We used to be together, and I thought we had things going really well for us at one point. We got married-and then he started to abuse me. Now we're separated, I'm filing for a divorce and he's really upset. He's been such a big part of my life, so I've had to get help learning to cope without him.
I think he deserves a formal introduction. Ed is my ex, also known as the Eating Disorder, in this case, Anorexia.
The first step to Recovery, they say, is to acknowledge the problem as a separate entity from your real self. The problem has a voice. It tells lies. It is a part of, and yet not a part of you. The deliberate distinction makes all the difference. It may sound strange, almost like having a split personality, but to some extent, all of us live with two or three voices in our heads all the time. Part of journeying to Recovery involves recognising this, and involves giving the problem a face, traits, even a name, a personified identity, as if it were a real person, apart from you.
So, ladies and gentlemen, this is my ex, Ed.
Little Anna, and Ed
Ed has a mirror which he shows little Anna on a daily basis, that is really not a mirror at all, but a frame with his pet elephant behind it. He is a hard, fierce slavedriver who carries a whip wherever he goes. He's a Casanova, a control freak, and a narcissist. He's pursued many of us, little Anna included, since she was that round child with chubby cheeks. He was always there to remind her how much more beautiful, successful and popular he could make her, if only she listened to what he told her.
Run more, eat less, hide your ugliness, hide it underneath layers and layers of achievement and good deeds, busy yourself, please people and I can help you be Perfect if only you will let me.
She was quite bothered by him as a child. Then at 19, he convinced her there was nobody else who could promise her happiness like he did. They got married, as he does to so many other women, he successfully battered her till she had to see the doctors, and now they're filing for divorce.
She really upset him last week.
You see, they went to see the doctors together. He got exposed and it was really embarassing-for the both of them, really. He got really upset.
Most times, Anna's supposed to tell Ed to pipe down and ignore the lies he tells her. But at the hospital, Ed is allowed to speak so the doctors know how to help.
They walk into the dietician's room and Ed sits down next to little Anna. Little Anna is very nervous. Ed tells her that she knows more than the dietician can ever tell her, that it's all a conspiracy-they're here to make her get round, become unwanted and go home. They can't help you, he's saying, only I can.
"How can I help you?" The dietician is very nice, and very patient.
"Didn't the other doctor tell you my problem? I don't even want to be here." Little Anna's hostile retort shocks her own self, and she quickly apologises. "This is very hard for me, I'm so very sorry..."
The dietician understands- she's seen so many patients with similar struggles.
The dietician wants to weigh little Anna and asks if she wants to know the number. Little Anna takes a deep sigh, says yes, that she's thrown away her scale and she doesn't know how much she weighs anymore.
Every day, Ed has been reminding her that she's put on two sacks of rice worth of weight, that she has it spread out on all the wrong places. Imagine going to the supermarket and carrying two sacks of rice home- that's how much weight you've put on, says Ed. And you've put on an extra five kilos since your birthday-you're a sorry snot, nobody's going to love you now, he tells her. But she steps on the scale and she is startled- she realises she hasn't put on a pound.
She tells Miss B* about this later on and Miss B says this just shows how good a liar Ed really is. Ed is the prince of lies.
The dietician asks her a lot of questions and she lets Ed answer them, only because she's supposed to, especially during therapy sessions. Other times, she has to learn to tell him to shut up. He tells the dietician what he thinks about food and before I know it, Ed is arguing with the lady in the white lab coat.
The dietician looks at the both of us squarely and says, "You can't get your main source of carbohydrates from fruits. We get them from RICE or equivalents. And tofu is not considered meat. "
The words ring in my head in slow motion and echo. Ed is shocked. How preposterous, he tells me, how dare she the audacity to even say that to you.
I look at Ed- he feels absolutely violated by that four-letter word. Throughout our marriage, Ed has always preached that R-I-C-E is the enemy. It is an unspeakable vulgarity.
