Wishbone Part 2
Guest writer, Dr. Jessica Murphy, returns this week with a excerpt from her exacting, exquisitely-written account of living with anorexia nervosa while standing on the threshold of womanhood.
The following text is the second part of Chapter 8 of her novel Wishbone. You can read the first part, published last week, here.
Please consider sharing this week’s newsletter with anyone you think may benefit from gaining insight into this important subject, or those who may feel compelled or perhaps comforted by Jessica’s raw, honest account.
Comments are absolutely welcome and will be shared with Jessica.
Wishbone
by Jessica Murphy
CHAPTER EIGHT
Part 2
Life in the hospital slogs on. Tedium and dissatisfaction are my constant companions. Most days, I occupy myself by reading books and magazines, writing in my diary, or drafting poems or detailed lists (of complaints, strategies, and possibilities). Occasionally, I do sketches of myself, or rather, of what I see in the mirror: an asymmetrical girl, short, stocky, and pockmarked, with messy hair and disheveled clothing. I also illustrate all my negative emotions, each one personified by a gaunt girl, always with a visible sternum and ribcage and big, vacant eyes, who stares accusingly (or hauntingly?) from the page. Resembling corpses rather than living beings, these drawings are attempts to express my self-loathing and to contemplate death as well as to understand my state of mind. Why am I so miserable? What does life hold for me or for any of us? Is death preferable to being, existing, inhabiting a prison of soft, porous flesh? If so, why not rush to meet it rather than be accosted by it suddenly and ruthlessly? Meeting it halfway seems reasonable to me since I have always disliked surprises, preferring to plan ahead and leave nothing to chance or circumstance.
Occasionally, I get visitors: my tutor, Hart, a history enthusiast turned hospital volunteer and jack-of-all-trades who stops by once a week to discuss World War I; family members who live in the city and who want to show their support; friends who have come to distract me from my dismal surroundings and cheer me with funny anecdotes. One time, to make me laugh, one of my cousins enters my room wearing a blue hospital gown and lies down beside me, pretending that the two of us are patients forced to share the same bed like our twin mothers did when they were younger. I smile wanly, appreciating her humour and her attempt to make me forget my lamentable situation.
On a separate occasion, my mom helps me get from my bed to a wheelchair propped against the wall. She pushes me down the hall, past the nurses’ station, and into an elevator. We go down to the first floor where my dad is waiting with my dog, a white and cinnamon-speckled Poodle-Terrier mix with curly, shaggy hair and soft, floppy ears. Overjoyed at seeing me after my three-week absence, Licky LeChien leaps up and puts his paws on the armrest of my wheelchair, his tail wagging rapidly, until a security guard comes over and insists that my dad bring him back to the car.
Another time, my mother, accompanied by my younger sister and her friend, visit me. Giggling and exchanging furtive glances, my sister and her friend leave the room for a moment to go to the bathroom down the hall. Perplexed, I stare at my mom who then provides me with an explanation for their behavior.
“They tried their first cigarette a few days ago,” my mom murmurs even though they are no longer within hearing distance. “A lunch monitor caught them in the schoolyard and called the parents. As we were driving over here, I warned the girls how dangerous and addictive smoking is. I told them that, while it’s okay to smoke one cigarette, just to try it out, anything more than that is reckless and unhealthy. Besides, it’s forbidden on school grounds, and your father and I certainly don’t want your sister to become a smoker. I think that they’re both really embarrassed at having been caught. Hopefully, they won’t do it again…”
“You know, your sister’s going through big changes,” my mom adds, after a brief pause, “She got her period over the summer, just before starting high school, and she’s already wearing a bra. Thankfully, unlike you, she shows no signs of wanting to remain a child forever; on the contrary, she seems eager to grow up and try new things… Your father and I just want her to make good decisions—and be safe and responsible.”
Surprised and unsettled, I try to digest what my mother has just told me. The thought of my sister going through puberty at such a young and vulnerable age and liking the process fills me with fear and bewilderment. How can she possibly enjoy something so awkward and loathsome? Where does her joy or curiosity come from? Why is the future not frightening to her?
As for my parents, I wonder if their professed happiness at watching my sister grow up and embrace womanhood stems from their reluctant acknowledgement that sending out any other message at this stage could have harmful, potentially even devastating, consequences. They know from experience that wanting a daughter to remain a child forever can be toxic, so they refrain from making comments about her hormones, weight, or figure, hoping that their silence will ensure her healthy maturation. They treat her as I wish everyone in my family had treated me, though my sister, naturally hardy and confident, seems not to require such careful handling. Stable and secure, she shows no sign of tripping or breaking. Instead, she forges on, fiery and fearless, an unstoppable force, ready to meet whatever danger lies ahead while I remain still, frozen and petrified, wishing I could hide under my bed.
Unlike my sister, I have never smoked a cigarette even though I am on the verge of going to college, and at sixteen, I still do not wear a bra. The one and only time I asked my mother about getting a training bra when I was in sixth grade, right before I began coveting a flat chest and a waifish frame, she replied that it was pointless to buy me a bra as I had nothing to put in it. Similar to when I made my request years ago, I still have no need for it. The sole difference is that I no longer desire bras, or breasts, or padding; what little desire I once had for curves or softness is gone. Years of dieting have thwarted my growth, curtailed my natural urges and impulses, and rewired my brain, suspending me perpetually in mid-air, somewhere between childhood and adolescence, like a feather defying gravity, floating rather than drifting to the ground. All ribs from collarbone to midriff, I am almost sexless, more child than woman, more spirit than matter. Freed from biology and chronology, I have, like Dr. Frankenstein when creating his monster, fashioned something truly frightening and fabulous: I have taken an ordinary flesh-and-blood girl and transformed her into a walking skeleton, tingeing life with the demeanor and drabness of death.
Copies of Jessica’s novel may be purchased as a Kindle edition through Amazon.com.
Black and white photo by Olenka Kotyk on Unsplash