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The Idea Of My Future Simultaneously Thrilled And Terrified Me, Like Standing At The Lip Of A Very Sheer Cliff- I Could Fly, Or Fall. I Didn't Know How To Fly, And I Didn't Want To Fall. So I Backed Away From The Cliff And Went In Search Of Something That Had A Clear, Solid Trajectory For Me To Follow, Like Hopscotch.

-Marya Hornbacher

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The Idea Of My

Marya Hornbacher

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The Idea Of My Future Simultaneously Thrilled And Terrified Me, Like Standing At The Lip Of A Very Sheer Cliff- I Could Fly, Or Fall. I Didn't Know How To Fly, And I Didn't Want To Fall. So I Backed Away From The Cliff And Went In Search Of Something That Had A Clear, Solid Trajectory For Me To Follow, Like Hopscotch.

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I Am Feeling Fine. I Remember These Words And Recite Them. These Are The Things You Say When Asked How You Are. After All, It Would Be Odd To Say: I'm Not Feeling. Or, More To The Point: I'm Not, I Have Ceased To Be. Where Am I?

This Is The Very Boring Part Of Eating Disorders, The Aftermath. When You Eat And Hate That You Eat. And Yet Of Course You Must Eat. You Don’t Really Entertain The Notion Of Going Back. You, With Some Startling New Level Of Clarity, Realize That Going Back Would Be Far Worse Than Simply Being As You Are. This Is Obvious To Anyone Without An Eating Disorder. This Is Not Always Obvious To You.

Eating Disorder

When You Believe That You Are Not Worthwhile In And Of Yourself, In The Back Of Your Mind You Also Begin To Believe That Life Is Not Worthwhile In And Of Itself. It Is Only Worthwhile Insofar As It Relates To Your Crusade. It Is A Kamikaze Mission.

You Will Miss Her Sometimes. Bear In Mind She's Trying To Kill You. Bear In Mind You Have A Life To Live.

I Get Absolutely Shitfaced. I Am Shitfaced And Hyper And Ten Years Old. I Am Having The Time Of My Life.

Time Of My Life

It's Really Interesting To Me How All Of Us Can Experience The Exact Same Event, And Yet Come Away With Wildly Disparate Interpretations Of What Happened. We Each Have Totally Different Ideas Of What Was Said, What Was Intended, And What Really Took Place.

I Began To Measure Things In Absence Instead Of Presence.

All Of Us Carry Around Countless Bags Of Dusty Old Knickknacks Dated From Childhood: Collected Resentments, Long List Of Wounds Of Greater Or Lesser Significance, Glorified Memories, Absolute Certainties That Later Turn Out To Be Wrong. Humans Are Emotional Pack Rats. These Bags Define Us.

I Developed A Deep, Abiding Fear Of Jeans, Which I Still Have. I Hold My Breath And Shut My Eyes When I Pull On A Pair In The Dressing Room, Afraid They Will Now, As Then, Get Stuck At My Hips And There I Will Stand, Absurd, Staring At The Excess Of Hips That Should, If I Were A Good Person, Be „slim“.

Madness Strips You Of Memory And Leaves You Scrabbling Around On The Floor Of Your Brain For The Snatches And Snippets Of What Happened, What Was Said, And When.

Anorexia And Bulimia Seem To Be Getting Much More Common In Boys, Men, And Women Of All Ages And Socioeconomic Backgrounds; They Are Also Becoming More Common In Racial Groups Previously Thought To Be Impervious To The Problem.

And So I Went Through The Looking Glass, Stepped Into The Netherworld, Where Up Is Down And Food Is Greed, Where Convex Mirrors Cover The Walls, Where Death Is Honor And Flesh Is Weak. It Is Ever So Easy To Go. Harder To Find Your Way Back.

When You Are Mad, Mad Like This, You Don't Know It. Reality Is What You See. When What You See Shifts, Departing From Anyone Else's Reality, It's Still Reality To You.

For A Long Time I Believed The Opposite Of Passion Was Death. I Was Wrong. Passion And Death Are Implicit, One In The Other. Past The Border Of A Fiery Life Lies The Netherworld. I Can Trace This Road, Which Took Me Through Places So Hot The Very Air Burned The Lungs. I Did Not Turn Back. I Pressed On, And Eventually Passed Over The Border, Beyond Which Lies A Place That Is Wordless And Cold, So Cold That It, Like Mercury, Burns A Freezing Blue Flame.

