Dancing Through It: My Journey in the Ballet (14 page)

“Do you need help?” she asked with growing concern. She helped me
put my coat on. I took a cab home and ate dinner lying down. The next morning, I couldn’t walk.

I’d had injuries on my feet before—breaks and sprains—but had never hurt my back. For all dancers and athletes, a back injury stirs up a primal fear, maybe because the primitive part of our brain knows that the spinal cord is crucial. I felt very afraid when I called the physical therapist to ask if she could see me. But overwhelming that fear was a sense of relief. I’d been given a break, and a reprieve. I didn’t have to go back into the theater and face my problems. At least not for a while.

—

I
stayed in the city for a few months after my back injury, what the therapists called a back sprain, splitting my time between going to physical therapy and hiding in my apartment and eating. My back wasn’t getting better, and I was gaining more and more weight. It was easy to isolate myself. I never went into the theater and was not asked to; an injured dancer isn’t very useful to the company. My friends were too busy with their performing lives to see me, which I preferred. My sister was still in the city, and we did see each other often, which was probably the only thing that kept me from completely imploding. But I did not share my shameful eating even with her, my best friend.

One of the physical therapists encouraged me to go on a mail-order macrobiotic cleansing diet. She said she was worried about how heavy I was. I tried it for two days and then gave up, telling her that I was still on it.

In the spring, my parents asked me to come stay with them in Washington, DC, where they were staying while in between European postings. They were very worried about me and tried to help me in several ways once I arrived at their home.

My mother quickly took charge of me; she couldn’t bear to see me hurting. She knew something was terribly wrong, but I refused to talk to her about anything except the practicalities of a back injury. Mom found me a physical therapist who incidentally also knew about weight-loss techniques. She found some local ballet studios where I could take
class anonymously when I was ready. My mother also started talking to me about quitting.

She sat down with me one day in the living room of their house and was quiet for a while. I knew she wanted to talk about something important, something that had to do with my situation, and I felt myself building a defensive wall against her, despite the love I saw in her eyes.

“Jenny,” she said carefully. “Do you think you would ever want to stop dancing?”

“No, Mom. I can’t just stop.”

“But why not?” she asked. “You could come and stay with us, maybe enroll at William and Mary College. . . .”

“I’m not going to do that.” Silence. “I’m just not.” I can see now how worried my mother was, and how much she was hurting because she could see how much pain her dear daughter was in. But at the time, I could only see myself, and I shut her out.

Despite the darkness I felt, I couldn’t even conceive of quitting ballet. I was angry with my mother for even suggesting it. In my mind, I had to be perfect: pretty, smart, talented, kind, funny—and a ballerina. That’s who I was, who I had to be. I was not a quitter, and I was not someone who failed. I got straight A’s. I got promoted. I went to college while I danced professionally and did both extremely well. While the fact remained that I was failing, that I was now ugly in the eyes of the ballet world, that making jokes couldn’t cover up the fact that I was falling apart, still I couldn’t admit my failure to myself. I kept thinking that I just needed to discover the trick, the secret, the key to ending my addiction to food, and that once I did, I would fix all of my problems and be happy again and no one besides me would ever know my disgusting secret. I couldn’t just give up and stop dancing, because then I felt everyone would finally see the truth: that I was not, in fact, perfect.

I didn’t open up to my parents about my eating disorders. I was too ashamed, despite the safe environment they provided for me. It was impossible to believe that even these two people, who loved me
unconditionally, could still love and understand me if I revealed to them what I felt was such a horrible behavior. But of course I didn’t have to tell them; my mother knew exactly what was going on without our ever talking about it. The problem was, she was as much at a loss as I was about how to deal with it. When my mom hesitantly approached me with the suggestion that I try out an Overeaters Anonymous meeting, not even saying outright that she thought I had a problem, I rejected the idea and felt angry and encroached upon. But the more I thought about it, the more I thought it was something I should try. It was terrifying to think of attending a meeting of strangers and publicly admitting that I had this shameful problem. But I had no other ideas. Finally I decided to go, just once.

