What is the Matter with Mary Jane? (3 page)

I've got IT.
IT's official.
Anorexia Nervosa.
Now everyone will know.

Did you hear?
Sancia is in hospital because she won't eat her tea.
And it's lovely rice pudding for dinner again.

Oh God…
If only…
If only I could be…
Nothing.

AT THE PSYCHIATRIST'S OFFICE

Now weighing nothing seemed like a good idea to me… but my parents had other ideas. So instead of letting me do something useful like go for a jog… or go on a kale juice fast… they sent me to a psychiatrist… a head doctor for the mentally ill, the emotionally handicapped.

Which was bizarre… I hadn't lost my mind… just my appetite.

SANCIA
sits in a chair for ‘consultation'.

Oh yes, I'm really glad to be back at school. And I'm pleased with the weight I've put on. I really want to eat more and yes… putting on more weight? Yes, yes that does seem like a good idea.

[
To audience
] Why not make it more… why not a billion… hey, why stop there, why not 70 billion? Let's all enjoy watching me grow into an enormous fat whale… a pile of blubber as big as a block of flats. Why don't I do that? Then go on
Biggest Loser
and completely humiliate myself. Would that make you happy?

Oh yes. I very much enjoy sharing my feelings here every week.
I am feeling enabled.
And very empowered.
My inner child… ?

How could I tell him my inner child didn't want dinner either.

There's just one thing… This isn't important… it's just a little thing… but I thought I should mention it.
I'm sort of starting to bring my food up a little bit. Just vomiting a little bit… now and then.

Oh yeah, I'm still eating heaps.
Oh… then it's not a worry… as long as some of it stays down.
The most important thing is that I eat.

YES.

I don't think he realised quite what he had said ‘yes' to, because after years of keeping my hunger under control finally…
The Beast Was Loose.
Be Afraid, Be Very, Very Afraid!

‘BINGING WITH SANCIA'

On a TV studio set.

Cheesy music starts and
SANCIA
starts dancing and waving like Ellen.

HELLO AND WELCOME to ‘Binging With Sancia', a favourite segment of ours here on ‘What is the Matter with Mary Jane', our Anorexia-Bulimia lifestyle program.

Of course binge eating is becoming more and more popular these days. Originally made famous by the ever glamorous Princess Diana, our first Celebrity Bulimic… it does look like a quick and easy answer to that figure you've always wanted. But is it? There's a whole lot more to it than fingers down the throat, a quick little vomit and then slip into those skin tight skinny jeans, believe me!

Many folk have asked me: ‘Sancia, how do I go about binging? Is it difficult? Is it expensive? What do I wear?!

So today we're going to look at a classic binge.
Firstly, do set aside an evening by yourself, no TV, phone, Snapchat, Twitter, IG or texting and no music to distract you (unless you download
Music to Vom By
—a compilation of One Direction and Justin Beiber hits), oh and you'll need about $35–$60.

If you can wear something you don't mind getting stained… that's great. But be prepared to ruin your best clothes… remembering that binging can strike at any time.
You wonder how Princess Diana manages in those gorgeous frocks, don't you? Well, at least she doesn't have to queue for the ladies'.
I know you're thinking… what about those tell tale bits of food left floating in the bowl? Perhaps that's why she always carried a handbag.

OK? Great!
Now we all know how it starts… it's 4 pm, you've hardly eaten a thing all day, your tummy is roaring and you think: ‘Hmm, perhaps I'll eat an apple' but, no, before you've realised, you're in the patisserie and whoa, we're off.

She takes a shopping basket to the fridge/pantry.

OK firstly in the patisserie we're looking for your basic carbohydrates… you want to grab about six cakes… perhaps three iced doughnuts and a few cream cakes… maybe some sausage rolls.
Find a quiet spot… behind the shop is a good place… and just shovel these down as fast as you can…

She shoves the food into a food blender.
*

Let's push the gluggy, doughy ones down first, without having a drink if you can, and of course don't bother about chewing because we want them to come up in a good solid lump when we get home.

