Names including my own have been switched in these stories.
Diet Coke. Zero. Dexatrim. Two. Coffee, two cups. Four. Splenda. Five. A hundred and five. Too much.
Sitting in Arabic, my focus again had waned from the list of foreign wiggles on the board to my usual invocation. Diet Coke. Zero. Dexatrim. Two. Coffee, two cups. Four. Splenda. Five. A hundred and five. Too much. It repeated in my head, the thoughts unwanted but wanted at the same time. They were the only thoughts I had; the only thoughts I needed.
“Megan?” Madj, my Palestinian Arabic teacher, grabbed my attention. My litany was interrupted at Splenda. He had his finger pointed at a sentence on the board. I glanced at it, scrambling to translate it in my head. A hundred and five. Too much. No, Megan. Read the wiggles. I looked again, confused and looked back at Madj.
“How do you make this sentence feminine?” he asked.
I could feel the eyes of the class on me. We were a tight knit group in the Middle Eastern Studies department, and I could see my friend Jessica mouthing the answer to me. I looked back up at Madj. “Add a tammarbuta?” It was the little sign that made an “a” sound to signify that a woman was speaking.
“Right,” he confirmed. “Read the sentence now and translate.”
My head started to ache and the wiggles were blurring in front of my eyes. “Ana joanna?” Madj nodded. “I am hungry.”
I am hungry. That’s what I translated. I am hungry. But I wasn’t hungry. I had a diet coke, two appetite reducers and I was half way through my cup of coffee. A sudden grumble in my stomach almost gave me away to my peers and myself but I shifted my desk at the same time to disguise the noise. Jessica was scribbling at her desk a seat away as Madj’s voice once again fell into the back ground. A hundred and five. Too much. Diet Coke. Zero. Jessica slipped me the piece of paper she had been scribbling on. I am sure Madj knew we passed notes but chose to ignore it. We had been his students for two years now, since he was one of the few professors in the department. He went on the MES field trips with us so he knew us personally. He knew I had gone from his best student to struggling. He knew I wasn’t paying attention and he knew Jessica was worried. I didn’t know it that day but in the next couple of months he would stay after and help me catch up on the work I missed while I was in the hospital.
Jessica had been taking notes in a pink pen and her writing was immaculate, like her. Unlike me. “Wanna get dinner after class? I am starving.”
I cast her a dirty look, making sure she wasn’t looking. It was Wednesday. I didn’t eat on Wednesdays. I had to wait until tomorrow for my granola bar. Forty-five. I went through it again. Diet Coke. Zero. Dexatrim. Two. Coffee, two cups. Four. A hundred and five. Too much. I picked up my pen. It seemed heavy. Had my hand been shaking all through class? “Sociology study group at nine,” I wrote back. I hoped she could read it. It was shaky and squiggly. It took me a second to make sure I had written in English instead of copying the Arabic from the board. I handed it back.
I scooted as quickly as I could out of the class room once we were dismissed and ran into the cold October air. I ditched my coffee in the nearest garbage; the bitter liquid had turned cold. I needed warmth as a thin layer of goose bumps had settled on my skin. My classmates had worn sweatshirts now the weather had gotten chilly; I wore a thermal shirt under my sweat shirt, plus my favorite jean jacket. The layers had two purposes. They kept me warm and they hid what just a sweatshirt couldn’t. I scaled around the building, to the opposite entrance than the rest of the class would be coming out of and hid in the corner of the building, where it met up with the social sciences building. I slid down the wall, using it as support. I took a deep breath, feeling the ground beneath me. It was there, I was stable on it for now. I had to get across the campus, a good half mile of side walk framing tall institutional looking buildings with a few abstract structures adding the “university” feel to the campus. Then I had to go through the rows of identical looking town houses. Five in a row, facing the next five, brushing up against the five next to it. It took Jessica ten minutes to walk it. Jessica and I lived near each other in the upperclassmen dorms, which were narrow two story town houses made to house four students a piece. We usually walked together after Arabic, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. But tonight I knew I probably wouldn’t make it, and with her invitation for dinner I couldn’t avoid an awkward moment explaining that I once again wasn’t hungry.
