map pictures

Anorexia: Looking at the thing inside



The arm: A region of contention, and focus of self-loathing. When I wanted to be thin, during the conditioning phase of the disease and while I was in the process of wasting I hated my arms, and legs, belly, and backside. I saw these parts of my body as large, almost as expansive as continents. I wanted to control those areas, tame, and shrink them. The language (fat, pig, too soft, etc) reflects the way I saw these areas when I was ill. Later, however, when I was in the process of healing, and to some extent recognized that I was thin (my arms, legs, belly, etc were thin) I felt attached to these areas, and terrified to loose them. I wanted to preserve what I created, and the process of watching the body take over again was like watching plant life overwhelm a hard-built city, home- if you will. Currently, I have returned to seeing my arms and legs and other body parts the way I did when I was conditioning myself to starve, and during the process of actually starving. The comments on these body parts are therefore both a reflection and current with the way I understand my body now.
It is difficult to see here, but the legs were and are an area that is although somewhat barren here very finely detailed in my mind. I struggled to deal with this part of my map, as the legs are a point of obsession, pain, and shame for me. Comments like "thick" or "disgusting" knees, thick ankles, fat, cellulite, and too wide reflect both the general contempt I have my this area of my body (both then and now) and the very specific areas (i.e. knees, thighs, and ankles) that are a point of obsession for me. I admit that I am humiliated by the shape and size of my outline in this area, and found mapping it very painful. Interestingly, had I mapped my legs when I was recovering they like my arms would have likely been marked with describing words like "beautiful" "thin" "womanly"- because when I was recovering I was especially attached to my legs and arms, both of which were undeniably thin. I deeply feared watching them swell. In some ways they were the prize of my sickly empire.

Another over-view of the entire disease.



The face/mind: In looking back at my journals and blog from the period of conditioning to when I was the thinnest it became clear that the mind of Anorexia (or of the Anorexic) is consumed in ideals. Everything from your sensory organs (eyes, mouth, ears, skin) to your thoughts is consumed with the desire for and obsession with ideal beauty, thinness, and interestingly (for me) romantic and deluded ideas about the world in general. My mouth and tongue tasted only the desire to be thin, in control, and safe. Food became meaningless, beauty became nourishment to starve on. My ears heard only what I wanted to- and often echoed with observations about my body that others made. If someone said I looked great (as people often did when I first began to loose weight) or alternatively if someone made a comment I interpreted as critical their words rung in my head, blocking all else out. Also, my eyes ceased to function properly. I saw only in terms of ideals, and mirrors reflected only what I desired or what I was NOT (i.e. my thighs always looked heavy, my belly was never smooth enough, etc). And my thoughts- oh god- I was OBSESSED with thinness, perfection, and control. Most of the time I would spend thinking about wanting to be thin, how was I going to get thinner, and thinner, who was thinner than me, who I wanted to look like, who I did not want to look like, etc. I also spent a lot of time either chastizing myself for eating to much, not working out enough, or just not being thin enough or congratulating myself for being controlled with food (only breakfast and dinner today, and only 300 calories each), for working out (especially on days when I burnt over a 1,000 calories), and for other "good" or ideal behavoir. When those thoughts were not occupying the fore front of my mind, I fixating on numbers. How many calories, how many calories? Unlike many people who tend to underestimate how much they consume, I would intentionally ad calories on to my count to convince myself to eat less tomorrow, or stay longer at the gym (or often both). Thus, the mind of the disease I felt should represent the idealistic realm that it was. I wanted the mind to appear like a garden, with the central, thin female figures like gods or muses located in the center. I felt that presenting the mind of the disease as a garden appropriately captured on of the many paradoxes of the disease for me when I was ill, and now that I struggle to accept my current "healthy" weight: Anorexia is consumed with ideals, beauty, and the desire for security. Through starvation I tried to make my body a symbol of control, to embody what I understood to be perfection, and through that to achieve the sense of security and acceptance I was so hungry for. In the end, a cancer not flowers grew inside of me.
The heart: To put it simply pain lies at the heart of the disease- pain, ugliness, and the horrible truth that you want to starve away. For me, at the heart of it all, the truth was I was scared, I was hurt, and I felt both undeserving of and denied love and a sense of "fullness." The heart, is a sharp contrast to the mind and stomach of the disease, but all are intimately connected. The heart (the pain) feeds and sustains the ideals that consume and dellude the mind and body. The heart is the essence of the illness, the engine of the disease, the last, hardest thing to repair. If I were to map the heart at any point, be it in conditioning, wasting, or recovery it would look the same. Until you heal this broken, diseased region you are always Anorexic- this thing always lives in you.
The Breast Obsession: My disease is intimately connected to my gendered body. One might say that anorexia was for me conceived at puberty, in the swelling of my breasts, spreading of my hips, and developing fullness of my thighs. The breasts however became a particularly painful region of the body for me, and so an important- if a little odd- thing to map. When I hit puberty and all through adolescents and adulthood my breasts were larger than my female friends', and wildly out of proportion for my body. They earned my nicknames at home and at school that I found humiliating. I felt out of control of my body, which was developing wild animal shapes that the attention of others sexualized. I was ashamed of my body, but I often wore revealing tops that displayed the very things I was ashamed of. In this way I have always been an exhibitionist of my pain- I've always show cased it for others, even though many did not understand what I showed them. I think too I showed my chest that way because I felt that I was suppose to- my body had grown this way without my consent, and my friends, family, and culture suggested it was suppose to, and that these once innocent (or at least insignificant) parts of my body were sexual symbols. I supposes showing them off, like being thin, was an attempt at embodying an expectation, and a meaning imposed on my body as a woman. That said, I must add, that after I experienced wasting my breasts became an even more painful, and hideous area of my body. Suddenly, I had only the debri of what wasting had done to the flesh in my breasts; only empty, hanging skin, ugliness, shame. Even now, my breasts look to me like symbols of a war- monuments to the disease, if you will. Now they are too small, ugly, old-looking. The perkiness, the fullness, the strange sexuality they once had is destroyed utterly, and I'm left with the remains of the destruction. I veiled this area behind tranluscent paper because, despite my honesty here, this is an issue and an area of my body I am both ashamed of, and pained by.

