My Secret Life (9 page)

When I lie in bed, worrying that I will be awake forever, I think about bad things. I think about having to go to school tomorrow and suddenly I’m really upset. I can see myself getting up in the morning, putting on my school uniform, getting into the car and then being dropped off at the school gates. This sends shock waves through my body and I’m pumped with adrenaline, unable to focus on anything else but the thought of leaving this house tomorrow. Other times it’s even worse and I think about my Aunt Susie’s house. One Christmas, her house caught fire with Susie, her husband and their two children still inside it. It was Christmas Eve and their television, which was left plugged into the socket, sparked and caused the fire. The sitting room went up in flames and they lost everything but their lives. At this dead hour of the night, I can see those flames and eventually, I can see them in this house, growing bigger and taller like a plant in the earth. Night after night, I have mapped out how it would happen and what I could do when it does. It’s as if it is inevitable. I know that this house will catch fire one day and I can’t sleep because knowing that nobody will be awake when it happens makes my chest feel like it’s about to burst open. My family don’t realise the danger they could be in; they’re all I have and I couldn’t live if they didn’t.

Once I couldn’t stop thinking about the roof and how it was about to fall on top of me. Or if not that, then the floor underneath me was about to crumble and I would surely land atop my parents and brother beneath me, killing them. Then it would be my fault. On that particular occasion, I lay so still that my body ached. I was even afraid to cry too hard in case it shook the house at all. When I finally did fall asleep – after two trips downstairs – I was told that I had started talking in my sleep. My slumber was never peaceful and was always full of disturbances including talking, walking and sometimes screaming or shouting. The next thing I remembered after dozing off was my sister shaking me and telling me to shut up, that she couldn’t sleep because I had been so noisy. As she stormed away again to her room, her feet pounded on the floors and I stopped breathing, knowing that now the house had no chance of standing for very long. I don’t think I slept at all that night. I knew that if I fell asleep, I would never wake up again.

It’s around this time of scanning through all the bad things in my head that I start to cry. So I get out of bed and hover at the top of the stairs for a while, listening carefully and hoping someone is still awake downstairs. Mum and Dad sleep down there and some nights I see the television light from their bedroom shining on the walls. That’s very rare because everybody gets up really early in the mornings. It’s pitch black at the bottom of the stairs and I feel guilty because I know I’ll have woken Mum before I even knock on her door. She has gotten used to me doing this and listens for the creaks on the stairs that tell her I’m coming down to her. When I get to her room, I hold my breath so she can’t hear me crying and say, ‘I can’t sleep.’ I’ve been saying that every night for years.

In the darkness, a sigh flutters around the room which I know means Mum is trying to enjoy the next few moments in her warm bed before she has to step out into the cold. Dad is awake as well. He’s probably has a 12 hour shift starting at 8.00 am tomorrow, but won’t give out to me because he knows I’m upset. I wait at the door, my toes icy on the wooden floors and my back sore and stiff as I try not move in the noisy hallway. For a moment, I wish I’d never come down. I tell myself that I could have just stayed upstairs and not been so selfish. However, I have sometimes gotten to my mother’s door, turned around and gone back up to my room for this very reason. It never works out well and usually means I disturb my parents at a much later time and give myself more trips.

I can see movement in the darkness and Mum puts on her red dressing gown and walks me back to the landing. Though I feel better now because she’s in the room with me, I can’t shake my nerves fully because I know this is only temporary and that eventually, she will have to leave again. I can’t let her do that. I beg and plead with her not to leave me alone, that I won’t sleep and I’ll be all alone.

‘Leanne, what do you want me to do?’ she says, wrapping me in her red dressing gown. It smells just like her and sometimes she’ll let me have it for the night if I’m very upset. ‘I can’t stay up here all night.’

‘Can I stay down with you and Dad?’

‘Babe, I don’t know. You need to stay in your own bed.’

‘Please, Mum, please,’ I whimper. She gives in and I go back to their room with her, wedging myself into the bed between my parents. This starts to happen more and more and soon, my Dad has started sleeping in a different room. I don’t even go upstairs anymore. Instead, I go straight to Mum’s bed where the two of us argue until she finally just lets me stay with her. That moment when she says ‘Alright then’, is the happiest of my day. All my worries since waking have come down to just that and now, the worst has not happened for another night.

