The Other Girls

My bed was in an incredibly large room with five other beds. We each had a curtain that we could pull around our beds for our own private space, although the nursing staff liked us to keep our curtains open for the most part. Each separate space was quite large in itself, and we were able to personalise our sections to make them our own. I had a love of classic movies and the movie stars who were in them; and because I collected photographic books and devoured biographies on my favourite actresses, I filled the wall in my section with the images of film stars like Grace Kelly, Marilyn Monroe, Ingrid Bergman, Bette Davis, Elizabeth Taylor, and Joan Fontaine. Although patients came and went, because it was a longer-stay unit, I grew to know the other girls with anorexia very well. While they were all at different stages of treatment, they had certain features in common that I did not have. I was considered the most acute case of anorexia nervosa as mine had occurred over a few months; whereas all of the other girls had been battling the illness for years – with most having previous and multiple in-patient episodes. The youngest girl was 13, and the oldest that I met during my stay – who had recently left but remained an outpatient while I was there – was 26.

All of those with anorexia had begun from the age of 10 onwards, with the peak years being in their teens. Another trait that the others had in common was that they looked thinner in the face than me, which I attributed to the fact that they’d had the illness for longer. Lastly, all of the other girls were admitted into hospital believing that they were ‘still fat’. Although I did not see the full extent of my thinness until after actually regaining a few kilograms, I knew that I was thin. So, while they had hidden their emaciated bodies under layers of clothes because they believed that were too fat, I had celebrated my own emaciation and had shown it off for the world to see. What I did have in common with the other girls – aside from age-group and other physical commonalities such as down on my arms (which the body develops to stay warm) – was a personality and character which was inclined to be: strong yet sensitive; full of pride, stubborn and perfectionistic; seeking control in life and yet felt out of control; containing an inner and deep unhappiness. We all had secrets too, which we would not even tell each other though we were emotionally very close. I had the sense that under all of our pretence though, we were all just scared little girls.