Dancing With The Devil
How do eating disorders affect the family's of sufferers? I sat down with the mum of an Anorexia survivor to hear her story.
TW: Eating Disorders, Suicidal Ideation, References to Calorie counting, restriction & Weight. Content may be upsetting for some readers.
Growing up, I lived in a detached house. It had a driveway, two cars, a shed and a herb garden. When I was young, the garden felt massive. I often asked for a horse. As I grew, it got smaller and I understood the impracticalities of equestrian activity. The garden was split into decking and grass. The grass was always well maintained, asides from a circular plot the ghost of my trampoline haunted… (understandably it did not survive the weight thirty four sixteen year olds one Kopperburg deep at their first house party). The decking was worn. It sat beneath a set of French doors, one of which was almost always open - the other only really opened when my parents moved furniture. My parents didn’t redecorate often, and were married to the memories that came with questionable fridge art and spats cake mix above the counter. My mother operated an “its always open” system with the front door, so people always flitted in and out. As a young child, I was far from shy, but with every new face that came in, I would hided e behind my mum for as log as I could get away with. This was not normally very long. She would peel me off of her belt loops with the “Don’t be silly Tavie, you can say hello” that I would both dread and be relived to hear. It felt like the the person at the door has passed her safety check.
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My mother was a good cook and good company. She had tight curls and an infectious laugh. She would do anything for anyone and would spend too much money on curtains if my dad let her. She grew up down the road from our detached house and she grew up as an only child knew “no loneliness like it” so I grew up with a sister too, Charlotte.
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Charlotte was smart and funny and different to me. I idolised her growing up and to her I was a ball of unnecessary chaos. We had a standard sibling dynamic that mostly consisted of fights over the ‘Bop-it’ and bribing my dad out of ice creams after surfing.
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My dad was a soft touch. He introduced us to play and wound us up before bed. He taught me how to surf, listen to good music, and cook beans on a campfire.
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Its hard for me to pinpoint where anorexia came from. It wasn’t my childhood - The closest I got to trauma was my sister trapping her finger in the car door at a wedding. I would actually say I was abnormally lucky to get from two to ten without a whole lot of baggage.
A white picket fence cordons of the blade of a knife
Whispers words of wooly wisdom
It Nurtures a wooly life
A gift that keeps on giving
A story before bed
Problems that are somethings of nothings
Sculpted in your head
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Rich and ripe in colour
A symphony in sound
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Slides and swings and snakes and ladders
Mary-go-round and round
A staircase for your struggles?
Perhaps a penny for your thoughts?
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A fight for lesser curfews is a fight that should be fought
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Within this white picket fence
That cordons in my wooly life
Im safe with wooly struggles
Im oblivious to that knife
When I really think about it, looking deeper that the white picket fence, I think anorexia is something has always been inside me, bubbling and gurgling beneath the surface, looking for a broken pipe to spirt out of. That spout came in the form of a thick solitude. A isolating relationship I built with myself from the foundations of three intoxicating factors: a national lockdown, plant based preaching TikTok’s and an insatiable hunger for control. The three formed a message that clung to my heart and suffocated my brain. It promised me happiness perfection and an inner confidence I had never developed. I was a victim to a devil who would fill a hole I didn’t know I had. And all I had to do was commit.
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There is something quite liberating about being the only person doing something. Whether its standing on a picket line or starting a fad diet. I was 17 and choose the latter, announcing to my family of meat eaters that I would be going vegan.
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Mum: “are you sure?”
Dad: “you're crazy”
Charlotte: “you have not got the will power”
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I remember these sentences because they fed the devil. Mixing a cocktail of something to prove and nothing to loose inside a vulnerable brain.