All Of Us Have Theories About The World And About Ourselves. We Will Go To Great Lengths To Prove Ourselves Right Because It Keeps The World In Our Head Coherent And Understandable.

Never, Never Underestimate The Power Of Desire. If You Want To Live Badly Enough, You Can Live. The Great Question, At Least For Me, Was: How Do I Decide I Want To Live?

I Am Often Drawn To What Appear At First To Be 'dark' Or 'difficult' Subjects, But Which, Upon Further Examination, Are Always And Only Reflections Of The Ways Human Beings Attempt, However Clumsily, Badly, Or Well, To Connect With Others.

The Term “starvation Diet” Refers To 900 Calories A Day. I Was On One-third Of A Starvation Diet. What Do You Call That? One Word That Comes To My Mind: “suicide.

Hospitalizations In General Are Blurry. The Days Are The Same, Precisely The Same. Nothing Changes. Life Melts Down To A Simple Progression Of Meals. They Become A Way Of Life Fairly Quickly. You May Welcome This Transition. It May Seem Inevitable To You. You Have Been Removed From The World. It Is All Right, In A Way, Because There Is Nothing So Sure, So Safe, As Routine.

I'm A Driven Perfectionist, Very Self-critical.

I Had A Love Affair With Books, With Characters And Their Words. Books Kept Me Company. When The Voices Of The Book Faded, As With The Last Long Chord Of A Record, The Back Cover Crinkling Closed, I Could Swear I Heard A Door Click Shut.

Soon Madness Has Worn You Down. It’s Easier To Do What It Says Than Argue. In This Way, It Takes Over Your Mind. You No Longer Know Where It Ends And You Begin. You Believe Anything It Says. You Do What It Tells You, No Matter How Extreme Or Absurd. If It Says You’re Worthless, You Agree. You Plead For It To Stop. You Promise To Behave. You Are On Your Knees Before It, And It Laughs.

Madness Will Push You Anywhere It Wants. It Never Tells You Where You're Going, Or Why. It Tells You It Doesn't Matter. It Persuades You. It Dangles Something Sparkly Before You, Shimmering Like That Water Patch On The Road Up Ahead. You Will Drive Until You Find It, The Treasure, The Thing You Most Desire. You Will Never Find It. Madness May Mock You So Long You Will Die Of The Search. Or It Will Tire Of You, Turn Its Back, Oblivious As You Go Flying. The Car Is Beside You, Smoking, Belly-up, Still Spinning Its Wheels.

You Wake Up One Morning And There It Is, Sitting In An Old Plaid Bathrobe In Your Kitchen, Unpleasant And Unshaved. You Look At It, Heart Sinking. Madness Is A Rotten Guest.

Children Take In More Information Than We'd Like To Believe.

I Either Want To Be Completely Recovered Or Completely Emaciated. It's The In Between That I Can't Stand, The Limbo Of Failure Where You Know That You Haven't Done Your Best At One Or The Other: Dying Or Living.

In That Six Months, So Much Happened That Death Seemed, Primarily, Inconvenient. The Trial Period Was Extended. I Seem To Keep Extending It. There Are Many Things To Do. There Are Books To Write And Naps To Take. There Are Movies To See And Scrambled Eggs To Eat. Life Is Essentially Trivial. You Either Decide You Will Take The Trite Business Of Life And Give Yourself The Option Of Doing Something Really Cool, Or You Decide You Will Opt For The Grand Epic Of Eating Disorders And Dedicate Your Life To Being Seriously Trivial.

There Is, In The End, The Letting Go.

He Leaned Down And Whispered To Me: No Matter How Thin You Get, No Matter How Short You Cut Your Hair, It's Still Going To Be You Underneath. And He Let Go Of My Arm And Walked Back Down The Hall.

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The Anoretic Operates Under The Astounding Illusion That She Can Escape The Flesh, And, By Association, The Realm Of Emotions.

