the uncle

(continued from post 8/6/11 "the cries for help")

I don't remember much of the rest of that day other than getting extremely upset after every meal. I managed to throw away my salad dressing and a few other extra things, but I was still angry about the amount of food I had to eat. I explained to any BHA who would listen that my stomach literally felt like it was going to explode and there was no way it could physically hold that much food. I just kept saying it wasn't fair as I fought back the tears. 23 years old and I was crying at the dinner table because I had to finish what was on my plate.

Come dinner time the BHAs kept telling me to talk about it with the dietitian tomorrow. I felt like Princess Jasmine (minus the "perfect" body) in the movie Aladdin when the soldiers arrest Aladdin in the street and Jasmine, who's posed as a commoner, unveils her disguise and says "UN-HAND HIM! By order of the princess!" Everyone, including Abu, Aladdin's faithful monkey, is shocked that she's the princess and that she actually has a say in the matter regarding Aladdin's arrest. The soldiers kneel and apologize but the head soldier responds "I would, princess, except my orders come from Jafar, you'll have to take it up with him." The camera flashes to Jasmine and there she stands with her arms crossed and anger in her eyes as she says in a deep and disgruntled voice, "believe me, I will!"

As the BHAs told me to discuss it with the dietitian tomorrow I sat at the end of the table and replayed that scene with myself. I crossed my arms and with anger and disgust in my voice replied "believe me, I will!" I was trying to act like a bad ass, but at the same time trying not to laugh because I realized in my attempt to appear like a bad ass I was actually just re-enacting a scene from Aladdin, of all movies. Oh, if some people only knew what went on in my head... I might have stayed in treatment a bit longer.

Aside from the emotions in regards to my meals and exercise, the only other thing I remember from the second day is meeting with my psychiatrist. I don't even remember meeting with my therapist that day but a journal entry tells me I did and that I actually liked her. More on that to come.

My psychiatrist was a short, somewhat heavy set woman with just the slightest bit of curly hair on her chin. She appeared to be from the Middle East but seeing as geography was the last thing I cared about at that point I wouldn't be able to tell you from what part, but I would guess probably somewhere in the middle. She asked me so many questions though I sometimes felt as if she wasn't actually listening, but instead shaking her head and saying "ummhmm" right on cue. I told her about my anxiety and what I called "sort of depression." As a Christian I wasn't comfortable calling it depression because my understanding was that if you had Jesus then you shouldn't be depressed. But when I thought about the possibility of me not being a Christian anymore I started to feel more comfortable claiming the depression.

Once again, not being a Christian started to feel more freeing than it did lonely or scary. After all, not being a Christian was making me feel more honest than I had ever felt in my whole life. I didn't know it was okay to say "I am a Christian, and I have a problem," I always thought it had to be one or the other. I have since then realized that this is not so. Today my hope does not lay in the problems going away, my hope lays in the fact that I have Someone to carry me through them.

By the end of our session my psychiatrist, Dr. Lynn, had prescribed me to Prozac for depression, Buspar for anxiety, and Trazodone for sleeping. Before entering treatment I had previously been on medication for A.D.D., but since I had a history of abusing it in college she thought we might wait to see how I would do on the other medications before pumping my bloodstream with more... how kind. "Besides," she said, "prescribing Adderall to someone with an eating disorder is quite risky because it suppresses your appetite." Damn. I think she knew that was why I wanted it.

Though I did like the fact that Adderall suppressed my appetite, I also found that it helped me focus incredibly... I'm sure most college students would agree. I missed having that focus in life, even if it was chemically enhanced. Maybe my body needed the medication she prescribed me because it wasn't wired like everyone esles, but at the same time putting all those chemicals in my body without thinking I was abusing them was hard for me to accept. I trusted Dr. Lynn knew what she was doing simply because she was a doctor and I wasn't. I knew I didn't want to be on medication forever, but I also knew that I wanted to feel something other than nothing.

When I was actually experiencing emotion it was either anger or anxiety and I just couldn't do it anymore. The sleeping pill was optional and she told me I could take it as I felt I needed it, so I decided that I didn't need it, though I didn't tell her that. Like with my psychiatrist, when I first entered treatment I didn't say much of anything to anybody unless I had to. I mostly just listened and judged without saying a word. I kept thinking I wasn't as bad off as the other girls which I mis-led myself to believe that meant I didn't have a problem. People knew me as quiet and sad, but with spurts of "tamed anger" like my Princess Jasmine re-enactment at dinner. Only I knew that the anger deep down was so much more fierce than that of a Disney Princess, it seemed foolish to even relate it.

