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

The first time I take the recommended dose: I swallow two brown Senokot pills with water and wait. They work a treat. I reckon if I increase the dose I’ll get thinner, quicker.

‘For God’s sake,’ says Claire, ‘you don’t need to lose any more weight. You’re looking so ill. And where’s your personality gone?’ ‘But I just feel I’m too big,’ I tell her. I am quite open with my friend about my problems with food, and even tell her that I am taking laxatives. Like me, she doesn’t fully appreciate the long-lasting damage that laxative abuse does to the body; she’s more worried about me not eating. ‘If you were as big as me you’d have to worry,’ she says, ‘but there’s nothing of you: you don’t have to diet.’ She begs and pleads with me to eat, and sometimes she gets angry.

‘Carry on,’ says Claire crossly, as she drives me home one night in her Renault. ‘Just carry on not eating. It’s doing me good – I’m losing weight worrying about you!’ And she is, poor girl. She’s carrying all the worry and stress of seeing me not eat day after day after day. I hide it from everyone else, but let my friend glimpse what’s really going on. I’m filled with guilt at what I am doing to her, and scribble her a note. ‘I’m sosorry for causing you all this pain,’ I write, ‘I promise I’ll try to eat. I’m so scared of losing you. You’re the only one who understands me, and I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t my friend.’ I post it through the slats of her locker at work, the first of many insecure little notes.

Claire tells her father about me, and big gruff Matt McCann then spends hours talking to me too. He tries to coax me into eating and suggests several times that I come to live with their family. But I am trapped in a bubble of disbelief, and no one can make themselves heard above the roar in my head which says, ‘You’re bad, you’re fat: you don’t deserve to eat.’

By early 1989 I am taking 30 Senokot a day. It always has to be 30 – not 29 or 31: it’s a ritual. My body has hardened to the huge doses and it now takes 12 hours for my bowels to work, so I tend to take the tablets at night. I know that if I take laxatives at 6 p.m. they’ll work at 6 a.m. the following day, and my trots to the toilet will be complete before I have to go to work. I think I’ve got it down to a fine art.

A girl called Rosaleen, who works at British Home Stores, is getting married in Scotland. Claire and I are invited to the wedding and decide to go up the week before, stay with Rosaleen’s family in Hamilton and have a bit of a holiday.

The coach to Hamilton leaves at midnight and will arrive just after six the following morning. Claire and I spend the evening getting drunk in a pub with a gang from work. At ten o’clock I swallow my laxatives in the Ladies, thinking that by the time they work I’ll be safely installed at Rosaleen’s. We carry on drinking until it is time to catch the coach. Then Claire and I stagger aboard, whacking other passengers on the head with our holdalls as we stumble to our seats.

A couple of hours later, horribly familiar feelings of fatigue begin to overwhelm me and my vision begins to blur. ‘Oh, my God!’ I think to myself, ‘the laxatives are working too early!’ Mixing laxatives with alcohol has been a bad move. ‘Here, use my bum as a cushion,’ says Claire, curling up in her seat. She has no idea I’ve taken laxatives – just thinks the drink has made me tired.

Sleep is impossible. I close my eyes, but rows of dots keep realigning for my inspection and sharp little stabbing pains start in my chest. My grumbling stomach begins its agonizing grind to a crescendo – ‘Oh my God, here it comes!’ I think. An almighty spasm shoots through me and I have just seconds to scramble over Claire and rush to the loo. The pain is excruciating – my insides seem to be cascading into the toilet along with their contents. I cling to the toilet seat and boil with a terrible fever. A high-pitched buzzing fills my ears and everything goes black. When the pain subsides and my vision clears I clean myself up as best I can, and head back to my seat, barely able to walk. ‘Thank God that’s over,’ I say to myself. Only, with laxative abuse, it’s never over and, as the coach rumbles through the night, I am forced to scuttle backwards and forwards to the disgusting toilet.

Scotland is a nightmare. It is freezing and I am forced to eat more than usual to keep out the cold and stop people commenting. I shovel down tablets at all times of day and night to make up for it. We hire a car and do a lot of sightseeing, and I am forever having to rush to the toilet. After we get back from a visit to Edinburgh Castle, I am chattering away to Rosaleen’s dad when suddenly I freeze, and burst into tears. I’ve had a terrible accident! ‘Are you okay?’ says Rosaleen’s father. ‘Can I have a bath please?’ I sob. ‘It’ll take a while for the water to heat up,’ he says, looking bewildered. ‘I’ll have a cold one,’ I say. ‘Yes,’ I hear him say, as I race up the stairs, ‘Go ahead.’

