Eating Disorders - Connecting the Dots : Part 5

Gaining: The Truth About Life After Eating Disorders
by Aimee E. Liu

(Page 5 of 7)

Which was how I found myself standing outside the condominium complex in Santa Barbara, California, where Kim lives today. As the buzzer sounded to let me in, I thought hopefully of Candace - how much she now resembled herself as a healthy young child . . . but I never knew Kim as a little girl.

The door opened and we blinked at each other, straining for recognition. Kim was still petite. It was difficult to tell just how petite, since she wore several layers of black Polartec on this warm fall day, but the resemblance to her past self ended there. Her cheeks now were full, her face powdered and blushed, her hair cut short, fluffed, and colored a deep auburn. I would have passed her on the street without a glimmer of recognition, and I sensed she felt the same about me.

I had brought as a gift a block print from Carol of her New Mexico kitchen, but when we moved inside I held back. The picture was full of color and shape, bowls filled with shells, a bunch of flowers, two dogs, a cat, a rocking chair. Kim's condo was champagne white. We sat on an antique French empire settee. A cut-crystal light fixture hung above the polished dining table. Spotless as Candace's childhood home, the place felt more like a model apartment on the Upper East Side of Man- hattan than the beachfront condo of a girl who once lived in overalls and Birkenstocks.

I considered the absence of pictures on the walls. Zero photographs - no family, no pets, no friends. "How long have you lived here?"

"Three years."

I decided to give Kim the print. "Thank you!" she said. But she hesitated before taking it and awkwardly set it down.

What brought you to California?"

"Escape." Abruptly, she stood. "Let's get out of here."

"We drove to a nearby coffee shop where Kim ordered tea - no sugar, no milk. "Anything else?" I eyed the display of glazed cookies and muffins. I wasn't hungry but would gladly have shared something. Kim shook her head."

She told me how she'd earned a graduate degree in sociology, then worked as a paralegal and later entered public relations. She built her own consulting business and eventually married a prominent corporate executive in Atlanta. He was ten years older and had three children. They were together for nearly fifteen years. Then she caught him in an affair with one of his clients.

I told Kim about the meltdown of my own marriage. We both had older husbands, and I, too, was a stepmother, though my stepson was now grown. "When we separated," I said, "it seemed as if everyone in the family went into hiding. For the first time in twenty years I felt alone. I immediately stopped eating."

Kim nodded. "I lost more weight before the divorce than I did in high school. It diverted attention from what was really going on. Oh, so you're the problem." Anorexia, she explained, offered a familiar haven where she was in full control and where her husband couldn't hurt her. It also visibly signaled that something was wrong which needed immediate attention. But Kim's husband refused to admit that he was contributing to her distress. Instead, he turned the signal back on her, making her the culprit. Not only did he claim her illness was the reason he'd strayed but he also used it as justification to end the marriage. And yet, she had to admit that the divorce and relapse had prompted her to resume long-term therapy, which she believed saved her life. She was now "up to" 105 and studying to become a clinical therapist herself."

Kim had been so ill in high school, I couldn't bear to imagine the damage she must have done to her body during this recent ordeal. I asked if her psychotherapeutic training had helped her understand why she returned to anorexia, specifically, as her retreat.

She turned her teacup between her palms. "You never met my family, did you?"

"I saw your mother a few times," I said. "Small, quiet, dressed in tweeds and sensible shoes."

"She managed a garden supply company." Kim rolled her eyes. "Even when we were little, there was never food in the house. I mean, there was food to cook, but no sandwich bread or fruit or crackers - you know, ready fuel. It didn't seem to occur to her that growing kids might need to eat more than she did."

I was confused. "You think that's why"?"

"Just an early indication. Both my parents drank too much." She shrugged. "I never could trust her to keep me safe."

Safety, it turned out, counted for a great deal because Kim's father became violent when drunk. But in talking about him, Kim was surprisingly generous. "He was a self-made man," she said. "As a child, after immigrating from Russia, he lived in a shed behind the boardinghouse his parents managed. That was how they survived the Depression." Eventually he earned a graduate degree and built a successful insurance firm. "But he never got over the shame of his childhood, the poverty. No matter how much he achieved - or how much attention he got - it was never enough." Many men of his generation and circumstances drank. But alcohol ignited Kim's father's rage. The more he drank, the more he punished his family. Breaking things. Yelling."

Copyright © 2007 by Aimee E. Liu

About the Author

My past lives include early childhood in India; middle childhood, adolescence, and anorexia in the Connecticut suburbs of New York City; three years of teenage modeling through the Wihelmina agency; a major in painting at Yale University followed by turns as a waitress in New York and a flight attendant with United Airlines. Between flights I wrote my first book, Solitaire, a chronicle of my passage through anorexia, which was published in 1979, when I was twenty-five.