It was a revelation to me. The meeting was close to my parents’ home in Virginia, just outside DC, and close to a Metro station. It was held very early in the morning so that the people who attended the meeting could get to their jobs on time. My parents dropped me off on their own way to work, and then I would get on the Metro afterward. There were only about eight or nine people in the meeting, and everyone sat at an oval table in some office’s conference room.

I mostly sat silently while the others talked, but everyone was encouraged to share something in this meeting, particularly because there were so few people there. Also, this group knew that there was something healing in the sharing of stories, whether they are stories of failure or triumph. No one commented on another’s stories or offered advice; the telling was enough. They went around the table, everyone opening up their time to speak with the phrase “My name is _______ , and I am a compulsive overeater.” Stunned, I listened while these individuals around me matter-of-factly talked about their abnormal eating habits and their struggles to find normalcy in healthy ways. They spoke of the twelve steps and how those steps helped them out in different situations. They spoke of taking it moment by moment and relying on a higher power. They spoke of failure and frustration and success and forgiveness.

I looked around the table at the small group and saw very normal people, some thin, some heavy, some young, and some old, all of whom admitted to living daily with abnormal attitudes toward food. They talked about their feelings and emotions, even if those feelings and emotions were unattractive. They spoke of how they used food in order not to feel the more difficult emotions of everyday life.

I listened to those courageous people, and learned that I wasn’t alone and that what I was going through was not so strange.

I looked around the table and saw my heroes.

When the sharing made its way around the circle to me, everyone looked at me with gentle expectation. I didn’t feel a sense of pressure from them and probably could have just passed, but once again, I needed to “do well” and rise to the occasion, even here where my need to be perfect meant that I had to admit to strangers that I had a problem.

I hesitated, my throat closing up.

“My name is Jenny,” I finally said, “and”—I swallowed—“I am a compulsive overeater.”

I blushed bright red, feeling a wave of shame soak me in self-hate. I said no more.

The people at the table nodded politely, greeted me with the ritual response of “Hi, Jenny,” and then moved on to the next person. That was it. They accepted me. And all they knew about me was the absolute worst thing about myself.

So I sat there, silent and stunned, listening to these very regular people talking about their eating disorders, and knew I was going to be coming to the meetings. Over the weeks I stayed with my parents, I regularly attended the group, and eventually I began to open up during the sharing time. For those brief months, I became friends with those wonderful people, and felt a connection with each one of them, young or old or male or female. And they treated me as just another member of the group, someone working to escape an addiction but normal nevertheless—not a weak failure with no self-control, as I had felt at
City Ballet. Here I was accepted and surrounded by those who were winning their battles against food addictions. It was amazing.

Unfortunately, despite what I was learning from the group and my internal revelations, my eating disorder continued at full force. I was gaining an understanding as to why I was behaving the way I was, but I was unable to stop it.

As I look back now upon my twenty-three-year-old self, I see a stranger who was absolutely incapable of coping with difficulty. Up until this juncture of my life, things had always come easily for me, and I’d had a degree of success with almost everything I attempted. Growing up in the South, I learned that a good southern girl was pretty, polite, gracious, and friendly. She was always pleasant and avoided ugly topics or feelings, at least in public. She was well put together and always had her hair fixed, her makeup on, and her smile ready. I could be this perfect southern girl really well.

I was rarely allowed to feel unhappy for long, neither by society nor by my parents. I don’t blame my parents—they loved me and wanted to protect me from being hurt. But they did always fix my problems, and we never let on to anyone outside the family if we were sad or hurt or disappointed. I learned that negative feelings were to be ignored or hidden or taken care of by someone else. I didn’t learn any tools for dealing with pressure or difficulty or hardship. And I didn’t learn that it was in my weaknesses and my failures that I needed to rely on God the most.

