Write or Wrong?

Hello my pretties!

So I have been thinking about, like, this cool thing I could do, only I don’t know if it’s cool, and what if people think I’m lame ‘n stuff?

See, I like to think of myself as a writer. I may not be very good, and some may not like my super suave style, (alliteration: 3 points!) or think I’m very funny, or maybe I’m a total yawner to them, but I’m cool beans with that because I can’t please everybody. But ever since I was a kid, writing has always been my obsession.

And I don’t say that lightly.

Writing is and has always been a TOTAL PASH for me. I remember as a three or four year old, writing out poems and short stories. I won writing competitions as a kid.

(Yay for meaningless badges and medals!!)

I was reading college level books at 12, aspiring to be like the great writers I worshipped: Dostoevsky, Bronte, Austen, Steinbeck...

I’ve always secretly dreamed of writing the next Great American Novel, and while I know that’ll never happen, because The World does seem to hate me, and I could never be that great, but I think that maybe I could write something that people might like. Maybe relate to? Certainly most haven't suffered from an eating disorder, but everybody hurts, everybody struggles, and I'm not ashamed to share my story. I don't want people to be ashamed for their hurts, their mistakes, because we're all human, we're all flawed, AND.THAT'S.OKAY. It's taken me a long time to come this realization, and I want others to know this. That they're okay as they are. That you can change and be flawed but still laugh through it. That's what this is all about.

I actually turned in a manuscript into a publishing company, and I still haven’t heard back, but I know they’re interested, and I can’t believe I’m telling you this because if I fail then the whole world will know, but I think it’s pretty swell I tried, and you never know what will come of it…

But I was thinking…

What if I tried to publish my From Behind Bars series? I’d of course change the title, because even though sometimes it felt like it, I wasn’t actually in prison.
(I think.) (And yet?)
But I could go back to some of my past entries, jazz them up a bit, fill them out…and write more in detail about every aspect of every day I spent there – from a humorous, and I hope inspiring viewpoint.

What do you all think? Is it something you’d buy or be interested in? And by you I mean like the whole world? How do you think the public would respond? Or would you think I was a big box of lamesicles for even thinking this?

Please let me know. I honestly and for realsies want your opinion. Most of you are dedicated readers of mine, and I value your input. (Unless it’s negative, haha.) Because if even the Lovers of All Things Blogxygen wouldn’t be interested, then the general public sure as H bomb wouldn’t be.

What do you thinksies?

Oh, and my next entry (thanks Kara for the idea) is going to be on what my first day of treatment was like. I LOVED the idea and it’s going to be totally fab. Stay tuned!

LOVE YOU! (And if no one comments, I will hang my head in shame and find a black bag. I feel so insecure about this post.) (Gross.)

From Behind Bars, Part XV, on that One Time I Farted in Honesty Group

I am a woman of many bodily functions. Combine that with massive amounts of weight gain, gallons of boost, no place to do it in privacy, and you’ve got yourself a classic story of That One Girl Who Farted in Honesty Group.

For those of you who are not familiar with Honesty Group, and I hope there are a lot of you,(!) let me give you a brief history on what it’s all about:
Every Tuesday night, from 7 pm till whenever the confessional was deemed to end, the girls on RTC (residential treatment center – that means you had been in IP at least 7 weeks and were practically recovered and moved to a less intensive part of the unit) were made to sit in a group and confess their sins of the past week or like, life or whatever. The masterminds of this group (probably a group of therapists taking their patient’s opiates) thought that the group would be beneficial for the following reasons:
1. Laugh about it in treatment team the next day when they found out a girl did secret, special things in her room when everybody was asleep.
2. Time filler, plain and simple. Unthinkable that the “untouchables” should get even 10 minutes of spare time
3. Punishment
4. Depriving us of our media outlet. You see, Tuesday night was the coveted TV night. You only got one a week, and you were able to watch it beginning when the last group of the night ended until lights out, which was around 10ish. (Oh, and TV night in and of itself should be a post all on its own. We were not allowed to watch shows with disturbing themes or language, women who were too beautiful or too thin, people who were too overweight, any show with food in it, people who engaged in anything that looked like it was even close to any addiction like alcohol, drugs, shopping, sex, and cowbells. This left us with the Discovery Channel on Humpback Whales (Aaah! I’m so triggered! Once I got called a whale!! Or Inside the Actor’s Studio, and even though there was a chance you could see a hot, young, skinny celebrity on there, the show was too damn boring to watch much anyway.)

Now, telling you about TV night is important because you have to realize that Honesty Group was the only thing left in our way before we could learn more about Humpbacks.

Humpbacks were our only link left to the outside world.

So basically, everybody hated the group and wanted it to get over with. Every Tuesday before the group began, we’d have to read a Very Important Document stating what Honesty Group was, why it was important (it’s the only way you’ll recover lalala) and once that was read, the time was turned over to us to begin the purging of our souls. Except, except (EXCEPT). There was a catch: if you were honest about a rule you had broken while confined during imprisonment, YOU STILL HAD TO DEAL WITH THE CONSEQUENCES. So basically, you’re willfully walking the plank on this one. I mean, WHY? If you were ballsy enough to break a rule, AND cool enough to have gotten away with it, why on earth would you tarnish your excellent track record, be honest, and get the consequences for it? Like, I’d have been all over Honesty Group if by being honest you’d have gotten a Get out of Jail Free card. I think it only fair. You’re brave enough to come clean, and you get rewarded for being ridiculously responsible and still get to have privileges. But NOOOOOOOO. You still got phase dropped or caution status’ed up or lynched or something. So why would we talk? None of us could figure it out either!!!!

So basically, most of the time it was silent. Aside from the tapping of feet, the looking at watches, seeing if we were missing the lame TV shows that we were allowed to watch, that is. Now, I never really talked in Honesty Group, because I was definitely never a rule breaker. But there were some goooood Dishonesty Bombs that were dropped in my day. For instance:
One girl had stolen a tech’s set of keys for MONTHS so she could let herself into a bathroom and do things NOT conducive to a recovering bulimic. I think she was sentenced to death on that one.
Some other poor girl had been squirreling her salt packets away in her sleeves for no conceivable reason I could ever think of. I think it was mostly just to take a walk on the wild side.
One girl stole a pair of scissors from the art room, and that was basically the worst because they put the unit on lock down and frisked us in our sad, weight gaining skivvies to find out who had done it.
Oh and one girl ACTUALLY DID, IN FACT, confess to doing secret, special things alone in her room at night. And in the shower. And at the breakfast table, which takes miracle muscles, if you ask me.

So really, Honesty Group could be quite entertaining. Only, most of the time it wasn’t. Most of the time it was minor offenses with little or no penalty time.

So, on that fated night, I was sitting on the large sofa next to Whit. We were all staring glumly at the ground, waiting for somebody to say something so that the group could get over with and we could fill our heads with watered down media images.

Okay, look, I’d had gas ALL DAY, alright? Do you know how freeeeeeaaaaaaking hard it is to hold it in for 8 hours and counting? I’m never alone! I can’t do that sort of thing whenever I need to! And it was making me bloated and gurgly, and I was bored, and I couldn’t take it anymore. So, I lifted up my left cheek so it wouldn’t vibrate the entire sofa, and let it rip. And rip (so, so unfortunately) it did. It wasn’t one of those cute ones babies do, or even one of those accidental squeakers. It was LOUD and LONG. And if you know me, that’s absolutely in character. And, because I’d lifted a cheek, it all ended up right in Whit’s lap.

Of course, of course, immediately, everybody burst into laughter. I did too. Hell, it was funny! It was the best thing that had happened to Honesty Group in a long time, and I also, felt much, much better. Totally bonus, right?

WRONG.

Of course it took awhile for everyone to stop complaining about the smell and stop laughing enough to resume the painstaking silence. But once it did, nobody could stop tittering, and once when some girl dared to start talking about that one time she stole a pink pen from Rite Aid when she was five, some girl, usually Whit, would burst out laughing again and COMPLETELY ruin the whole thing.

Ah, man. It was beautiful. The Immortal Fart. It will forever be remembered in the annals of CFC history.

FINALLY it ends, I take some Gas X, and it’s all good, right? NOPE. Wrongsky again.

The next day when my therapist finally got me to concede to actually going into individual, apparently it had gotten CHARTED that I had farted in honestly group and ruined the whole thing. WHO CHARTS THAT? Who writes “Patient got a little out of control last night and farted?”

