Battling The Demons
By Cindy Duhe

       High school. A time in which everyone fed me the line that these were to be the best years of my life.  If only that were so. I think back to all of the days, weeks, months, time, culminating in a pot of warped visions and false notions about myself, breeding this fire that burned with intentions of eating me whole. Half as nice as Hades, slightly more horrific than purgatory, I swam through the River Styx in a halfhearted attempt at self-annihilation.  Two Latin words came quickly to describe the content of my character; anorexia nervosa.  It's the moment when the idolization of Kate Moss suffers to the extreme. When you start skipping classes and lunches to sit in the library, pining over books of Holocaust victims and skeletonesque refugees with as much meat on their bones as a sparrow. When every passing of reflective glass comes, and not without an observance of your appearance.  When Ghandi is your hero, and not for humanitarian reasons.  When lies become truth, and truth lies somewhere obscured, in a far away land. When your only wish is that you would disintegrate into oblivion, so that this wretched lifestyle would just go away.

       Whenever I tell people that I had anorexia, a common question is of the nature of the illness, and what started it into motion.  When I entered high school, I entered as a straight 'A' student, who had never had to work for those grades in my life.  I never had to work for anything;  I was naturally thin as a rail, smart as the "Dickens", happy as a clam....and all other clichés to describe someone without a clue. Much to my surprise, however, things were going to change. A lot. The second week of school came, and I was already failing geometry.  Failing was never even in my vocabulary up until that point.  I was shocked and angry.  It seemed that the harder I studied and gave it my all, the worse my grades became. I felt as though I had nothing.  I was no longer the smartest....I had never been the prettiest, so my only hope at being "special" was by becoming the thinnest.  It was a clear day, as I walked, thinking this very thought.  Not a road too rocky that I wouldn't soon come to face.

       As I mentioned before, I was always naturally thin, but ever since I started to get my menstrual cycles, things took a drastic change in that department. My hips were expanding, my stomach had a roll in the middle, my thighs rubbed together when I walked. Granted I was only 107 lbs., it was still a far cry from my once, more normal, weight of 90 lbs. My summer days of ice cream had betrayed me! It all happened so quickly that I hadn't even noticed my body was adding all of this weight. Only when it was brought to my attention, by a remark that was made by a fellow classmate, did I realize the fat that had become Cindy. I gazed back into the days where ice cream was served as my main course, sometimes three times a day. Ice cream sandwiches, chocolate ice cream cones, chocolate, chips, junk, junk, junk.  It had to stop. From that day, I vowed that I was going to eat only healthy victuals. Nothing fattening, processed, configured, or made by Frito Lay....not any more.  So, I stopped.

       At first, it was invigorating. A health kick, as everyone called it. I cut out snacks and fattening foods.  I became quite the lecturer to my friends and family, abruptly scolding them when they would put a morsel of lard or sugar into their mouths. I was envious. How was it that everything I even smelled seemed to add weight to my 5'2" frame?   It didn't help that I had to wear a skintight leotard to dance class.  My hips appeared to be wider than ever. My frank friend made comments.  I cried at home, but laughed in public. I wanted to be me again....I wanted to be thin.  I started to exercise, religiously.   After about three months of sensible eating and exercise, I went to try on clothes at one of my favorite stores.   If anything, I had gained weight. I was now wearing a tight-fitting size 7. I feared the quickly encroaching size 9, then 11, then....the dreaded PLUS sizes!!!! Things weren't happening quickly enough...I needed to be better, fast.

       Thanksgiving came and went.  Then Christmas, and Valentine's Day, and Easter...not to mention my birthday, somehow wedged in between all of that. Did you ever notice how all holidays surround themselves around food? This fact drove me into a crazed state.  It was the first time that I had refused to eat pumpkin pie, chocolates, marshmallow eggs,...birthday cake!  I was going to stick with this if it killed me. Slowly the weight came off, pounds clutching strongly.  I was down to 103.  That was not good enough. I started toying with the idea of skipping meals to get down faster. Though it's foggy as to how and when, exactly, that started, all that matters is that one day I just threw my peanut butter & jelly sandwich in the trash can. There was no going back. School was ending for the year, and my horrible time as a "fish" was almost over.  By summertime I would have more time to focus on my goal of losing as much weight as possible.