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And It's California, Where Everything Is Powerfully Strange. Everyone Wants It To Be Home. Everyone Left Where He Or She Was From With Dreams Of Transformation. Everyone Runs Away To California At Least Once, Or At Least All The Lonely, Hungry People Do.

You Will Not Stop. The Pain Is Necessary, Especially The Pain Of Hunger. It Reassures You That You Are Strong, Can Withstand Anything, That You Are Not A Slave To Your Body, You Don't Have To Give In To Its Whining.

Falling In Love Happens So Suddenly That It Seems, All At Once, That You Have Always Been In Love.

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Creative Nonfiction

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Hatred Is So Much Closer To Love Than Indifference.

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That Nothing - Not Booze, Not Love, Not Sex, Not Work, Not Moving From State To State - Will Make The Past Disappear.

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And Yet You Are All That You Have, So You Must Be Enough. There Is No Other Way.

The Madness Is There, And Will Always Be There. But It Will Keep Sleeping, As Long As I Don't Wake It Up.

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I Do Have Faith. I Don't Have Faith That A God Exists, Nor Do I Have Faith That One Does Not; I Have Absolute Faith That I Do Not Know, Cannot Know, Am Only Human, Am An Infinitesimal Creature Packed Onto A Cramped Planet Crowded With Seven Billion Bodies, And As Many Yearning Hearts, And As Many Questioning Minds.

I Have A Remarkable Ability To Delete All Better Judgement From My Brain When I Get My Head Set On Something. I Have No Sense Of Moderation, No Sense Of Caution. I Have No Sense Pretty Much.

After A Lifetime Of Silence, It Is Difficult Then To Speak.

In Truth, You Like The Pain. You Like It Because You Believe You Deserve It.

The Biggest Fear Of My Life Is Living. My Second Biggest Fear Is Dying.

I Know How This Feels: The Tightening Of The Chest, The Panic, The What-have-i-done-wait-i-was-kidding. Eating Disorders Linger So Long Undetected, Eroding The Body In Silence, And Then They Strike. The Secret Is Out. You're Dying.

I Know For A Fact That Sickness Is Easier, But Health Is More Interesting.

I Wish I Could Find Words To Explain What This Kind Of Cold Is Like- The Cold That Has Somehow Gotten In Underneath Your Skin And Is Getting Colder And Colder Inside You.

There Are Women In My Closet, Hanging On The Hangers. A Different Woman For Each Suit, Each Dress, Each Pair Of Shoes. I Hoard Clothes. My Makeup Spills From The Bathroom Drawers, And There Are Different Women For Different Lipsticks.

For Me, The First Sign Of Oncoming Madness Is That I'm Unable To Write.

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Some People Who Are Obsessed With Food Become Gourmet Chefs. Others Become Eating Disorders.

Eating Disorder

In Her Presence, I Was Reminded Again Of Why I Was An Anoretic: Fear. Of My Needs, For Food, For Sleep, For Touch, For Simple Conversation, For Human Contact, For Love. I Was An Anoretic Because I Was Afraid Of Being Human. Implicit In Human Contact Is The Exposure Of The Self, The Interaction Of The Selves. The Self I'd Had, Once Upon A Time, Was Too Much. Now There Was No Self At All. I Was A Blank.

It Is, At The Most Basic Level, A Bundle Of Contradictions: A Desire For Power That Strips You Of All Power. A Gesture Of Strength That Divests You Of All Strength.

The Fact That You Were Essentially Dead Does Not Register Until You Begin To Come Alive.

• Eating Disorders Are Addictions. You Become Addicted To A Number Of Their Effects. The Two Most Basic And Important: The Pure Adrenaline That Kicks In When You're Starving—you're High As A Kite, Sleepless, Full Of A Frenetic, Unstable Energy—and The Heightened Intensity Of Experience That Eating Disorders Initially Induce. At First, Everything Tastes And Smells Intense, Tactile Experience Is Intense, Your Own Drive And Energy Themselves Are Intense And Focused. Your Sense Of Power Is Very, Very Intense. You Are Not Aware, However, That You Are Quickly Becoming Addicted.