Most nights we go out drinking – Claire, Rosaleen and I – and because I am so starved it only takes a couple of drinks before I’m away with the fairies. One night, after we’ve come in late, I go into the kitchen to get a glass of water. A tiny crumb lies on the counter, next to a sponge cake that Rosaleen was given on her hen-night five days before. The cake is stale now, and nobody has thought to throw it out. ‘I want this,’ I think, eyeing the weeny crumb with its titchy bit of icing. Guiltily, I pick it up and stick it on the tip of my tongue. ‘I need this,’ I say to myself, quickly picking a little corner off the cake and popping it into my mouth. I grab a bigger piece and shove it in; then another, and another. My iron rule over my starving body snaps and I turn into an eating machine. My mind hums with nothingness, as I sit on the floor with the cake and shovel it into my emptiness.

‘What the fuck are you doing?’ says Claire, gazing in horror at the sight of me on the floor, ramming down the stale cake. She forces my mouth open and flicks out the cake, whacking the rest from my hands. ‘Get up!’ she orders. ‘I want it,’ I whimper helplessly, as she scoops up the cake and heads out of the back door with it to the dustbin. I stay on the floor and sob as if my heart will break. ‘It’s okay,’ says Claire, coming back in and rushing to hold me. ‘It’s okay.’ ‘Please don’t leave me,’ I sniff into her shoulder. ‘I won’t leave you,’ she says gently, rocking me in her arms, ‘But you’re going to die if you don’t sort this out. Promise me you’ll eat properly tomorrow.’ ‘I promise,’ I say through my tears.

Next day I have toast for breakfast – oh, and 30 laxatives – but I can’t manage any dinner.

‘I’m hungry,’ I tell the others, when we get back to the house after a night out with Rosaleen’s sister. Again I am horribly drunk. In front of everyone I walk through to the kitchen and fling open all the cupboards in search of crisps, bread, biscuits, anything. I find a packet of digestives and start stuffing them down one after the other. ‘Don’t!’ shouts Claire, but I am in a feeding frenzy and no one is getting in my way. ‘Stop it!’ she says, making a grab for the packet. My mouth bulging like a baby’s, I throw her a look of pure hate. ‘Leave me alone!’ I shriek, spluttering crumbs. ‘What the hell’s happening to you?’ says Rosaleen as she walks in, visibly shocked. ‘I want those biscuits!’ I yell as Claire snatches the packet. ‘You’re really ill,’ Rosaleen whispers incredulously. ‘I’m not ill!’ I scream. ‘Don’t you want me to eat? Am I too fat?’ ‘We’ve got to go to bed now,’ says Claire, trying to calm me down, but I’m not going anywhere without those biscuits. ‘I’ll bring them up in a minute,’ says Rosaleen, snapping into action, ‘Go upstairs.’ So I go and Claire helps me into my nightshirt and puts me to bed. Rosaleen brings the biscuits up, sits on the bed and lets me have three. I want more, but she won’t let me have any more and I bawl my eyes out.

Later, when Claire has gone to sleep, I lock myself in the bathroom and shove my fingers down my throat.

‘Did you eat while you were in Scotland?’ asks Mum, as she drives us home from the coach station. ‘Yeah,’ I say. ‘Did she, Claire?’ she quizzes my friend, who is sitting in the back of the car. In return for her silence I’ve promised Claire that I will eat when I get back home. ‘Yeah,’ she says in a flat voice, and changes the subject.

Chapter six (#ulink_9a8278aa-2df4-51c9-b8bf-7a88edc65e05)

‘Don’t bloody start that lark again,’ says Mum. ‘You’re going to sit down and you’re going to eat that.’ ‘I don’t want it! I can’t,’ I protest. ‘How do you think we feel? Lisa’s so ill, and here you are making yourself ill,’ says Dad. Desperate to get me to eat, my parents try various tactics. Making me feel guilty is one; issuing ultimatums is another. ‘You’re not going out, my girl, until you eat something,’ Mum says one evening. I go to the cupboard, get out a slice of Nimble, and ram it in my mouth. ‘There, I’ve eaten,’ I say and flounce out. ‘My God,’ gasps Mum, ‘you ate that like an animal!’

Every meal is a battle-ground, and I have honed my defence strategy. If it’s shepherd’s pie I eat some; then skim off the layer of mashed potato, hide my greens underneath and flatten down the mash so nobody realizes what lies below. Other bits of dinner go under my knife and fork. My most powerful allies are Drummer and our new Alsatian Sheba, who lie beneath the table – their mouths ever-open – waiting to devour the enemy.

