Cries of the Ashamed
My husband and I recently celebrated our fourth anniversary of the day we met. We went out to dinner at one of our favorite restaurants, a Chinese buffet. I saw something there that upset me so much that I was unable to eat.
It was not the food.
About 20 minutes after we arrived for a late lunch/early dinner around 4:00 p.m. a woman arrived with her daughter. They sat as close to a corner as they could get, with their backs to the room. I didn't pay much attention to them until they were eating.
As part of my PTSD, I sit facing a room and constantly scan the people in it. It's just what I do. That's how I noticed it.
The girl was maybe ten years old, the mom not much older than me. The mom was beautiful, and it was clear that she put a lot of work into being that beautiful: perfectly dyed highlights, artfully applied makeup, manicure, and nice clothes. She wasn't overly fake looking, but definitely cared about looking beautiful.
I happened to notice their food. The girl had a reasonable amount of food, good for a child of her age. However, the mom had three plates piled three inches high with food. She had gotten them all at once, sat in a corner hunched over her food, did not look up from her food except to talk to her daughter, and looked very upset.
I've seen it all before.
This meal will end in a trip to the bathroom with a finger down the throat and a purge of everything she just ate. I've seen it before.
She was hiding her bingeing, but couldn't leave her daughter alone. She went out to eat around 4:00 p.m., before the usual quitting time when her boyfriend/husband would be heading home. She sat down with all her plates at once so no one would see her keep getting up for more.
She is ashamed of her behavior. She knows it's unhealthy. But it's something that goes far deeper than that. She is scared of becoming fat, and is starving herself to stay thin. But she can't starve herself forever, so she binges. Then she purges it all to keep from getting fat. It's a vicious cycle that is addictive, scary, and deadly.
This woman doesn't see her beauty. She tries so hard to be beautiful and doesn't see that she is. She's so scared of being fat that she doesn't see how beautiful she is now. But she will ruin her body. She will shrivel up and turn into skin and bones, and possibly die.
While hospitalized for my addiction to cutting, I was on a specialized psychiatric unit for eating disorder/self-injury patients. They are addictions and need to be treated differently than depression or suicide attempts. They are called self-destructive behaviors.
In that unit, I saw many people of many ages who suffered from eating disorders. I saw girls 13 years old who were being treated before the behaviors got serious, and I saw women whose bodies were so ravaged by the disease that they looked like walking skeletons. I've seen women whose age is indeterminable because of the effects of their illness, women who look like they should be dead.
I saw a woman who had been in the hospital for three months before I got there because she was refusing treatment. When I got there she was cooperating with her treatment after months of fighting, because you were not discharged until you had gained a reasonable amount of weight through special diets determined by a dietitian. The woman was young, possibly an older teen. Her parents had brought her to this particular hospital, several hundred miles from home, because it was the best in the region for treatment of eating disorders. They came to visit her every weekend, staying in a hotel room overnight to see their daughter. For three months. One day I overheard her say to another patient she had made friends with, "I don't think I want to get better." She was cooperating solely to be released, and she was released while I was there. She was supposed to do some intensive outpatient therapy before going home, a couple more weeks of treatment. Her mother was going to stay in a hotel room with her for two weeks to help her before they could go home. And she was going to go right back to her previous behaviors because she didn't want to get better.
As I sat in the restaurant watching the beautiful woman and her daughter, I wanted to run up to her and tell her she is beautiful, and that she doesn't need to harm herself to remain beautiful. I wanted her to know what I had seen, what her behaviors would do to her body, that it would only make her feel worse about herself. But it wouldn't have done any good, and likely have made things worse.
When we left the restaurant, I thought of the young girl, watching her mother and thinking that her mother's behavior is normal.
Things like this, these self-destructive behaviors, are a self-perpetuating cycle that is difficult to break. It is an addiction that spirals out of control very quickly, and will always gnaw at the person's ways of coping with life, no matter how long it has been - just like a drug.
It was not the food.
About 20 minutes after we arrived for a late lunch/early dinner around 4:00 p.m. a woman arrived with her daughter. They sat as close to a corner as they could get, with their backs to the room. I didn't pay much attention to them until they were eating.
As part of my PTSD, I sit facing a room and constantly scan the people in it. It's just what I do. That's how I noticed it.
The girl was maybe ten years old, the mom not much older than me. The mom was beautiful, and it was clear that she put a lot of work into being that beautiful: perfectly dyed highlights, artfully applied makeup, manicure, and nice clothes. She wasn't overly fake looking, but definitely cared about looking beautiful.
I happened to notice their food. The girl had a reasonable amount of food, good for a child of her age. However, the mom had three plates piled three inches high with food. She had gotten them all at once, sat in a corner hunched over her food, did not look up from her food except to talk to her daughter, and looked very upset.
I've seen it all before.
This meal will end in a trip to the bathroom with a finger down the throat and a purge of everything she just ate. I've seen it before.
She was hiding her bingeing, but couldn't leave her daughter alone. She went out to eat around 4:00 p.m., before the usual quitting time when her boyfriend/husband would be heading home. She sat down with all her plates at once so no one would see her keep getting up for more.
She is ashamed of her behavior. She knows it's unhealthy. But it's something that goes far deeper than that. She is scared of becoming fat, and is starving herself to stay thin. But she can't starve herself forever, so she binges. Then she purges it all to keep from getting fat. It's a vicious cycle that is addictive, scary, and deadly.
This woman doesn't see her beauty. She tries so hard to be beautiful and doesn't see that she is. She's so scared of being fat that she doesn't see how beautiful she is now. But she will ruin her body. She will shrivel up and turn into skin and bones, and possibly die.
In that unit, I saw many people of many ages who suffered from eating disorders. I saw girls 13 years old who were being treated before the behaviors got serious, and I saw women whose bodies were so ravaged by the disease that they looked like walking skeletons. I've seen women whose age is indeterminable because of the effects of their illness, women who look like they should be dead.
I saw a woman who had been in the hospital for three months before I got there because she was refusing treatment. When I got there she was cooperating with her treatment after months of fighting, because you were not discharged until you had gained a reasonable amount of weight through special diets determined by a dietitian. The woman was young, possibly an older teen. Her parents had brought her to this particular hospital, several hundred miles from home, because it was the best in the region for treatment of eating disorders. They came to visit her every weekend, staying in a hotel room overnight to see their daughter. For three months. One day I overheard her say to another patient she had made friends with, "I don't think I want to get better." She was cooperating solely to be released, and she was released while I was there. She was supposed to do some intensive outpatient therapy before going home, a couple more weeks of treatment. Her mother was going to stay in a hotel room with her for two weeks to help her before they could go home. And she was going to go right back to her previous behaviors because she didn't want to get better.
As I sat in the restaurant watching the beautiful woman and her daughter, I wanted to run up to her and tell her she is beautiful, and that she doesn't need to harm herself to remain beautiful. I wanted her to know what I had seen, what her behaviors would do to her body, that it would only make her feel worse about herself. But it wouldn't have done any good, and likely have made things worse.
When we left the restaurant, I thought of the young girl, watching her mother and thinking that her mother's behavior is normal.
Things like this, these self-destructive behaviors, are a self-perpetuating cycle that is difficult to break. It is an addiction that spirals out of control very quickly, and will always gnaw at the person's ways of coping with life, no matter how long it has been - just like a drug.
Photo Credit: "Girl Looking in the Mirror" by Stuart Miles
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