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She had been battling ED since she was eleven, and her body was a portrait of battle scars. She had never gotten her period because she had stopped producing estrogen due to severe malnourishment, which negatively impacted her bone density, leading to osteoporosis. She’d end up with a broken bone with the slightest wrong movement.
When I first met her, she was wearing a cast on her wrist after trying to twist open a jar in the kitchen during a cooking lesson, which happened regularly at the ranch to get girls used to being around food again.
She was markedly short due to her stunted growth. Her thinning hair was nearly gone, with patches of bald spots on her scalp, and she had large purple, blackish circles under her eyes.
Even though she was only sixteen, she looked like an “after” portrait in a then-and-now series of photographs of people aging over a century.
She filled me in on the ins and outs of the place since she was well-versed in them. Lights out every night at 9PM. Bedroom doors needed to be left open. Someone would check in on us hourly throughout the night.
If we needed to use the bathroom, we had to press a button for someone to escort us, and the bathroom door always had to remain slightly ajar. The staff set a one-minute timer when girls were inside because of the ones that purged. Emily didn’t know if I was a purger (I wasn’t), so she also let me know they checked the toilet bowl after, looking for sprinkles underneath the seat, not just inside the bowl.
Purging wasn’t an issue for Emily, who refused all food and had a feeding tube. I noticed that during the dark hours of the night, between the hourly staff check-ins, she took her earrings off and used them to poke tiny holes in her feeding tube, letting the liquid food dribble out, which she wiped down with tissues to flush the evidence.
Emily’s trick wasn’t the only ED trick I was exposed to at Better Horizons. Some girls hid food at the bottom of their bras because nobody ever felt them closely enough to know what they were hiding there. Others sported messy buns so they could hide food in their hair.
Some pretended to want “more” hot chocolate when they just used it to spit up chewed food (food sunk well into hot cocoa).
Some of the girls that purged stole fabric softener sheets from the laundry room to pad themselves with to help cover the smell of throw-up on their clothes.
Many girls water-loaded before weigh-ins, drinking a ton of water to appear to weigh more than they did.
My tactic was different. It was the same one I had used at the hospital—I ate every bite on my plate so I could get out of there as quickly as possible and return home to ED.
After a week of complete eating compliance on my part, Dr. Larsen sat me down for our daily therapy session and said, “I think you’re doing a little too well.”
“Too well?” I asked.
“I think ED is telling you to eat everything on your plate because the sooner you get home, the sooner you can return to restricting,” she said. “I’m here to make sure he doesn’t win.”
I was surprised because I didn’t think anyone had noticed.
“Why doyoucare? You’re not my mom,” I shot back at her.
“I’m not, but I knew her. I started working here a month before she finished her internship.”
Wait, was Dr. LarsenRose?Mom’s supposed friend, who Dad said got me in here?
“Are YOU the reason a bed opened up for me? Because you knew my mom?” I seethed.
“Uh, no …” she hedged. “But I want to honor her by helping you. Your dad told me your mom would’ve given anything to be here with you. He loves you very much and wants the best for you too.”
ED didn’t care about any of Dr. Larsen’s platitudes. He was in a rage because she’d figured out his plan to get me out of there, so he lashed out.
“Maybe you should focus on the girls here who actually have a problem, like Emily,” I said.
“What do you mean?” she asked me.
“Emily pokes holes in her feeding tube, and none of you have a clue,” I said.
Dr. Larsen tried to hide her surprise, but it was apparent this was an ED trick she’d not yet come across. She gathered herself before responding. “We’re extending your stay here.”
“But that’s not fair! I’ve been eating everything I’m supposed to!”
“Then it shouldn’t be an issue for you to stay a bit longer,” she said.
ED was cornered without any chess moves left. Eating my way out of the place hadn’t worked, and not eating wasn’tgoing to work either. I would have to stay at Better Horizons however long Dr. Larsen saw fit.
“What do you want from me?” I asked her.