And what kind of therapist PUNISHES YOU FOR IT? I got chewed out, guys. Lectured for farting?? Where was I? A cushy $1000/day treatment facility or a Nazi concentration camp? You tell me. Although, if you think about it, I got exactly what I deserved, in that lame lame lamazdoid group: I needed to fart. I was entirely HONEST about it. And I got the consequences. Chewage out by therapist and an order to hang my head in shame.

Anyway, after that, cuz I was so bugged, I never came clean about the iPod I managed to keep hidden for the entirety of my months spent there. It was an amazing feat, and I’d tell you the methods to my genius, but I think care techs read my blog, plus I don’t want to give any of ya’ll ideas.

But personally? I’d take a Fart Confession to an iPod Confession any day. What about you?

From Behind Bars, Part XIV, on Family Therapy

Well, the polls are closed, and apparently the majority wants to hear about family therapy, and I'm surprised, but I can't quite put my finger on why. I suppose I was just a little agog that people don't want to hear about all the fart-tacular stories that are inspired from a yoga class full of girls drinking a ridiculous amount of Boost. But I’m sure at some point on another I’ll get around to chronicling every choice on that poll, for they all merit posts of their own.

So. Family therapy. I’m going to broaden the spectrum here, just a bit, and focus not just on family therapy, but something at CFC called Family Week. Family Week was a special form of torture that came once a month – I believe every third week of the month, if I remember correctly. It was a time when parents from all over the US (or other countries, as well) flew in to be with their daughters and learn how to eating disorder-proof their home, how to openly communicate with each other, and to of course have individual family sessions where they were told as nicely as possible that their daughters disease was entirely their fault. Just kidding.

The end of the week culminated in a spectacularly humiliating activity called the Ropes Course. And, well, there’s nothing quite like watching your aging parents be secured in a harness and get thrown out of a catapult and try to do as many flips in the air as possible. Seeing my dad in a harness and a helmet two sizes too small was bad enough. But the flips? The awkwardness? It was too much, I tell you.

There were many activities an eating disordered patient would do with her parents. Groups vacillated from art therapy, to open group, nutrition class, to even yoga. Some prisoners were thrilled their parents were coming to visit, looked thoroughly forward to the time when they could be with their parents and even siblings. You could always pinpoint the ones more than a little overwhelmed at having the parental units visiting by the hysterical screaming fights that could be heard in a nearby room. It was sad. Scintillating, but sad.

Family Week, honestly, wasn’t something I was completely looking forward to. My familia only lived forty minutes away, so it’s not like I was exactly hankering to see them – they lived near enough that I saw them on the weekends when I was allowed on pass, plus, I felt some sort of indefinable doom at them coming. I felt like the world was going to end, or something.

One of the first groups of the week was art therapy. I still remembered sitting on the hard plastic chairs with my parents, watching all the other parents shift nervously in their seats, wondering if they were really, in fact, going to have to express themselves with paint like the brochure promised. The fear was palpable, I could smell it. Parents’ eyes roved the room, almost maniacally, looking for the nearest exit. My parents’ unease mirrored that of the other unfortunate souls who had a daughter with an eating disorder.

But not us. The prisoners, I mean. I had gotten over my fear of art therapy long ago. I didn’t necessarily love it, (the tribal incantation music still made me feel like I was participating in some sort of ritualistic sacrifice) but I was used to the idea of painting my fear and joy and passions on paper. Or whatever.

But my dad. Oh, my dad. I mean, my dad grew up on a farm, guys. A farm. He got up at 4:00 every morning and milked cows and fed the horses and stuff. He had to walk a four mile roundtrip to school everyday in the snow. Uphill. Both ways. He like grew up in the depression or something.

My dad didn’t have time to be depressed growing up. He only had time for cow milkage and homework and slaughtering pigs or whatever for dinner. The idea of art (especially art therapy) was as foreign and inconceivable as pigs flying.

So there’s my pop. Sitting there, blinking rapidly, wondering how he’s supposed to depict his daughter pre-eating disordered with a lump of clay. I think he ended up making me look like a saggy, mousy snowman with no limbs. Or eyes. Or mouth. Or face at all, really. But you know, I appreciated the effort. I think he would’ve preferred to use the clay to make, like, some sort of farm tool out of it. Mom’s was little better, if I remember, but I don’t think she looked so pained doing it. I think she thought after she made a clay-me I would recover. Suck, I missed the memo.

Individual family therapy succcccccked. Seriously. I have as of yet to find anyone who enjoys being confined in a small space with one’s parents for an hour, sometimes more. If I recall, I was desperately looking toward the door, or maybe at the fire alarm, hoping it would go off. My mom couldn’t stop crying. My dad kept demanding my therapist to tell him just when exactly was Brie going to recover? She’s been here two months and she’s not getting any better! I made a mental note to get on the whole recovery thing, then promptly dissociated. For real.

Family also had a session with dieticians that the patients were not allowed to attend. It was on intuitive eating, and more or less consisted of a dietician trying to convince parents that, in fact, intuitive eating wasn’t some ridiculous myth, but actually a real thing. My dad couldn’t grasp the concept that you could eat whatever you want whenever you want. You mean, I don’t have to finish everything on my plate, he asks? Again, the farm boy side of him was coming out. He was raised to believe that you didn’t waste the chicken you slaughtered that afternoon. You ate it – and every bite. Wasting food was not a luxury my dad and his family could afford back in the day. So naturally, it was a tough thing to ingest (no pun intended). Listen to your hunger and fullness? Diet no more? No reduced fat foods? Allow your own body to find its natural set point? What--??

But really, family week was really beneficial. It allowed my parents and family to voice all their questions and concerns concerning me and my eating disorder. We came, we conquered, we bonded. It was fantastic.

On Saturday afternoon, the last activity of the week was the Ropes Course, like I already mentioned. It was conducted outside, in a sort of boot camp-esque setting, and guides take us through all the activities that are intended to allow us to break free of our fears and embrace our fat body and life, etc. I’ll still never forget my mom, who definitely wasn’t getting any younger, struggle to climb a gargantuan tree that was two stories off the ground. Seeing your parents in a harness is kind of like watching a dog walk on his hind legs. It’s unnatural and uncomfortable. But you know what? They did it for me. Because they loved me, and this was their way of showing me that they wanted to be a part of my life and my recovery.

And I think that’s pretty damn cool.

You Enjoy Reading About My Crazy ED Treatment Stories! I Loves it!

The results of my poll are in. Of the 50 or so who voted, an overwhelming 91% replied with a HELLZ YEAH, I want another satirical recap of your experiences of inpatient eating disorder treatment. 10% are quite certain I need to work through my anger toward the mental health industry, which I completely concur with. NOBODY said that my hilarity offended them, which actually surprised me. I suppose the nay-sayers of my previous Behind Bars posts either didn’t care to vote, or, more likely, stopped reading my blog. Whatever. And lastly, there were 6% of you who didn’t give a rat’s ass. And that’s cool too.

So there you have it. Another From Behind Bars entry will be coming soon. And that brings me next to the new poll. What would you like me to write it on? Please vote, and if you have a preference that isn’t there, please leave me your ideas and suggestions in a comment, I’d love to know what you all think. And for those of you who have perhaps never read this series, you’ll enjoy it, I hope – whether you have/had an eating disorder or not. Writing this series in a satirical, sarcastic way was actually incredibly healing. I find a sense of humor a necessity in recovery, and this honestly was incredibly therapeutic and positive toward my recovery – mostly because it made me realize how much I never want to go to treatment again. Hey, whatever motivates you, right?

Anagram of the day night:
While writing my from behind bars series, recaps of rehab brims fond memories.

Also: to read this series, click the label below.

From Behind Bars, Part XIII, On Body Tracings

This one’s a goodie, folks. I’ve been thinking about this post for a few days now, relishing the very idea of roasting the world’s most ill-conceived art project. I mean, this was a catastrophe. Picture this:

Partnering up with a fellow prisoner, who always, without fail, was thinner than you, which always, always, made me utter a few curses. This was some law, like Murphy’s Law, but instead of something always going wrong in any given situation, the Law was that you will always feel as fat as maximally possible in any given circumstance. And body tracings were the ideal situation for that, lemme tell you. Pictured here is the actual art room at CFC, but with fake patients. For confidentiality reasons, obviously they can't show any real prisoners. I can see some members of the cleaning staff and a receptionist. But. The body tracings on the wall are the real deal. In fact, I must've been in treatment when this picture was taken, because I very much remember seeing those tracings in real life. Too bad mine's not up there for all to behold...