       Everyday I ate a little less than the day before.  I skipped breakfast for some morning exercise, lunch for an afternoon jog and soon enough, dinner for my evening set of 5,000 crunches.  Maniacally I jogged in place, for hours, in my room. What the walls must have seen, through all of this time!  I jogged, and did jumping jacks, then crunches and leg lifts...followed by a long set of aerobic tapes by all of those famous faces.  After a while of the sheer repetition, I decided to become more "sophisticated".  I bought a few pairs of light dumbbells, as I had heard that gaining muscle burned fat at rest. That meant that I would no longer have to fear going to sleep, for fear that any sedentary moment would cause weight gain. The food started to completely cease.  My parent's fear became more drawn on their faces, as my skin wrapped itself tighter around my bony shell. The pounds were flying by....rapidly.  At this point I had lost 15 pounds. My miracle had come.  I was back in the 90's where I belonged.  Still, it didn't seem to be enough.

       I still had wide hips...sure, not to most people, but I knew it was true.  Bones jutted out of every angle of my body. It was quite a novelty looking at my rib cage poking out of my back and hip bones sharp enough to have cut through butter...oh, butter.  It's okay.  I had a strict routine that would have made a nun cry.  I woke up at 4:00. This early offering started my exercyclical day. I had a regiment that I followed to the letter.  "Raise those glutes...squat...and one, and two...come on...you can do it.." Tape after tape, until I had memorized them all.  That was before breakfast.  I would always take my vitamins because they were the closest thing to food that I would allow myself to have. That was, of course, until I started pondering the excess 5 calories that the calcium pills had to offer.  Well, down the hatch...and nothing more.....  I had to become very sly in order to fake my parents into believing that I was actually eating food.  Me, eat food? Ha...not that poison....I somehow trained myself to believe that it was poison...all of them were fools...did none of them care?  After the trickery hoisted my mom's eggs into the trash, back to the exercise, I would go. I had to follow this pattern surrounding every conventional meal.  Family gatherings were the worst. Not only did I sit idly by, all day, but it was also much trickier to hide food in my grandmother's cloth napkins. People who I had not seen for weeks commented on my new figure.  I felt high...as high as you can get. I soared by their remarks of concern, looks of terror, and worried wonderment. I knew I had done it.       

     After all of this time had flown by, it was time for school to begin again. Not only was I afraid of my own potential weight gain, but I now also had to worry about how I was going to fit all of my bulimic exercise into the mix. School was a good seven hour day.  Perhaps I could fit a few squats in during a trip to the bathroom....during lunch, for sure. I came, that first day with drastically short, black hair, a keen opposite from my normally long, blonde locks. The black summed up all of the emotional pleas that beckoned to my soul.  I had become hardened.  I ceased to smile; for, there was no reason.  I was now 85 lbs....and wearing the jeans that I had worn when I was 11. I was 15.

     As I walked down the halls, none of my friends recognized me. With such a far cry from the previous year, I felt more alone than ever.

       I was isolated, indeed. Friends were mere distractions from my exercise. My beloved exercise. I sat up in the library and read, read, read...and happened on the term bulimia. I thought it had only pertained to people in vomitoriums. Little did I know, it also pertained to the 8 hours of exercise a day that I was becoming more weaked by.  Slowly the numbers on the bathroom scale, who I fought with for so long, would go down.  I set goals.  By the end of this week I will be in the 70's. Weeks like this came and went, to no avail.  The unbearable hunger just kept getting in my way.  I would be so close, and then...something would blow it. I would crack, and eat a rice cake with dripping, gopping cheese.  It was horribly wrong, but it felt so good as its warmth entered into my cold body. I thought I owed it to myself, to my purple fingernails, my hair follicles which were now dwindling in numbers....I deserved it....and for that moment in time, it was pleasurable. But afterwards, the penance was hideous. If only there were an agency that removed faulty minds, as it does with faulty parents...my mind would have been first to go. It was far more abusive than any criminal could contend. 