‘You’re going to kill yourself,’ Mum and Dad keep saying. But I am trying to live: being light and empty is my way of living with myself, of surviving. Granddad hasn’t touched me since the day I stopped him, but I still hate my body. I can’t help thinking that if I could just rid myself of my dirty, disgusting carcass and float round the world, perhaps I’d be truly happy.

Each day I monitor my disappearance. Mum has banished the scales, so I go to work early and jump on those in the medical room before anyone else arrives. At every opportunity I sneak back in to weigh myself, and each night in the bathroom I run my body through a series of checks. We don’t have a full-length mirror at home, just a half mirror above the toilet. If I stand in the bath and twist round I can watch my fingers count down my ribs in the reflection. Then I get out of the bath and stand on the toilet to inspect my bottom half. I have to be able to put my hands round my waist till they almost join. ‘You’re still too big though,’ says the little voice, ‘you still take up too much space.’

‘Can I talk to you, Michael?’ I say to my brother one night, after a bad day at work. I am cold and in almost constant pain from the laxatives, which frightens me. ‘Mum and Dad are having a go at me about my eating again,’ I say. ‘Well, you’re stupid,’ he says matter-of-factly. ‘But I’m scared of eating because I’m scared of getting big,’ I say, starting to cry. ‘And I’m taking laxatives,’ I snivel. It is the first time I’ve admitted this to a member of my family and I don’t really know why I choose Michael – he doesn’t have a clue what laxatives are. ‘They, er, make you go to the loo,’ I explain hesitantly. ‘Why are you taking them?’ he asks incredulously. ‘I feel lighter after taking them,’ I mumble, ‘but I’m scared because I’m in so much pain.’ He looks horrified. ‘I’ll tell Dad,’ he says, getting up to do so. ‘No, don’t tell Dad,’ I say. ‘I’ll tell Mum then,’ he insists. ‘Don’t tell either of them,’ I beg. But he does.

Mum and Dad go through the roof. I just want my family to understand me, but they are frightened by what’s happening to me, and fear makes them lash out. ‘What are you trying to do – kill yourself and kill us with you?’ yells Mum at the top of her voice. And Dad hits me across the face, hard. I go into hysterics, screaming so much that I can hardly breathe. I grab my handbag and run from the house. My brother tears down the street after me, but I am running so fast I give him the slip. Mum and Dad jump into the car and start to scour the streets.

I get as far as The Favourite pub and ring the McCanns. ‘It’s Claire. Please help me, please!’ I yell into the telephone. ‘Just tell me where you are, and we’ll come and get you,’ says Matt who’s picked up the phone. Ten minutes later I see Claire and her dad draw up outside the pub. As I come out of the building, Mum and Dad pull up as well. I run to my friend who bundles me into the back of her dad’s car. ‘You’re coming home with us,’ says Matt, getting out of the car to speak to my parents.

‘Come on, Claire,’ says Mum, peering at me through the car window. ‘You’re showing us up. Come home with us now.’ I bury my face in my friend’s shoulder. ‘What shall I do?’ ‘Stay. Stay with us,’ she whispers. But I’m scared to: I know my parents won’t like it. Matt’s saying to them, ‘There is no point taking her home and having a go at her. Your daughter is not well.’ ‘We just don’t know what to do,’ says Mum, starting to cry. I say goodbye to Claire and get out of the car. ‘Your daughter needs help; you’ve got to see she needs help,’ I hear Matt saying as I climb slowly into Mum and Dad’s car.

Too shocked to speak, we drive home in silence, and troop into the front room. Dad sits on the organ stool, looking beaten. Mum flops on the settee, her eyes fixing on her treasured photograph collection of pet Alsatians past and present. I curl up in an armchair in the corner and look at my lap. ‘I am so sorry,’ I say eventually, starting to cry. ‘I don’t want to hurt you.’ ‘We’ve got to get you sorted out,’ says Mum softly. ‘I’ll make an appointment for you to see the doctor.’

‘What can I do for you, Claire?’ says Dr O’Donnell, looking at me over his half-spectacles. ‘I’m having bad period pains,’ I lie. ‘Can I have some Ponstan Forte?’ Period pain? I’m not even having periods! ‘Of course,’ he says, writing out the prescription and handing it to me. ‘Thank you,’ I say, picking up my handbag. ‘Is there anything else, Claire?’ he asks. ‘No,’ I reply, starting for the door.