So I partner up with a teensy little sprite, lie my fatness all over a giant piece of paper, and try not to preoccupy myself too much with my monumental thighs spread out for the entire world to see. I will her to move faster, faster, as she traces the outline of my entire body. I’m sweating now, and I hope she doesn’t notice it as the pencil goes up into my armpits and back down the other side of my arm.

I’m painfully aware of not just how big I am, but how looooong I am, too. My feet are barely on the paper, and half my head’s cut off, too. Suck.

She lies down now, and I’m done tracing her in about 3.849237 seconds. It didn’t take long, seeing as she’s the approximate size and weight of a hummingbird. I look at her body tracing, and then I look at mine, and a few more appropriate curses are uttered. I go to my corner of the art room, find a giant eraser, and proceed to narrow my body by, oh, you know, a few inches. I now look more like a Barbie doll, and I feel much better. I sit back on my heels in satisfaction, and notice that everybody around me is narrowing their bodies, too! And then I feel better, except the hummingbird now looks like a bumblebee. [Cue curse]

Once the tracings are completed, and the care techs and art/recreation therapists have calmed down a few girls from their minor panic attacks that included, but were not limited to, head banging, hyperventilation, and impulsive attempts at going AWOL, we begin the excruciatingly painful “creative” part, which, if you recall from my previous post on Art Therapy and other various posts concerning my missing creativity chromosomes, (although, it does seem I have an affinity for Easter hats, does it not? I am an accomplished maker of Easter bonnets. And it feels good.) I am so un-gifted in this area, so it could get really painful.

See, the point of this train wreck of a project was to color/paint/draw in our bodies the way we really felt on the inside. You know, our emotions and all that jazz. So most bodies were filled with black pain and Chiclet-sized particles of fat, broken hearts, blood, tears, gore, etc, etc.
And did I mention gore?
So I painted my body with some of the requisite black paint, (you weren’t cool unless you had black pain) a barren tree, and like, a sunset or something. I’d like to tell you it was deep, and meant so much, but it wasn’t. Not even a little bit. I just think sunsets are pretty, and something needed to occupy my faux Barbie-sized self.

This mission inevitably took more than one art project, which bored me to tears, because I always finished the first week, and spent the rest of the ensuing groups staring at the wall and listening to “artsy music” that was supposed to get us in touch with our artistic and inventive side, when in reality it sounded more like some sort of homage to Satan. You know, tribal incantations, animal sacrifice, stuff like that.

But finally, finally time is up, and it’s time to share our fear! And pain! And cellulite! With the rest of the group. We now have to hang our body tracings up, and of course, due to the aforementionedLaw, my tracing is hanging next to the bumblebee, and even Barbie can’t compete with a bumblebee. Boo. Double boo.

But.

Body tracings are over for another six weeks! And I am comforted, until the realization dawns that in another six weeks, I’ll weigh approximately 48585 pounds more than I already do. Suck. Double suck. I make a mental note to get my hands on a super jumbo eraser for next time, and then promptly repress the entire memory.

From Behind Bars, Part XII, On RAD

I realize that I have kept you, my dear readers, awaiting my next installment with bated breath for far too long. And I am particularly excited to write to you all today about RAD, (Rape Aggression Defense) because it holds a dear, dear place in my heart. The place in my heart where ridiculous humor is stored. So here goes:

Once us prisoners have been inpatient for at least seven weeks, we are shipped off to RTC – the Residential Treatment Center – that is basically just another part of the top-security prison where we supposedly have a bit more “freedom,” which actually translates into having even more boring groups (methinks it was not possible!) and less therapy. But once on RTC, we got (or were made to, depending on your point of view) to participate in RAD. A few of the recreation therapists were certified in teaching us, and every Wednesday afternoon, it was time to get trained. We’d all go into the upstairs group room, push aside the chairs, and learn how to protect ourselves from rapists or robbers or whatever. Now for me, because I’m quite boisterous, this was not an issue. I’d cheerfully punch the rec therapists and scream “NO, you rotten bastard scumbag!!” at the top of my lungs. But for some of the more shy inmates, this was not an easy task. I’d slowly watch their faces and necks turn scarlet, and they’d pathetically take a swing at the rec therapist and weakly whisper, “no…?” I mean, if it were really a rapist trying to attack them, the poor things would have been overtaken in like 3.48 seconds. Or less, even.

I also suspect this training was somehow supposed to give us more self-esteem, because screaming in fake horror and taking a swing at someone who is actually really nice and in no way looks like a man, let alone a rapist, requires the skills of a seasoned actor. And I don’t know if actors really have self-esteem, but they sure act like they do. And acting like any of us have self-esteem is not a gift that any of us were really given. We were, however; given the gift of wanting to destroy ourselves and our bodies, and that in no way helps us protect ourselves from evil men wanting to steal our treasures.

So every week, we’d trudge up and learn how to accurately punch someone without breaking our thumbs, or the best ways to get away from someone if they’re lying on top of us, etc. Oh, by the way: this was especially humiliating, because when we were asked to partner up with someone to practice our new bad-ass skills, when it was my turn to lie/sit on top of them and wait for them to pull their sweet moves to throw me off, the whole time I’d just be apologizing for my heavily gross body on top of them. It made it incredibly difficult to think about raping someone when you are solely preoccupied with the fact you’re probably killing them with your mammoth frame, and you can’t stop theorizing that they probably think you weigh more than anyone else on the face of the earth, or at least in the room, and it sucks. Sucks big time. How can you be a proper rapist when you’re loathing yourself and not the person you’re supposed to be raping? It always posed a problem.

So, after the six or so weeks of training were completed, and we’d properly learned all the moves that will save us in a dire situation, it’s time to get tested so that we can officially be certified. And it’s not some fake kindergarten certificate they give you. It’s a for realsies certificate you get from the police department. I’m supposed to get it renewed every year, which means re-taking the course, which means sitting on top of someone again, which means being reminded of how heavy I am, which means NO WAY. So my certification has expired, but once, dear readers, yes once, I was an official certified RAD’er.

So D-Day had come. I think we were all a bit nervous, because actual policeman were coming to rape us. (Or I hope pretend to?) Now, these were not little squirrelly men whose thighs resembled string beans. No. These were huge men, who could easily have been sumo wrestlers on their days off. They were without doubt at least six-and-a-half feet tall, and seemed nearly as wide as they were tall. And to add to the terror, they were wearing huge black pads all over their bodies that were reminiscent of a transformer. And not one of the good ones. The evil ones that were trying to kill Shia LaBeouf.

So getting certified entailed essentially getting attacked and being able to defend yourself and get to safety. Getting to “safety” meant reaching a corner at the other side of the room that was outlined in masking tape. We were in the exercise room, and it wasn’t a small room, it was overwhelmingly big, especially that day. The transformers would give you a “situation” that you are in and would have to act out, and then the attack would begin. As you can see from the picture, we were required to wear a helmet and elbow and knee pads, because it got rough, and I more than a few times was picked up and thrown to the floor. Before I went in, I could hear girls ahead of me screaming their lungs off before getting thrown into a wall. I could also hear girls sobbing who had been traumatized in a real life similar situation, and that was always sad. But those damn transformers didn’t care one whit.

And now it’s my turn: I was more than a little nervous, I won’t lie. After watching girls exit the room battered and bruised, I knew that this was going to be harder than I had anticipated. The transformers shook my hand, then told me that my “situation” to act out was that I was at an ATM and and two rapists come up behind me and would start oogling my goodies. There was a rec therapist in the room refereeing with a whistle in case things got too out of hand. The only place I was not allowed to kick or punch the transformers was in the side of the knee, because the padding was weak and I could actually break their knee. The groin was fair game, and I knew my ticket to freedom lied therein.

So I’m facing the wall, pretending to punch buttons on the ATM, and I hear one of the transformers growl in a really scary voice filled with evil and testosterone: Hey, there. You look like a pretty bitch.

Whoa.