     Things in life seemed to be more disjointed.  Thoughts fell into fragments and seemed unable to complete a whole pattern. I blacked out...a lot. I felt horrible...constantly.  I wanted only ever to sleep.  Yet, I woke up, every morning, at 4:00 and completed my routine, before going off to school....  I had no life, because I wished, no longer, to live.          After a year and a half of this repetition, I wanted out.  I wanted to breathe, again. I wanted to have dreams, again.  I wanted to smile and be happy and love...myself...again. I wanted, not to be thin, but to live.

     A woman named Debbie was my angel.  She was the mother of one of my close friends, who had come to worry about me, over time.  He had watched his mother go through exactly what I was now facing.  Being more than aware as to this behavior, he told her about my new way of life. I had discussed the issue with him, and he approached me that if I so chose, his mother would try to help me get out.  I wanted out more than anyone could know. But, it wasn't just as easy as everyone said...just to eat.  It was much more complex than that.  It had become my security blanket.  In my high-strung way of behaviour, if I had had a bad day, this was the way that I relieved myself of stress...purged myself, if you will. I wasn't sure I wanted to give that angle of it up.  After much thinking, I called Debbie. What could she say?  Me, being the cynic, thought that it would just be a simple chat...and, after having faked her like I had faked everyone else, she and all of them would get off of my back, once and for all. I called.  I was at my lowest point of 79 lbs. I worked so hard to get there...but, it was either out...or in...the ground. I thought about it long and hard.  If I ever gained weight, I could just stop eating at any time, I told myself.  Stop at any time.  Stop. Eating.  That seems so stupid, in retrospect.  Akin to saying that I can just stop breathing or blinking.  After a long chat, and a few tears, I realized that by faking her out, I was merely
cheating myself. She was going to come see me that following night.

     I noticed her body. She was...healthy. She was also lucky.  She was out, but now she was going to give me the best gift of my life.  As we talked, my parents sat by with the most frightful faces I had ever seen. She spoke of the inevitability of death and the anatomy of a human.  Food was merely fuel, she said. Calories are merely units of heat, she recited.  60% of all anorexics die, she warned. Die. I had never looked so strongly to the carpet.  The black and brown strands of yarns wove into patterns, in and out, over and through, but all with some unity, some place.  I wanted to have a place, again.  I wanted to be back.  After her fearful words, I could only burst into tears and reconcile all of the lies that I had told my parents over the course of this time.  I was going to live...if it killed me.  After she left, I ate dinner...for the first time, in a long time...and I never skipped a meal since.

     Recovery was not so idealistically simple.  It was more than her words...it was the culmination of thoughts, feelings, and wills. But, once again, my wills would be tested.  I still had bulimia for quite some time afterwards; seven months, to be exact. What prompted the bulimia to end?  Muscle & Fitness. Yes, Joe Weider's famous muscle magazine. My mom picked up a copy, on a lark, and pointed to a fitness model, saying to me, "Why don't you go for that look?"  I fell in love with muscle. The lean, muscular frame was exactly what I wanted to look like.  I had finally found my sense of perfection, and I was willing to work my fullest to get it. I was ecstatic with the idea of having a "new body". The feeling of control was, once again, back in my hands. I learned that my way of training was overtraining....rest is good for your body. I read, voraciously...wanting more and more...I suppose that's just my way...but I worked with the mind that someday I would be Ms. Olympia.

     I have served two years of heavy duty training for my "sport"...but more importantly, for my health.  I'm not anywhere near Ms. Olympia yet, but I've learned that I am already a winner.  I have overcome the most important obstacle, ever, and have lived to tell the tale.  I am not perfect, though. I still have guilt.  I still prefer eating strictly, to having a cheat day during the off season.  I still fear being fat. But, the difference is, I now have the strength of mind, and of body, to put those bad thoughts to the side, and just enjoy life.  It's the only one I have.

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