body and I feel suddenly ecstatic, as if I have just been injected with sugar or caffeine. Danielle holds the stick above her head, and Chiqui lunges at it, stretching her lithe golden body to an intimidating height, making them both topple over into a pile of leaves. Chiqui runs excitedly with her tail wagging as Danielle dusts herself off from the leaves. Watching this, I feel an electrical surge erupt through my body, as I have just been plugged into to socket with too much voltage. High-pitched, maniacal laughter rolls out of me, vibrating in my stomach, through my lungs, and drumming on my vocal chords.


“She….just…she…jumped…she…HAHAOOOHAHAHAHAHOO”


I can barely breathe, the vibrations from my unstoppable laughter bite at my ribcage, pulling it inwards towards my lungs, and any attempts to talk are stifled through torrents of throaty laughs. I can feel my eyes pushing outwards, bulging with the release of energy out of my pores, out of my sinuses. I feel high; my brain is pushing off the walls of my skull to make itself spin in circles, dizzy from its own actions.


I’m clutching my sides, as the laughter spills over in uncontrollable waves. Chiqui approaches me tentatively, pokes me with the stick in her mouth to see what I will do. I reach out for it, and wrench it out of her grip, running across the road to our neighbor’s house, and then back towards our lawn. Chiqui chases after me, her energy fueled by my glee. Danielle stares at both of us with a look of utter confusion, but eventually pulls out her camera and all three of us ride on the waves of my apparently good spirits, laughing and running around.


My heart is thundering inside my body, and I have to strain to hear over it; I barely react when Mami comes out to tell us that it’s time to go. Danielle starts to take Chiqui inside, but I am still vibrating with the force of my energy. Danielle comes back out of the house, as Mami is warming the car, and I am still standing by the door, watching them, trying to step off the cloud that I was riding on.


“Come on, giggly face, let’s go!”’


Danielle has to physically take my hand to the car, and I clench the other one, tightly. I am desperately trying to swallow the adrenaline still buzzing in my head, trapped in my throat and between my lungs. I feel dizzy in the car, heading towards the shopping mall, my eyes sticking to people on the sides of the road, and pulling backwards as we pass them. I try to breathe through this energy, and the throbbing between my temples worsens. It warns me that a low is coming and I fight to keep my spirits up, and my smile genuine.


The twenty-five minute ride is excruciating; my brain feels as if it is struggling to right itself as it commands my body to perform, to interact with Mami and Danielle in the car. It is a welcome relief when we finally park the car and I know that I will, at the very least, be able to walk. The air is brisk, and it settles on my flushed cheeks as a blanket needles as we walk towards the shopping center.


“Let’s go here!”


I’m practically skipping through the first store we go into. I take clothes off the shelves in a frenzy, and urge Danielle to try on more than the snowflake-patterned fleece pants that she is holding.


“Come on! Don’t be shy! We’re Shop-p-p-ping! Get more! More! I COMMAND YOU!”


Danielle is straining to keep up with me, as my energy makes me bound across the shopping floor. She is looking at me as though I have grown a second head, but also as if she wants to embrace this supposed happiness of mine.


“Uh…I’m not…sure…I don’t really…want to…”


She tries to resist as I peel more items off their respective shelves and bunch them on top of her quickly filling arms.


“Now niňas, don’t exaggerate!”


Mami follows us as we pick up seemingly mismatched clothes from the sales racks. A hot surge bubbles up inside of me where the airy excitement had just been, why does she always have to tell us what to do! I pull Danielle by a semi-resisting arm into the dressing room and forcefully throw down the clothes bunched up in my arms.


“Woah, woah, no need to attack the clothes!”


Danielle and I are sharing a dressing room so that we can show each other our outfits without the unnecessary stares of the dressing room attendants. I peel the clothes apart from each other carefully. Then, I throw each of them on the floor and decide that I don’t really want to try any of them on. Danielle, meanwhile, concedes that she only really wants the snowflake pants, and not any of the other things I imposed onto her arms. No fair. I want them too! I take off my jeans without unbuttoning them and step into the pair of snowflake pants at the bottom of my pile.


