“I weighed 27 kilos for 1.59 m when, in May 1997, I returned from a 9-month stay in the United States where I joined a dance company, my passion. I was then 15 years old. My Meals consist of 7 apples a day. And when I have to swallow rich foods, I make myself vomit. So I can sit down like everyone else, while keeping control of the situation. This will last 20 years.
On my return, therefore, they said I was sick, but I had never felt such great well-being. The more my stomach is empty, the more I feel alive, moved by a colossal energy. Each dodged meal gives me a feeling of intense power due to the will not to have given in.
The obsession with perfection
The disease has become visible through my protruding bones, through my neck which has lengthened and my emaciated face, but, for me, anorexia – which I call “her” to detach myself from it – is like a cancer with metastases. When it is detected, it has often been at work for a long time. “She” was there before the United States, contrary to what those around me thought. Dancing is not in question either: this art has inspired me with a discipline, not a disease.
Before leaving, I was fine only on the surface. At school, I had excellent grades, because I forbade myself the right to fail. I was a teenager full of life and desires, but instead of being interested in boys like girls my age, I was obsessed with my body, which made me complex. Every day, I circled my right thigh with my hands and, if the two thumbs didn’t touch, I starved myself for two days. As I evolved in a golden daily life, no one suspected that I was crying every evening. I was emotionally deprived, bound by the conviction that I had to be perfect to be loved. I wasn’t looking to look like a supermodel, just not to get fat to become perfect and be loved one day. So I had to erase my flaws.
Anorexia is like a tumor embedded in the brain
I never wanted to die, I loved life, but my suffering was beyond me. Through my emaciated body, I screamed, “Love me again and again”, while I was grappling with a feeling of immense abandonment, because the disease generated rejection around me and I lost my friends. The most terrifying thing is that I let it happen.
Anorexia is like a tumor anchored in the brain, it directs everything, it influences thoughts, it guides cravings. When a tumor attacks the throat, it can prevent swallowing. Mine, similar to barbed wire, attacked my brain and also prevented me from swallowing, whereas I am a real epicurean. It’s a cliché to think that anorexics don’t like to eat. For psychiatrists, not eating meant refusing to heal, whereas for me it was surviving.
To eat was to die, not because of the calories, but because of the loss of control that it generated. The loss of control of my emotions, of my feelings, of everything that was stabbing my soul. The emptiness in my stomach made me feel secure. Not eating was my oxygen. I was in control of my pain. “She” was my survival and my suicide at the same time. Entwined in her barbed wire, “she” secured me with the power of her embrace and mutilated me by clinging to my skin. Also, seeing the number climb on the scale made me feel distressed.
We do not choose to lose weight, it is a symptom of the disease
The precious antidote is consideration. I suffered from the confusion made between my pain and me, because you don’t choose to lose weight, it’s a symptom of the disease. This consideration, I felt it thanks to Patrick Poivre d’Arvor, first by reading his book dedicated to his daughter Solenn, then by meeting him. Because I wrote to him and he called me. For 17 years now, his presence has been my antidote. He always made the difference between “her” and me, without ever judging me.
When we first met, “she” disappeared for two hours. I then knew that it was possible to live without “her”. Patrick saved me, because he not only took me under his wing, he taught me how to weave mine. He didn’t protect me “from her”, he taught me to protect myself “from her” on my own, whereas over the years, I no longer knew who I was. I was a French teacher for a time and I lived as a couple, but the illness remained. I wanted to get rid of her, but without “her” I lost my identity, because “she” had always been in my life. I was the prey of a fusional bond.
Writing my book freed me from this addiction. Am I cured today? I follow the dictatorship of disease: thinness, the obsession with control, the absence of emotions. I am no longer in survival, but in life. However, I remain skeptical. Like an alcoholic who can relapse, I have to nurture my identity so as not to leave him room in me. And to really accept myself, I still have to realize myself in my theater and writing projects, as an author and actress, and to build my life as a woman. And, above all, to forgive myself for not having been able to recover sooner.
To read :The Taste of Life – Anorexia is not a fight without hunger, Sabrina Missègue, ed. Faves.
Read also :
- Teen: she doesn’t eat like she used to
- Anorexia nervosa: the signs that should worry