I sat back, with my head against the cold brick. I breathed in the cool evening air, feeling it in my lungs, hoping it would fill me enough to give me the strength to get to my dorm. There I could get in my second cup of coffee and head to bed. Thursdays were my slow day. I could wake up, have a granola bar and rest until my four-thirty class. I just had to get back to my dorm or I would spend my slow Thursday here, huddled between the science and language buildings. I tried to stand, but my knees shook and everything turned. I sat back down, really in a pickle. There was nothing in a pickle. No calories. “Okay, Megan,” I told myself. “Focus. Don’t think about pickles.” Even the simplest thoughts had turned to food and calories, and I had no control over them. I put my head on my knees, pulling my sweatshirt hood over my head. Diet Coke. Zero. Dexatrim. Two. Coffee, two cups. Four. Splenda. Five. A hundred and five. Too much. The words were comforting. It was what I had to eat that day, and their calories. The last number was my weight, the last I knew. My roommate had thrown out the scale two weeks ago in a fit of anger, saying I spent too much time on the thing. I had tried to find it, but it was gone.
I didn’t remember getting to this point, where I had to sit outside of the school building wondering how I would make the ten minute walk across campus. I didn’t know when thoughts went from rational, educated to short, choppy sentences and obsessive redundancies. It must have been slow. At one point I knew that I had eaten like the others. I would do my homework at my computer, a pizza slice next to me. I didn’t know how long it had been since I did that, my memory was foggy. But now, it was just this. There was nothing but the food and their calories. But I didn’t care. This was the way it had to be now.
It didn’t take long for the hard concrete to get uncomfortable. Campus was pretty much empty now so I felt isolated and cold. I checked the time on my older model cell phone and threw it back into my bag. It was nine thirty; all classes ended at nine. All the students had gone either to one of the several cafeterias, or home to study. I knew that it wasn’t the safest spot to be in, being defenseless and alone in the dark. I was facing the parking lot, which was always well lit. I would be able to see a potential mugger or attacker from the front at least. I was aware for the first time the seriousness of my predicament; that I was stuck on the side of a building, staring at the parking lot. I couldn’t get home; I was just too weak, too tired.
Suddenly, I saw headlights slow down on the street in front of me. They didn’t turn into the parking lot, but stopped. I could feel the engine rumbling through the cold hard ground. It was a clunker, but being on a college campus all the cars were clunkers. The door opened and someone got out. I could see its silhouette coming at me and I felt a rush of panic. Diet Coke…. No. That wouldn’t help me now. I ruffled through my bag, which was full of books and papers and pens. Where was my phone? I ruffled through it quickly as the dark figure came closer.
“Come on,” the figure said, reaching its hand towards me. I looked up. I hadn’t noticed the outline of the curly hair in my panic. It was Jessica. “You don’t have sociology this semester. I went to get the car for you.”
I didn’t have sociology? My mind was so starved that I couldn’t even remember what classes I was taking. She reached down, picking me up. “I’m too heavy for you,” I argued. She said nothing, but half carried me to her car. I knew she was angry as she drove to her apartment silently but I didn’t understand why. She didn’t say a word but helped me into her dorm. “My roommates aren’t here,” she said. She locked the door behind us. “Into the bathroom.”
“I don’t have to go,” I said, without enthusiasm. I knew where this was going. It had gone there with my mom when I had gone home for the weekend. It had gone there with my boyfriend just the week before. If I argued with her she’d eventually force me in there anyway. I had no more fight in me.
She pointed empathically towards the bathroom, a quiet order that gave me no more thinking room. Jessica was a force to reckon with. The daughter of a staunch catholic mother and a devout Jewish father, she knew how deal with difficult people. She was very gentle and loving but could be hard and unforgiving if the situation called for it. So, I had no choice. I followed her into the bathroom. She eyed me under the harsh bright light. It hurt my eyes. “Jacket.” It was a one word order that I immediately got the point of. I took off my jean jacket. “Sweatshirt.” I took off the sweatshirt, stumbling a little as I pulled it over my head. She sighed. “Thermal shirt, t-shirt, undershirt.” I stripped down to my bra, pulling my arms around my shivering skeleton. We had been friends for two years and often shared dressing rooms in stores, though not lately. I wasn’t embarrassed that she was seeing me half dressed, but I was nervous. No one liked my new body. It always made people yell at me. My mind preemptively blocked out what was coming. Diet coke. Zero. Dexatrim.