Perhaps if I’d finished high school and gone to college at the regular ages, I would have matured and learned how to manage adult problems in a healthy way with the help of experience. But I threw myself into the ballet world, becoming a professional at the age of sixteen. I was barely a teenager when I found myself dealing with high pressure, exhaustion, and physical pain; I was slow to realize that the reality of a job as a ballet dancer was very different from the glowing dream version that I was determined to see instead.

In my family, we used to always celebrate special occasions with food:
we would go out to a nice restaurant; we would get a certain dessert; we would be allowed a candy bar at the grocery store. There is nothing wrong with that, of course, but I associated some of my happiest memories with special foods. Since my mom was often concerned with her own diet, we rarely had sweets in the house because she did not want to tempt herself. But once I had an apartment of my own, I suddenly realized I could eat whatever I wanted whenever I wanted. I could celebrate with food, yes. But I could also make myself feel better with food. Or I could just somehow
not
feel with food.

It had come to the point where success in the ballet world was my only measure of happiness, but even when I was successful, I wasn’t happy. As I began to realize that not only was I imperfect but this dream life I was living was also not as beautiful as I thought it would be, I started to turn to food for some modicum of control over my life and my feelings. I might not get my ten-hour rehearsal schedule until eleven o’clock the night before, but I could know what I was going to eat that day. I might be anxious about a part I was hoping to dance in a week, but I could make that anxiety disappear by eating a large bowl of pasta and reading a science fiction book. If I was still feeling anxious and out of control after dinner, I could watch TV and eat more food, even if I wasn’t hungry. And no one would ever know, because I ate alone, in secret.

—

A
fter my time with my parents, I went back home to New York City to check in with the physical therapists there. My PT was concerned about my weight and told me about some diets I could try while I used the summer to get back into shape for City Ballet’s winter season. I thanked her and actually tried the diet, thinking that I would do it, lose my weight quickly over the summer, and return to the company in the fall as if I had never had a problem. But the diet was dramatically limiting, and after two days of very little food, I binged and was right back into my destructive eating cycle. I looked for OA groups in the city, but they were huge and
crowded and intimidating. I found a sponsor whom I could call and talk to, but I started to close up on her and eventually stopped trying to contact her.

That summer of 1996, at my sister’s wedding, I reached my highest weight; I was probably forty pounds over my dancing weight. I couldn’t fit into the bridesmaid dress I’d bought and had to buy another in the wrong color. My sister of course said she didn’t care—she just wanted me to feel beautiful—but I felt I’d let her down on her special day.

In the fall I returned to City Ballet, officially reporting for work. My back had healed, and I was taking ballet class and had even lost some weight—but it wasn’t enough. As I waited for rehearsals to begin, something became clear to me: there was a very important component missing from my routine. I realized how much I needed to make God a part of my life in New York again. Since becoming a professional dancer, I’d put God aside. But while visiting with my parents in DC, I’d attended church regularly and we had prayed together as a family. I’d received counseling from a pastor at their church and had even danced in a service, something I hadn’t done in years. It had felt wonderful to be part of a Christian community again and to have my thoughts turned regularly to the bigger picture of faith in life. But once back at home in New York, my focus narrowed to ballet again, and I’d fallen back into my old patterns. I felt that I was suffocating, and I realized I was missing an essential part of my life by not attending church and not having Christian friends I could talk to. I also felt instinctively that I would not become a full, realized adult, able to face life frankly and fearlessly, until I addressed my relationship with God and recommitted my life to Him. I needed to be able to stand on my own two feet, but with those feet firmly cemented in God’s steady foundation.

I started attending All Angels’ Church regularly once again and was immediately welcomed back into the community. It was a new experience to be attending on my own as an adult rather than as the teenage daughter of Doug and Scharlene. My heart was filled to bursting the first Sunday I returned and participated in the wonderful worship songs
and prayers. I wanted to kick myself for letting my faith go, for pushing my beautiful Savior off to the side as if He were of no consequence.