In my dreams I am a bird
Soaring to solstice
Down a path unheard
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In my dreams I’m am my mothers chair
Reliably impressioned
Corner slouched
But Always there
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In my dreams
I am my fathers curls
Tasseled around a freckled face
An Innocence unscathed by a world
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In my dreams
I am the way my sisters watch
Mothers makeup paint her face
Fathers swilling scotch
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In my dreams
I have no face
No body
And no sound
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In my dreams
I am a bird Shot and barreling
Down
First my mum knew before me. She announced it in a costa drive through. Then my swimming coach knew before me. He caterwauled it above the echo of poolside chatter. Then my social media feed knew it before me. Churning out videos on hunger suppression and fasting. I don’t remember when in knew.
For the first year there this thick deception that infiltrated my self perception. My reflection was grotesque. My mirror sat on the floor because I was too lazy to stand. It spotlighted my lumpy cellulite infested thighs, the way my belly would collapse under my excess weight and the way my cheeks that looked too chubby if my hair didn’t fall right. It showed my areas of myself I didn’t know existed. The mole on the back of my leg, the hair on the top of my arms, the navy undertone in my lips.
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It felt proactive to pick away at myself in such a way. I was riding out the inevitable storm that came with that whole hearted devotion that gets real results. I trusted my gut and streamlined my heart. Everyday was another day spent seeing how far I could push myself. I had a hunger to starve. I never told anyone how right It felt to harbour such a self hatred, if I did, maybe it wouldn’t have got so far - but the first rule of fight club. Don’t talk about fight club.
I look back, and my reflection was grotesque. My mirror was on the floor because I was too weak to stand. My thighs were lumpy but from the impressions of my bones beneath my skin. My belly was balloon like, but just retaining water to feed my dying organs. My hair never fell right because it fell out in clumps. The mole on my leg was a bruise that just never healed, the hair on my arms was my bodies way of keeping warm enough, the undertone in my lips was a mix of anaemia, poor circulation and the beginning stages of hypothermia.
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The storm I was riding out was my body shutting down. Everyday was another day incarcerated in my own head. People mattered less and numbers mattered more, cake turned to calories and calories to consequence. I was dancing with devil. And I was dancing in the dark.
Save me a seat at the table
Perfection is my name
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Im pretty and poised
a delicate noise
Play with me my game
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The rules are clear and simple
The dice is yours to roll
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Land one to six – no tactics or tricks
And ill take from you control
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Put your cards in order
And offer me your hand
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Its my choice for the taking
Where on the board you land
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Save me a seat at the table
Perfection is my name
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Im cold and cruel and no ones fool
Play with me my game
Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any psychiatric disorder* My mum said she would dig me back up if I died. Out of what she remembers as 'sheer desperation’, she took me to the doctors in the midst of a global lockdown. It was the surgery we had both been going to our whole entire lives. A normal person would have rang from home, but she was a desperate person. Her intuition drove to the front door of the surgery. We didn’t talk much about it. This was a longtime coming. Everyday she had begged me to eat, and everyday I gave her my word. I promised her I could rein it in. I lied, purged, did cardio and took laxatives, all in the period of time I was promising to ‘change’. The devil in my brain bullied me away from my support system. I developed a venomous tongue that spat abuse at anyone who tried to get through to me, and my mum was always at its mercy. I would tell her I hated her and she would tell me she hated my disorder and would do anything to get rid of it.
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When we arrived at the surgery she punched the doorbell with the side of her knuckle. When she was hissed at for ignoring the social distancing signs she spat: ’my daughter is going to kill herself”. I watched from the car. I didn’t know what being suicidal felt like and I didn’t think I wanted to die. But I was dying. I was a skeletal vessel In a quasi state of self destruction and denial. Drowning, starving, hanging, suffocating. I was dying.
Puppet master
puppet master
Take me to your stage,
Dance my legs in circles
Punch and Judy away my rage
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Puppet master
Puppet master
Paint my face in smile
Untangle my strings and raise my hand
Take control for a while
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Puppet master
puppet master
My audience is waiting
I’m sat inside your box of toys
My body is yours for the taking
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Puppet master
puppet master
My paint is chipped and dull
That smile you painted has faded blue
My head, a cracked wooden skull
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Puppet master
puppet master
Why have you cut my strings?
