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August 5, 2007

How To Save A Life

My favorite Big Cat Rescue video is the one of the tigers, Trucha, Bella, Modnic and TJ, being rescued from a backyard breeder who went out of business, on the very day when they had been scheduled to be put to death. They go to Big Cat Rescue and get to live in a beautiful cat-a-tat with a pool. Nice. The background music is "How to Save A Life" by the Frey.

It was the song I had in my head when I wrote my entry called "I Lost a Friend." That's a line from the song.

Today, Emi wrote about her friend Tracy .

Yikes, she is brave. Have I mentioned that I just adore this girl?

Well, she's inspired me to write about the friends who saved my life, albeit unintentionally.

I went to a performing arts high school, Interlochen Arts Academy. It was a haven for the gifted, the genius kids, the crazy, the abuse survivors (if you could call us survivors at that age... some of us didn't survive in the end) and the just plain messed up.

Dancers were graded down on their report cards if they gained weight. I remember this girl who had 4 percent body fat. She was the queen of the dancers. She was skinnier than MR. She didn't get that way by using DWIDP to monitor her nutrition.

It was the low fat eighties, and we used to eat bagels cause they had no fat. Marya Hornbacher was with us then... she gave me her old jeans when she was too skinny to wear them anymore. Marya was so brilliant, so much fun, so witty. Such a good writer.

My best friend from those days turned out to be seriously anorexic. She went through hospitalizations that were like prison camps. Her now husband, the father of her daughter, was there. He stood by her through the worst, and now he will be rewarded with a lifetime of having her as his wife. I was a bridesmaid in their wedding, and I cried through the whole darned thing cause I was just so grateful to have her alive and healthy and happy. I cried more at her wedding than I cried on her graduation day when I just couldn't process the fact that she'd be leaving and I'd be alone at Interlochen for a year without her... she was a year older than I (still is, to be exact) and so she graduated a year before me.

The next year, I signed up for the "Big Sibling" program, where you get a new student as your little sister or brother, and you mentor him or her. My little sister, let's call her Kay, was a freshman from Illinois.

Even at fourteen, she was so beautiful. Bright flaming red hair, extremely tall, so skinny. Dancer, actress. Model. I immediately loved her. I took the task of taking care of her very seriously.

She had survived many things. More things than anyone should live through, especially more than a child of fourteen should have seen.

She was anorexic, and she threw up. Both intentionally and because like a lot of folks who haven't eaten in awhile, she just couldn't keep food down. I used to hold her hair while she threw up. Her beautiful red long hair. I used to hold her hair back so it wouldn't get dirty when she couldn't stop throwing up.

I loved her so much, like she was my own sister. The sister I never had. I realized, there in the bathroom of my high school dorm room, that the disease that was torturing her was evil, wrong, deadly. I could see that she deserved love and nutrition and food and to live. And in realizing that she deserved that, I could see that I deserved the same.

I had flirted with anorexia like all the girls at my school did, but never gone far down that path. Holding on to little Kay, I knew that I had to save myself. I had to, there was no choice. Just like thirty some years ago, my mother realized that she had to be healthy to take care of me.

Kay saved my life. Seeing her be sick, and feeling powerless to help her, scared me so much that I never went down that path. I had some crazy days, and heaven knows that I have used up some of my nine lives. But anorexia never got the chance to eat me alive the way it ate so many of my good friends.

There are so many friends I couldn't help. So many. Even my best friend from earlier, who decided after I started CR that she couldn't see me. I will see her again soon, I think. I hope she can accept me as I am now: happy, healthy, but yes, calorie-restricted. I hope so.

So many girls from Interlochen didn't make it. It's better now... an amazing woman took over the dance department and reformed the evil ways. The theatre teacher who nearly killed us all was replaced by a wonderful man who stood by me through some of my worst moments, so many years ago. Things are better now.

But Marya, and so many others, were so harmed in the process.

That's how I know so many anorexics. Oh, and I went to an Ivy League school, which is a breeding ground for anorexia, though not nearly as bad I hear as the women's colleges.

