"Where is it coming from, this echo, this huge No that surrounds you...?"
There was always this sense that I can't. Just can't. Or shouldn't. Whatever it was, I shouldn't.
Shortly before entering the hospital, I developed a minor obsession with a Margaret Atwood poem called "Up." It is about a woman whose past, rather than her future, is her destiny. She can't figure out why or what to do about it. The poem was comforting and discomfiting all at once. I made all the obvious connections to my life, but while I could relate to the bulk of the poem, I could not connect with the last line:
"Who is it, exactly, you have needed all these years to forgive?"
Who was it, exactly? Exactly. Those words nagged at me, but meant nothing. Meanwhile, I kept apologizing to my dead brother in dreams. I'd wake up sobbing, asking him to forgive me for...for...for what? The accident happened 600 miles away from me. I left him behind when I went to college, but he was twelve, and that's what big sisters do. I couldn't have changed the course of events, I couldn't have saved him, and yet there was a persistent, haunting feeling that I had failed him. But still there was "this huge No." Whatever it was that needed forgiving...I shouldn't go looking for it.
So after the hospital, I lived a sort of half life. My meal plan gave me something safe to control. My connective tissue healed enough to let me run again, but nothing over five miles (I still have chronic tendinitis in my shoulder that flairs up after five miles). I worked, ate, ran, and went to therapy. It filled up my time with meaningless prescribed tasks. The one thing I did without approval from doctor, nutritionist, or therapist was read.
My obsession with the poem led me to look for answers from the venerable Ms. Atwood. I read everything I could find in print. Her first published novel stitched together the neurons that had been desperately trying to connect in my brain, and I found the answer to the burning question posed in "Up."
The Edible Woman (1969) tells the story of a woman trapped by societal expectations. She is unable to eat, losing the taste for food groups one by one as the pressures of her engagement to the perfect man increase. Her identity is being devoured by impending wifehood. She feels each of her imperfections intensify as she grapples with the expectations of a "good" wife and mother. Before she wastes away entirely, she bakes a cake that looks just like her and eats it in front of her fiance, not offering him a bite. It is the symbol that she finally accepts herself as she is.
And there it was. I was living someone else's definition of a good life and it had almost eaten me alive, pound by pound. I had to accept myself for who I knew myself to be, and not for who people wanted me to be. I had to come out. That was the forgiveness I sought. My own.
I had been asking my brother for absolution in my sleep as a stand in for my own forgiveness. I couldn't extend the courtesy to myself, but I thought Jacob might. I regret that I didn't come out before he died. Our relationship will always have some element of a lie, because I never gave him the opportunity to accept or reject me honestly. I vowed I would not let another person leave my life without really knowing who I am. I would no longer lie to myself or anyone else. Many people close to me have rejected me as a result of being open about my sexuality, but I value those rejections more than I value the relationships I had with those people, because the rejections are honest. The relationships were not.
I came out as a lesbian in the year 2000. This, more than any single step I took along the way here, ended the eating disorder. The eating disorder was about eating my anomalous heart out. Coming out let my heart heal. I embraced ediblewoman as an alter ego in honor of the journey to find myself. It's a name rife with irony and innuendo, and it fits me.
Hello. It's nice to meet you. Honestly.
The Making of an Edible Woman Part I
The Making of an Edible Woman Part II: The Eating Disorders Unit
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