I face the mirror, and turn around in circles, lifting my shirt so I can see the top of the pants on my body. They make me look like I have a butt. This thought sends heat pounding through my body in angry waves, I feel like I’m sweating in these snowflake pants. I pull at the skin around my mid section.


“Ugh. Gross. That’s what happens when you start to eat again…”


The pain from Danielle’s reproachful poke on my forearm pulses momentarily on the spot like a hazard light. I react as if she’s just shot me with a rubber bullet.


“HEY! OW!”


I try to poke her back, but she doges me, and pokes me again,


“If you are going to stand there with your bony butt and tell me that you’re fat, I’m going to challenge you to a sumo wrestling match right here!”


Her reprimand hisses out in a tense whisper and she points to her own exposed stomach. Through my eyes, she appears to be healthy and her naturally curvy figure is beautiful.


“IT’S OKAY to gain weight Yali, you’re EATING!”


She means well, but the damage is done. The affirmation that I am in fact gaining weight pops what remains from my bubble of positive energy from two days of sobriety. My mind is now wrapped in a syrupy gloom that weighs down my eyelids and attaches itself to my hipbones. It appears in bulging layers of fat, only visible to me. I feel suddenly depressed, and I can’t look at myself in the mirror anymore. I can see every imperfection on my face. I pull at my still dried out hair and I can only think of how disgusting of a person I have become. I strip off the pants, and pull my clothes back on, zipping my heavy down vest all the way up as we exit the store. I don’t want to try on anything else; I am quite ready to go home.


I’m supposedly looking for something to wear to my high school reunion in two days’ time, but now I don’t even want to go anymore. The gloom emanating from my pores surrounds me as the three of us continue to walk around the shopping center.


I just know I’m going to run into someone I don’t want to run into…

At this point, that could be anyone. There are too many people I went to high school with around now, and I don’t want to see any of them. I feel ashamed to even be here, and this feeling grates at every nerve in my body. I pull my vest tighter around me, wishing it had sleeves. After a few more rounds of unsuccessful store visits, we decide to stop for lunch. I head immediately towards the salad bar; I know it is the only food I’ll be able to keep down. Danielle goes to the Chinese food stand and comes back with some rice, an egg roll, and some tofu thing in a red sauce.


“Do you want to try some, Yali?”


Yes, Yes! Yes I do!
“No…I’m okay. Thanks”

We sit in relative silence throughout the meal; Mami and I munching on our salads, while Danielle talks to us about what she’d like to buy for her friends as holiday gifts. I push the broccoli around on my plate, trying to get some flavor onto it from the dressing. In my mind, I can see the food landing in lumpy piles inside of me, and I feel sick.

“Hey, you, what’s the matter?”

Mami nudges my foot under the table, and I look up, stretching my eyebrows and the corners of my mouth upwards so that I appear to be smiling.

“What are you thinking about?”

How I don’t want to be here anymore. How I don’t deserve to be eating this. 
I take a bite out of the leafy part of the broccoli, taking care to chew it carefully so that I can think of a reply.

“Oh, nothing, just thinking”

Mami is still looking at me, and I can feel the tension rise inside my body by a couple of notches. I’m finding it difficult to breathe, so I shift around in my chair.

“So…yeah, maybe we can go to The Bookstore tomorrow so I can buy stuff…”

Danielle has effectively cut the awkwardness out of the situation, and I wash down my anxiety with two big gulps of water. When we finish our lunch, the food sits heavily on my hips, and just to be able to move I pick up all of our trays and throw them out.

Maybe I should go running later…
When I come back to the table, I have what I think is a successful forced smile on my face and the air around us has thinned considerably. We walk back to the car, considering the possibility of seeing a movie later.

“Oh, we have to buy the ingredients for our Thanksgiving mini meal tomorrow!”

Why?
The familiar tightness at having to face more food settles around my heart, and I am quiet during the ride, letting the radio and Danielle fill the recycled heat in the car.