“Megan!” she hollered, her manicured pale hands over her mouth. “I knew it was bad, but not like this.”
“What’s bad?” It was better to play dumb. She turned me to the mirror. I already knew what I would see and feel. I saw it every day when I got ready for class and I felt pride and terror at the same time. My cheeks were sunken in, my head looked like it was huge compared to my neck. My collar bones jutted out violently and my rubs were countable. My belly was sunken in like my cheeks and there was a one inch space between my skin and the band of my size 0 jeans. If I turned to look at my back, there was a line of bruises down my spine. I had to lay flat on my back to sleep and the bones rubbed against my skin.
“Stand on the scale,” she ordered. Usually this scenario caused a ferocious reaction in me. I would fight and yell and accuse, tired at people begging me to eat and calling me boney. I had gotten it from all angles lately it seemed, from everyone I knew. It was tiring to fight and lie all the time. But tonight, I was just too tired. I stepped on the scale, causing another horrified scream from Jessica. It had two, red digital numbers flashing back at me. 87. I had done it. I had lost the extra weight I had carried around since middle school. It was all gone. I felt triumphant, I felt full. My energy surged slightly at the news of my weight plummeting even further and I dumbly looked at the scale. It had worked! I had done what I had wanted to do. I turned to talk to Jessica, to lie. I was going to tell her that I was sorry, that I would eat. It was stupid to get this skinny. I’d tell her I was just losing weight because of my stressful class load. It would be better after Thanksgiving break. But I was alone. It was just me in the brightly lit bathroom. And the scale. I walked out, using the faux marble bathroom counter for support. Jessica was curled into a ball on the cream standard issue couch; she had her arms tightly hugged around her legs. Her face covered by her unruly red hair, looking like a wine stain on the pale scratchy couch.
“You’re going to die,” she sobbed into her arms.
I sat down next to her, resting my head on her legs, next to her head. I felt helpless, guilty. Unlike the others, my family, roommates, other friends, she wasn’t yelling at me. She wasn’t rummaging through her kitchen, forcing food down my throat. She was crying. I had caused this, had caused the friend who would rescue me after class, the friend who would stand up for me when my boyfriend would be a jerk to cry. We stayed in that position until I had finally fallen asleep on her couch, still in my light fabric bra.
Light filtering in through the kitchen woke me up in the morning. Jessica had covered me with a fleece blanket and the comforter from her bed. I could smell apples and cinnamon, wafting at me from the small kitchen. There was a buzzing noise but it ended with a ding seconds later. Jessica, already dressed in her jeans and a white blouse, was at the small wooden table eating out of a bowl and looking at her biology book. She smiled at me and handed me a long sleeved t-shirt. I pulled it on as she set a bowl of oatmeal and a cup of orange juice in front of me.
“Jessica….” I started, cautious. I couldn’t eat this. There were just too many calories. I wanted a diet coke. Diet coke. Zero. My mind had started already, two minutes after I had woken up. I shook my head as if to shake the thoughts out of my head. Today my litany would be different though, when they finally pushed through into my thoughts. It would be Diet Coke. Zero. Dexatrim. Two. Coffee, two cups. Four. Splenda. Five. Eighty Seven. Makes Jessica cry.
I only managed two spoonfuls of the oatmeal that morning and half the orange juice; it was more than I had eaten in a long time. But the thoughts had been interrupted. They weren’t about just numbers and food anymore; they were proof that I wasn’t only hurting myself.
It would take three more years to recover. It was my stepdaughter that had cinched the true recovery. She depended on me and needed me to be healthy for her. I couldn’t truly care for this little girl, if I couldn’t truly care for myself. And I knew that I couldn’t cause my little girl pain as I had caused Jessica pain that night in 2005, a night that ultimately ended our friendship. It was too painful for her to watch someone she loved hurt herself like that. My thoughts have changed from an obsessive litany to a constant song of praise that I am alive to witness my stepdaughter growing up, healthy and confident.
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