Eating Disorder Talk

Parts one and two can be found here and here. I left you with one foot in the door of a modeling agency*. The other foot was already in my mouth - ultimately blocking any nourishment that I could hope for during the my twelfth to fourteenth years.

It began innocently enough. I had some friends who were checking out this new agency in our suburb. One was going to act, the other model. They didn’t get any work - one was slightly…stocky, the other very thin but in need of (and would eventually get) a nose job. I checked things out. I was photographed, measured and given a copy of an interim comp card - the one that would be forwarded to my eventual agent.

She was both a warm-hearted and ball-busting woman. I respected her immediately - for the command of all people’s attention and her ability to say exactly what needed to be said. This included that I needed to lose five to ten pounds and maybe get a little more hollow looking. A good way to do this, she helped me learn, was heroin and coke - speedballs. In two years of part-time print modeling, I rarely saw a paycheque - they were signed directly over to her, in order to recover the money she’d spent on my “habit.”

When I was fourteen, I started being a little skatergirl, hanging out with the boys and trying to show off on my board. I’d show up for work, high and hungering for more and bruised and beaten from the pavement. I was told that I needed to shape up - my body was my temple and I was abusing it. By skateboarding and falling down. The drugs - those nourished.

Ultimatums were given - I could quit working or skating. I decided work, after yet another photographer had commented that losing another five pounds would take the chubbiness from my cheeks. I won’t go into the gritty details of getting clean or other experiences with photographers and industry people, let’s just say that my opinion is an earned one.

I spent the next year eating 100 calories a day, if possible. I resigned myself to daily baths to stay warm, hot chocolate made with skim milk and a 1/4 teaspoon of Quik syrup, and most of a cinnamon raisin bagel. For the day. If I went over my 100 calories, I would exercise to the point of exhaustion, take laxatives, purge and have an anxiety attack - all within the same hour.

I had relapsed and dropped back to 82 lbs. from 95 within the next year. I looked…tired. I felt dizzy. I smelled horrible because of the ketones and sugar I was excreting. Not to mention my breath.

I met my first love then, and even though nothing was fundamentally wrong, I swung further downward while simultaneously going back to drugs and drinking. By the time that my father kicked me out of the house and I moved into my mother’s, I was nearing 75 lbs. though if asked, I would quote my (apparently safe-sounding) 82. My household rules: no chemicals in the house and I had to eat.

So I did. I gained nearly 55 lbs. within a two-month period. I learned what fresh stretch marks look like. I binged constantly without purging. I would eat a dozen doughnuts in 36 hours and a block of cheese the size of a baseball over a few. That was snacks. I was left feeling…less than ideal and by the time that I moved out to my own place, a year later and 16 years old, I was relapsing back to anorexia. It helped that I worked at McDonalds and lived on a very small food budget.

Next time, I’ll cover what happens when I go on anti-depressants, recover and then break up with my first love.

* In part two, I didn’t mention how I came to have a heart condition that requires periodic monitoring and ultimately would make the first few months of my pregnancy…lonely: While in treatment, because of my frequent intervals of gaining and then losing until I was less than I’d come into the program weighing, I had three very minor heart attacks. I progressively lost more weight every time that I gained any, at one point putting me at 69 lbs.