A two-headed monster
22
Autumn 2001, I begin my medical training at National College of Naturopathic Medicine (NCNM). I yearn for a different path but with no clear direction, medicine is my default. During the first week, I sit in the back of Intro to Human Physiology and draw pencil sketches of classmates, not because I’m an illustrator, but because I’m trying to be someone else. I’m pretending to be one of the cool, free-spirited artists at Portland’s Last Thursday art events. I want to drop out, return to my summer gig at North Shore Productions and learn how to edit or join their film crew. I listen to classmates during lunch and judge their conversations about herbs, nutrition, and yoga. I castigate my own preoccupations. My wellness-dominated neuroses are content at NCNM. But am I?
A week later, a little under a month into my graduate training, two commercial airlines fly into the World Trade Center. I use the sudden national uncertainty to dive into my own. I drop out.
Aside from a twice-monthly volunteering commitment at the Dougy Center, I am lost and need structure. Through a connection at a local gym, I become a receptionist at a post-production film company, Downstream. I don’t experience the industry craft first-hand but I enjoy the clients and casual conversations at reception. We don’t talk about self-improvement! No one knows what a gluten-free diet is! Most of the projects at the company are commercial. Animation spots for Nickelodian. Infomercials for vacuum cleaners and freight services. There are no Academy Nominated films or even inspiring independent shorts. All the same, I envy the creators . The script to final-cut collaboration reminds me of the long, but loved, discipline of ballet — choreography, training, rehearsing, final performance. The directors sometimes mock their projects, “Another Saturday morning ad for kids jacked on Cocoa Krispies.” But a meaningless sense of purpose that smells nothing of herbal remedies and incense is enlivening.
Occasionally, during quiet evenings at home I play with iMovie on my laptop. I make insanely stupid videos of my friend’s dog, walks in the park, derivative observations from a bus stop bench. I enroll in a few classes at the NW Film Center. I take a writing course at The Attic. But my new endeavors disorient. I feel like a fraud, acting a part. Soon the theatrical production will end and I’ll be shooed back to naturopathic school.
After a growing number of scary medical emergencies, I also develop an omnipresent fear of my body. Some specialists refer to this as “Medical PTSD.” I am a walking, ticking, time bomb. Blinding menstrual cramps that leave me face-planted on the floor or blacked-out on airline passengers’ laps, violent and sudden sicknesses, constant GI upset and thyroid storms litter my consciousness. Food hyper-vigilance balloons into body hyper-vigilance. I constantly scan for sensations that may signify impending danger. Once an unsafe world, the walls close in—now my body feels unsafe.
Determined to get to the root of my health problems, I visit a highly-recommended physician in Arizona where mom now resides with a former Wooster College alum. A few times a year I visit and spend days at the doc’s clinic hooked up to acetaminophen and mercery detox IV’s. My drip-comrades looks like zombies and with time, I become one too. The doc determines (through a highly suspicious “machine”) that I’m allergic to almost every food/chemical/molecule on god’s green earth, and prescribes homeopathic vials for each of the offenders to be administered—7 drops of every vial (upwards of 30 total)—3 times a day.
This level of hyper-vigilance isn’t sustainable. I spiral into a black-hole of obsessive, compulsive thinking: Will this oil paint trigger my thyroid? But I want to paint! Will this dank classroom make my brain foggy? But I want to learn! Does this soy sauce have gluten? But I want to go out with friends! Did I get parasites overseas? But I love traveling! If I drink this glass of wine will I feel terrible tomorrow? But I want to have fun! Why isn’t my brain working today? Who cares!
I become a two-headed monster, and my shoulder-mates do not get along. Kim 1 wants to celebrate chaos, play, vulnerability, and uncertainty. Kim 2 needs control to survive. Their uproar is deafening.
Once month, around the raging chaos of hormones, I begin purging—confusing emptiness with peace.
I check out books from the library and try to understand the behavior. But it’s 2002. Purging Disorder doesn’t become an official diagnosis until 2005 and to this day is still not listed as an official disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5). Everything I read points to bulimia and anorexia but I don’t relate. I don’t binge and I’m not trying to influence my body shape or weight.
Blaming eating disorders on body image issues feels one-dimensional. Women have complex, powerfully emotional lives and we carry centuries of generational trauma in our bodies. Our DNA is not foreign to invasion, perpetration, and silencing. The world is uncertain and through a perfect storm of circumstances, I now distrust my body’s ability to handle it. When I purge, I’m saying no to the world when my body can’t.
I don’t purge to be thin, I purge to be quiet. I purge to be still. I purge to be safe. I purge to be at peace.
I feel violent helplessness in the act and then soft connection afterwards. Looking in the mirror, eyes bloodshot and watering, I dialog with this undone version of myself. Who am I? What do I want? Below the questioning, I am just seconds, a-fraction-of-a-second, away from the answer. I feel reckless but honest. Out-of-control but vibrating with newness and possibility.
I feel violent helplessness in the act and then soft connection afterwards. Looking in the mirror, eyes bloodshot and watering, I dialog with this undone version of myself. Who am I? What do I want? Below the questioning, I am just seconds, a-fraction-of-a-second, away from the answer. I feel reckless but honest. Out-of-control but vibrating with newness and possibility. I hear you Kim! I hear you at last!
When emptied, I feel like me—innocent, intact, untouched by anything or anyone else’s influence. No one telling me how to act, what to believe, how to heal, and most of all, who to be.
For a spell, control and chaos co-exist and the two-headed monster becomes one.
Philosopher and activist Bayo Akomolafe says, “Every time we meet a monster we cross a threshold. We ‘enter into’ a liminal zone, and we are never the same from then on. We never walk away intact. And yet we keep invoking them. It seems we need monsters to break us down, to beat us into a pulp, to disturb the fixity of our shapes, and to challenge our notion of continuity.”
But the safety is only temporary. A sinking feeling always returns. A complete and total loss of control. And grief. So much grief.
I experiment with purging for two years. Sometimes once every few months. Other times, every week. Then, the impulse disappears through an act of will at first, then lack of desire.
But the two-headed monster is always near, subdued by distraction or afire with strife. My body submits, longing to someday be their altar of unification.
Extremely vulnerable writing in today’s submission! Yay to you for allowing yourself to face your personal demons so powerfully and sensitively. If we all faced the chaos in our souls, the world, I imagine, would be a more peaceful & resolved place.
Kimberly,
I have been circling around in wait for words to come. To you the writer, I wish to say, “Bravo!” You pulled me in whole-bodied to the anguish and confusion that watered out of your red eyes after purging. I felt the desperation of wanting to be carefree inside a body that refused. At every turn of phrase, I was there inside the complexity of feelings. To you the person, I wish to stand up and applaud you your courage--then and now, and to thank you. I’m immensely struck by the connection you draw between purging and being empty--as if to wretch to the bottom is the only way to get inside the feeling of such emptiness, the absence that cannot be touched or known any other way. I will never forget this insight. I bow to you. There is so much more I could write, but this seems enough for now.