Rebecca Traister would love this... my freshman year in college I read Susan Faludi's Backlash and firmly turned away from anorexia for all time.

I am one of the lucky ones. But don't think that I don't take anorexia seriously. I know what it does to people because I lost a friend. And many of my friends lost years of their lives.

I think that's why I'm so outraged by people who know absolutely nothing comparing CR to anorexia.

When I read Marya's book, I cried for days. I felt guilty that I had survived, while others did not. Why couldn't I help them?

Because I was a child, and people dealing with anorexia need the help of trained professionals with years of experience in fighting this evil disease. It didn't make any sense to blame myself... there was nothing I could have done. For all of us who survived, we have to realize that those who did not would not want us to live with guilt and fear forever. The best monument we can built to their too short lives is to live well ourselves. We owe that to them. We have to take care of ourselves. We can't bring them back, but we can save ourselves. When we build healthy lives for ourselves, we are putting beautiful flowers on the graves of those who didn't make it. That's what they would have wanted. I know they're cheering for us... somewhere up there.

When I was at Interlochen, my political conciousness cemented itself. I remember sitting in my freshman year dorm room listening to Sting's "We Work the Black Seam." I stared out the window into the snow covered landscape and thought, "I will do something with my life that will do something, anything, to address this horrible inequality in the world." I didn't know what a union was, but the union organizer I was to become was definitely born in those days. Kay and I used to walk around campus imagining our grown up lives.

I have the life I dreamed of. Every time I watch nurses win a voice on the job, I remember that little girl walking around the snow covered Interlochen campus, listening to Sting on an ancient tape on my walkman, dreaming about being a grown up freedom fighter.

We matter more than pounds and pence
Your economic theory makes no sense.

I am so very blessed. And so very grateful.

I couldn't help a lot of my friends when I was a child, but I can help my nurses now. Sometimes I think this job is going to kill me, but when I remember walking around that high school campus just wishing I could do something, anything, to change the world a little bit, I know it's worth the sacrifice.

When I imagine the nurses who saved the life of the person I love most in the world years ago when he could have died in a car accident, I know I'm doing the right thing.

Last night I was talking to a PACU (that's recovery room, in nurse talk) nurse from Scranton, who I will admit is one of my favorites (yes, I have favorites! I know, I am going to hell.) I thought about how after my mom had her surgery and had lost way too much blood, the PACU nurses took care of her and made sure she made it through.

And the nurse who took care of me in Vermont. Jessica. I'll never forget her.

I go back to work tomorrow after a week off, and it's going to be stressful. But I'm looking foward to it. I can't go very long without my best friends, and they're all my co-workers. I tried to leave my job once, and I was a miserable failure at leaving. Organizing is my life, my love, my passion and the most annoying thing on earth. Nothing could make me more miserable or happier.

Also from "We Work the Black Seam": (concert version)

This way of life is part of me
There is no price so holy
Let me be.

It's been a long hard road, and it continues to be long and difficult. Don't be fooled by the happy recipe talk: I fight every day to be happy and healthy, and not to fall into the depression and anxiety that consumed many of my family members and friends. But I fight and win. I make myself meditate, work out, eat right, reach out for help when I need it. I am so blessed to be loved by some of the most amazing people I can imagine, who've been with me through horrors untold. It is not always easy, but we've come this far by faith, love and kale. As Billy Joel says in my favorite Billy Joel song of all time, "She's Right On Time,"

Still I will choose to live in the complicated world that we've shared for so long
Good or bad, right or wrong.

Post script: to anyone out there who thinks you might be suffering with an eating disorder, please seek help! There's good help out there, and no one should have to suffer alone. Everyone I know who got better did so because they found help. Please find someone who can work with you to get better.

Posted by april at August 5, 2007 5:28 PM

Comments

Posted by: Marti at August 6, 2007 10:36 AM

Posted by: sam i am at August 7, 2007 11:39 AM

Posted by: Marti at August 8, 2007 8:03 AM

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