This is the first part of the first chapter of the book i am writing, same as the one from the previous posting. i have more written, but it still needs to be gone over and edited. so, there is more to come. By the way, the book is going to be called Desert.
Are they stupid or something? I thought to myself. I had lived at the Center for Change for three straight months, (plus another five the year before) and still they continued to give me fruit. Everyone knew I hated fruit. My siblings didn’t think much of it, not being fruit people themselves. My parents rolled their eyes; they were used to my picky eating. Viktor, my ex boyfriend, had called me crazy. “It’s like healthy candy!!” he’d say, trying to get me to try a bite of his strawberry yogurt. My own dietician had watched me cry when she tried to force me to eat a bowl of peaches and cottage cheese. In light of this fact, when they had handed me a bag of food to eat on the drive down to Monticello I had expected some sort of consideration to be put into it. But no, there it all sat: an apple, a cup of raspberry yogurt, a bagel with strawberry cream cheese, a bottle of orange juice, a bag of chips, and a tuna salad sandwich which, after taking a bite and almost choking, I discovered had sliced grapes in it. Grapes? In a sandwich? Who DOES that? I mean, SERIOUSLY?
It wasn’t that I was allergic to fruit, or had had some sort of traumatic experience with it as a child. I just didn’t like it; I never had, and it was as simple as that. I opened the bag of chips and turned to look over at my dad. He was sitting behind the wheel, looking out across the road at the mountains in the distance. When he noticed me watching him he turned to me and smiled.
“You’re going to love it out there, Sarah,” he said. I picked at my nails.
“I mean, I’ve done campouts before when your brother was in Scouts, but nothing like this.”
I stuck my pinky finger in my mouth and nibbled at the corner. I had removed my acrylics last night, biting each one off savagely until I had a small pile of plastic chips in my lap and blood seeping out of pink, inflamed cuticles. If I was going to be roughing it, I was determined to at least look the part. I wouldn’t be caught dead as “The Ditzy New Girl With Fake Nails” in a group of well-worn-in campers.
“I can imagine being out there for a few days, but six weeks? That’s a long time. I don’t think I could do it. But you’ll love it, Sarah.”
I shrugged and inserted a chip into my mouth, letting it dissolve slightly before starting to chew. I hadn’t showered the past three days either, but that wasn’t so much about fitting in as plain old apathy. I didn’t have anyone to impress.
“Your mother and I are so proud of you,” he continued. I looked over, confused.
“Wilderness Quest has a very high standard for the students they let in. If you’re not healthy enough, they won’t admit you. They don’t want to have any lawsuits put on them- you know, with kids getting injured or having medical issues out in the middle of the desert with no hospital for miles. We’re so proud that you had the health to qualify. A year ago you would never have made it.”
Yeah, and a year ago I was skinny. You forgot to mention that.
“Thanks, pop. I’m going to try and sleep now, okay?”
“Okay honey.”
I leaned against the car window and closed my eyes. It wasn’t that I was fat or anything, at least not in the eyes of the people who saw me. I just wanted to be thin, dangerously thin, model thin, sick thin, wow-she-looks-like-if-you-touch-her-she’ll-break thin. I wanted my body to look like it was constructed with tinker toys, or even better, spaghetti strands. One long noodle for each leg, one for each arm, one for the torso and a wagon wheel for the head--- with angel hair pasta, not the thick kind. I had gotten pretty close last year but was institutionalized and made to gain the weight back.
By now I knew how unhealthy it was to crave emaciation, be willing to die, sacrifice everything just for the perfect body. I knew how ridiculous and sad I was for wanting what I wanted, and I truly desired to change my distorted thinking. But that was impossible and completely inconceivable to me. I couldn’t turn a switch in my brain and all of a sudden be content with my body at a healthy weight. How could someone- anyone- just alter their reality at will? I wasn’t magic, and asking me to change my thinking patterns was expecting the impossible, something I could NOT do. I couldn’t even bring myself to try anymore; I’d tried so hard for so long and yet I was right back where I started. I couldn’t go home and live with myself if I looked this way. That left two options: either go home and get skinny again, or don’t go home at all. My parents chose the latter.
The countryside whizzed by, changing gradually as we drove further and further south. The polished shops and brick buildings thinned out, replaced by horse pastures, sheer red-rock cliffs, sandy turf dusted in sage brush, and the occasional gas station. I watched as we left it all behind: the telephone wires and lampposts, the sidewalks scattered with people talking on cell phones, the flashing lights and moving billboards. The only things in front of us now were a mountain range and a long strip of highway. No more showers for me, I thought. No more toilet, no more running water, no more microwave, no more bed, no more light switch, no more television
The wilderness program was actually my idea, if you’ll believe it. I knew I wasn’t going home (Janna had informed me of this last week) and I was glad. Home scared the shit out of me. I knew I would relapse if I went back, and despite my desire to do so, I knew that if I continued the lifestyle I’d had three months ago it would be only a matter of days until I killed myself- whether intentionally or accidentally I couldn’t say. But it would happen. Death loomed ahead of me, lounging casually on my bed at home, waiting patiently for me to come back and be claimed.
I had informed Janna of this fact many times in an effort to stay longer at the Center for Change. “I can’t recover, I can’t do it,” I’d say, tears running down my face, my eyes looking plaintively into hers. “Yes you can, Sarah,” she’d say. “You aren’t letting yourself try. When you make ultimatums like ‘I can’t’ you are setting yourself up to fail.” “But it’s TRUE!!” I’d say, and burst out sobbing.
My parents gave me a choice. I could go to another treatment center specialized in eating disorders, or I could go to one that treated all types of problems- drugs, alcohol, whatever. I’d tell them what I wanted in my next place and they’d do their best to accommodate me, but I wasn’t staying at the Center for Change and I wasn’t going home.
I had suggested a wilderness program because my old roommate had been sent to one and I’d heard good things about her experience with it. Lindsay had been kicked out of CFC for freaking out and destroying the family room, and her parents had sent her to some sort of outdoor rehab thing. I hadn’t seen her since, but word had it that she’d had a complete turn around and was now committed to recovery. At the time I hadn’t known what a wilderness program was; when it was described to me (a program where kids get put out in the middle of nowhere and have to survive with hardly anything) I was intrigued, and the vision of it had stuck with me ever since.
I pictured trees, a huge forest that went on and on forever. I pictured myself walking through the woods with a backpack, approaching a small lake and peeling off my shoes and socks to wade through it. I pictured the frogs and fish swimming around, me catching a fish with my bare hands, me starting a fire with flint and rock, cooking the fish on a stick and eating it. I pictured a bear coming up to me when I was asleep, going through my food and then leaving, me telling everyone else about it the next day.
Part of my vision came from an episode of Law & Order I’d seen last month. Part of it was taken from descriptions of another girl at the Center’s experience in an outdoor survival program. It was also loosely based on the book A Walk in the Woods about a man and his friend who walk the Appalachian Trail together. Most of it was my imagination fabricating scenes for my own entertainment. No matter where I got my information from, I was fairly certain of what to expect.
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