ThinandBeautiful.com (25 page)

“This eating disorder thing sucks. Sometimes it kills kids if they don't get help.”

“Kids don't have heart attacks.”

“Not usually, but it's like my doctor warned me,” Wolf said in the same kind of gentle voice that Marina was using, like he was afraid I would shatter if he spoke too loudly. “He said my heart had already been affected and that I was lucky. That lots of kids don't figure it out until it's too late.”

“But she wasn't sick.” I ignored the little nagging voice of doubt that was starting at the back of my brain.

“Maybe she was. Maybe she didn't want to be or want to admit it. I don't know. I didn't know her.”

“Well, I did. At least I thought I did. I don't know anymore. I don't know anything. I don't know how to feel. I have to go. I have to think or sleep or something.” I ran from the room, tears streaming down my face for a friend whom I had never met. A friend whose name I didn't even know.

May 22

I closeted myself in my room and stayed up most of the night trying to understand. I felt like my whole world had fallen apart. I couldn't even begin to get my head around it and I couldn't stop crying long enough to think. My feelings were
raging around in a dark, swirling fog, confusing my mind and making my head ache and my chest feel tight.

Why did I feel this way? This was someone who was no more than words and a picture on a computer screen. Someone who didn't know my name any more than I knew hers. I didn't know anything about her really. I didn't know where she lived or who she lived with or what school she went to or anything.

But I did know that she was sweet and positive about life and wanted the best for everyone she knew. I knew that she was kind and considerate and cared about other people. I knew that she was hurt by the ugliness in the world around her and that she hated the fighting at home. I knew that she liked me and tried to help me. Maybe knowing all that was more important than knowing her name. Do you have to see someone standing in front of you to call her your friend? Or do you just have to understand her and trust her and know that she understands you and trusts you, too?

I also knew that she hadn't seemed all that different from me in some ways. I mean, I wasn't as sweet or positive or nice as she was. I had a lot to learn from her on that score. But in other ways we were the same. She just wanted to have a little control over her life, her body. She just wanted to figure out how to feel good in a confusing mess of a world that seems to get messier the older you get.

She wasn't trying to hurt herself. She didn't have some sort of death wish. She just wanted to feel pretty and good about herself. She wasn't hurting herself, was she? She wasn't doing anything wrong, was she? Maybe this didn't
have anything to do with eating or not eating. Maybe there was something else going on that no one knows about. Some people are born with heart conditions and stuff. Maybe she had been sick and just didn't want to tell us.

I had read all of that medical stuff about the things that eating problems could do to you. Heart attacks had been on the list. But I didn't believe it could actually happen in the real world to a real person. How could dieting make your heart decide to die? It just didn't make sense to me. Heart attacks come from diseases or smoking or being old and eating too much. Not from being young and eating too little.

But then there was the stuff that Wolf said about his doctor. He was only seventeen, like me, and his doctor told him his heart was already affected. Could LFL really have died from not eating enough? Did she have an eating disorder after all? None of the GWS thought they had disorders, including me. I always knew that some people had eating disorders – after all, this place was full of them. But they weren't me or my friends.

Except for Marina. And Wolf. And all the girls I met in group. I closed my eyes at the inevitable next thought so I could block it out. My head was spinning around and around and I felt like I was going nuts.

I guess I spun myself into exhaustion because I finally drifted off to sleep. I know I was asleep because all of a sudden I woke up. I sat up in bed, totally weirded out and with no idea where I was. I felt like I used to when I had a nightmare as a little kid and I had a sudden urge to see my mom. I blinked a couple of times and tried to focus. I was still half stuck in a dream.

I had been sitting in the cafeteria at school, which should have felt strange but it didn't. I was at a table with my friends, drinking a bottle of water and just kind of chilling. Ruth was there, and Devon and Alyssa. I asked them where Annie was and they all just laughed. Devon pointed to the table next to me and made a face as if she thought I was nuts. Alyssa looked at her and laughed again and then they both started eating a great big chocolate cake. They didn't offer me any and I didn't want it anyway because I had just started a diet and was trying to lose weight. It looked good, though.

I looked over to see what Annie was doing. She was sitting at a table with two other girls. She looked different somehow. I couldn't figure it out at first but then I realized she had finally managed to dye her hair red. It was all braided and the braids were hanging down over her shoulders. I think I laughed because I knew she would be so pleased with herself for finally managing it.

She waved at me and gestured for me to come over. I stood up and walked away from the chocolate cake pig-fest and headed over to the other table.

As I got closer, I realized that it wasn't Annie at all. The girl with the braids had the face I had just seen on the computer screen. The other girls at the table were the living, breathing versions of the pictures I had seen of nevertoothin and bodaciousbod. They were dressed in the same clothes as in the first photographs I had seen of them on the website, which I guess made some sort of weird sense. All three of them were smiling at me as if they were used to seeing me every day.

“I thought you were dead!” I said to LFL. She looked at me in surprise.

“That's a strange thing to think. If I was dead, would I be sitting here in the cafeteria? I'm just fine. Do you like my hair? Don't I look wonderful?” She stood up and started twirling around and around and around. Her yellow ribbons fluttered around her, swirling around like she was doing a bizarre rhythmic gymnastics routine.

“Where's Annie?” I asked, but no one answered. Everyone in the room got up in some sort of ghoulish choreographed movement and started twirling around and around until the whole room was a spinning mass of color and confusion.

“Where's Annie?” I shouted, but no one could hear me. “Where's Annie?”

I shouted it again and threw myself into the mass of bodies, trying to find her and calling her name. I could feel myself getting caught up in the movement and chaos, my mind spinning along with the bodies, and I just gave up and closed my eyes, sinking into oblivion, lost and scared and alone.