In the supermarket, I’m supposed to find the ingredients for the goat cheese stuffed mini pumpkin recipe that I invented. I’m not sure why I really want to make this again, as the memory of the last time I made it is still too fresh for me to even process. I amble around the produce section, and when I come upon the gourd section, I notice that there are only two lumpy specimens left.

Of course…
I pick them up, and trap them in a plastic produce bag. I carry them under my arm as I search for the sun-dried tomatoes that also go into the recipe. The supermarket near our house has cleverly placed delicious looking nut-mixes along with the produce, supposing that the health conscious would grab them. I’m hungry again, even though we’ve just eaten. I know it’s not a physical hunger as my stomach still feels full. I’m hungry somewhere near my heart, and the nuts are dancing in front of my eyes to a beat that I can’t shut out. I walk so quickly past this section that I am almost running. I need to get the cheese, and the spices. Then we can go home.

Where is the cheese? Where is the cheese? Where is the cheese?
I repeat this in my mind as if it were a mantra, and the hunger around my heart intensifies as it spots the chips, cookies, and all sorts of bakery items. The thought of the last time I made this meal is scaling the fortress I’m trying to build around myself and throwing spears at any progress I’ve made.

NO!! STOP!! RETREAT!!!
Tears are now pushing against the back of my eyes, I don’t want to think about this, please stop…the pain from the illusion I’ve left behind, from the eggshells I’ve been walking on is agonizing. I want to cry and scream, and throw the produce on the floor. Instead, I just walk faster, scrunching my eyelids only to the point that I can still see where I’m going.

I reach the cheese section, and I can’t find the goat cheese. I can’t find it! Where is it!!? Why can’t I find it?? The panic is now rising as bile in my throat, and when it finds no exit, it rises into my sinuses and pushes along with the tears behind my eyes. It hurts, and I let some fall onto my cheeks, scalding me on the way down. I swipe at them angrily, and continue to walk around the cheese section in aimless circles, swerving around ghostly figures that seem to be coming towards me.

Mami and Danielle finally join me with the cart and I throw the produce in my arm at it’s belly without much finesse.

“So, are we done?”

“I can’t find the cheese. It’s not here.”

Mami looks at me with the expression that clearly states I haven’t done a good enough job in looking.

“It has to be here, it cannot be that it’s not here.”

I take a stilted breath in before answering; I’m now shaking inside in order to keep calm on the outside.

“Well, I can’t find it.”

Then, within a rare moment of clarity within the past few hours, I remember that it could be in the deli section. When I find it there, a small rush of relief pushes the bile back to where it belongs, and I can breathe again. The strange specters that I had been dodging in my attempt to find the cheese have reformed into customers, unknowingly going about their business.

When we are finally home again, I detach my frazzled mind as we put the groceries away, with Chiqui wagging her tail and running around us excitedly, hoping for a treat or a game. I pat her head a couple of times, not really noticing what I’m doing, and from somewhere I hear Mami tell us to take her out.

“You take her out, Danielle, I’m tired.”

She looks at me and her eyes are full of disappointment. I know that she was hoping for another moment of sisterly bonding while walking Chiqui. I can’t take it now, though. My mind is thoroughly exhausted from the battles it has fought all day. I just want to lie down.

I climb the stairs to my attic bedroom, and settle with the latest very long book that I’m plowing through. As I’m lying upstairs, I remember that there’s a bag of peanut M&Ms in my bag, from another time that I was not able to overcome the voice of my disease.

Oh, you know you want them…
***

November 27, 2008

Wynnewood, PA


3:00 am. 

My sinuses are full of vomit.

For lack of a more beautiful way to think about it, this is how I am right now. It is around two o’clock in the morning, and Mami and Danielle are asleep upstairs. Chiqui barely stirred as I climbed down from my bed and snuck down to the kitchen to rummage in the cupboard, talking what I thought would not be noticed as missing.

I cringe now when I think about everything that is mixed inside of me and that I am now forcing out of my body:

The pack of  Israeli soup almonds in the back of the cupboard. 
A few slices of bread. 
Some candy from the giant stack we bought at the warehouse store. 
A few cookies.
Granola.
The dried berries I supposedly bought to take back to New York with me. 
Oatmeal that only Papi eats, and he’s not here.
The peanut M&M’s, 
And of course, whatever is left from the late lunch we had earlier.

