That was until one day, when my teacher sat me down on the floor and said, ‘You could be such a good dancer, Sophie,’ she paused, her eyes scanning my already slender frame, ‘if you lost some weight.’
She said it so very casually, like it was just another step I had to learn. For any girl to be told that – even one without autistic traits – is dangerous. Some people might be able to brush off a comment like that and not take it seriously. Someone like me, however, prone to obsessive behaviour and with an addictive personality, immediately took it to heart.
I went home and looked at myself in the mirror. Anyone else standing beside me would have seen a thin little girl. But as I examined myself I thought, Maybe she has a point. I pulled at my stomach and examined my arms and legs. Had I got fatter? I wanted to please my teacher. If I wanted to become a proficient dancer then I had to take on board what she said.
Okay, I thought, I have to lose weight.
My confidence in my body was already shaky. I had a keen interest in fashion and at one stage dreamed of being a model, but there were parts of my body I had issues with, and wearing a leotard and tights in a room full of mirrors, you notice these things more. I admired very skinny models and ballet dancers and had in my head the quote by George Balanchine, co-founder of the New York City Ballet and one of the world’s most influential choreographers: ‘You can only dance if you can see the bones.’
My teacher was always quite intense. She was so strict she could have been straight out of a Russian ballet company. I liked her discipline, though, and I responded to the challenges she set for me. She used to be a dancer and still choreographed for a ballet company. She knew what it took to reach that standard. I wanted to be a dancer, just like her, which was why I took her very seriously when she made those comments and others about the way I looked.
I didn’t tell anyone about our conversation or how I was thinking, but in the days and weeks that followed I started to look at the food put in front of me. Suddenly it didn’t look like a wholesome, nutritious meal, lovingly prepared by my mum anymore. Instead, I imagined every morsel adding rolls of lumpy fat to my body. It was completely irrational, I know, but it seemed a perfectly sensible attitude at the time. I began calorie-counting everything, cutting out any treats and limiting myself to around 500 calories per day.
I thought I was doing well, but not long after, when I arrived for my lesson, my teacher’s eyes scanned my body again. I immediately felt self-conscious. Had I overindulged? I thought I was being good. How did she know? Was it that obvious? I went home even more determined to show her that I could lose weight – and fast.
At night I exercised in my bedroom, doing hundreds of sit-ups and press-ups. But when I checked myself again in the mirror it wasn’t enough. I just looked the same. I sat down on the floor feeling wretched. I needed to do more. I went into the bathroom, took my toothbrush and shoved it as far as it would go down my throat. I gagged at first; I wasn’t sure if I could go through with it. I pushed it further back. That did the trick. I slumped over the toilet as my stomach emptied into the pan. That was much better! I was now far more pro-active in my quest for skinniness.
At first no one noticed. You can get away with saying you’re not hungry or that you’ve ruined your appetite by eating too many snacks during the day. Quickly, though, like the other things in my life I’d become fixated on, it became an obsession.
I started picking at my food, cutting it into small pieces, making it look like I was tucking in as normal, but when no one was looking I discreetly tipped it into the bin. I’d take meals up to my bedroom when I could. Food became the enemy. I hated the idea of eating anything. I used to look at my meals, things I’d previously loved eating, and think, No, I don’t want to eat that, think what it will do to me – no way.
As I starved myself of nutrients and energy, I became lethargic and ill. That helped because the first thing to go when you feel off colour is your appetite. The weight dropped off me. I was always slender but soon I was really skinny. Still it wasn’t enough. Whenever I looked in the mirror, all I’d see was a fat girl.
I wrote notes to myself about how big I was and took a marker pen and scrawled on my stomach the word ‘Fat’. I wrote the same on my arms and legs, on any part of my body I didn’t like. If I felt hungry I looked at the words and I wouldn’t eat.
At dance class I hoped my teacher would notice the effort I was making. She did and praised me for it. One weekend, though, I lost control and ate a treat. At my next lesson she somehow knew.
I started logging on to pro-anorexia websites, where I found a raft of clever ideas – despicable, of course, for a young girl to view, but when you have an eating disorder your personality changes completely and these disturbing websites spoke to the new me. I imagined food as vomit or being maggot-infested. I brushed my teeth right before having to eat in an effort to put me off my meals. If I felt really hungry, I punched myself in the stomach – punishment for it making me feel that way.
During one mealtime my parents got suspicious and encouraged me to eat up. I kept saying, ‘I am not hungry,’ over and over. They had a go at me, telling me I was wasting away. To keep them off my back I ate everything on my plate. As soon as I was done I rushed to the bathroom and reached for my toothbrush. I started to gag and then brought my entire dinner back up. That felt good. Like I was winning.
Even though I was getting weaker and weaker, I kept pushing myself, both to do well at ballet and to get even thinner. My parents reached out to the mental-health team, which had previously supplied the psychiatrists to assess my anxiety attacks. A crisis team came to visit me at our house.
A mental-health nurse tried to offer practical solutions. ‘Why don’t you join a gym?’ she said. ‘That would help you gain confidence and reinforce positive connections with food, because it provides the energy you need to be healthy.’
It looked like she was helping, but my parents weren’t present for what else she said.
‘You know, Sophie,’ she said, when we were alone, ‘there are parts of my body I don’t like. I hate my thighs, for instance.’
She was probably just trying to help by showing that most people have insecurities over their bodies, but I looked at her and saw someone really thin already. Her words had the opposite effect. They reinforced my own attitudes.
A psychiatrist I saw told my mum and dad to follow me upstairs after a meal and sit outside the door in case I made myself sick. This didn’t help either, as it made my toilet phobia worse. And being pushed to eat just made me detest mealtimes even more, which led to huge arguments with my parents, as they were so concerned about me and didn’t know what to feed me or what to do.
The psychiatrist also advised them to remove all the mirrors from the house because every time I looked in one I saw a huge, obese creature looking back. It didn’t make much difference; even though I was getting so thin I felt constantly ill, I still thought I was fat. In my mind the weight loss wasn’t happening fast enough. Without mirrors to examine myself in, I obsessively checked myself against my clothes, and was elated when I got a size-four top and it was a little too big for me. I felt so happy then – but still it wasn’t enough. I was addicted to losing weight.
My actions seem crazy and irrational to me now, but back then I was locked into a course of action and nothing would persuade me otherwise. I ordered diet pills over the Internet without my parents knowing. At night I lay in bed stroking my hip and rib bones, feeling pleasure that I was achieving