There we go… let's leave that for a moment.
Now, holding our tummies in tightly, it's off to the supermarket.

She returns to the fridge.

We all know it's important to buy the best ingredients we can afford, so today we're looking for sure fire throw up material… anything soft and sweet.
Stay away from anything spicy or crunchy because the last thing we want here is to rip our throats out as it comes up.
So, I have here soft bread rolls, jam, Mint slices, Tim Tams (a family favourite… but the kids won't be getting their hands on these), cake, raisin bread, chocolate or caramel topping, custard, sugar, cornflakes (hello to our lovely sponsors at Kellogs), milk, Milo (always looking to buy Australian made of course), cheesecake, icing, honey, peanut butter, ice cream and of course… chocolate!

Now what about chocolate, you're thinking! Be very careful about chocolate… it does tend to decompose rapidly and stay in the stomach where it can be absorbed and turn into dreaded FAT.

Grab everything as fast as you can… into the trolley they go… [
SANCIA
returns to the table.
] You can certainly feel free to finish off your pastries, donuts or packets of Cheezels [
added to blender
] or what have you, as you race through the aisles.

So, with everything in the car, it's time to head for home. Now time is important here, because who knows how many calories we are absorbing through the stomach lining, the throat, maybe even the cheeks as we keep the food in our bodies.

Oh, did I mention the barbecued chickens? I usually grab a couple, with stuffing, and start on them in the car…

She adds bits of chicken to the blender.
**

Do be careful here… driving with a huge bloated stomach, packets of food opened all over the seats and hands covered in chicken fat is definitely a traffic hazard.

In the event of an accident try explaining exactly what you are doing to a policeman you've just thrown up all over!
And darlings, if the phone rings… forget it!

Once home, grab the food, run inside and head for the toilet.

OK? Great!

And, in the toilet…we go.

She pours the contents of the blender into the toilet.

The first part of our binge is a huge success… a big mass… you can see the chocolate, which is a relief, we don't want that staying down. Actually you might like to use the kitchen tongs to have a good poke around to identify all the various ingredients.

Can you get a close up of that camera three?

Now we come to the most enjoyable part of the binge… eating in peace and quiet.

Take your ingredients into the kitchen and breathing steadily, feeling a little light headed, begin picking at a pastry until you pick up speed… [
Putting the items into the blender.
] Cheezels, Tim Tams, ice cream… swallow the lot, then to the toilet again.

She pours the contents into the toilet.

This should come up easily… and produce a severe headache and throbbing in the temples.

In the kitchen again, with a sausage roll in one hand while preparing a huge bowl of cornflakes, milk and sugar… [
Into the blender.
] Down it goes and then off to the toilet. [
She pours the contents into the toilet.
]

Up it comes again… your eyes should really be aching now.

You should be feeling extremely tired and dizzy now as you finish the ice cream covered in Milo, followed by the Tim Tams and Mint slices, then off to the toilet to vomit once more.

Our head is aching, our eyes are swollen and sore, the throat and mouth feeling red raw, we can't stop now… stuffing in the rest of the chicken and drinking a bottle of chocolate topping until we are off to the toilet to throw up again.

The chocolate is dangerous, it hasn't come up, so if this happens drink water until you throw up and throw up until you can only see bile in the toilet bowl.

Now just sit on the toilet and breathe deeply, aware of the sore muscles in your stomach, the burping acidic taste, scratchy, furry teeth, dry face and staring eyes. Just take a drink of water, sit and recover.

Feel your swollen tongue and eyes protruding.

Now get the food out again and repeat the process. You're exhausted, push the food down.
Finish the chicken carcass, throw up.
Toast, jam and ice cream, throw up again.
Throw up Cornflakes, custard and sugar,
Throw up Cheezels and chocolate,
Throw up water.

She goes back to toilet.

And throw and throw and throw and throw and throw…
Throw, throw, throw, throw until you are sweating, your gut is aching, your mouth bloated, ears and eyes sore, your back muscles strained and ripped, until you are on the point of passing out.