One Really Ought To Be Afraid Of Self-torture. But It Tempted Me. It Begged. The Dark Place That My Mind Was Fast Becoming Blends, In My Memory, With The Dark Womb Of Church: The Chant, The Fugue Of Prayer, The Strange Erotic Energy That Carving A Very Small Cross Into My Thigh With A Nail Had Brought.

In Our Absence, The Violet Early Evening Light Pours In The Bay Window, Filling The Still Room Like Water Poured Into A Glass. The Glass Is Delicate. The Thin, Tight Surface Of The Liquid Light Trembles. But It Does Not Break. Time Does Not Pass. Not Yet.

The Idea Of My Future Simultaneously Thrilled And Terrified Me, Like Standing At The Lip Of A Very Sheer Cliff- I Could Fly, Or Fall. I Didn't Know How To Fly, And I Didn't Want To Fall. So I Backed Away From The Cliff And Went In Search Of Something That Had A Clear, Solid Trajectory For Me To Follow, Like Hopscotch.

And So I Am Feeling Numb. It's A Curious Feeling, And I Get It All The Time. My Attention To The World Around Me Disappears, And Something Starts To Hum Inside My Head. Far Off, Voices Try To Bump Up Against Me, But I Repel Them. My Ears Fill Up With Water And I Focus On The Humming In My Head.

The Joy Is An Absurd Yellow Tulip, Popping Up In My Life, Contradicting All The Evidence That Shows It Should Not Be There.

You Can Only Whine For So Long. Then You Need To Get Your Life Back.

Starvation Is Incredibly Frightening When It Finally Sets In With A Vengeance. And When It Does,you Are Surprised. You Hadn't Meant This. You Say: Wait, Not This. And Then It Sucks You Under And You Drown.

Madness Is Not What It Seems. Time Stops. All My Life I've Been Obsessed With Time, Its Motion And Velocity, The Way It Works You Over, The Way It Rushes You Onward, A Pebble Turning In A Brook. I've Always Been Obsessed With Where I'd Go, And What I'd Do, And How I Would Live. I've Always Harbored A Desperate Hope That I Would Make Something Of Myself. Not Then. Time Stopped Seeming So Much Like The Thing That Would Transform Me Into Something Worthwhile And Began To Be Inseparable From Death. I Spent My Time Merely Waiting.

I Have Not Lost My Fascination With Death. I Have Not Become A Noticeably Less Intense Person. I Have Not, Nor Will I Ever, Completely Lose The Longing For That Something, That Thing That I Believe Will Fill An Emptiness Inside Me. I Do Believe That The Emptiness Was Made Greater By The Things That I Did To Myself.

...painfully Curious...about How It Feels To Fall.

You Never Come Back, Not All The Way. Always There Is An Odd Distance Between You And The People You Love And The People You Meet, A Barrier Thin As The Glass Of A Mirror, You Never Come All The Way Out Of The Mirror; You Stand, For The Rest Of Your Life, With One Foot In This World And No One In Another, Where Everything Is Upside Down And Backward And Sad.

The Idea Began To Sink In, More Than It Ever Had, That I Might Be Crazy, In The Traditional Sense Of The Word. That I Might Be, Forever And Ever Amen, A Crazy Person. That's What We'd Suspected All Along, What I'd Been Working So Hard To Disprove, What Might Be True. I Preferred, By Far, Being Dead.

I Do Not Remember Very Many Things From The Inside Out. I Do Not Remember What It Felt Like To Touch Things, Or How Bathwater Traveled Over My Skin. I Did Not Like To Be Touched, But It Was A Strange Dislike. I Did Not Like To Be Touched Because I Craved It Too Much. I Wanted To Be Held Very Tight So I Would Not Break. Even Now, When People Lean Down To Touch Me, Or Hug Me, Or Put A Hand On My Shoulder, I Hold My Breath. I Turn My Face. I Want To Cry.

Me And My Needs Were Driving My Mother Away. Me And My Needs Retreated To My Closet, Disappeared Into Fairy Tales. I Started Making Up A World Where My Needs Wouldn´t Exist At All.

We Know We Need, And So We Acquire And Eat And Eat, Past The Point Of Bodily Fullness, Trying To Sate A Greater Need. Ashamed Of This, We Turn Skeletons Into Goddesses And Look To Them As If They Might Teach Us How To Not-need.