This place, this room is one of containment. I never want to leave it again. I want to board up the windows and the door and keep my mother here with me for ever. If I can do this, I will breathe easy again. I cling to this place for dear life because it’s mine to keep. It will never cave in or catch fire while I’m in it. I will protect this place with my mother and it will protect me from the bullies at school and all the other bad things that happen outside of it. I don’t want Mum to leave either in case something happens to her. I can’t lose her so I don’t let her go. I ask God to keep us here for ever.

***

We’re much too early in our story to start discussing the concept of control in detail. But for the moment, we can ascertain that I had issues with control since childhood. I never did develop much of a healthy sleeping pattern and still bounce from four to six hours of sleep a night, give or take. Of course, it doesn’t matter much anymore and I’ve grown to relish those dark hours of solitude. During these sleepless childhood nights, however, my apparent inability to rest easy was horrific. It is something I often forget about and it’s only now, as I reflect on those lost snapshot flashes from my past that I recollect how horrible they were. No child should have anxieties so desperately violent that they cannot sleep for fear of losing control. But I think this was the case with me, even if I wasn’t aware of it then. So knotted up about everything I could not control, my body seemed to switch a chord, following the trend and like everything else, I’d lost my authority over it even then. I swear, it often seems as if my bulimia was destined to happen, like she knew it long before I did. Looking back now I can see scattered traces of her among my dishevelled memories. It would be this lack of control that she would ultimately live off and seek to conquer.

The feeling was very familiar by the age of 18. Despite my already intoxicated state on the evening of Ami’s birthday, my friends and I proceeded to the bar nonetheless for tequila shots, vodka and every other toxic-sounding spirit. Anxiety was starting to set in. I could feel that food from earlier turning over the workings of my body and making me sick. I thought if I drank more, the feelings would drown in the haze but it didn’t work and I found my nerves slipping degenerately as the night progressed.

After my third round of shots – possibly more but I don’t fully remember – we graduated to the dance floor. That’s when the trouble started. The floor was packed full with people shuffling awkwardly. Sweat ran down my back and my mouth dried up with the intense heat. Pushing my head up for air from the sea of people, I was blinded by a bur of flashing lights overhead. Red, greens and yellows erupted in front of my eyes and I couldn’t distinguish the faces of my friends anymore. The music pumped in the walls around us and I could feel a thunderous beat pulsing from my feet up to my hands. Pins and needles traced my fingertips and I was certain that my head would soon eject itself from my body and float to the roof. All the while, my stomach anchored me on the earth beneath my feet. The sting of toxins, the dead weight of food and the stain of cigarettes suddenly clamped down on me and I knew my body was about to forfeit the battle.

A wave of urgency flooded over me and I darted with such speed that I doubt my friends had even caught my rapid exit. With no care for who or what I bombed through in my path, the lavatory door finally shut behind me. I crashed to my knees and drew my head up over the toilet bowl, not looking down. It was vomiting and that was all. Not purging, vomiting. But the satisfaction and relief that ensued were feelings I would come to associate with that familiar position, hunched over the toilet bowl for a long time thereafter. I slumped back on my legs, exhausted and struggling a little for air.

‘Leanne, you okay?’ I heard Ami’s voice come from behind the door.

‘I’m fine, don’t worry.’ I called out to her. ‘Go on back outside, I’ll be out in a minute.’

Once I was sure she had left, my breathing steadied and my body finally seemed to unite itself under just the one state of being. Aside from my knees feeling mildly weak, I was almost instantaneously relieved of the horrible sensations that had wrenched me moments before. I glanced back in the bowl, disgusted at the sight and waited for the adrenaline to leave my veins and bloodstream entirely. Sitting on that cubicle floor, my stomach now empty of the poisons that had previously inhabited it, it was as if my body was my own again. The emergency that reigned over me seemed to have dissolved so quickly since stepping into that cubicle and now here I was, feeling fine and completely in control of myself again. Yet when the time came for me to stand up and presume fixing my tousled make-up and clothes, I lingered on that floor. I still felt a little woozy from the drink and thought to myself that if vomiting had eased all that discomfort, perhaps just once more would make me feel completely sober.