‘Can you step on the scales for me, please?’ he says, casual as you like. I freeze. ‘Why?’ I ask. ‘I just want to have a quick check on your weight,’ he replies. ‘No,’ I say, panicking. ‘Why not?’ he says. ‘I can’t,’ I reply, fear creeping into my voice. ‘You look very thin to me, Claire,’ he says. It suddenly dawns on me that Mum must have been to see him. ‘Well, looks are deceiving!’ I retort angrily. ‘I’m about 8½ stone – that’s how much I am!’ ‘Well, let’s just check, shall we?’ he says, patiently. The floodgates open – ‘I can’t, I can’t!’ I weep. He walks round the desk, guides me back to the chair and pushes a box of tissues towards me. Then, after I’ve dried my tears, he says softly, ‘I need you to get on the scales.’ So I do, and I weigh just under 7 stone.

‘For your height you should be anything from a minimum of 8 stone 11 to a maximum of 10 stone 12,’ he says, consulting the Body Mass Index. He points to a red bit on a chart. ‘Your weight is right down here in the danger zone.’ Then he takes my pulse. ‘You are emaciated and your pulse is too low,’ he says, making notes in my file.

‘Have you heard of anorexia nervosa, Claire?’ he asks, putting his pen down and eyeing me over his glasses. ‘Yeah,’ I reply sullenly. ‘That’s what you’ve got,’ he says. But I don’t believe him. ‘No I haven’t,’ I insist. ‘What makes you say that, Claire?’ he asks. ‘Those people are really thin,’ I say.

‘Right,’ says Dr O’Donnell finally, ‘I’d like to see you every week and I am also going to refer you to the hospital, to someone who is experienced in these matters.’ Hospital! ‘Will I have to go to hospital?’ I ask, mortified. ‘You might have to,’ he says gently.

‘You shouldn’t have told them,’ says the bullying voice in my head. ‘That was weak, and now they’re going to make you extremely fat.’ An army of people are joining forces against me and I have to do something.

I tell Mum that I’m not going to take laxatives any more; but I lie and bury them under my bedroom carpet. I start to eat more regularly. For breakfast, I have a slice of Nimble toasted with the lowest of low-fat spreads. Dinner is a bowl of Weight Watchers minestrone soup. In the evening I have a roll with a wafer of cheese melted in the middle. It is a starvation diet; but I get away with it, because Mum and Dad know nothing about calories. They are just relieved to see me eat.

I am scared. I want to stop taking the laxatives which make me feel so ill, and I don’t want to end up in hospital. In a rash moment I give all my laxatives to Claire McCann. She puts them in her locker, and the instant she shuts the door I regret it.

I spin a story to Shirley, a girl at work, and she promises to get me some laxatives when she goes out at lunch-time. On her way back Shirley bumps into Claire and hands her the tablets to give to me. Claire goes ballistic. ‘Keep ’em, keep ’em!’ she shouts, taking all the laxatives from her locker and throwing them at me. ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorry!’ I plead, scrabbling around the floor to gather up the packets and thinking, ‘I’ve pushed her too far.’ ‘I can’t deal with this any more!’ she yells at me. ‘Please don’t stop being my friend,’ I cry. ‘I won’t,’ she says, calming down, ‘but I can’t cope any more.’ ‘Listen,’ I say, ‘I’ll have a sandwich’ – anything to pacify her. So we go up to the canteen and I eat a sandwich. Afterwards I go to the toilet. I am so intent on getting rid of the food that I don’t notice that my friend has followed and can hear me throwing up.

In desperation, Claire McCann rings her GP. She gets talking to the doctor’s receptionist, who says that her daughter Lesley is anorexic and has been for years. She wonders if Claire and I would like to come to her house the following night to meet Lesley.

‘So you hide yourself in baggy clothes,’ says Lesley, eyeing me up and down. ‘I always dress like this,’ I protest weakly, feeling awkward. Lesley is quite a bit older than me, and has short brown hair and massive eyes. Her top half is very thin but her legs are quite muscular because she exercises so much. ‘You won’t have any friends – I don’t,’ she says. ‘They stick you in hospital where you won’t be allowed visitors; you’ll be made to stay in bed and they won’t let you wash your hair. But,’ she adds, ‘your hair will fall out anyway.’ It sounds barbaric. ‘You’ll lose everything,’ she continues, ‘so, stop! Stop it now while you still can.’ But I don’t know how.