When I opened my eyes again, I was sitting up in bed, in a room that wasn't mine, my head still spinning. For the first time in what seemed like forever, I found myself wanting my mother and wondering where my best friend was.

I stayed in my room all day. Marina checked in on me a couple of times and so did Wolf. It was nice of them and everything, but I couldn't find anything to say to either of them.

I had run out of words.

May 25

Once my words ran dry, I mostly just sat and thought, which didn't help much because it created more questions than answers. I got so turned inside out and backwards that I was afraid I would have to spend the rest of my life alone in a room, staring at the walls, trying to figure out if I had anything to say that would make any sense.

I had individual counseling appointments scheduled every day. I didn't always have the same counselor. You could request that, but I think they tried you out on a variety pack first so you could see if you gelled with one of them or something like that. I had never really talked in one of my sessions. I treated the counselors kind of like the doctor – the less said by me the better. I never asked questions and seldom provided answers. I had made a conscious decision not to try to figure out my subconscious or whatever it was that I was supposed to be trying to do. I had made a decision not to try at all, I guess.

After a few days of literally wondering if my mind, conscious or unconscious, was starting to actually leave my body, I began to think that maybe I should start trying to see if someone could help me make sense of things. I was having bizarre dreams that wouldn't have been so bad if they had stuck to happening when I was asleep. But even when I was awake, strange and frightening images kept coming into my head no matter how hard I tried to make them stop. I couldn't make sense of lookingforlight's death any more than I could make sense out of my own life. I couldn't get my head around it, my words around it, or my feelings around it. I didn't even
know how to start talking about it. I knew on some level that Marina and Wolf would have done anything I needed to help me, but I just felt like this was too big and too messed up to try to figure out with other people who were still trying to figure themselves out too. Without my GWS to fall back on, I felt like I really had nothing.

So, now that I actually had nothing to lose, I decided that it was time to try opening my mouth. I had no idea what was going to come out of it. I had even less idea of what anyone could say that would help. I wasn't sure if I could really go through with it, but I couldn't think of anything else to do. I didn't want to completely lose my mind and I was pretty sure that I had already misplaced it. I didn't know if anyone could help me find it but I wasn't really doing such a good job on my own. I needed another set of eyes.

So, I took a deep breath and promised myself that the very next appointment would be the one. I would try to keep an open mind – which was tough to do since mine was missing – and dig down for a positive attitude. After all, these people were here with nothing to do but listen. I didn't even know what I needed or wanted any more. Just … something …

Of course, when the moment finally came, it
would
have to be Big Red. I shouldn't have been surprised. She seemed to show up everywhere. I sat there for a few minutes looking at her, while she sat for a few minutes looking at me. Pretty much the same routine I was used to with any of the counselors. She was smiling in a nice way, not too big like she was about to sing a happy tune or anything, but just kind of gentle and like she had all the time in the world. Maybe she
had always looked like that and I hadn't noticed before. I tried a little smile back but my smile reflex wasn't working just yet. Maybe it was lost along with my mind. I closed my eyes for a second and sucked in a deep breath. When I let it back out, I let out some words also. Actually, once they started, they seemed to come out in a big stream, like when the recess bell goes and all the kids come flooding out. My words came running outside like it was the last day of school and I couldn't seem to stop them.

I don't know how long I babbled away, but there didn't seem to be any time limit and I'm pretty sure about three years of life escaped me before I remembered how to close my mouth. Once I finally stopped talking, it was her turn. I should say Julianna's turn. I actually knew her name all along but had been too rude to use it, even in my head. She was actually pretty nice. Not that I want to sound like some kind of instant convert or anything, but I have to admit, she managed to make some sense and actually seemed to give a crap about me.

On that first day she mostly talked about lookingforlight. Julianna seemed to accept that LFL was my friend and didn't try to tell me I never really knew her just because I had never met her. She told me that friendships can exist in all different ways and that I had just as much right to grieve for her as I would if it were one of my school friends. She told me that my feelings were OK and that I would need to take the time to work through them all. That it was all right to miss LFL and that the pain I was feeling was normal. I almost smiled when she said the word normal. It was something my mom would
have said. I didn't feel like screaming when Julianna said it, though. This time, I needed to hear that my emotions were normal. That someone dying makes you feel confused and crazy and in so much pain you want to curl up in a little ball and shut the whole world out. That the pain wouldn't always be this strong even though your feelings for the person would always be there. That maybe Time would finally be on my side and help me figure out those feelings so that I could feel OK about the world again some day. That some day I would think about her and it wouldn't make my throat ache and my stomach hurt, but that wouldn't mean that I didn't care about her anymore.

Julianna explained a lot more about what could have happened to LFL as well. She said that eating disorders can cause all kinds of problems like dehydration, malnutrition, low blood pressure, really slow heart rate, electrolyte imbalances, and hormonal imbalances that can all cause serious problems with the heart. She explained what it all meant in a way that was pretty clear and easy to understand. I know I read all about it before and learned about it at school, but this was different. This time I was talking about someone I knew. I had to understand it this time. I had to find a spot in my brain to store it so I wouldn't forget.

I kept expecting her to start talking about me and my eating and how I was doing everything wrong. But she didn't. This is going to sound weird, but I was a little disappointed even though I was relieved at the same time. More evidence that my mind was MIA. Anyway, it was just that I sort of thought we were going to talk about me. Well, we
talked about me, but it was mostly about my feelings about LFL.

So, I surprised myself by making a couple of extra appointments to talk to her about other stuff. I didn't know exactly what stuff I was going to talk about but I was starting to believe that a little more talking might help me to start thinking again someday without my head hurting.