Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (46 page)

This is the weird aftermath, when it is not exactly over, and yet you have given it up. You go back and forth in your head, often, about giving it up. It's hard to understand, when you are sitting there in your chair, having breakfast or whatever, that giving it up is stronger than holding on, that “letting yourself go” could mean you have succeeded rather than failed. You eat your goddamn Cheerios and bicker with the bitch in your head who keeps telling you you're fat and weak: Shut
up
, you say, I'm
busy
, leave me alone.

When she leaves you alone, there's a silence and a solitude that will take some getting used to. You will miss her sometimes.

Bear in mind she's trying to kill you. Bear in mind you have a life to live.

There is an incredible loss. There is a profound grief. And there is, in the end, after a long time and more work than you ever thought possible, a time when it gets easier.

This is the Hour of Lead—

Remembered, if outlived,

As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow—

First—Chill—then Stupor—then the letting go—

—EMILY DICKINSON

There is, in the end, the letting go.

Present Day

Mornings, I sleep through the alarm. My pulse in sleep is something like thirty-nine; it's hard to get back into your body when it slides into half-life in the night, a pale corpse rolling into dark waters without a splash. I wake up when Julian shakes me. Mar.

MAR. MARYA WAKE UP GET UP COFFEE HELLO. I open one eye at him. Fuck off, I say. NO UP GET UP ARE YOU UP? Yes. Go away. YOU're NOT UP.

I slide my hands under the covers and take my pulse: good day or bad day? In the fifties, a fine and bright morn, up without falling.

Bad day, forties or lower: feet on the floor. Sit up slowly. Head spin.

Better than acid, this. Head swim and nausea. Hand on the wall, stand up. Catch yourself. Look in the mirror, check the butt. Still there. Dismay. Into the bathroom, lean head on wall. Pee. Stand up slowly.

Go to the gym. Stand on the scale. Do I? Yes. I confess. Everyone says not to. I do it anyway. Just to be sure that I've not overstepped my limits. Limits? Who set them? A question we have yet to answer.

Lately have lost weight. Am scared by how this pleases me—I'm well! I'm better! I'm all right! I'm alive! And I have lost weight and I get on the treadmill and run for an hour and a half, until my bad knee feels like it's exploding with every step, but I have lost weight!

More weight, lose more—I get off the treadmill and sway. Hallo.

Steady, girl. I have gotten used to speaking to myself as if I were a horse. Steady. Into the showers.

Pass out in the showers.

Do not tell Julian this.

Because Julian is afraid, more than anything, I think, that I will die.

I have tried to tell him. I have said: I will die first. You will have to get married again, after me, and have a lovely golden years romance and how picturesque and honey don't think of it now, just have now with me. See? I'm here.

See? See? See? Look at me.
Look at me
.

How long? My love, I don't know. I can only guess but I guess alone.

We know that I am here. See? We do not know how long. We know that last night, many nights, I wake up: heart tripping the light fantastic, manic heart, stumbling about in a jester's cap and bell-toed shoes, swaying this way and that, tachycardiac frantic heart, trying to get out, my chest is thumping outward cartoonlike, a big red Valentine's Day heart pushing out from my ribs, ragtime tiptapping, calm down CALM DOWN MARYA maybe you're just hearing Julian's heart, maybe you're having a heart attack STOP IT, maybe you're hot, maybe you're dying DON'T SAY THAT, maybe you're holding your breath in your sleep, maybe maybe maybe—you sit up, too fast, head spins. You stagger from bed, hit your head on the sink, lay your cheek on the cold porcelain like a drunk, turn on the water, put your mouth under the tap, try to breathe nice and slow. Slow.

Slow.

Some nights, many nights, I crawl back into bed and curve tight up against Julian, who sleeps like a smooth beating heart, hot, skin steaming, mouth just open as if in awe of his dreams, hands making the small abstract gestures of sleep. I fit myself into his chest and listen to his heart. And try to memorize his heart. And speak severely to my heart: Listen, I say. Like that. Steady. Strong. Julian mutters.

My heart sinks back. Sits up and patters, wide-eyed, once more: the last shudder of coming, the last shaking sob of a child who's cried a long time. I count it tapping thirty-eight by the green light of the clock. I count it tapping thirty-five. And then it tumbles into sleep, grabbing me by the hair and pulling me down into these watery sleeps that are so terribly deep and cold.

Bibliography

Because the articles in scholarly, medical, and psychiatric journals consulted for this book would be too numerous to cite, and because they are of such varying degrees of relevance and specializ-ation, I have elected to include only book-length texts in this biblio-graphy. I would direct the reader to the
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