I swear on my life that is a direct quote. How could you forget something like that?! I was a little taken aback that the transformer, however evil, would actually say that to me, and I lost my guard. I mean, wasn’t this a game, after all? Suddenly I was picked up from behind and thrown to the ground. I could see the transformers lumbering toward me, and I screamed. Like for real screamed. Bloody murder, actually. I turned to the one on my left and kneed him in the groin as hard as I could, then punched the other one in the face. This didn’t seem to faze them, and they kept calling me a “feisty little bitch” and throwing me to the floor to try to pin me down. I was screaming help! and fire! because that’s what we had been taught, but I knew that no one was going to come rescue me, though at that point, I was entirely convinced these really were rapist transformers pretending to be cops. Now, even after a minute or two, I was incredibly winded, and that’s putting it lightly. Adrenaline and asthma and running and kneeing in the groin will make you really tired, especially when you’re already dizzy and in pain from getting thrown all over the place. But I didn’t give up, dangit. I kept fighting. And eventually I won! I got to safety!! I collapsed in my safe corner of masking tape and started crying. I think what I was most overwhelmed with was that these cops did not go easy on any of us at all – not even a little bit. There were some there who were really small and petite (though by then most of us had all gained our weight) and I can’t imagine what those giant oafs did to those poor girls. At least I was nearly six feet tall, I’m sure that gave me an edge, no doubt. But it was scary.

As soon as the transformers and I could catch my breath, they heartily congratulated me, telling me that I had been quite the little hellion and for sure would have scared away the rapists long before they could get my precious woman treasures. That made me feel good, though the bruises on my arms and legs begged to differ.

But it was actually incredibly empowering. And just so you know, all you voyeurs or potential rapists out there, blog stalking me, you can pass this bad-ass up. Cuz I will kill you with my mad, mad skills.

From Behind Bars, Conclusion

I must admit folks, I’m a little sad to be ending my chronicle on the shenanigans of inpatient girls with eating disorders. I got a bit more attached to writing it than I had originally anticipated. Thanks to the few of you who suggested I write this, it’s been so fun.

I’ve decided that this account will never end. It’ll kind of be like The Never Ending Story, minus the mythical creatures (and the fact that, you know, the Never Ending Story did end). I won’t write a new chapter daily, but I’ve had a few alumni from CFC point out to me that I missed so many delicious things to talk about! What about the infamous unit freezes when someone pukes and won’t fess up to it? What about yoga, and nutrition class, and crazy Art With Andy?! I could talk about the backpacking trip we went on, and how one girl refused to eat and bet Dr B a hundred bucks that she hadn’t lost weight, and when she was right and he wasn’t, he totally paid her?! Music listening…choir…RAD…Saturday afternoon outings…Friday night snack…phase advancements and going into Staffing…caution status…ah, there’s too many good things to conclude for good! So I will write more. And I hope ya’ll will enjoy it as much as I will.

If anything, writing this crazy epic of monstrous proportions has totally reminded me not only of how much I coughhatecough inpatient treatment, but it’s also reminded me that I had some fun and silly times while locked up and made some irreplaceable friends. It’s also served as a friendly warning to never, ever go back in. RECOVERY NOW (because I like hot dogs, and, you know, living)!!!

If any of you have more ideas to write about, please send them my way.

From Behind Bars, Part XI, On Evening Snack and Music Therapy

Evening snack was always something that could be easily pulled out of a box or a wrapper because the cook’s went home after dinner, so it was something that didn’t require really any cooking or time. That, of course, meant that it was usually a bakery item, or maybe popsicles. If you’re thinking the fruity kind of popsicles, you’re sadly mistaken. I once had to eat two Haagen Daz chocolate ice cream bars AND a fruity popsicle in fifteen minutes. I had like the worst brain freeze ever. The only thing that gets me through evening snack is that it’s almost time for bed, and this means that I won’t have to eat anything else that day and can go to sleep and preferably die or have something equally horrible happen during the night so that I won’t have to wake up to face another day of weight gain. It didn’t work out as I planned, but I still prayed to burst into spontaneous combustion or get abducted or something so that I wouldn’t have to wake up in my sad prison. And obviously, nothing paranormal happened, other than my fast and significant weight gain. But, you know, I’m over it. Obviously.

Our last group of the night was music therapy (or, at least, it’s the group I’m going to talk about on this lovely afternoon). I usually loved music therapy. The therapist leading the group was an absolute sweetheart, and aside from being a wee bit too thin, I was a complete and total fan of hers. But for the purposes of this series, I am going to write about an incredibly painful music therapy session that we had to participate in once every six weeks or so: karaoke. And yes, you heard me right. Karaoke.

I am not a singer, just as I illustrated in my previous chapter that I am not a dancer. God left me sadly bereft of these two talents – or any, really.

So, picture this: On my first, yes, first day of treatment during my second stay, Karaoke Torture Night happened to fall on the same day as my admittance. I was sick – really, really sick. I had been in the hospital the entire week prior, so I was weak and slightly homicidal and a tinge yellow. Really, I was. Yellow I mean. It was weird. So I’m in no mood to go to any therapy, let alone friggin’ karaoke.

So, the music therapist’s only rule for this sacred ritual was that you had, absolutely had to sing. Naturally, I thought I was the exception to this rule, so didn’t bother choosing a song, like all the other girls who were huddled around the CD’s choosing the shortest song, or at the very least trying to avoid a painfully high soprano song. So at the end of the group, after everyone’s already sung, there’s me. And everyone’s waiting for me to sing. I keep stubbornly thinking to myself that I’m not going to give in, that I’m going to stick to my guns (albeit small ones) and not sing. Yeah, didn’t work. So I get up, and I’m singing a song by No Doubt, Hella Good. Have you ever heard this song? It contradicted every single thing I was feeling and thinking that night:

You got me feeling hella good

So let's just keep on dancing

You hold me like you should

So I'm gonna keep on dancing keep on dancing

A performance deserving of standing ovations

And who would have thought it'd be the two of us

So don't wake me if I'm dreaming'

Cause I'm in the mood come on and give it up

I’m feeling Hella Good so I’m going to keep on dancing? Um, I don’t think so. A performance deserving of standing ovations? Yeah, why don’t you just call me Beyonce or Shakira and we’ll call it good? Yeah, right.

So, needless to say, the experience was mortifying. More than mortifying, actually, but I can think of no other adequate synonyms to describe my experience. As soon as the whole fiasco was over, I was desperate to find a corner so that I could promptly sit in it and begin rocking like an overgrown autistic child. But CFC doesn’t allow rocking. I checked.

Apparently this exercise was to to help us get over our anxiety and our fear of life or whatever, but the only thing it gave me was a fear of another six weeks rolling around so that I’d have to do it all over again. Once I had to endure a girl singing a song from Phantom of the Opera, and she was not an opera singer. Or a singer, period. So, I mean, it was interesting. Just as Rachel’s sole motivation to recover is so that she’ll never have to go back to treatment to do Nia, (Recovery now! Nia never!) my motivation is to recover so that I’ll never have to unleash my vocal styling’s on innocent bystanders ever again. I’m sure you’ve all seen My Best Friend’s Wedding, yes? Well, Cameron Diaz’s singing was almost (but not quite) as bad as mine. And that’s the truth.

Okay, okay. I said this was the last chapter, but I have a bit more to say, so I’ll conclude tomorrow.

From Behind Bars, Part X, On Mail Time and Nia

Mail time was always my favorite part of the day, because I was able to have contact with the outside world. It reminded me that there were sane people in the world who weren't hell-bent on destroying themselves, which was always cheering.

I wasn't a big cryer while in treatment, but getting letters from my family always made me cry, because it was one of the only times I allowed myself to think about how much I really missed them. Leaving my son last year was especially difficult, and that's putting it lightly. It was the worst thing I've ever done. To him and to myself. Man I suck.

With each stay in treatment, I received less and less mail, which was always more than a little disheartening. My mom faithfully wrote me, but my siblings, by my third round of treatment, didn't really bother. This, of course, bugged me a lot, but who can blame them? I suppose it'd be tough to have a sister who they never thought would get better. Brandon (the husband) wasn't always the best letter writer, either. He faithfully came to visit me every week, and we talked on the phone twice a week, but letter writing wasn't one of his strong points. I tried not to be offended by this. I remember once I even wrote him a completely scandalous letter that was pretty much porn, seeing if I could get a response. I did, but not the written one I was hoping for...

After mail time is over, it was time to get ready for Nia. Oh, Nia. How I hated this with a fiery passion. Really I had a special hatred I reserved just for this crazy, modern, eclectic dancing the CFC called therapeutic.

I always loved the first month or so of treatment, because I didn't have to go to Nia. This was because I wasn't exercise approved because my heart or electrolytes were out of wack or whatever. But as soon as I was healthy enough, (I took this to be fat enough) going to Nia was mandatory.

Thus began the longest hour and a half of the entire week. We'd go down the exercise room, wearing shorts and gym shirts and feeling fat and insecure. Many girls loved Nia. I could never get into it. I wasn't about getting "in touch" with my body and depicting my pain and rage or whatever through dance and movement.

