Hunger's Diary

"Looking back in time, it’s hard to unravel the mystery of my ongoing battle with anorexia."

Listen to this Commentary!

By Lauryn Silverman

Lauryn Silverman is a 16-year-old high school junior from Berkeley, California, and one of eight million Americans, seven million of them women, who suffer from eating disorders every year. Lauryn says she’s beaten her eating disorder, but statistics show only half of those with anorexia fully recover.

Lauryn was recently recognized by American Women in Radio and Television (AWRT) with a prestigious 2005 Gracie Allen Award for this piece on her struggle with anorexia.

Looking back in time, it's hard to unravel the mystery of my ongoing battle with Anorexia. When I was thirteen, the image of the perfect young woman began to form in my mind, and unfortunately, I looked and acted nothing like her. This raised the question, "How could I be special?"

I wanted to escape my own body, ignore its basic necessities until I could ignore my emotions too. I started to focus on my menu instead of the problems in my life that were really making me depressed. I cut out junk foods, counted calories and excessively dieted, (even though my regular size pants is 0) and this led me on a downward spiral. Every day, I took one step further away from social situations...which left me alone with myself, obsessing, with no one there to distract me. I was performing a disappearing act, but at first, people didn't notice I was vanishing. I didn't want them to know...mostly because I had gotten so used to the friendship that anorexia provided me.

Dull dry memories,
Which now stick to my lips as I speak,
But once lulled me gently to sleep.
However in this moment I wake up knee deep.
Knee deep in past hate and problems.
Knee deep in failed effort from attempting to solve them.
Shut one, two eyes,
Try to ease the pain while I erase my own mind.
So that I can start it up again not so out of the loop I am supposed to be in.
This body I occupy is somehow different, I feel it,
It fits too tight in some places and I can't possibly squeeze all of my thoughts down
to its size, and I can't conceal any more lies.

My relationship with anorexia was completely one-sided. For more than a year I gave up my time, energy, health, friends and family for it. And in return I lost my health and ability to think straight. My memory was faulty, I was weak and couldn't play lacrosse, or dance, as my once-strong body had been able to. Because of the small amount of food I was taking in and the compulsive exercise, in only a couple of months I went from 95 pounds to 60.

Anorexia convinced me if I continued to on its path, I would feel unique, become someone better. But instead this is what it gave me.

On a Wednesday morning in April, when I should have been in math class, my parents took me to see a nutritionist. She gave me a long of things I would have to do in order to become healthy. Next stop was the doctor, who said my pulse and heart rate were dangerously low and without a change in my behavior I would have to go to the hospital. I promised to change, but later at home realized I couldn't, I had a pattern inscribed into my mind, a message that blared "don't eat" in neon colors, that had turned into an obsession. I later found out that it became such a preoccupation because of chemical imbalances in my body from malnutrition.

Imagine it's around 2:30 am. I wake up to the sound of the heart rate monitor going off. I am lying in bed, shivering, alone in the hospital, when the nurse comes running into my room. I am extremely scared that I am going to die right then and there.
March 2003. It's 5:30 a.m., and I'm waiting for the nurse to come and draw my blood like she has every day for the past two weeks.

Analyze me I'm your rodent,
Poke and prod and control it.
Locked away alone,
Bright white room my home sweet home.
Two hours pass and routines repeat,
Close my tired eyes in defeat.

I'm wearing only a paper gown, tugging at the uncomfortable scratchy edges, with my bony fingers. I won't bother to tell you everything that went on in the hospital.

It was such a vivid phase in my life, but it's funny - now I can't even imagine that person was me. That person was a ghost of who I'd been, and something that I never again want to become. Honestly, it was a life changing experience, but one that was chaotic and that I would prefer to completely forget.

It's still the middle…that time when being sick feels so right.
Being upside down repairs lost sight.
And a gurney feels much too comfortable.
You're dying, therefore you must be in control.

April 2003. After less than a month's stay in the hospital I was required, and determined, to recover… despite all of the statistics not in my favor. Each day I completed a food chart that listed everything I had to eat. As time passed I grew less and less preoccupied with what was on my plate. Harder than gaining weight was the realization that I had lost friends through the whole experience, and that people in high school might remember me as someone who I am not proud of. Now, when I encounter people who I met freshman year, I realize I have no memories of them whatsoever -- their names, how I know them, and more importantly if I liked them. I can only assume that I was so wrapped up in my own complex world that I couldn't absorb what was going on around me.

Sitting slouched at the dining room table for one of my endless supervised meals, watching the clock flip its numbers like a deck of cards. Watching the food on my plate, looking down in it as if it were the problem. Watching my parents stare hopefully at me, dicing and rearranging my carrots, steak, turkey sandwich with extra cheese, slice of butter and toast on my awkward oversized plate. Glance back at the clock. Back at the plate. Take one bite. Just one small bite, one small step towards recovery, then another, and another. Then I laugh. For the first time in over a month, mouth curved into a wide-open smile, sides crimping from laughter now, as I realize what I have done. I have begun to defeat anorexia, begun to conquer my old companion.

But I am no longer scared; I am more like the raging ocean,
The storms that create vast waves,
The crashing cold salty days.
To take me away from the tension.
The people who tug me one way, while I'm being pulled another, and I cant stretch any I'll snap
So please quit trying to force me to mold into a certain shape.
This is just what I can't take any longer.

Twisted thoughts of skin or bone to eat or not, a little or a lot?
Listen to the voice that offers a single lie,
Live or die?

Steal away all that makes me unique, but no one can force upon me what will make me weak.
I speak more clearly each day as I become, dare I say Me.