I Threw Up Again That Night, Half-afraid That My Eyeballs Would Explode. But It Was, By Far, More Important That I Get Rid Of Dinner. Of Course, By Then, Throwing Up Was The Only Way I Knew How To Deal With Fear. That Paradox Would Begin To Run My Life: To Know That What You Are Doing Is Hurting You, Maybe Killing You, And To Be Afraid Of That Fact--but To Cling To The Idea That This Will Save You, It Will, In The End, Make Things Okay.

We Turn Skeletons Into Goddesses And Look To Them As If They Might Teach Us How Not To Need.

Eating Disorder

When I Returned, Everything Was Different. Everything Was Calm, And I Felt Very Clean. Everything Was In Order. Everything Was As It Should Be. I Had A Secret. It Was A Guilty Secret, Certainly. But It Was My Secret. I Had Something To Hold On To. It Was Company. It Kept Me Calm. It Filled Me Up And Emptied Me Out.

My Students Know I Have A Life, They Know I've Written About My Life. They Know Some Detail, Probably More Than They Know About Their Physics Teacher, But I Would've Told Them Anyway!

But In Some Ways, The Most Significant Choices One Makes In Life Are Done For Reasons That Are Not All That Dramatic, Not Earth-shaking At All; Often Enough, The Choices We Make Are, For Better Or For Worse, Made By Default.

I Have Never Been Normal About My Body. It Has Always Seemed To Me A Strange And Foreign Entity. I Don't Know That There Was Ever A Time When I Was Not Conscious Of It. As Far Back As I Can Think, I Was Aware Of My Own Corporeality, My Physical Imposition On Space.

When I Was Growing Up, I Always Felt There Was An Expectation That I Would Do One Of Two Things: Be Great At Something, Or Go Crazy And Become A Total Failure. There Is No Middle Ground Where I Come From, And I Am Only Now Beginning To Get A Sense That There Is A Middle Ground At All.

My Relationships With Both My Mother And Father Are Good. We Spent Several Difficult Years Hashing Over The Problems And The Past, And Worked Out A Fairly Solid Middle Ground. I Wouldn't Say My Relationship With Either Of Them - They're No Longer Together - Is Exactly Typical, But That Would Be Difficult After All We Went Through.

Having A Normal Person Around Me Made It Poingnantly Clear To Me That I Was Out Of Control.

...someone Speaks In Soft Tones To Me And Says I Am Psychotic, But It's Going To Be All Right. I Put On My Hat, Unperturbed, And Ask For Some Crayons.

I Grew Into It. It Grew Into Me. It And I Blurred At The Edges, Became One Amorphous, Seeping, Crawling Thing.

We Think Of Bulimia And Anorexia As Either A Bizarre Psychosis, Or As A Quirky Little Habit, A Phase, Or As A Thing That Women Just Do. We Forget That It Is A Violent Act, That It Bespeaks A Profound Level Of Anger Toward And Fear Of The Self.

My Parents Say That Even As A Very, Very Little Kid, The Way That I Acted Was Dramatically Different From Other Little Kids.

My Bones Are Brittle, My Heart Weak And Erratic, My Esophagus And Stomach Riddled With Ulcers, My Reproductive System Shot, My Immune System Useless... I'm Not Going To Have A Happy Ending.

There's Childhood And Early Onset Bipolar, But It Transitions In Your Early Adulthood Into Something A Little Bit Different, And Extremely Severe. It Was At That Time That My Impulse Control Just Went Out The Window. Impulse Control When You're Manic Just Disappears.

Impulse Control

Somewhere In The Back Of My Brain There Exists This Certainty: The Body Is No More Than A Costume, And Can Be Changed At Will. That The Changing Of Bodies, Like Costumes, Would Make Me Into A Different Character, A Character Who Might, Finally, Be Alright.

I Mean, We All Know The Dangers Of Starving, But Bulimia? That Can't Be That Bad. It's Only Bad When You Get Really Thin. Who Worries About Bulimics? They're Just Gross.

You Can't Teach An Ear, You Can't Teach Talent, But You Can Teach People Who Have Those Things Not To Just Fly By The Seat Of Their Pants.

