They are trying to kill me. Make me stupid, make me fat. They take my books, the only things I need to survive. If I can have my books, they’ll disappear, I’ll be safe, but they lock my books away, I scream and swear and cry and pound the walls, collapse on the floor, they say, Marya, you have a time-out, I go to my room and lie face-down on my bed, they come in with my treatment plan, you are assigned to play, you will play one hour a day, you will eat what you are told, you will not scream, you will make your bed, you will go to therapy, you will engage with other people, look me in the eye, you will not be allowed to push us away with your books. We spend our days in therapy groups, Marya, how are you feeling right now? I chew my nails until they’re bloody stumps, I stare at the floor, I have no books, I cannot starve, they’re pumping me full of pills, their kindness encroaches, surrounds me, suffocates me, Marya, it’s all right to feel, you will not die of feelings, why don’t you color your feelings on a piece of paper? Stop pushing them away, get out of your head, it’s safe out here. It is not. I am trapped.
We shuffle through our screaming, crying, silent, laughing days, frightened, angry little kids cared for inside of and made safe by these thick walls. The bedroom doors don’t close. The windows are three-paned Plexiglas, unbreakable, we cannot cut ourselves on them, or escape. I am sitting in the bathroom sink with scissors, chopping my long hair off, it falls around me, I’m cutting it so close it nicks the skin. I am bald as a baby. I lose control, fight, I lie in bed all day, staring at the ceiling, until they haul me out and make me talk and feel my fucking feelings, eat my fucking food, take the Prozac—you’re depressed!—that’s making me more insane. But gradually, despite myself, I really start to try to get better. The pressing kindness and care of the people here gets to me, and after a few months, I’m trying to get well, I really am. I talk, I play, I work out my issues, I participate, I give hugs, I make the effort, take responsibility, share the love.
But it’s not enough. I’m still so sucked into the eating disorder, and so racked by the wild, roaring moods that no one can explain, that no amount of trying is going to work. As tempting as this health thing is, the idea of going back to my familiar obsessions is more so. I want out. I want my bones and my books back. I become the star patient. I talk them into letting me go to college, and they finally agree. I want to be rid of who I am, go back to the place where I wasn’t a fuckup, where I was good at something, instead of a place where all I do is talk about how fucked up I am. I’ve got to get out.
I AM SHIVERING at the bus stop. They let me out each morning to go to the university across town. I am on fire with the classes, writing like mad, hunched over my desk, my underused, overanalyzed brain coming to life again, who cares if I’m an institutionalized freak? All I can think about is when I will get a job writing. I have to make up for this hideous failure. I’ll never tell anyone. This will disappear in my past. I’ll be a new person, soon, soon. When class lets out I avoid the other students, Come have coffee! they call after me, I liked your paper, let’s talk! Can’t, I mutter, hurrying off, can’t very well tell you I have to get back to the loony bin before they give me a time-out.
1992
Sophomore year. I’ve won a scholarship and am completely nuts. I’m at the office, editing for a wire service, racing through the pages, assigning, working, I’m finally a success, I’m taking five classes and getting all A’s, now I can be up all night again, this starvation is better than speed, I’m nearly dead and don’t believe it for a minute, I’m on my sixth pot of coffee, my fingers are blue, my hair is falling out, I’m winning awards, people stare at me with disgust, I couldn’t care less, I sit at my desk all night, how many nights now? The nights become days become nights and I am working, working, working, starving myself to death.
I am nineteen years old. I am lying in a hospital bed, hooked up to a tangle of IVs. My heart monitor barely moves. I weigh fifty-two pounds. I am almost perfect. I lift my arms and admire them, bones covered in gray, dry skin. My fingers run their course over my body: the thin ridge of my collarbone, neck and chest sunken far beneath; the hollow of my cheeks, the way I can run my fingertips along the teeth underneath; the cavern in the center of my body, the way the cage of my ribs curves around the hollow, and my hipbones jut up, the way I can feel my internal organs through the skin. I wrap a fist around each thighbone. My thighs are no longer round. They are just right. They don’t exist. I’ve done it. I’ve erased myself. I’ve won.
I pass out.
THE FIRST CLEAR thought in years: I refuse to die.
1993
The feeling of health, as I slowly gain the sixty pounds I need to keep me alive, is foreign, weird. My body morphs as I stare at it in the mirror. I am going to stay alive. Finally I have grasped that I cannot feed my mind and starve my body to death. Finally, from somewhere, comes this visceral urge to survive. And so here I am, living. I’m working again—I’m going to school, and getting grants, and I get a job teaching undergrad classes, and I make friends, and stay up with them all night talking about books, and I’m going to parties, and learning to eat, and I suddenly have a life. A normal life. I walk tentatively through my days, afraid of breaking the spell, afraid I’ll fuck it up, I’ll fail.
Afraid I’ll go mad again, and lose it all.
1994
I am writing a poem. I am only vaguely aware of myself: the point is the poem. To the effort I contribute the mechanism of my mind: the cogs and wheels groan and begin to chug along. They move faster, sending out a conveyor belt of neatly packaged words. A story, a poem begins to take shape. Pages pile up. I scribble and gnaw on my fingers, getting blood and spit on the paper. The pages are a product of my body. I can touch them. I can eat them if I want. I worry their edges, rip at their corners, throw them to my right as I finish each one, the letters running up to the edge and spilling off onto the desk until I get another piece of paper and continue recording the automatic generation of language from my mind. As the sky outside my window turns from black to midnight blue, as thin clouds stretch across the indigo sky like someone lying on her side, I hurry: morning is almost here. I race to get down the last of the words. The light comes up. I push myself away from the desk, unclench the fist that held the pen, stagger off to bed, fall into a thick, drunken sleep.
I wake up an hour, a few hours, half a day later. I wince at the light. I am a bat. I dangle in the corner of my room, my leathery wings folded over my face. I look at the clock. Did I call in sick to work? What day is it? Do I have class? Am I teaching? Oh, Christ. I let my head fall back on the pillow and stare at the ceiling. I am silent. I do not exist. I am merely a pair of eyes, looking around at the room. The rest of me is invisible. I won’t be visible again until someone sees me. If a woman stands in a kitchen rubbing her eyes and pouring coffee with no one there to see her, does she exist? I will not register in the world until I speak.
I stumble out the door, hop the bus to the university, my head bobbling as we drive over ruts in the road, listening to the slow milling of arbitrary words around my head. The words displease me. They are not in order. Everyone is talking at once. I sit in silence, staring out the window, watching the city go by.
An hour later I find myself standing in front of a classroom with chalk in my hand. They will drop a nickel in me and I will begin to talk.
MY BODY CLOCK is completely screwed up. I’m drinking again. One minute I’m flat on my face in the living room, crying and deep in despair, the next I’m tearing back up, moving so fast my head is spinning,