Ed sees the dietician take out a sheet of paper that looks like a meal plan and he panics. There is three times as much food intake on that piece of paper than he allows little Anna to eat every day. Ed and the dietician negotiate for what seems like an eternity. Why is there rice here. She can take fruits, or muesli-why rice? Why so much, no she's not going to be able to finish this.
I am very tired by this. Ed continues to argue and I get very upset. I didn't think it would take so long. He uses his last resort and whispers- won't you look at how thin your dietician is- do you really think she practises what she's preaching? Take the meal plan- just don't follow it.
I start to cry. The dietician asks what is wrong, and tell her this is really hard for me to do. I'm 21, a second year medical student. And there I am sitting on the chair watching her teach me how to eat and what makes up a normal meal using plastic food models, asking me if I think this portion is too big, how about this, or how about even this, does this look like an unmanageable meal, will this plan be hard to follow- I answer yes to all her questions and we start over from square one.
I am crying because I am 21, a second year medical student, and someone in a white lab coat is telling me using plastic, coloured moulds of plastic rice, meat-cubes and broccoli what makes a normal meal- a normal meal that I've never been able to have since I can ever remember.
Most people have little idea of the extent of distortion that an eating disorder causes. It has the ability to distort the most sound, rational and knowledgeable mind. It is illogical, and it takes weeks, months of therapy sometimes to get to the root of the problem. The root problem almost never lies in vanity, but often in deeper issues such as self-esteem, trauma, lonliness, depression.
Ed and I look the 3-dimensional food pyramid before us and all the different plastic food models inside it. He is really upset now- he realises that at the rate I'm going, he'll lose his power over me someday. I realise that eventually, the dietician will teach me how to eat cake, sweets, chocolate, and all the other things I've not eaten since I married Ed, -gasp- and even ice-cream.
Since they got married, Anna has eaten ice-cream perhaps only but once, and even then Ed punished her harshly. His whip is not kind.
After an eternity of table-tennis negotiating, the dietician asks, "Is this meal plan all right for you now?"
I look at it, and it has more rice in a day than Ed allows me to eat in five days. It has milk, even, and meat. It also has... oh my, it has bread, and biscuits. Oh my, and potato, too. Oh look, and I can whatever I want at this time, right here. This looks... fantastic.
"You're joking... I can eat this much? E-ver-y sin-gle day? Really? This is crazy." It sounds too good to be true.
"Try it, " she says. "Your current food intake is insufficient-that's why your metabolic rate has slowed down so much. Eat more, and it'll shoot up. My job here is to maintain your current weight. By the way, you can have spreads on your bread, you know. Like jam, peanut butter... Most people I know don't have it plain."
"No way- like, seriously?"
You're joking? I look at her incredulously.
Ed has gone completely berserk. She's lying! It's a conspiracy! I see him hopping on the chair with his muscular legs and spandex pants, without an once of fat jiggling on his jumping body and I am amused. I keep asking her over and over, "You mean I can have this? And this too? Bread and jam and biscuits and potato and rice? Really?" I am squeezing the plastic food model and asking her. " I can have this much? All in one day?"
She says yes. I feel like raising my hands and shouting Hallelujah, because that meal plan she is holding looks like a miracle.
There is three times as much food in there as I usually take now, and probably eight or ten times as much as the time I was most ill. This meeting happened last week. It has not been easy following it. Most people don't understand that because of the illness' ability to kick the body into starvation and conservation mode, one's stomach gets filled up much faster, food gets digested much more slowly, and eating more becomes a real pain. It's not like what you think- recovery isn't a piece of cake, pun intended.
I turn around and see Ed flat-out, sprawled out, on the floor, his chest muscles heaving up and down with exhaustion, his face hot with frustration. I hold the meal plan, and I tell him, "I can have JAM."
He's really upset with me now, and he's not going down without a fight.
* Miss B is the principal psychologist who works with people suffering from eating disorders at the Singapore General Hospital.
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