Pretending to have fallen asleep over my book, I silently and contentedly binged, waiting for Mami and Danielle to fall asleep and quiet to settle over the house. I was left alone in my room, with my anxieties from the day rushing upwards and choking me at my throat, igniting the abused shame and guilt synapses stretching from my brain, downwards through my spine, and dissipating into my body.

The only way to fight something back down is to stuff it, and what a better way than with delicious food, oh…

I can’t seem to hold on to the strength, the draining effort it takes to stay sober, and alert. I feel awful. My eyes are inches away from the murky toilet water, and I just wonder what it would be like to stick my head all the way in and drown in my own puke.


Cause of Death: Complications due to Bulimia

That would be my legacy, how wonderful. I can just see the faces and hear the thoughts of people who have given up on me along the way, well, I knew she was gonna die anyway. Yeah, no big surprise, what a worthless person, too weak to even stay alive.


Why won’t I ever learn??

Bitter tears are streaming down my cheeks, and mixing with the dregs of food, bile, and blood that I’m heaving into the toilet. The index and ring fingers on my right hand are covered in it, and are chafing from when I bite down on them; my body’s last attempt to let them into my throat.


The silence is too overwhelming!! I can’t take it

I push my fingers further inside my throat because I know that it will make my stomach spasm, and it will force whatever is left inside of it to surge out. I am punishing myself for the sadness I feel, I am punishing myself for how angry I am, and this is the only pain that can justify it all. After purging, I know that I will feel too drained, too exhausted to do anything other than crash for the rest of the night.


Usually, a purge does not last more than twenty minutes. I have gotten to the point where my body has adapted to this coping mechanism so well, that throwing up comes as easily as peeing.


Why?? Why do I always end up as someone’s ‘responsibility’ and not a person? Why?? Why do I have be such a burden all the time!?!?!

I can hear myself wishing to die; I can see all of the ways I could do it, right here, tonight. I’m coughing from the scratches that my nails are leaving in the back of my throat, and it is sending the surge from my stomach into the sinuses behind my nose, under my eyes, into my ears. My head is made of cheesecloth, and vomit is flowing from its pores.


I am a person! I am a sick person, but I am still a person!!! I have feelings!

…and right now they are shattered…


I am coughing harder now, and panic grips my battered throat.


What if they can hear me??

When I came in here, I turned on the ventilator, and let the water flow. I am in the basement, and they are upstairs. There is no way that they can hear me. I feel my stomach folding inward, gripping its shriveling walls for support. I know that this purge is done. I feel hollow, emptied out from all food and feeling. I want to fill it again,


I can’t! they’ll notice!

Leaning on the rim of the toilet, I force myself up and take the bottle of Windex out from under the sink. I have to clean the walls from the spatter; I have to clean the toilet too. I have to make it smell normal, because Mami will know. 


Come on, clean faster, go upstairs, go to bed, come on!!! Can’t you even do this!!?

Scalding tears are pouring out of my eyes as I’m cleaning, I’ve broken my promise to myself, I’ve broken my promise to my loved ones. I should be ashamed. I am ashamed. I just want to go back to sleep. I have to just go back upstairs.


I pour a third of the bottle of mouthwash into the toilet, and swill it around with the toilet brush. An acerbic vanilla-like aroma wafts up from the bowl. I flush it once. Twice.


I wash my face in the sink, scrubbing hard with the soap to erase all traces from my skin. I’m desperately trying to prevent more of my face from eroding from splash-back acid.


When I’m done, I angrily wipe it dry with the towel, leaving searing red marks where my tears were. When I’m done, I shut off the lights, hitting the switches with my fists. I leave the ventilator on, I’m sure that by tomorrow all traces will be gone. I climb up the stairs silently and when I get to my bed, Chiqui greets me by a wave of her tail. I lie down next to her; she nudges herself close to me, and licks my eyes.


Tomorrow is another day…