But New Love Only Lasts So Long, And Then You Crash Back Into The Real People You Are, And From As High As We Were, It's A Very Long Fall, And We Hit The Ground With A Thud.

Because I'm Not, In Fact, Depressed, Prozac Makes Me Manic And Numb - One Of The Reasons I Slice My Arm In The First Place Is That I'm Coked To The Gills On Something Utterly Wrong For What I Have.

Bear In Mind, People With Eating Disorders Tend To Be Both Competitive And Intelligent. We Are Incredibly Perfectionistic. We Often Excel In School,athletics,artistic Pursuits. We Also Tend To Quit Without Warning. Refuse To Go To School,drop Out,quit Jobs,leave Lovers,move,lose All Our Money. We Get Sick Of Being Impressive. Rather,we Tire Of Having To Seem Impressive. As A Rule,most Of Us Never Really Believed We Were Any Good In The First Place.

[i] Learned ... That Friends Are A Good Source Of Food And Soul When One Has Not Yet Gotten The Hang Of Cooking Or Living (as Opposed To Dying) Alone. That Nothing-not Booze, Not Love, Not Sex, Not Work, Not Moving From State To State-will Make The Past Disappear. Only Time And Patience Heal Things. I Learned That Cutting Up Your Arms In An Attempt To Make The Pain Move From Inside To Outside, From Soul To Skin, Is Futile. That Death Is A Cop-out. I Tried All Of These Things.

People Take The Feeling Of Full For Granted.

So Many Means Of Self-destruction, So Little Time.

There Is Never A Sudden Revelation, A Complete And Tidy Explanation For Why It Happened, Or Why It Ends, Or Why Or Who You Are. You Want One And I Want One, But There Isn't One. It Comes In Bits And Pieces, And You Stitch Them Together Wherever They Fit, And When You Are Done You Hold Yourself Up, And Still There Are Holes And You Are A Rag Doll, Invented, Imperfect. And Yet You Are All That You Have, So You Must Be Enough. There Is No Other Way.

I Have A Type Of Bipolar That Swings Up And Down All Day Long. There Are Significant Mood Swings Within A Day, Within A Week, Within A Month. I Go Through At Least Four Major Episodes A Year. That's Really The Definition Of Bipolar Rapid Cycle. But I Have Ultra-rapid, So I Have Tiny Little Episodes All Day Long.

People With Eating Disorders Tend To Be Very Diametrical Thinkers – Everything Is The End Of The World, Everything Rides On This One Thing, And Everyone Tells You You're Very Dramatic, Very Intense, And They See It As An Affectation, But It´s Actually Just How You Think. It Really Seems To You That The Sky Will Fall If You Are Not Personally Holding It Up. On The One Hand, This Is Sheer Arrogance; On The Other Hand, This Is A Very Real Fear. And It Isn't That You Ignore The Potential Repercussions Of Your Actions. You Don't Think There Are Any. Because You Are Not Even There.

I Think Many People With A Chronic Illness Would Prefer Not To Have Their Chronic Illness, Simply Because It's High Maintenance.

There Is, In Fact, An Incredible Freedom In Having Nothing Left To Lose.

My God! People Say. You Have So Much Self-control! And Later: My God. You're So, So Sick. When People Say This, They Turn Their Heads, You've Won Your Little Game. You Have Proven Your Thesis That No-body-loves-me-every-body-hates-me, Guess-i'll-just-eat-worms. You Get To Sink Back Into Your Hospital Bed, Shrieking With Righteous Indignation. See? You Get To Say. I Knew You'd Give Up On Me. I Knew You'd Leave.

If I Had Been A Different Sort Of Person, Maybe Less Impressionable, Less Intense, Less Fearful, Less Utterly Dependent Upon The Perceptions Of Others - Maybe Then I Would Not Have Bought The Cultural Party Line That Thinness Is The Be-all And End-all Of Goals. Maybe If My Family Had Not Been In Utter Chaos Most Of The Time, Maybe If My Parents Were A Little Better At Dealing With Their Own Lives Maybe If I'd Gotten Help Sooner, Or If I'd Gotten Different Help, Maybe If I Didn't So Fiercely Cherish My Secret, Or If I Were Not Such A Good Liar, Or Were Not Quite So Empty Inside... Maybe.

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