I am a size 6. What the actual f**k? I know I am now a size 6 as I bought a new pair of jodhpurs thinking, well, I own two horses, so I might as well look the part. The size 8 hung from my frame like a flag, so a 6 it is. I’ve wanted to be thin since I was 11. My mum staggered, limping, to feed me toast and marmalade in bed before I got up for my riding lesson* one Saturday morning and a sister (three girls shared a room) asked whether I knew how many calories were in marmalade, telling me if I ate it I would get fat. A switch clicked in my brain, and I never looked at food in the same way again.
A couple of years ago I had a comprehensive, £120,000** health check-up in Zurich. The doctors were shocked I had never had a smear test or mammogram (I told them it wasn’t fear that stopped me getting checked – it was that I don’t care enough about myself) and found my depression is linked very clearly to a lack of good nutrition. When I returned home, I duly took the prescribed supplements, most notably B12 and calcium, and ordered recipe boxes from Riverford. I enjoyed awaiting the arrival of the boxes, the teeny pots of ingredients, the instructions.
Last July I met and fell in love with a handsome man, but was dumped by New Year’s Eve, which means that for the past six months I have eaten very little. I felt I had been found wanting and needed to be thinner. He gave me nothing on my birthday, but what he did gift me was a very bad throat infection (don’t ask). It meant I went weeks without eating, triggering me to believe, well, I can survive on nothing.
For me, being thin isn’t about looking attractive. I feel I’m not worth the bother of chopping garlic, steaming rice and laying the table. I suffer from OCD, triggered by the same sister who told me I’d get fat. She would fly into a rage if
I put the fork used for the dog in the sink. When we lived together in Brixton in the early 80s, she was by now a nurse, working nights. I’d panic she’d get home and see the grate not swept, laid neatly for the next night. One morning I hurriedly swept the grate, placing the coals on newspaper. They were still hot, and melted the carpet. Her meltdown is still seared on my brain. So not eating is also simply a way to avoid mess. There’s a sense of superiority, too, when I see people munching as they walk to their car at a service station or paying for a weight-loss drug. Have you not heard of willpower?
David 1.0 replied to my email reminding him of our meal at L’Arpège, the plant-based Michelin-starred restaurant in Paris. I doubt I even nibbled on a breadstick. Ignoring the happy memory, he wrote: ‘You broke my heart and treated me appallingly. Remember your rage when I smoked in your bathroom? Put chocolate in the chilli?’ I agree. OCD anorexics are impossible to live with. We suck joy from any occasion. The reason I still mourn the fact the German was a serial cheater is that I loved him enough to change, to attempt normality and have a go at happiness. I allowed him to smoke and wear shoes indoors. I used a trolley in Sainsbury’s instead of a passive-aggressive basket.
I say all of the above in my second session with Bianca, my therapist. ‘I want to give you a hug,’ she says. ‘You have been very abused. Life has taught you not to trust. Unfortunately, you are like a magnet, attracting people who are bad for you, who will let you down. All the evidence of your life so far has locked you in a cage. The minute you love yourself, everything will change.’
I have homework. I must think about my macro intentions. What do I want from life? What do I want to achieve? Bianca asks me to relate all the therapies I have tried. I tell her hypnotherapy was the one that seemed to work – when I returned from a session, Nic told me it was the first time she had seen me smile in years. So that’s what we’re going to try…
*Before anyone writes in, saying that my family wasn’t hard-up – I paid for the lessons by washing up in a pub
**Also before anyone writes in, Zurich was work. Do you think travel writers or food critics pay their own bills?
Jones moans… What Liz loathes this week
- People renovating houses on Instagram pulling up carpet to reveal mosaics and marble. All I got was concrete covered in paint splodges.
- Why are dogs always sick over the gap in the floorboards?
- Wheelie bins: too deep and too cumbersome to clean – designed by men?
- Ironing.
