constructing my own private hell.
Here is where the film begins to heat and melt, white absent spaces on the screen. Chronology ends—time and language twist upon themselves and become something else. Tenses, past, present, and future, lose their meaning. Here my life became a living theater of the absurd: the mistaken identities, the terrible coincidences, the exaggerated gestures, inane arguments, two plots circling each other, missing contact by the theatrical split second. There was self by day and self by night. There was life, within the four flowered walls of my childhood bedroom, and life in the echoing, spotless, white hallways of my parents' home, in school, at church. Backstage and onstage. Behind the velveteen curtains of the wings, I sat facing my mirror, took the cold white cream and tissues, first wiping away the dark black of the eyes, then the rose blush and white powder of cheeks, then the blood red of the lips. I sat staring, in silence, at the blank white nothing that remained. The oval absence, framed by wild black hair.
Something changed the year I entered junior high. For one thing, bulimia took over my life. It stopped being a moonlighting gig, something I just happened to feel like doing when things in my head were particularly crazy, or when I was angry or lonely or sad or flat.
It began to have a force and took on a life of its own. From this point on, there are no memories that are not related to food or my body or barfing. It became a centripetal force that sucked me in, something I knew and needed. Badly. All the time. I did not put a bite of food in my mouth without considering if, when, and where I would throw up. I did not ever look in the mirror without thinking, Fat .
Consider, for instance, junior high parties. They started at seven and ended at ten. If you were lucky, they ended a little bit later. You wore a dress that made you look thin. You tried on every single piece of clothing you or your mother owned in search of the thing that would make you look thin. Fifteen-odd kids gather awkwardly in the basement of someone's gorgeous, enormous house. You all start eating. This is relatively normal, this is what people do at parties. They eat the Doritos and pretzels and Ruffles and nobody eats the veggies. You nibble on cookies and Hershey's kisses that somebody's mother has put in a cut-crystal bowl. Somebody's mother is hovering in the doorway, nervously glancing at the mixture of boys and girls. A pizza is ordered. Someone puts a movie in the VCR.
However. If you are bulimic, when the lights go out and cute kiddie couples pair off, slurpily kissing and fumbling on the couches, you will walk up the plush-carpeted stairs, heart pounding, face flushed with fear that the food is going to be digested before you can get it out. You will ask the sweet perfectly-made-up hovering mother where the bathroom is. She will point it out to you, smiling sweetly. You will go into the bathroom, take note of the brass fixtures on the sink, the Laura Ashley print wallpaper, the fresh flowers in a Waterford vase, the wicker magazine rack holding Condé Nast Traveler and Forbes . You will take a mental inventory of all of these things and scrutinize your face in the mirror.
You will beg God to keep your face normal after you puke as you turn on the water full force to drown out the retching and splashing, hoping to hell that the walls are thick so nobody hears. You will lift the toilet seat, carefully slide your fingers inside your mouth and down your throat, and puke until you see orange. The Doritos. You ate them first because you, like most bulimics, have developed a system of “markers,” eating brightly colored food first so you can tell when it's all out, and it all comes out, in reverse order: the pizza, cookies, Ruffles, pretzels, Doritos, all swimming in dark swirls of Coke.
You straighten, flush. You turn the water down, put your hands under it, scrub with the Softsoap in a special matching
Here is where the film begins to heat and melt, white absent spaces on the screen. Chronology ends—time and language twist upon themselves and become something else. Tenses, past, present, and future, lose their meaning. Here my life became a living theater of the absurd: the mistaken identities, the terrible coincidences, the exaggerated gestures, inane arguments, two plots circling each other, missing contact by the theatrical split second. There was self by day and self by night. There was life, within the four flowered walls of my childhood bedroom, and life in the echoing, spotless, white hallways of my parents' home, in school, at church. Backstage and onstage. Behind the velveteen curtains of the wings, I sat facing my mirror, took the cold white cream and tissues, first wiping away the dark black of the eyes, then the rose blush and white powder of cheeks, then the blood red of the lips. I sat staring, in silence, at the blank white nothing that remained. The oval absence, framed by wild black hair.
Something changed the year I entered junior high. For one thing, bulimia took over my life. It stopped being a moonlighting gig, something I just happened to feel like doing when things in my head were particularly crazy, or when I was angry or lonely or sad or flat.
It began to have a force and took on a life of its own. From this point on, there are no memories that are not related to food or my body or barfing. It became a centripetal force that sucked me in, something I knew and needed. Badly. All the time. I did not put a bite of food in my mouth without considering if, when, and where I would throw up. I did not ever look in the mirror without thinking, Fat .
Consider, for instance, junior high parties. They started at seven and ended at ten. If you were lucky, they ended a little bit later. You wore a dress that made you look thin. You tried on every single piece of clothing you or your mother owned in search of the thing that would make you look thin. Fifteen-odd kids gather awkwardly in the basement of someone's gorgeous, enormous house. You all start eating. This is relatively normal, this is what people do at parties. They eat the Doritos and pretzels and Ruffles and nobody eats the veggies. You nibble on cookies and Hershey's kisses that somebody's mother has put in a cut-crystal bowl. Somebody's mother is hovering in the doorway, nervously glancing at the mixture of boys and girls. A pizza is ordered. Someone puts a movie in the VCR.
However. If you are bulimic, when the lights go out and cute kiddie couples pair off, slurpily kissing and fumbling on the couches, you will walk up the plush-carpeted stairs, heart pounding, face flushed with fear that the food is going to be digested before you can get it out. You will ask the sweet perfectly-made-up hovering mother where the bathroom is. She will point it out to you, smiling sweetly. You will go into the bathroom, take note of the brass fixtures on the sink, the Laura Ashley print wallpaper, the fresh flowers in a Waterford vase, the wicker magazine rack holding Condé Nast Traveler and Forbes . You will take a mental inventory of all of these things and scrutinize your face in the mirror.
You will beg God to keep your face normal after you puke as you turn on the water full force to drown out the retching and splashing, hoping to hell that the walls are thick so nobody hears. You will lift the toilet seat, carefully slide your fingers inside your mouth and down your throat, and puke until you see orange. The Doritos. You ate them first because you, like most bulimics, have developed a system of “markers,” eating brightly colored food first so you can tell when it's all out, and it all comes out, in reverse order: the pizza, cookies, Ruffles, pretzels, Doritos, all swimming in dark swirls of Coke.
You straighten, flush. You turn the water down, put your hands under it, scrub with the Softsoap in a special matching
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