Cue weird, creepy music, and it was time to start moving. Our exercise routines included things like making clouds and hearts with hand gestures, marching around like robots, leaping around with scarves, holding hands and running in circles, and doing tribal incantations.

I could never keep a straight face, and always tried desperately to claim the back corner of the room before another self-conscious freak did. I was never more painfully aware of how tall and fat (I thought, at least) I was than when I was leaping around like a monkey, all arms and legs in all their lurpy glory.

The over-exercisers loved Nia, and would always go above and beyond the routine to burn the maximum amount of calories possible, while I, on the other side of the spectrum, tried my damndest to move as little as possible, which mainly consisted of me looking at the floor with my arms crossed and shuffling my feet.

Nia was excruciating. Worse than excruciating. The one positive thing about it, however; was that often I was able to sufficiently work off enough food in my stomach that I wasn't so full I would burst by evening snack.
Because it was next on the schedule.

One more chapter, folks, and this crazy epic will be complete! I wonder if it is you or I that is more thrilled about this? It's debatable, I'm sure.

From Behind Bars, Part IX, On Dinner and Goal Setting

Walking into dinner and claiming my meal tray, I look around me and try to sit at the table (there are two) with all the “cool people,” meaning people who can actually stand me. I avoid, if possible, sitting next to a nitpicky care tech that will phase drop me for playing some ridiculous food game, like looking at my beef steak menacingly or accidentally having my roll crumble in my hands or otherwise something stupidly silly. Food games are punishable by death. And if not by death, then a care tech will take away your tray, and you will be Boosted for the calories you didn’t finish. This might not be so horrible, except for the fact your dietician and therapist will find out, which will turn into this giant suck-fest, because they’ll be accusing you of not wanting to recover, etc, and all you can think about is tying them up and forcing them to consume as many calories as you are forced to in one day, so they can friggin’ know how it feels. In your mind, you watch them double over in pain, begging you to please stop; we can’t eat anymore, please!
And then you laugh.
And then you stuff another pastry in their mouth.
And laugh some more, this time with some diabolical glee. (Sometimes daydreams were a necessity to get through the lectures. I was pretty swell at dissociating and just thinking about doing evil things to them.)

I’d always jealously look around me at the girls who had been in treatment longer than me, because they had a privilege called Intuitive Eating at meals. Intuitive, as we called it, meant that you could dish up your own meal, and choose your portion size, then eat as much or as little as you liked – it wasn’t a requirement to finish everything on your tray, like my unfortunate (but bad-ass) self. The idea was to be intuitive about your hunger and fullness, and to listen to your body and other such nonsense. I am not an ideal candidate for Intuitive Eating, and I’ll tell you why: I’m pretty sure that intuitively, my body just likes no food. Brie’s Intuition is just like, “Hey, yeah! I need nothing to live. Food is gross. I’m intuitively sensing that eating blows hardcore! Now who wants some saltines and some exercise?!”

So every time my dietician begrudgingly graduated me to eating intuitively, which was always months after my admittance because it took so long to gain weight, I inevitably was whisked right back onto “100%” (eating everything on your tray given to you) because I somehow justified to myself that eating an apple and four M&M’s in one day was all my body wanted and needed. Intuitive is hard, man. Even now, though I eat on a regular basis, I don’t consider myself an intuitive eater. I know that when it’s lunch time, it’s time to eat lunch – even if I don’t feel in the least bit hungry, which is quite often. If I allowed myself to be intuitive about it, I don't think I'd ever eat. I'd just wither away. So I don’t know. I mean, I’m confused about it all. Is becoming an intuitive eater like this place that you someday reach like retirement or Nirvana? I have a hard time believing in it, though the idea is really sweet. Are there any for realsies intuitive eaters out there? Do you even exist, or are you kind of like Men in Black?

So once again, after I have consumed (or made a valiant effort) my entire tray of food, which was gluttonous, we head back to the unit for goal setting. Goal setting was pretty much just a time filler between dinner and our first evening group. CFC was not keen on letting us prisoners have much free time, so instead of allowing us to pinch our fatty stomachs and wallow in our self-hatred, they insisted we set daily goals. There was always an eager beaver girl (sorry if one of you are reading this) who would write on the goal board, and we’d have to call out goals that we would like to have achieved by the same time the following evening, and she’d write them down so we wouldn’t forget. My goals usually included something like having a runaway plan set in stone, or finding a new way to find out my weight, or to somehow find patience to not bust the girl’s nose next to me who is annoying the sweet milk outta me, etc. Occasionally I’d set a goal like “talk in therapy, “ or “don’t focus so much on my disgusting, fat body,” but mostly I steered clear, because I knew that nothing would make me feel worse than I already did about myself than not achieving a goal. I mean, who are these people? Why would they make us do something like that? I'm convinced they were only setting us up for relapse.

And finally, after goals are over, we all squeal in delight because it's MAIL TIME!!! Hells yeah!

And thus concludes part IX.

From Behind Bars, Part VIII, On Art Therapy

Art Therapy. It was odd. Cute, interesting, but odd.

Let me just throw something out there: I am not, not a creative person. I try, yes. Do I yearn to be artsy? Indubitably. But do I have actual talent? Hell no.

So we’d walk into the art room, amid squeals of delight by the talented “Art Folk,” (I, obviously, was not one of them) and the smell of paint and glue. We’d retrieve the projects we’d been working on, which for me were sadly Kindergarten-esque.

Thus began a long hour-and-a-half of raw consternation. I was trying to be creative. I was trying to draw something other than a stick figure and a bird that looked like an M in the sky. I’d inevitably give up, though, halfway through class, and grab a big ‘ol bucket of black paint and slap it around on some construction paper and call it Fine Art. Skill. Abstract art, if you will.

Looking around me, I could see hard-core art projects going on around me. Creative Tycoon to my left was making a life-size chair out of puzzle pieces. Puzzle pieces! Art Freak to my right was getting in touch with her pain and other such junk with a gargantuan painting the size of Europe. Or whatever. I glumly look at my black swirls. Suck. God gave me no talents, apparently. This was never clearer to me than in Art Therapy, and nothing is more therapeutic than realizing you have nothing in life but the clothes on your back and hard work. Or something. No talents, none. Zip. Just my sad, anorexic, miserable little self. How cheerful.

As soon as the group was nearing its end, Art Therapist would go around the room and have us talk about our work, how it made us feel, what we were trying to depict, etc. After I have been enthralled listening to others epic woes and deep anguish, (and this black swirl represents the cellulite on my left thigh. And this ripped out heart represents, well, my ripped out heart) we come to me. Kindergarten Finger Paint Girl.

Me: Um. Black. The color just spoke to me today. You know.
Art Therapist: Ooooh. I can see your fear! Look at those rough and jagged strokes across the page. But you’ve left so many white spaces on your paper. This is depicting the emptiness you have in your life. Maybe you can have less white next time? Fill your life with color! This is moving, Brie. Wow. I’m impressed. Good work today.
Me: Didn’t I simply throw some paint around so I would have something completed? I’m deep now? Wow. Thanks. That’s exactly what I was thinking!

After Art Therapy, we await dinner. I always looked forward to evenings, because they were (usually) much quieter. Withstanding a few breakdowns and/or flashbacks from neighboring prisoners, it was usually easier to relax. I didn’t have to worry about therapy, for I’d already had it for the day. I’d already (somehow) survived Open Group and Study Hall, so all the tough and excruciatingly boring stuff was out of the way. Post-dinner was much looked forward to because we could receive letters from family and friends, (phase permitting) or even call them if we had an order from our therapist.

I tried to remain hopeful during this time, coaching myself, reminding myself that I only had one meal left to stuff in my fat emerging, evolving body. It was almost time to sleep, to get away from the crazy girls and the cool girls and the care techs. I just needed some freaking alone time, which I never got, ever.

But first, I had to climb the proverbial Mount Everest: dinner.

From Behind Bars, Part VII, On Study Hall and Afternoon Snack

Study Hall was the lamest part of the day. For adolescents who were still in school, it was a much needed time for them to catch up on homework so that they wouldn’t lose school credit while getting cured from the pesky eating disorder. For adults, though, who had no school work, it was like the Longest. Hour. Ever. What did we have to study? Sure, we had our “therapeutic homework,” but I had decided to quit finishing those little jewels when my therapist had gotten mad at me for an assignment I had prepared. She had asked me to write a letter of gratitude to my body, and it began as such:

Dear Body,

You rock my world. Can I get your digits? You are sooooo-oooo hot. When I pass my reflection in the mirror, I think, “Who is that sexy human being with grace and cat-like instincts?” Oh, it’s me. You are one beautiful piece of work, I’ll tell you what. How lucky I am to have you…

And yes, that’s a direct quote. I’ve memorized it. You have to commit to memory a treasure like that, do you not?