Im alone but not free In the toxic mutiny
That made me a vessel of toxic things
I would think about food but never eat it. I went to birthdays but never ate cake, went to lunch dates but had always eaten a big breakfast. I had an ornate infatuation with cuisines I wouldn’t dare touch.
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In therapy I was told to think of a happy memory I had tied to a time that I had eaten. I thought about a cafe I had visited in California with my family. Nothing looked special about it. Cramped between flats on a miscellaneous street hidden by the bustling centre of San Fransisco, was this cafe. After we had eaten our way through the chain restaurants, we decided to trawl the backstreets in attempt to eat somewhere slightly more ‘culture immersing’ than ‘in n’ out’. In the interest of hanger, we settled for this cafe. The name had eroded off of the sign. I didn’t bother scanning the menu: on the way in I caught sight of the “specials: avocado toast” and thought it a safe bet. The cafe was quite peaceful. Unlike the rest of the city, we can hear each other talk without really trying too hard. We sit, people watching and listen to the back end babble of a couple's conversation.
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As I remember this moment that felt so insignificant I cry. There is a freedom in this memory that I doubt I will ever access again. My mum is beside me, and the therapist adjacent. We are sat in the static silence of clinical appointments. I haven’t shared my memory out loud yet and a part of me doesn’t want to. Its such a fragile section of my mind that is so perfectly unscathed. When I eventually opened my mouth I talked about the time my best friend dropped a whole portion of cheesy chips off the cliff.
Last year I hosted a party
It was the type for restless legs
We stood and danced in a naked trance
That pleased our restless heads
We walked among the tightropes
And span the circus plates
Hopped and skipped and jumped and sang
the symphony that memories make
As morning came to great us
The sunlight dimmed our flame
We took our masks with painted smiles
And hid our restless pain
Eight years. Eight years is the average time it takes someone with anorexia to recover. I am now recovered. It was a slow process that took all eight years. Eight years, three therapists and one version of myself that’s was not quite ready to give up her life. Im not going to glamorise this process, its not like I made my decision and started eating pizza for breakfast. Far from it. The battle was all uphill I lost a lot more than I won. It felt intrinsically evil to kill this monster inside of me and I spent a-lot of time sat at rock bottom, grieving the loss of anorexia before starting to rebuild my life again. It was a process that took every fibre in my body and every ounce of my commitment. I had to trust everyone around me and accept a level of help that is deeply intimate.
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A few months ago someone asked me why I chose to recover. At the time it felt like a bit of a stupid question: “so I didn’t die” I replied. I have since realised that choosing to recover was so much bigger than just not dying. I chose recovery for my mum, who always cared a bit to much; for my dad who was too easily bribed out of ice cream; for my sister who was always better at boppit. I recovered for cake on my birthday, for kebabs after nights out, for cream teas in sun traps. I recovered for laugher, for connections, for baking without measurements. I recovered For rain dancing and for car singing and for skinny dipping. For reading and yoga and thinking and chatting. I recovered to heal a part of me that felt like broken glass. I recovered for the memories I would loose and the moments I would miss. I recovered for me, that little girl who always wanted a pony in the back garden.
Dancing with the devil, a reckless game,
A tempting offer, a fiery flame,
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A seductive dance, a hypnotic spell,
A chance to fall, to tumble to hell.
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The devil’s steps, so smooth and sly,
A pulsing rhythm, a wicked lullaby,
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A beat so fast, a heart so weak,
A body moving, to a devilish peak.
The gruesome gaze, so piercing and cold,
A lure so strong, a desire so bold,
A mind so clouded, a will so frail,
A soul that slips, into the devil’s tale.
Dancing with the devil, a dangerous thrill,
A dance with death, a heart to kill,
A moment of pleasure, a lifetime of pain,
A chance to lose, every gain.
But hope still shines, in the darkest night,
A chance to break, the devil’s might,
To find the strength, to walk away,
And let the light, guide to a new day.
Dancing with the devil, a warning tale,
A choice to make, a path to sail.
