I had lost even more weight, and even I knew it. By the end of the first semester, all my clothes were hanging off me. When I got dressed up to go out at night on the weekends, I would layer my outfits so no one would notice. At school, during the day, I would wear bulky sweats and sweatshirts. I once carelessly didn’t layer, only wearing spandex and a Babson T-shirt to class, sweatshirt tied tightly around my waist, and one of my guy friends came over to me.
“I am worried about you. You’re disappearing.” He touched my frail arm, his expression turning stony-faced. I didn’t even know he could get that serious. We weren’t friends who had deep conversations, so I was quite taken aback.
“What do you mean? You just can’t handle my guns. These babies are weapons of mass destruction,” I said, while nervously laughing it off, and touched his arm back, pinching into muscle.
He laughed. “Yes, I should call the police, you are a danger to society.”
“I have gotten that before. Better put this bad boy on to cover them up before someone gets hurt.” I grabbed my sweatshirt and put it back on to avoid any other possible encounters like this. I’d rather be overheated than do this dance around the eating-disorder issue again—nuh-uh!
This was during finals, and I was so focused on my routines, there was no time to even look in the mirror or analyze what was happening to my body. I had to do well in all my classes or risk being even more of a failure, because it was bound to be revealed that I wasn’t as smart as everyone else at college. I wouldn’t let that happen.
It wasn’t as easy to fool my parents as my peers. Though, let’s be real, I probably wasn’t fooling anyone with my shrinking frame. My friends just weren’t going to say anything. I didn’t let any of them get that close to me. That was my purpose in spending a lot of time alone—to avoid anyone observing my weird behaviors around food and to avoid any form of connection that could bring about a confrontation from a concerned member of the student body about my dwindling (student) body. But my parents, that was a whole ’nother story.
During winter break, my mom found a suitcase filled to the brim with empty laxative boxes. I had left the suitcase in the computer room, in a corner, thinking it was inconspicuous and no one would open it. Not my smartest move.
“Dani! What the hell are all of these?” I heard in loud, piercing echoes, the same tone she’d used back in middle and high school when I carelessly left my dirty socks everywhere, forgetting to toss them into the laundry: a sock on the kitchen chair, another sock on the table, a sock hiding in the crack of the living room couch. The list of places went on and on, and it drove my mom completely bananas—more like BANANAS! I’d hear her yells echoing through the vents, “DANI!” and that was code for “Get your butt down here now OR ELSE.” Nothing made my mom more pissed-off. Except for this.
“Whoa, all of what?” I replied, startled by the tone of her voice.
“This, this…” she screamed, and shoved the now-empty black suitcase in my face, indicating that she’d found my stash—as if it weren’t obvious enough.
“Dani, if you don’t stop doing this to yourself, I…” She could hardly breathe, “I can’t send you back to college.”
“Mom, I am so sorry. I really will stop. I just messed up, and all of those were from a really long time of collecting, not just since I got home.” Which was a lie, I’d been bingeing and purging every day since I got home.
My mom’s therapist at the time, who she made me talk to after uncovering my laxative stash, was convinced I had done this subconsciously to get caught. She was totally wrong. I just had a careless moment, but I went with that because I could twist it into a good excuse for why I would never do it again. I wanted you to catch me, Mom. Yeah right! Psh! I would not use laxatives anymore, I reassured her. It was time for me to put an end to this anyway. I really would never touch them, I was so sorry. I wanted to believe I could do this. I wanted to believe I could stop, that I wasn’t lying to her again. That it was truly that easy. These promises and discussions lasted until I went back to school for my second semester, where all I could think about was purging again.
FULL Life, October 2014
Approaching the National Eating Disorders Association (NEDA) Walk, my mom and dad held hands as I trailed after them, taking in the view of all the people in green and blue NEDA shirts huddled together to keep warm. We were by the Brooklyn Bridge at Foley Square, way downtown. This was the first year I had raised money for the event. Though my team was small in numbers, it was big in pride. As I got closer to the crowd, I couldn’t believe the sea of people whose lives had been touched in one way or another by this disease. For someone who always thought she was the only person in the world battling her anorexia and bulimia, this was an awe-inspiring moment.
A tall woman with kinky black hair and dark skin came to the podium and started talking about her battle with exercise bulimia and how she used to run the Brooklyn Bridge rain or shine when she attended NYU. She said she had been in recovery for six years. I remember thinking Wow at the notion that someone could be in recovery for that long and still be okay, and even more crazy was the fact that she was now able to fight for others, so they could see recovery is possible.
How beautiful. My dad couldn’t take his eyes off this speaker; his unblinking eyes released fat tears that rolled along the contour of his chin and down his neck. He never understood people talking about their issues. He grew up in a house with an old-school mentality of being quiet about one’s problems. You dealt with them, and that was it.
As we walked across the bridge, my father held my hand. “I never understood why you decided to be so public about what you went through,” he told me, “but now I get it.” Then he squeezed my hand, as if giving me some kind of approval.
“Thanks, Dad. I want to be able to at least help people with it. I mean, if I survived…” As I said that, we saw a swarm of people pass us with shirts bearing a picture of a beautiful woman that said, “In Memory of.”
“Well, you help me every day,” my dad said.
“Don’t cry again!” I pleaded. “I am good,” I said, taking my hand out of his and putting it around his back to comfort him.
“You better be,” my mom interjected from behind us. She was bundled in her winter coat, lips chattering. The freezing extra-strong winds combined with the low temperatures turned her breath into mist.
As we continued across the bridge, I felt a sense of safety and solidarity. All of these people understood what I had been through—and still go through at times. I knew at that moment I would never feel alone again.
That night I posted on my Living a FULL Life Facebook page:
“Fairy tales are more than true—not because they tell us dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten.”
—G. K. Chesterton
And they can. <3
I smiled and sat back. What a great day.
Back at my dorm, I thought about how my second semester would need to be about making some much-needed changes. With my only focuses being my waistline and getting good grades, college had been kind of a bore so far. Though it was predictable and controlled, the way I liked it, I found myself disappointed with the experience. It needed a reboot of sorts, College 2.0—this version much more exciting, boozier and wilder or at least an R movie rating, I’d even settle for PG13. I didn’t know it yet, but some things were about to happen that would shake me up, whether I welcomed it or not.