I remember before going to bed that night calling my aunt and uncle. Part of the reason my family decided on Illinois as the place for me to go to treatment was because my aunt and uncle, my dad's brother, lived 45 minutes from the facility. Seeing as there were not many options in South Carolina for treatment facilities, plus the fact that I just wanted to get away, my parents still wanted me to have family close by if I went off some where. If it had been solely up to me to pick a treatment facility I would have picked a spot nestled on the coast of California... give me the beaches and the warm weather any day. The idea of going somewhere as cold as Illinois was not appealing to me at all, but thankfully there was a greater plan than my own at work. Having my aunt and uncle close by helped me get through so much of my time in treatment. Girls often had visitors come to see them and I definitely underestimated how refreshing it was (and still is) to see a familiar face in a foreign land. I barely knew my aunt and uncle before moving to Illinois, mainly because of the physical distance between us, but during my time in treatment they became like a mother and father to me.

And now I introduce a most important character in this story...

Uncle Buddy. He is a man who has my heart unlike any other; not more so than my own father, and obviously in a much different way than a man I have fallen in love with, but Uncle Buddy's tough love brought warmth to my heart during a time when it was bitterly cold. Even if others were trying to say the exact same thing to me that he was, I never actually heard what they were saying until it came out of Uncle Buddy's mouth. He might still not know this, but those first few months of treatment seemed as if he were a translator, giving value to the words that other people tried to speak into my life. He's not quite what you would expect from the hard exterior, but the interior, which he would never admit to, is mostly warm mush. I think you might have to know Uncle Buddy a little bit better to truly understand what I mean. Allow me to try to paint a picture...

Picture Paul Teutul Sr. of Orange County Choppers (and if you don't know who I'm talking about click here), subtract some of the grey hair, take a little less off the mustache, but not much, add a thick southern accent (even after having lived in Chicago for twenty plus years), and combine the cooking abilities of Paula Dean, the decorating techniques of Martha Stewart, and the cigar smoking bad ass presence of X-Men's Wolverine, and there you have my Uncle Buddy. Some of it doesn't make sense, right? How can Martha Stewart and Wolverine be in the same category? I know, and you wouldn't understand it unless you met my Uncle Buddy. A true rebel at heart, with the physique to match, this man is not someone you want to mess with. That said, his capacity to love is overwhelming and his genuine smile makes Disneyland look boring.

Uncle Buddy and my Aunt Amy are the ones who suited me up in the flaming orange Harley Davidson jacket (see previous posts) . I'm not actually sure Uncle Buddy owns an article of clothing that doesn't say Harley Davidson. Not only does Uncle Buddy ride a Harley Davidson, he named his dog Harley David. If I were to play a word association game and the words "Harley Davidson" came up, I would say "Uncle Buddy."

So this macho man won my heart and my trust quite early on. His wife, Amy, loved me as if I were her own daughter, and the two of them welcomed me into their lives, not as a project to be fixed, but as a person to be loved.

My first month in treatment they called me every night before bed. One of my favorite memories of Uncle Buddy during this time involved one of his nightly phone calls.

Every night after snack we had our final group of the day to sort of do a check in before bed. After group we were allowed to have phone time for a short while which was always when Uncle Buddy or Amy would call. I don't remember the details, but I remember we were held in group longer than normal and we ended up losing phone time because of it. Uncle Buddy called and was told I was still in group. When he called again he was told group time went over and phone time was up, meaning he would have to call again tomorrow. As of the girls that night were upset that they didn't get to make or receive their phone calls. A few of them threw fits, and as I got more comfortable with my surroundings I cared less about what the staff thought of me and started to throw fits too. "My therapist told me I need to use my voice," I yelled, "so I am voicing that I need to use the phone! It is not my fault that group time went over, and it is not fair that I can't use it!" My favorite phrase when arguing in treatment was always to start my argument with "MY THERAPIST SAYS..."

I didn't win that argument, nor did anyone else. Extra BHAs were called in to calm girls down and take them to their rooms. After sleeping pills were distributed the night ended calmly, but I knew there was going to be someone who was going to be really upset, and I knew that if anybody could win that argument it would be him...

Uncle Buddy.

It was only going to be a few days later that I was going to see uncle Buddy come to my defense and make the director of the program think twice before ever cutting into phone time again.

(to be continued...)