Well. Anyway. After Therapist read that, she made me re-write it to something like,

Dear Body,

Thanks for sticking around all these years while I treated you like shit. Even though I think you’re ugly and worthless, I guess other people think you’re pretty sweet, so yeah. Thank you from the bottom of my half-starved heart.

But I digress.

So Study Hall. I tried to sleep. I had perfected the art of propping up a book near my face so that it covered my ZZZ’s. I had to sit at just the right angle from the care tech so that she didn’t suspect my little ruse. And it worked. Genius Me, I know.

After Study Hall it was time for afternoon snack. Gah! It seems that all we did was eat…

OH WAIT. That is all we did.

Afternoon Snack

By now I’m way beyond hoping for anything remotely healthy. I’d been beaten into submission with enough desserts to ever hope for a vegetable. In fact, I was beginning to forget what they looked like.

So I walk into a heap of mini éclairs. Éclairs are good, aren’t they? But they’re

not so good when you’ve got a pyramid of them on your plate. For real. My own personal little Taj Mahal to wolf down. I actually remember this snack, and the utter horror and revulsion I felt when I saw my plate (nay, platter) of them. The tears began before I even sat down, and I think I recall correctly that I prayed to have a heart attack right there and then. I wanted to survive, of course, but something as serious as a heart attack surely would get you out of eating your snack, correct? But I wasn’t so blessed.

After I get back to the unit and ask for “…a Reglin, NOW!! My stomach is about to rip into several jagged pieces!” (Reglin was a prescription medication that helped your stomach not hurt so much when on weight gain.) And after I finished frantically chewing my anti-acids and Gas X, we waited for our afternoon group, which, for today, was Art Therapy.

The day is just getting grander and grander.

From Behind Bars, Part VI, On Individual Therapy

On the inpatient unit at CFC, we had four individual therapy sessions a week. This was supposed to be where the real nitty gritty work was done. We had an hour a day

of one-on-one time with our therapist to really dig and discover where, when, and why the atomic Eating Disorder Bomb obliterated our life. Finding ground zero was necessary. We needed to explore why we insisted on killing ourselves with food (or lack thereof) so that we could turn around and begin changing and rebuilding our life.

My experience with individual therapy vastly varied depending on who had been assigned the task of wrangling me in and humanizing me into an un-anorexic girl. This wasn’t easy, and I’m sure none of the therapists volunteered for the job. For realsies. I would’ve avoided me like the plague.

My experience with different psychologists varied from a therapist who babied me and held me the entire hour of therapy while I sobbed my eyes out, to a woman who mentally beat my ass to the ground and didn’t stop there. She kept crushing and kicking…karate chops, round-house kicks to the ovaries, you name it. Her goal was to give me a nervous breakdown and she very literally succeeded. But that might be another blog for another day. Or not. It’s kind of tender to talk about. Who likes expound on their own nervous breakdown? That’s a wound that wants to stay closed, thank you very much.

But a therapy session (sans total and complete breakdown) might go something like this:

My therapist will come and find me. I may be in another group, I may be in study hall, or I may be engrossed in another really inappropriate conversation with a fellow prisoner on the unit. Once she comes to claim me, we have the really long walk from the unit to her office. This was usually in a completely different building, and because the walk lasted more than a few minutes, moronic small talk was usually required that was cruelly awkward.

Therapist: “Hi, Brie. How are you today?”
Me: I’m locked up in a crazy loony bin, you dummy. Why would I be anything but supremely bored and pissed? “I’m fine. Thanks.”
Awkward silence
Therapist: “The weather sure is nice out today.”
Awkward silence
Me: I wouldn’t know, would I? I’m behind locked doors. “Oh yeah. It looks nice. I guess.”
Awkward silence
Shuffling along
Looking at her shoes (props to her, by the way, she’s got some smokin’ boots on. If only her people skills were as practiced as her fashion sense)

And finally, after the trek across CFC campus, we arrive in her office. I am out of breath from walking up the stairs, because my sad little self is still too weedy to have much energy. I try to hide this. Being normal is usually a must if you want your therapist to let you out of prison. You can’t go acting all weak and winded. So I look as strong and, you know, healthy as possible, and sit in the corner of the couch and curl my legs under me, where I without fail always sit. My eyes automatically rove the room for a pillow to plop on my lap to cover the quickly growing surface area of my stomach and thighs. She knows this trick and tells me she took all the pillows out of her office so that I wouldn’t have anything to hide behind. Thanks a million, Freud.

“So.” She looks at her watch. I look at the clock. Fifty minutes left. “What do you want to talk about today?”

I shrug my shoulders. She knows what she wants to talk about, and I wait for her to bring it up. She doesn’t disappoint.

Thus begins the airing out of my issues. We pull them out, string them like popcorn on a Christmas tree, but only she admires our handy work. I think it looks hideous. I begin to feel exhausted. She looks hopeful, like maybe she’s actually helping me. I know, right? Weird.

On boundaries:
I know, I need to set them. I suppose I don’t adore being someone else’s door mat.

On being congruent with my emotions:
Yes, I know it’s okay to be serious and stop cracking jokes. But will I? No.
(Cue argument)

On my body:
Brie, you’re not fat.
Yes I am.
No you’re not.
Yes I am.
I’m not going to keep arguing with you.
Whatever. But I am. Fat.
No you’re not.
Yes I am.
I’m ending this conversation.

She turns her head and takes a deep breath when the vein in her forehead starts bulging. Making her mad was fun.

Sometimes I cried, but not usually.
A lot of the time I begged her to let me leave.
Sometimes my thoughts wandered to yearnings for me to birth my food baby.
A lot of the time I was scared. I didn’t like feeling vulnerable. I didn’t like her reading me as if I were an open book for anyone in the library to open and peruse. What if she read me wrong? What if she skipped the ending because she assumed she knew it…that I would not recover?

Once upon a time there was a girl named Brie, and she suffered from anorexia. And she was sick. And she never got better. The end.

That wasn’t how I wanted my story to end, so, despite my fears, I talked.
And talked. And talked some more. I wanted a happy ending.

And I got it, right? I’m happy. And I’m recovered. Mostly. And that, right there, is beating the odds.

From Behind Bars, Part V, On Lunch

Thanks to all for your delicious morsels of feedback on my previous post. You were all very right: girls with eating disorders are indeed people pleasers, and if I’m having fun, and if most of you are enjoying the posts, then who cares? I should do

what I want for me and not for anyone else. I, for one, am tickled with my posts, so I’m going to keep doing them. Besides, if Shannon, who used to be a Rec Therapist at CFC, can laugh at my little roast, then no one else has any place to be upset about it – you don’t see me poking fun at your profession, do you?!

So without further ado, I give you lunch time:

Once a week we had to tolerate a lunch that was called a “Mindful Meal.”
It was really awkward.
For the first ten minutes of the meal, we were not allowed to talk to each other. We were supposed to meditate about our food. I think. I never quite grasped the concept. A dietician would be in the dining room with us, intoning something like,

“Feel your hunger. Embrace your hunger. Feel your boobies. Hell, embrace them, if you’d like. This is just a quiet ten minutes to relax, and to have food be your ally, not your enemy.”

After we listened to the appallingly weird meditation-gone-wrong thingy, we were supposed to talk to the dietician about how good we felt, and how much we suddenly and surprisingly loved and wanted to make love to food. Or whatever. This was usually a great time for me to stifle giggles and mouth dirty words to someone across the table from me to see how long I could get away with rule-breaking before a tech gave me the stink eye. I think I once clocked an almost perfect ten minutes of non-meditating during Mindful Meal. Go me.

An average lunch for me on weight gain might consist of something like

- 2 beef burritos the size of my femurs with beans, rice, and cheese in them (yes, TWO!)
- A bowl of raw veggies with a giant swimming pool of Ranch to dip them in that must, of course, be consumed totally
- A side of rice that was T-Rex turd size. Why is this? I’ve already got the equivalent of my body weight of rice in the burritos. Never figured that one out.
- A 12 oz glass of red Koolaid that was so thickly concentrated, it was like drinking sand - yummy
- Two chocolate chip cookies. These were usually both roughly stuffed in my mouth in unison if I was trying particularly hard that meal to avoid getting Boosted and vying to make my thirty minute time limit

And I’d like to say that I made it through the meal with eating every delicious atom on my plate. Sadly, this was usually not the case. I tried. Really, I did. But when you’ve already consumed more calories than Andre the Giant would in an entire day, all by breakfast time, it’s incredibly difficult. Seriously people. I can laugh about all this now, but going though it, wow. Talk about a nightmare. Much crying and bloating and being doubled over in pain was involved. Weight gain’s a bitch, fo sho.

