Eating Disorders Ward, 1990

Walking into an eating disorders ward is like entering an alternate universe filled with skeleton people. Tubes are running through their noses, down their throats, feeding them the food their bodies need, but their minds abhor. Needless to say, tubes get ripped out often. All the skeleton people can see are endless calories layering on the fat, further distorting their view of their already distorted bodies.


Still only a few weeks past delivering my overdue baby, I’m already uncomfortably walking around with some extra weight. Clearly, as far as I’m concerned, I don’t belong in the eating disorders ward. Yet, this is where the doctor has dumped me, so here I am.

Gradually all the walking bones types are herded into the room with me. They glance nervously at a full length mirror on the wall. Some odd stares are tossed in my direction. I am certain they are keenly noticing how obese I must look in comparison to them. One girl won’t sit down. Instead she half jogs, half paces from one side of the room to the other as if the exercise will negate what her feeding tube has done.

The leader starts talking. Even though I’m cordially introduced, I remain stoically silent. I don’t belong here. How could I possibly belong here? I’m like an elephant amongst chickens. As the talking continues I hear how they hate themselves; how they hate their parents. Their parents hate them, or worse, ignore them. Much to my own amazement, I find out their issues with weight loss have nothing to do with simple appearances.

One girl just happened to be the only other person in the house when her brother found a shot gun and blew his own head off. She witnessed the gruesome aftermath. How could anyone ever forget such a sight? No matter how often or clearly anyone tries to explain to her that what he did, wasn’t her fault, that it was nothing more than fate that had left her there to hear the roar of the blast and find the mangled, lifeless form of her brother, she cannot accept that it wasn’t ultimately her fault. In her mind self starvation seems to be just punishment for such a failure.

Another near bald set of bones, the one still insistently jogging, is clearly wrapped up in some kind of delusional concept of perfection. Everything she did never seemed to be enough to keep her parents pleased. She had been head cheerleader and a prom queen. Her grades were immaculate. But then, her constant exercise regimen became an obsession. She’d eat when everyone was looking, but for some reason continued to lose weight. When her beautiful blond hair began falling out in globs, her parents finally realized something was seriously wrong. Even then her anal, perfectionistic mother couldn’t understand. Her parents would probably never understand. She was on her own in this battle. Clearly, thus far she was losing the fight.

One emaciated body after another spoke of their terrible feeding tubes, gazed furtively at their forms in the mirror and told tales of how they deserved to die. Sometimes it was simply a tool for getting attention or silently punishing others for their thoughtlessness. I’d never thought all the stories I’d heard about bulimia and anorexia were true. Now, all of a sudden, I couldn’t deny them.

Suddenly I realized how more than once, without even thinking about it, I’d found myself well on the way to starvation, weighing less than 100 pounds when I should have been more like 120. On those occasions I was so thrilled to find myself fitting into clothing sizes I’d never dreamed of squeezing into, that the abnormality of the situation never hit me. In truth, I was punishing myself for all of my own inadequacies, my never ending imperfections. It was a plea for help no one including myself, could see. Maybe the doctor had known what he was doing when he sent me to be with these waifish girls.

It made me sick, looking at these once very beautiful women, so unreasonably wasting away. There was no doubt in my mind some of them simply were not going to make it. They were literally locked in a battle for survival.

I don’t know why on that one odd occasion I found myself re-routed to the eating disorders ward for group counseling. Everyone, including the leaders thought it was a strange move. We all assumed it was because the doctor didn’t know where else to put me. Maybe he wasn’t so misguided. Maybe sheer providence was on my side. Either way, nine months later when my primary care doctor noticed how I had suddenly been losing all kinds of weight, he threatened to send me back to the eating disorders ward. It was like a slap on the face. There was no way I was going to allow myself to fall into that pit, not after I had seen up close what it was like. I changed my diet. My husband got me a trainer so that I could gain muscle rather than fat. Poor as we were, I did what I had to do to survive. That unforgettable hour made a life changing difference.