Lie on the bathroom floor until the dizziness passes.
Close your eyes, breathe deeply and evenly and repeat: ‘I am a fat, selfish pig. I am a loser, coward, I am ugly, a waste of space.'

That's all for ‘Binging With Sancia'… See you same time tomorrow… and the next day… and the next day after that!

*
Note for performance: Just use the foods you can afford! This is expensive, so you can use empty packets and ‘throw up' bread and sugar and Cornflakes.

**
Note for performance: Instead of chicken, use bread—no-one will know!

AFTER THE BINGE

Well… this is a fine mess you've gotten us both into.

You'd better clean this up, you ugly, disgusting pig. Have a good look at yourself… your skin's wrecked, your face is bloated! You've put on weight.
Everybody hates you because you're so sly. You're repulsive. You make people sick.
I wouldn't want to be in your shoes.

I know, I know… but what am I going to do?

You could do some exercise… go to the gym.

No… I can't… I can't do this any more…

Oh, so you want to be 500 kilos…

No… no… I don't, but I just want this to end.

There is knocking at the door.
SANCIA
scrambles to put things away, terrified someone will see her.

Mum?
Mum is that you?
I'm not doing anything.
No… don't come in.
No… I don't want you to come in.
I'm not here.
There's nobody here.
There's nobody here.

SANCIA
dives under the table, unable to show her face, sobbing. Slowly she recovers and stands to face the audience.

So. It was about that time that I realised I had a bit of a problem. After being bulimic on and off for ten years… one day I almost choked on some half regurgitated food…

Not a very glamorous end for Princess Sancia… no crystal casket, no woodland clearing strewn with rose petals… just dead on the toilet floor in a pool of her own vomit.

She coughs.

Up came a piece of poisoned apple.

And after twelve years of silence… locked in a dark tower… I finally opened my mouth.

Of course I had opened my mouth to throw up food.
And as an actress I had opened my mouth to speak words others had written… thousands of them, torrents of words.
And I had opened my mouth to whisper words of hate to myself.
And I had opened my mouth to lie to others.

But I had never opened my mouth to tell the truth.
And the first word that came out of my mouth? HELP.

The ‘fairy story' ends.

So I looked for help and after a couple of false starts, near-rescues and blind alleys I finally found my way to a whole army of people who specialise in this area—people who seemed to know me, or at least my disease, better than I knew myself—people I wish I wish I'd have seen when I was sixteen.

‘Oh my God Sancia… you are so thin… you must be like size zero. You are like skinnier than even the scariest skinnies in the Gone Too Far bit in the magazines—you need to see a professional mate—do you want me to get you some phone numbers? Or come with you to visit the counsellor?'

SANCIA
smiles knowingly.

Yeah—this is the bit where the message comes through, but seriously, if ONLY someone had known to say that to me… Anyway—so finally I stopped talking about food and my weight and started to talk about my mind and my soul. I came out of my dark tower, took off my tiara and began to deal with life on life's terms as a common garden variety human that was going to have to learn that being perfect wasn't why she was alive.

So why Anorexia, why Bulimia Nervosa? Why didn't I choose drugs or alcohol? I would still have hated myself but at least I could have danced. An addiction with a great soundtrack. Or why didn't I become an obsessive compulsive, kleptomaniac, pyromaniac, necrophiliac self-mutilator? I was good at spelling.

I wish I could say it was because of my mother's unreasonable hopes that I would become a beautiful, accomplished woman.
I wish I could say it was because my father called me ‘Butch'.
Or that my brother called me ‘Moon Face'.
I wish I could say it was because of this or because Josh Mason called me ‘whale arse' on Facebook. Or Nicole Trewicke… a model in
Dolly
magazine whose thighs never met in the middle.
And of course I'd love to say it was all my fault.

But you might as well ask my why my voice sounds the way it does. Why I walk the way I do. Or why I dream what I dream. Because Anorexia Nervosa is a psychiatric illness… a small, quiet, submissive madness… and what is it in this life which sends us quietly mad?

Right now, for me it feels so hard to imagine a life without Anorexia… the only thing I'm certain of is that I have no life with Anorexia.