So I’d sit and wait for my Boost. Most of my time would be spent praying my tech was really bad at math and would miraculously miscalculate the amount of Boost I was supposed to be given, and only give me a glass or two as opposed to, oh I don’t know, seventy-seven. I dreamed big while in CFC.

After said Boost is dolefully slurped up, I head back to the Unit to await my doom, for it is time for individual therapy. Doom indeed.

But first I argue with the nurse for awhile because I’m in the mood to be naughty and don’t want to take my afternoon meds, or maybe I curl up and cry because my tummy hurts so much, and I’m frantic about the food baby I’m carrying, but most likely I just try to laugh it off and forget about it. I wasn’t one to mope. I usually reserved that for after therapy.

Doom doom doom.

From Behind Bars, Part IV, On Rec Therapy and Runaways

Once morning snack is over, a group like Recreational Therapy would begin. Rec Therapy was always quite remarkable, really, because it was nice to be able to do some sort of activity that involved something other than us sitting on our rapidly growing butts, doing nothing but talking talking talking about our feelings and emotions. We got to, you know, actually laugh on occasion, or maybe even burn thirteen calories moving around a bit. So, you know. They had us on quite the long leash, as you can tell.

The catch with Rec Therapy, was that the “life lesson” learned at the end of every session was always the same: use teamwork to get over your eating disorder. I could sleep through the entire thing, wake up at the end, and know that the moral of that day’s lesson was that working together brings better results in life and in recovery than going at it alone. And really, it’s a nice message. It was just hammered into our brain waaaay too much, and it got kind of monotonous. It was a nice way to numb your brain, though, if needed.

Some activities would include

A group of a few girls
Two paper cups
Some string

And that, somehow, equaled teamwork and recovery.

Or maybe a particular day there would be

A rope
Holding hands
Your momma

And that, somehow, equaled teamwork and recovery.

It was fascinating. I mean, WOW. We learned so much in treatment!

After Rec Therapy, there was usually a half hour or so to chillax before lunch. That time for me was spent (using the bathroom, of course) and praying that my goliath amounts of food would somehow digest and miraculously disappear from my stomach so that there would be room for the mammoth amounts yet to come.

I’d also like to take the time to get a little shut-eye, but that was usually impossible for one of a few possibilities:

1) A girl was having a temper tantrum. The tell-tale signs included screaming and a lamp being thrown against the wall. Cue therapist running for their life. Enter hysterical girl, chanting something like, “I hate you I hate you! You’re all trying to make me fat!” And you’ve got yourself one little gem of a tantrum.
2) An attempted runaway. These were rarely successful, but when they were, oh yeeeeah. It fueled our conversations for the next several hours. We’d hear the revealing sound of the alarm, meaning a door somewhere has been open. We’d all run for the nearest window, craning our necks and pushing each other out of the way to see who’s made a go of braving Scary Evil World. We’d see her: running for her life, wearing slippers, then we’d watch a line of sprinting therapists and/or care techs trying desperately to catch up to her, wondering how in hell a malnourished girl can outrun them all. “Go So-and-So!” I’d always cheer for them, knowing that they’d inevitably get dragged back, but still. It was nice to see someone fight against The System.
3) A nurse would pull me aside for the daily How Are You Meeting. I hated this, especially because I secretly deduced that the nurse didn’t even want to be talking to us, but had to. Insurance companies now made it requisite that they fill out a form on us everyday, to see how our moods and behaviors and feelings toward our bodies were progressing. I’d enthusiastically do my best to escape as quickly as possible, but this could be tricky. There was inevitably always a nurse or two that loved to chit-chat. I mean, c’mon! Get paid to do some real work! Go draw blood or phase drop someone, or something. Go tattle to a therapist, whatever. Just fill out your form about me, informing my insurance that I am still highly depressed and anorexic and will never get better, or whatever you say, and let me sleep. I never said this vicious rhetoric out loud, but I did with my eyes. Oh. I did with my eyes.
And then its

LUNCH TIME!!!

NOOOOOOO!!!

From Behind Bars, Part III, On Inappropriate Convos and Morning Snack

The interim between Open Group and morning snack is usually pretty laid back. A few girls will try to sleep or read a therapeutic book, which is usually so dreadfully boring, one can’t get through it. Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway. Great book, (I guess) but the title says it all. Why read one-hundred-odd pages of “Even if you think you’ll be fat if you recover, who cares? Feel the fear and do it anyway!” or “You might have been horribly traumatized as a child, and therefore; need your eating disorder to cope. But who cares? Feel the fear and do it anyway!” Or “Why did the chicken cross the road? Who cares? Feel the fear and do it anyway!”

And then there were a couple girls who could complete a 1,000 piece puzzle in approximately 7.983 minutes. Because I cannot complete a four piece puzzle in 7.983 minutes, I usually steered clear. A few of us would sit in a circle and chat a bit, and of course, without fail, the topic would always go to our bodies and how much we were or were not eating. The staff at CFC naturally tried to discourage that kind of tête-à-tête, because discussing numbers (i.e. what we weigh currently, or what we used to weigh, or what our lowest weight ever was, or how many calories we did or did not used to eat, etc) could be triggering and could ignite competition in us to see who used to be the “Best Anorexic” or the “Best Over-Exerciser” or the “Best Purger,” etc. I was naturally the “Best at Going Back to Treatment Several Times,” but I don’t like to brag, so we’ll move on.

A conversation could go something like this:

Bulimic Girl Who Is Also a Binge Drinker: Oh, man. I could realllllllly go for a drink right now. You know, I used to put vodka in a water bottle and take it with me to school. It was awesome, man! I was wasted by the end of 1st period, and no one ever even knew!”
Me: That is the coolest thing I have ever heard. You must tell me more.
Bulimic Girl Who Is Also a Binge Drinker: Well, this one time – I got so smashed, and it was awesome! I almost cut off my finger and laughed the whole time. I also may or may not have lost my virginity that same night, but whateva.
Me: (Grossly enthralled) Woah! So –
Tech Who Had Slyly Been Listening to the Entire Conversation: You can’t talk about stuff like that, girls! Let’s steer the conversation to rainbows and butterflies and cakes. Wait. Not cake. No food talk allowed. But, hey. How ‘bout those rainbows, eh?

Or maybe it would be rather along the lines of this:

Girl Who Has a Massive Amount of Weight to Gain: (In a whisper) Brie, I know we’re not supposed to talk about this, but am I like, sooooo fat? I feel huge!
Me: No, NO. Of course not. You’re, like, severely underweight. You actually look like a twelve year old boy who has cancer and may or may not die at any moment.
Girl Who Has a Massive Amount of Weight to Gain: Really?! You’re not just saying that? That is the most marvelous compliment anyone has ever given me! Oh Brie, thank you so much! You just made my day! It’s just that (lowers voice) I used to weigh about the same as my pet frog, and now, it’s just so hard. I hate gaining weight.
Me: (Sympathetically) Well, don’t worry. You may not weight what Kermit weighs, but I’d say you’re about Pug size. Yeah, you’re quite Pug-ish. And that’s still teeny! Pugs are very small dogs, you know!

And after those extremely deep and uplifting conversations, it’s time for snack. Before we head for the dining room, though, there is yet another round of every girl and their grandomother peeing roughly three gallons of water and/or Boost. I’ll, of course, always end up standing in line behind the one girl who has to take a massive dump, so I get the extreme pleasure of walking into a reeking bathroom with skid marks in the toilet. After I do my biz-nass, the tech comes in to flush the toilet. She doesn’t say anything, but I know she’s grateful she only had to look at urine and not a huge, you know, bowel movement.

And it’s snack time. Because it takes the average human stomach about four days to digest what I have eaten only at breakfast, I do not in the slightest feel hungry. I drag my feet to the dining room and pray it’s not some fatty dessert concoction. “Please, no. My stomach can’t handle it. C’mon, Cooks! Do me a solid,” I’m thinking, “Please, pleaaaaase have it be apples or veggies or something.”

Damn.

It’s a fatty dessert concoction.

And I have quite the heap of it on my plate. Weight gain is gravely offensive to me.

