MY BODY, MY ENEMY: My 13 year battle with anorexia nervosa

MY BODY, MY ENEMY: My 13 year battle with anorexia nervosa
Claire Beeken

Greenstreet Greenstreet

This ebook edition of a classic, bestselling autobiography completes Claire Beeken’s powerful story, taking the reader on an inspirational journey to the present day.Claire Beeken first went to hospital with an eating disorder aged 10. For over a decade she locked herself into a vicious cycle of starvation, laxative abuse, binge-eating and vomiting, attempted suicide and periods in a psychiatric hospital.This graphically honest, deeply-affecting, and darkly funny account of Claire’s illness tells the story of an ordinary girl from Luton living life with rare intensity.Since publication of the previous issue, Claire Beeken’s groundbreaking techniques and work with sufferers of eating disorders has come to be internationally recognised. Claire’s charity Caraline is now internationally acclaimed and the help-line that began life in her parents’ front-room has become an established, and enormously successful, care and counselling centre.The updated material tells Claire’s personal story – her feelings and her achievements since the early days of Caraline and also includes further inspirational ‘case histories’ of girls who have recovered from bulimia and anorexia with counselling.

My Body, My Enemy

My thirteen year battle with anorexia nervosa

Table of Contents

Title Page (#u69f96edd-8714-5918-824a-62b84dc910ba)

Note (#uaf8e1c4c-18ad-5f02-9aed-b6f00d87a336)

Dedication (#u5082da88-4549-5381-b39e-44cd7019d818)

Chapter one (#u8e6e8224-e143-547e-b430-0aba786e9366)

Chapter two (#u34879d5c-b68d-5aa0-b9d3-5fac33d730f0)

Chapter three (#uc179dcec-9f7e-5712-a1f4-8b3eb5013ecb)

Chapter four (#u3ddea250-32ce-5d1d-b616-9864077a14bc)

Chapter five (#u5c09a89d-5d58-549e-93a9-55cd563a81ef)

Chapter six (#u327fa412-b424-583e-8291-a762bf614588)

Chapter seven (#udf66ab76-c995-5d26-b174-89625da90dfb)

Chapter eight (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter nine (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter ten (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter eleven (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter twelve (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter nineteen (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter twenty (#litres_trial_promo)

Chapter twenty-one (#litres_trial_promo)

Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)

Appendix (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)

Praise (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)

Note (#ulink_dee77cff-13c9-5391-be70-cdda9ced575f)

To protect the innocent – as well as the guilty – I have changed and omitted some names. While I am pleased to be able to tell the story of my life, I am only sorry that I am still having to protect others.

Claire Beeken

This book is dedicated to my dear friend Caraline.

Caraline, I told you that while I was alive people would

speak your name. I have kept my promise.

Claire Beeken

Chapter one (#ulink_f6ade458-4e55-5aec-a979-0adb3011a2a7)

The man who ruined my life was dressed as Father Christmas. We were sitting in the front room – Grandma, Mum, Dad, my big brother Michael, my new baby sister Lisa and I – when he walked in with his white beard, red suit and jolly ‘Ho-Ho-Ho!’. I didn’t realize who he was then, when I was three; and it’s funny because now – when I watch the cine-film of Christmas 1973 – I still don’t recognize him as my grandfather.

Granddad and Grandma were Dad’s parents. They lived in the same street as us in Luton and we were a close family. Every Sunday they’d come to our house for dinner or we’d go to theirs. Michael and I totally adored them – there was no reason not to. Grandma was plump and always on a diet, but she loved her food too much. She had dark-grey hair and smoked in those days. Granddad smoked too. He liked Clan tobacco and walked round with his pipe in his mouth even when it wasn’t lit. He had a hooked nose and, under the trilby he always wore, his pure-white hair was thinning. You could tell from his freckly skin that he’d once had bright-ginger hair. Michael and I favoured Granddad because he gave us sweets. So did our dog, Sabre, who was always sniffing his pockets. Granddad would fumble in his pocket, fish out his white handkerchief and the mints he always carried, dig a bit deeper and produce a Mars Bar for us each.

Mum and Dad were poor and really struggled when we were young. Dad worked across the road for a factory manufacturing ball-bearings. As soon as he came in at night, Mum would go out to her cleaning job at the same factory. Dad worked weekends as well, and on Sundays Mum would sit down with us kids to watch the afternoon movie on TV. I liked the old Elvis films and Mum loved anything starring Mario Lanza. Sometimes Mum would point out of the window and say, ‘Look, there’s Daddy.’ We’d look up from the TV screen and there he’d be, waving from the roof of the factory wearing a big black coat with the name of the factory written on the back.

By the time my sister was three months old, money was the least of my parents’ worries. Lisa developed serious breathing problems and at first it was thought she had cystic fibrosis. She was eventually diagnosed as a brittle asthmatic, and the doctors told my parents that she was unlikely to make it to her 18th birthday. Poor Mum and Dad were constantly in and out of hospital with Lisa, and my brother and I increasingly found ourselves at Grandma’s for tea.

Grandma was a great cook – she made homemade doughnuts and did lovely roast potatoes. She used a lot of fat in her cooking and you’d be hit by the smell as you walked through the door. It was a typical old people’s house: the carpet in the hall was an orange and brown pattern and in the front room stood Grandma’s organ and a record-player in a long, old-fashioned cabinet. The records were Granddad’s: he liked popular songs like ‘Downtown’ by Petula Clark and ‘Stupid Cupid’ by Connie Francis. The fireplace was almost completely obscured by a battery of family photographs, and on the wall opposite hung a rug with deer on it – I loved that rug. The stairs twisted up to the first bedroom which was Granddad’s. It was a plain room with a wardrobe and two single beds. There were no books by his bed – he didn’t read. Next door was the toilet with its creaky door and cold lino floor. It smelt of hospitals in there and sometimes, instead of toilet paper, there would be newspaper. In the bathroom there was a white enamel bath with lime-scale round the taps – but the house wasn’t dirty, just old. My grandparents had separate rooms, and in Grandma’s there was a double bed, a dressing table and a clock with a loud tick. By the bed there were always hardback books from the library by Catherine Cookson or Jean Plaidy, a pair of reading glasses with thick, milk-bottle lenses, and religious things like rosary beads and Mass cards. Lastly, there was a tiny boxroom which housed Grandma’s big brown sewing machine with its fascinating pedals that I loved to press.

Grandma and Granddad’s back garden was a sun-trap. You opened the kitchen door and stepped down two steps to the coal bunker, which we kids were just desperate to jump off. ‘Get down!’ the adults would yell. But we knew that if we were good Granddad would sit us up there. We weren’t allowed to move a muscle until he lifted us back down, in case we hurt ourselves. A thin concrete path ran the length of the garden, and an apple tree grew on either side. Behind the trees stood the shed where Granddad did his carpentry. He used to work as a chippy and he made amazing pieces of furniture. He retired when I was seven and I remember his retirement ‘do’. Dad has a picture of me at the party – I’m wearing a blue dotted dress and have two pink ribbons in my hair.