The cake and the cliff
I think I might have a problem.
This post discusses eating disorders and suicidal ideation. (I am okay though, don’t worry about me!)
Aberystwyth, 2014
I wasn’t going to kill myself. But if I did, it would be an accident. And if it wasn’t an accident, it would look like one. And if it didn’t look like an accident, nobody would ever know why I’d done it. No one would have the slightest inkling why I was headed up the ragged slope of Constitution Hill — in a storm, no less. At my funeral, my friends would cling to each other and wail, ‘Why did she do it?’ and there would be no answer, sorry guys, because the truth was unbearable.
Unspeakable, even.
The truth was I had eaten an entire pack of fondant fancies.
Back then, my relationship with food was underpinned by a staggering fear of weight gain. Permanent weight gain, to be precise. Everywhere I turned, I saw irrevocable damage waiting to happen. If I ate one fondant fancy then I would eat all of them, and if I ate all of them then I would feel bad, and if I felt bad I would always feel bad, irreversibly so. Of course, throwing myself off a cliff would have a similar irreversible quality, but my concern for that paled next to the idea that I might get… you know… fat.
There was no deep epiphany that made me come down from the cliff. There was only my survival instinct, and a text from my friend D.
Are you feeling better now? :)
I ignored him and put my phone away. Earlier that afternoon, D heard me crying and came to my room. I gave him a box full of food and begged him frantically to never let me have it back. He’d seen me bolt out the door, out into the wind that was quite literally tearing up Aberystwyth. Was I feeling better?
I didn’t want to feel better. I wanted proof that I was getting worse. I wanted someone to say the words out loud — anorexia, eating disorder, you need help — and grant me the permission to believe I had a problem. I wanted to thrash about in proverbial waters, so close to death that someone had to take action.
I did not want the smooth sailing convenience of feeling better.
Back at the house, I found D in the living room, looking more pensive than his upbeat message had implied. He was holding a shoebox. I both craved and dreaded what was inside.
‘If you want me to hang on to this,’ he said solemnly, ‘if that helps, then I will. But if at any point you want it back, of course I’ll let you have it.’
I nodded.
With that out the way, he exclaimed, ‘Don’t ever do that again!’
This stunned me. D never told me what to do.
‘I was so worried!’ he went on. ‘You’ve got to start telling us what’s going on.’
‘No. I don’t want to drag you into my shit.’ I crossed my arms and they squelched, rainwater running down my sleeves. ‘Anyway, we’re leaving this summer.’
‘So? We’ll still be mates, won’t we?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘We will. Of course we will.’
He was right. We’re still mates. But the future felt so bleak at that age, and I dreaded graduation, the big wide real world I felt in no way prepared for. I barely knew what a job even was, let alone how to get one. The path forward felt more like a sudden drop, the final months of university a cliff edge. Why not jump before I was pushed?
When we moved in together in 2012, my five housemates had voted for me to take the attic room. It was the smallest room and I was the smallest person. I got a kick out of being noticeably small, so naturally I went along with this. My boyfriend of the time compared it to a Russian prison cell, but what did I care? I was skinny, apparently!
I took the shoebox up the two flights of stairs to my bedroom. Handling the contents of this box required a kind of mental sanitation, an emotional hazmat suit, to ensure total detachment. I braced myself, and I removed the lid.
You’d think it would be easier to be anorexic without a shoebox full of food. The truth is I didn’t want an eating disorder. But at the same time I did. I wanted to eat normally. But I couldn’t. I loved food. I hated loving it. I wanted to eat. I didn’t want to want to eat.
The solution to this conundrum, this tug of war between brain and body, mind and matter, was simple. I would confuse myself further by hoarding perishables in a shoebox, and I would decorate the box with hateful messages like ‘DON’T EAT’ and ‘YOU FAT COW’. That’d show me!
I reached under the creaky bed for my scrapbooking materials. Beneath the sloping roof beams, I had spelled out the words ‘I WANT TO BE THE GIRL WITH THE MOST CAKE’ above my bed in PVC letters. Cake, I was quite certain, didn’t actually refer to cake, and only Courtney Love herself could reveal what she meant by these lyrics. I looked up to Courtney and modelled myself on her, badly, believing I could relate to her music. Unless she really was singing about cake, in which case no, I could not relate, I did not want cake, fine, thank you, no, thank you, not hungry, ate before I came.
This was a new low: a panic attack over a box of fondant fancies. Could I call it that? A panic attack? I knew food made me anxious, but it felt wrong to use that kind of language. It was as though there were a limited number of panic attacks to go round, and with my scarcity mindset in full swing, I settled for less. That wasn’t a panic attack you saw back there. No, I just felt like taking a wander up a cliff in a storm while my lungs did that crying/hyperventilating thing they once did in Pier Pressure after too many WKDs. I’m fine, by the way.
After decorating the box with meanspo — unkind words delivered ostensibly to inspire or motivate — I put my supplies back under the bed and happened upon the scales. I stripped naked and took off all my jewellery (how else would I know whether that half a pound was me or my earrings?) before stepping on.
Stepping off.
Moving to another corner of the room.
Try the right foot first.
Now the left.
Lean forwards.
Lean back.
Dressing gown, bathroom, have a wee, bedroom, naked again, step on, shuffle, blink in disbelief.
I looked down at the lowest number I had ever seen on my scales.
And I thought, Now what?
If you need help
Always seek medical advice in an emergency. In the UK, you can call NHS 111 option 2 for mental health support. Find a list of helplines around the world here.