I start going to Lesley’s house on Sunday afternoons: Mum would stop me if she knew Lesley was anorexic, but she just thinks Lesley’s a friend of Claire McCann’s. When Lesley picks me up in her Mini, she’s usually wearing a duffle coat to keep out the cold and her little nose is always red. Lesley is a hardened anorexic, but she does allow herself proper meals after she’s been to aerobics: I am subsisting on fewer than 250 calories a day.

‘Get in the car, skinny,’ says Lesley, eyeing my stick-like legs beneath my black skirt. I am feeling cold and ill. My eyes have started to sink in their sockets and Mum and Dad are in despair. Up in Lesley’s room I huddle against the radiator. She’s been given a box of Quality Street. ‘I like the fudge diamonds,’ I say. ‘Would you like one?’ she says, rooting for the distinctive pink wrapper. ‘I can’t,’ I say, as she fishes out the sweet and holds it out to me. I want it, but can’t bring myself to take it. I am fat, dirty and disgusting and don’t deserve anything nice. ‘Go on,’ says Lesley. ‘I can’t,’ I insist. Lesley keeps on at me so, to shut her up, I say that I’ll eat the sweet next Sunday. Lesley carefully sets the fudge diamond aside; and I spend the entire week fretting about it.

‘God, you look awful!’ exclaims Lesley, the following Sunday. We go straight up to her room and I take up my post against the radiator. Lesley hands me the fudge diamond and picks a sweet out for herself. ‘Okay,’ she says, ‘I’m going to have this one – you have the fudge diamond.’ The radiator burns into my back, but I am so cold I don’t feel it. ‘I can’t,’ I cry, tears streaming down my face. ‘Okay,’ she says, taking the sweet from my hand and opening it up, ‘I’ll get a knife and cut it in half.’ She gives me half, but I am too frightened to put it in my mouth – once I start eating I mightn’t be able to stop. Lesley cuts the half in quarters, but I sob and shake my head. Eventually, Lesley coaxes me into eating a bit smaller than the top of my fingernail. I feel so bad that when I get home, I have to take more laxatives.

Chapter seven (#ulink_856c8c89-1855-53ba-bca0-f20286fe1f26)

‘She’s too thin. She’s ever so thin,’ they’re saying, their faces swimming above me like huge moons. I’m lying on a bed of glass and broken light-fittings while staff and a few ‘let me through, I’m a nurse’ customers muse over my condition. I’d been heading for the stairs up to the stock room, but they kept careering off into the distance. Patches of blackness kept invading my vision, and I couldn’t breathe. ‘I can’t get there, I can’t make it,’ I thought, trying to catch sight of another member of staff. ‘Dawn!’ I cried, seeing the supervisor of lighting through the fog. But as she turned, my legs buckled and sent me crashing into a set of glass display shelves laden with lights. It seems I’ve been unconscious for 10 minutes. I am helped to the medical room, and Mrs Sansom tells me to take the rest of the week off.

‘You’re too ill to work,’ says Dr O’Donnell when I next see him. ‘Your appointment with the hospital should come through soon, but I’m signing you off work till then.’ In his letter to Mrs Sansom he tactfully writes that I have digestive problems. I’m relieved not to be going back to work: even lifting a pair of slippers back onto a shelf has become an effort.

‘It’s thicker,’ I cry, my voice rising. ‘What have you done to this soup? It’s thicker!’ ‘I haven’t done anything to it, Claire,’ says Mum. ‘I can’t eat it! I can’t!’ I yell, ‘you’re trying to poison me.’ ‘For Christ’s sake, girl, look at you, look at you!’ screams Mum, losing her patience. ‘You’re nothing but a bag of bones! And you are not leaving that table until you’ve eaten that soup.’ So I suck each spoonful before I swallow, and spit anything slightly lumpy back into the bowl.

After that I decide I’m not going to have soup for dinner any more. Instead, I cut myself a thin slice of cheese and have a hot chocolate made with skimmed milk. I eat the cheese in a particular way. I feed half to Sheba, then nibble all the way round the rest of the cheese, and stick the little pieces to the roof of my mouth with my tongue, the better to savour the flavour. I take sips of the hot chocolate and try not to swallow the cheese until the drink is finished. It is a disgusting little ritual, but somehow it makes eating more bearable.

Off work, I establish a rigid daily routine for myself. After Mum, Dad and Michael leave for work and Lisa has gone to school, I start my stomach exercises. I lie flat on the floor, put my arms over my head and slowly raise my legs up to the count of 10, then lower them to 10. Up and down, on and on, until I ache. I shower and inspect my body and then hide it in my baggy white jogging suit. I brush my hair and great clumps fall out; I notice long strands criss-crossing my pillow.