The Stomach (below): The stomach is another strangely paradoxical area to visit. The largest organ on the map, the stomach is full of rich foods and a few hidden images of women enjoying food. The stomach is thus a symbol of my repressed and very rampant appetite (like the breast, the area is shrouded, or veiled). The stomach is also a symbol of my desire for fullness, that sense of security I felt deprived of, and later (during recovery) a positive relationship to food. When I was not obsessing about ideals, my mind was in my stomach, in the emptiness where I sat longing for food, thinking about food, hating other people who could eat without guilt or without thinking, and feeling ashamed and secretive about my own eating. I did not binge, I starved, and I starved out of pain- not out of a hatred or even a disinterest in food. In fact, my stomach, and my battle to control it (its size, shape, impulses, and desires) was a struggle to control my entire body, my life, my family, my world. In many ways, this is the very epicenter of the disease, the battle ground, the focus- and interestingly, perversly even, it is full of hunger, of thoughts of food, of a earnest desire to taste, to feel full, to feel safe, and happy.

Also mapped: The hands
I'm having technical difficulties with the images of these regions, but will post close up's as soon as possible. In the mean time I will explain that the right hand is covered in images of diet pills, each finger "tattooed" with phrases from the cult of pill-dieter's like "two capsules in them morning before breakfast" "ephendra" "caffeine" and "rapid weight loss." Diet pills became a major tool of the disease. I've used them for over 5 years to rapidly drop weight and to sustain impossible thinness. Diet pills not only enabled me to loose weight, they in many ways helped me to affect normalcy in my social and romantic relationships. I took the pills to enable me to eat around friends, family, and boyfriends who as I became thinner and thinner grew suspicious of my eating. In many ways, when I was outed as an anorexic and people began forcing and watching me eat diet pills allowed me to preform eating. I maintain this behavoir on and off today, however more to loose weight than to conceal starvation.

The left hand is full of images of woman before and after using diet pills. The images represent my connection to what is I think a cultural obsesssion with control over the body. I often looked at and regarded these images as inspiration- not necessarily because they suggested I too could drop 20lbs, but because they compelled me to be thinner than these women. I could do more, I could be thinner. Pills, starvation, and hours at the gym were the way.