I sigh and unwillingly take my mountain of evil fat and calories with my chocolate milk and find a seat. Of course, every girl’s eyes are roving the others’ plates, gauging if they have more or less than the others. My and my fellow weight-gainers sigh and pick up our forks. We only have fifteen minutes to consume this monster, and we need every minute.

Six minutes later

I’m starting to feel sick, and I’m only 1/3 of the way through my mound of fat and calories.

Two minutes later

I start burping and praying that nothing will come up, please, oh please…keep it down…

Three minutes later

I catch the eye of Whit, who was in CFC many-a-time with me. C’mon, Brie, her eyes tell me, you can do it, and I watch her eat her giant pile of dessert as well, and am reminded that if she can do it, I certainly can, too.
Okay.
Four minutes left. Half of this fiend is left to consume. I begin taking massive mouthfuls, gagging and swallowing, gagging and swallowing. I wash it down with chocolate milk. I scrape my plate; because anything left on it – even a crumb – means getting Boosted. I’m finished.

TIME’S UP, they call.

I did it.

And then I cry, and simultaneously gain roughly two pounds.

From Behind Bars, Part II, On Open Group

As I recall, breakfast has just concluded, yes?

So, once back on the unit, all the girls wait impatiently for “The 30” to be up, which will be a loooong thirty minutes we must endure before being able to use the ladies’ facilities. Because it’s easier to, you know, get rid of your food when it has most recently been eaten, we all hop around and cross our legs trying to hold in our pee until our tummies have sufficiently digested our unholy amounts of food, which, by the way, would feed a small family of three hundred for the day.

So. We’ve all peed. It’s time for Open Group! Are you excited? No?
Neither of us ever was, either.
Open Group would predictably begin the same way every single session. The therapist would ask us to go around the room and tell everyone our names, how long we’ve been in treatment, where we’re from, and then have us answer some ridiculous question that would be something like “If you were a mythical creature, which would you pick?” or “On a scale of 1 to 10, how angry/happy/fat/ugly are you right now?” or “How are you doing today, but please refrain from using weather words – go into detail, girls!” (For some reason they really discouraged adjectives like fine, good, cold, cloudy, hurricane-ish, etc. Why the hell would we tell everyone we were felling “snowy” that day, anyway?) This was for the benefit of the new girls who had just been admitted and didn’t know anyone yet. You could always pick them out, because they were usually the ones sitting in the corner, tapping their foot a million miles a minute, looking like a deranged, rabid animal, frightened out of their starved little minds.

“I’m Brie.” I’d glance dully around the room quickly, and then revert my eyes back to my rapidly growing thighs. “I’ve been in CFC for ­­­_____ days/weeks/months/years. I’m from SLC, and if I were a mythical creature, I’d be a hobbit. Or something.”

Once everyone has had their turn introducing themselves, and after we all learn that there are an extraordinary amount of girls who would like to be either fairies and/or unicorns, Group finally begins. The therapist leading the particular group will open the floor to anyone who has anything they want to talk about. Thus begins the most awkward time of group, for we all look at each other, willing the other to speak, so that we, in turn, won’t have to. As expected, the same one or two girls will fall asleep, despite the care techs continually asking them to wake up.

After a good ten minutes of unbearable, disconcerting silence, the therapist will groan and pick a victim to speak. The rest of us sigh in relief as it wasn’t us, and we cheerfully listen to Victim Girl begrudgingly share her pain/worries/fat fears, etc. We all know she took one for the team, was a casualty in our I Don’t Wanna Talk In Group War. We all try extra hard to support her and give her remarkable amounts of feedback that she will, of course, immediately disregard. But still. She did us a solid, and we don’t forget that.

Group is over. Most of us are relieved, if only for the fact that we’ve been dying to pee like Seabiscut and couldn’t hold it a second longer. Most of us believe we are in a Nazi concentration camp, one reason being no bathroom breaks are allowed during groups, unless it’s an emergency. An emergency consists of either a

Time of the month issue or a
#2 or #3 thing

Because many of us don’t have “time of the month issues” because we still don’t menstruate due to our famished little bodies unable to produce the extra, I dunno, eggs or whatever, that option was usually out. So having a number twosie was usually the “emergency” we would have to revert to. So if I’m in Group, and I reaaaaaaaally have to pee, I’ll tell the tech that it’s
“…an emergency! For real! I can’t hold it!”
She’ll begrudgingly take me to the bathroom where I will blissfully pee (Should I mention how hydrated they insist on keeping you?). Then I sweetly would tell her that
“I had to go poop soooooo bad, but I’m just constipated and couldn’t get anything out!
Oh. Darn!”
And voila. That’s how you do it girls. Many a bladder infection has been avoided by my fool-proof plan to make sure my miniscule bladder pees all it wishes.

And thus concludes Part II.

[Disclaimer: This is a bit, you know, sarcastic. CFC actually rocks my socks.]

From Behind Bars, Part I, On Getting Weighed and Breakfast

I’ve had a couple of requests to write a blog about a day in the life of an inpatient eating disordered junkie.
I know, I know. Really, it’s quite fascinating. But fascinating in a creepy, horrifying way.
Or something.
It’s kind of like watching a car wreck. You know how you want to pull your eyes away, but they irrevocably, irrefutably, refuse to move? That’s what this post will be like: riveting in its humor and simultaneous revulsion.

I’ll be writing it in several installments. You breathlessly await, I’m sure. So here goes:

6 am

This is the blasphemous hour in which the care techs (i.e. fellow girls who were apparently “normal” because they didn’t have an eating disorder, which somehow made them qualified to flush our feces and boss us around) would wake us up. We had an hour to shower and get ready for the day, before meeting in the living room at 7 am. Being even one minute late meant all sorts of horrible punishments that included, but were not limited to, Chinese Water Torture, Hail Mary’s, and whippings.

Upon waking up, before we were allowed to relieve our distended bladders of Boost and urine so hydrated it wasn’t even yellow; we had to don a very becoming hospital gown to get weighed. We even had to take off our underwear, and trust me, they checked for those lines! Apparently underwear weighs approximately .036 pounds and could therefore drastically throw off our accurate weight. Naturally, we anorexics loved taking off our underwear, so that we could in any way lessen our weight. We were made to stand on the scale backward, and trust me – no peeking was allowed. I tried on many (nay, scores) of occasions, all without luck at seeing that evil number.

After that humiliating task was over, and after we had gotten ready, we waited for breakfast. This was an interesting time of day, because it was the time in which we had all gone the longest without eating anything, (approximately ten hours, yes, ten!) and most of us tried to talk loudly over the gurgling demands of our stomachs to be fed so that others might not hear our embarrassing need for food. For those of us who were used to going days without a decent meal, this was horrifying. To think that our bodies actually needed, even wanted food? Humiliating! But we couldn’t help it. We were eating so much, and our metabolisms were revving up. We were hungry, though most of us hated to admit it.

7:15 am – Breakfast
This was by far the easiest meal to eat because my stomach was not yet full from a day’s worth of weight-gain food portions. Now, this is my perspective, and since the majority of my (coughthreeinpatientstayscough) at the Center For Change were spent on weight gain, I will describe to you what an average meal for someone who had a great deal of weight to gain was like. It was gluttonous, really. I’d walk into the dining room and claim my tray that comprised something like

-1 large bowl of cereal with 1% milk
-1 container of yogurt
-1 large bowl of fruit
-2 pieces of toast with butter and jelly
-1 large glass of juice
-your firstborn

So, as you can tell, it’s a lot. And that, by comparison of what’s to come, was easy! Seriously, my gag reflex is acting up just thinking about everything I had to eat. Eating as much as I had to was not easy, physically or emotionally. It was incredibly painful. Tums and Gas X were taken in voracious abundance.

After exactly thirty minutes to consume our entire tray of food, we were able to go back to the unit - that is if we had actually, in fact, eaten everything on our plate(s) and did not need to wait around to argue with a tech about how much Boost she was substituting for the calories we hadn’t eaten:

Me: No, I had half of that toast! You’re giving me more Boost than that. It was just half. Half!
Tech: You’re not supposed to argue with me. Just drink the Boost I gave you.

Me: Noooo! There’s, like, fifteen more calories in there than there should be. This isn’t fair. You’re trying to make me fat!

Once said argument is over, and I have lost, (You always lose, by the way. Never has an argument, especially about food, been won at Center For Change. It’s maddening.) You get prepared for the morning group, which was either 12 Step (EDA) or Open Group.

We’ll get to that little gem in the next installment.