Battle Royale Pt. I (Memoir)
Where it all began.
Our story begins in Miami. Not at the time of my conception or birth, though both events took place in that special pocket of South Florida in the early 90s. A time laced with stories of its own.
This story’s starting point is 2011. I am nineteen years old and still somewhat jet lagged after the flight which delivered me to the 305 from Taipei, Taiwan. Though it’s springtime, I’m not lying in the sun or using my questionable fake-ID alongside my college-aged peers in South Beach. Instead, I am sitting in a plush rehab facility tucked away in a residential neighborhood that’s familiar, but far from home.
At this exact moment when we are meeting, I am boiling with rage as I sit face-to-face with a giant, flaky, golden croissant. There is some sort of soup and a salad involved as well - menu items that elicit a sense of anxiety, or helplessness on their own these days. For the moment, however, I am consumed by this new emotion: Red-hot rage. I simply cannot get past the audacity that I feel “they” have to serve me a croissant.
It’s a special circle of hell I find myself in today. I am not going through detox or sitting through the 12-step meetings most people think of when they hear, ‘rehab.’ I have not ingested a single substance that I need help coming off of… Maybe with the exception of the copious amounts of Splenda I use to flavor my black coffee. I think about the stash of yellow sweetener packets I have tucked away in my room right now. Not a soul knows and I fully intend to keep it that way.
No, the reason I find myself in this face-off with this breakfast pastry sitting in front of me has nothing to do with intoxication. In fact, I’m painfully sober at the moment and relatively sober for a freshman in college. I live with a paralyzing fear that smoking or even being near marijuana will result in me eating and never being able to stop. Though I have grown up in large part overseas and alcohol has been a de-stigmatized part of my life for a few years now, it’s barely been a part of my life these days. I am still haunted by the handful of calories I consumed one night last month throwing back straight vodka and sipping on my boyfriend’s beer. Ex-boyfriend? God, I have no idea where I stand on anything in life.
I don’t get fucked up the way most people choose to. My drug of choice is the sweet sensation of starvation, and I have to say, prior to the days preceding this particularly dramatic meal, I had been flying HIGH on caloric abstinence. That was before I crash landed in a residential treatment center for women with eating disorders. Total freaking buzzkill.
I’m an adult with my full rights. No court-order, no legal guardianship. I checked myself in, mostly aware of what I was getting myself into. Given the recent epiphany that contrary to my behaviors, I do not have a true desire to die from the medical complications of starvation, professional help seemed like my only alternative. Granted, at the time I thought professional help MIGHT mean a few hours of therapeutic and nutritional support per week. Perhaps a support group and a stern talking-to from my primary care physician. Imagine my shock when every single service I called claimed they would see me at nothing less than a residential level of care. AKA full, room and board rehab with 24-hour supervision. I thought, I can’t be that sick, right?
Wrong. Now, sitting at the table with the staff on duty and the nine other patients who have some variety of what I am dealing with, I finally understand what it means to want to crawl out of one’s own skin.
That golden, flaky, mound of dough and I sit locked in a stare-down for what feels like an eternity. Eventually, one of the recovery coaches (essentially mental health workers who are assigned 12-hour all-purpose shifts and have the patience of saints) prompts me to “give it a try.” Easy enough, right? The issue is that the girl they’re talking to is not Jacquie.
I, true-self, real Jacquie, happen to love croissants! I’m pretty sure I was still meant to be eating baby food when I discovered the magic of delicately peeling back the infinite layers of pastry and dipping them in jam. Preferably of the raspberry variety. The shell of Jacquie who is sitting at the table on this April afternoon, however, is terrified of feeling grease on her fingertips. Or flour for that matter. Which makes the experience of even touching pizza and pita bread (forget about eating it) feel like nails on a chalkboard; but that’s an incident of exposure therapy for another day.
The Jacquie at this table has strict rules not only about how many calories pass her lips, but also about what form those calories come from. A lump of baked flour and butter? Zero chance.
The whole debacle I find myself in did not start off in this way. I think back only about a year and a half prior when my clothes were feeling a little snug. I had simply wanted to lose a few pounds to give myself some breathing room. I started eating all the same things, just slightly less. Then I started paying more attention to healthy vs. unhealthy foods. Which very quickly became good vs. bad foods, then safe vs. unsafe. But I had been prioritizing my health! The right thing to do. Wasn’t that good, given that I was going to college and had to buffer against the Freshman 15 soon? Right?
Still sitting frozen in front of the croissant I am transported further back in time. Watching myself outside of myself. An image of me reading the fat content of all the pantry items when I was twelve years old flashes in my mind’s eye. Another one where I am lying in bed at nine years old pretending I am giving myself a tummy tuck. Maybe it didn’t start off so simply after all.
Either way, at this current point in time there are no more “safe foods.” The very process of ingesting energy is the enemy. What I deem to be “willpower” is my most powerful weapon. Though I have been fighting the brave fight against consumption day-in and day-out, there is a tiny little voice in me (the real me) who knows that something has gone seriously wrong. This was the part of me speaking up when I decided that I did, in fact, want to live. The little voice that raised suspicion a few months earlier when I stopped eating apples. My most comfortable comfort food. One morning soon after, despite my parents’ encouragement and my sincerest efforts, I was unable to swallow half of a single Cheerio. The quiet voice made enough noise that day for me to get my ass in gear.
In what now feels like a blur, my momentary panic had propelled me to go through the steps necessary to secure a medical leave of absence from the University of Illinois. After a panicked call from my mother who was half-way around the world, Abu, my fiercely loving grandmother who was always in my corner, flew up to Urbana-Champaign Illinois from Miami the same day to help me pack up my dorm. Despite the hours I slaved in the gym at that time, she was stronger than me. With my recent fainting episode and daily chest pain, I welcomed the tremendous amount of help she provided along with the grand personality she packs tightly into her 5-foot stature.
With this momentum, I used the little bit of energy I had left to get on a plane to Taiwan where my parents and two younger brothers were living on an international assignment for my father’s job. Taipei had been my home for my last three years of high school, and one of the many homes I had growing up as a third-culture-kid. There were no rehabs in Taiwan, but rehab wasn’t a part of the game plan at that point. “Stay alive,” was the main priority and getting out of the environment I was using to strangle myself felt like a good first step. Though being home meant scrutiny, my father’s endless attempts to feed me, and my mother’s tears, the little voice that was chiming in at seemingly random intervals told me it was my best bet. I would figure it out when I got there.