It was debated for a few seconds in the back of my mind. I had already gotten sick, what difference would it make now? Leaning back over the toilet and nearly holding my breath due to the revolting stench, I strained my stomach and wretched at the air again and again. Nothing happened. So, committing to the thought of consequential relief, I dropped my bag to the floor and proceeded to slide my index finger down my throat. At first, my body was too tired for another round but with a little repetition and persuasion, the remainder of the contents in my stomach was emptied out in a matter of minutes. I was finished and now in a position to resume my night with ease.

Fixing my face in the mirror, it looked as if nothing had transpired. And I suppose, nothing had really; not beyond the usual evening a nightclub sees, whereby a teenager drinks too much and vomits in the nearest toilet. But what I remembered more than anything else that night was the vast difference of the feelings experienced before and after doing just that. My recklessness in the hours prior to dropping my head over that toilet left me strung out and wayward, while the feelings that seemed to render thereafter bounced between relief and a powerful sense of self-governance. Despite that, I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t see that familiar monster flashing its devilish eyes at me from the reflection. Unable to behold the entirety of its ugliness, I hastened to rejoin my friends and continue in the birthday festivities.

Having reasonable command over ourselves is something most of us require, if not crave on a surface level. The methods we take in attaining that dominion status naturally vary from one individual to the next and the form in which said authority presents itself can be almost anything in the world. None of this occurred to me as I tidied myself in front of that mirror. But I knew that night that I had to regain control over myself. If I didn’t, she would slip away and I may lose her forever. Continuously fasting was no way to live a life, certainly not for me and I always knew this to be true. Together, she and I had to find a way of maintaining our life together in such a way that it could last the test of time and still enable us to keep our devout secret. From that point on, our was to attain sustainability.

In hindsight, I think our endurance came in the form of bingeing itself. Binge eating was what commissioned our relationship. A key factor to the secrecy of how we lived, it ensured that we would never be accused of skipping meals. People, especially loved ones, can be extraordinarily easy to manipulate and I was getting better at it anyway. Eating in front of them and everyone else for that matter, had started to make me extremely uncomfortable; there was and remains nothing worse than someone actually witnessing me devour food, and as I imagine – or at least have convinced myself – that surely there is no worse a sight. Nevertheless, when I chose to binge, it would be timed around others. I concluded that if I were going to destroy my progress, I may as well feed into my own propaganda surrounding my eating habits at the same time. The precision with which she and I carried it out was usually impeccable.

To draw our attention back to the matter of what a binge really is, we must delve into the technicalities of the act itself. It’s difficult to define where decision starts and disease finishes, as binges for me tended to transpire under a rather messy haze of confusion. Episodes like this could range from anything between 20 minutes to several hours and were fuelled by raw anxiety and panic. It wasn’t just the hunger that sent me into this kind of feeding frenzy; cravings and the penetrating desire for the mere taste of food was enough in itself. Combined, the temptations of taste and the sharp wounds of hunger sent me spinning. I stopped living as a human then and reverted to some form of animal. The predator who dwelled within me burst out in great extravagance and gorged like nothing I had ever seen before. Nobody can eat like a bulimic can and I was like a wolf on the brink of perishing.

Speed was everything. I seemed to think that if I forced it all into my system fast enough, it wouldn’t have time to morph its way into my bodily cells. The task was required to be skillfully crafted. While the rate at which I consumed this poison had to be of shocking dispatch, the contents had to be well ground-down; if not for the sake of an easier purge later, then even for my own peace of mind that masses of filth weren’t infesting my body in huge chunks. Therefore, washing everything down with liquid between swallows was an irrevocable necessity. If for no other reason, it meant that there was a degree of lubrication both to my throat and the food itself when the time came for it to surrender its place in my body. Apparently I couldn’t chew fast enough and I recall with great accuracy at a later stage in my illness, always contending with an aching jaw both during the binge and long after the purge.