featherlight ✅

hospitalization

"Angels, angels please keep on fighting
Angels don't give up on me today
Cause the demons; they are there
They just keep fighting
Cause inner demons just won't go away"

Here is the daily timetable of Katherine Greene:

7:00 Wake up to yet another day. 

7:15 Ask my mother to help me into a wheelchair and wheel me to the bathroom. Walking is not allowed: my body needs to store its calories. 

7:30 Breakfast comes around, strictly adhering to my meal plan. Two slices of bread, cheese and ham with a small bowl of fruit and chocolate milk. Swallow it down because they're watching. 

11:30 Weigh-in session, peeing before and wearing only my underwear so I can't fill my body up with water and stuff coins in my pockets to make myself heavier. I face away from the screen so I don't know how much I weigh. It's kind of like being locked in a windowless room with no clock. You feel disorientated. It could be midnight or high noon; I could weigh nothing or a million pounds. 

12:15 Lunch: two sandwiches made of white bread and filled with tuna and egg mayo; accompanied by a glass of sickly sweet orange juice. 

2:00 Therapy session with Dr Linda, lasting around an hour and a half. 

That's where I am now, in a room with a large window letting in the sunlight. It's been so long since I've been out that I almost think I would crumble to dust if I ever soaked in the sun's rays again. Fragile, broken, sick- that's what I am. Not a teenager but a malady; a problem to be solved. Saline drip in my arm, wrapped in a hospital gown. 

Dr Linda talks gives me sheet of paper and tells me to draw a pie chart of what I think my self worth is based upon. I take up the pencil, trying not to look at the IV tube lying across my skin, and think. 

I draw a circle. 

appearance (eating) - 50 %

what my family and friends think - 15 %

what other people think - 15% 

academics - 10 % 

other stuff- 10 % 

Dr Linda looks at it. "Okay," she says, "now draw another pie chart. Of what you want it to look like. You don't need the percentages this time if you don't want to add them."

This time, the appearance section is smaller. 

I look at my finished two pie charts. Dr Linda draws an arrow from the first one to the second one. 

I remember asking her the first time I met her whether it would be hard. Recovery.

"It's never going to be easy," she'd said, still smiling reassuringly. "But compared to other people who've been struggling with an eating disorder for years and years, you have a better chance of recovery. That's not saying it'll be easier; it just will be more possible."

My mom and dad were there for the first session. She talked to them separately while I filled out a questionnaire, like one of those diagnosis tests that I once found online. How true is this statement: I desire to have a completely flat stomach?  Very true. How many times in the past month have you exercised with the sole motive being to burn calories?  Every day.  

The next day, Dr Linda told me that my results clinically diagnosed me with anorexia nervosa. 

My mom was almost crying that first session when I came back when I was wheeled back into the room after having completed the questionnaire. My dad was quiet, but I could tell he was upset as well- probably more so than I'd ever seen him before. I'd passed the paper silently to my therapist and had looked at my flimsy white hospital slippers. It had already been several days since I'd been admitted to the hospital. I'd clenched my hands into fists, or as far as they would go with the tubes stuck in them. 

I am a crap daughter, I'd concluded. My family was so whole and complete and functional, and here I was like a screwed-up bomb that had exploded and ruined innocence. And I'd thought: look at that tear crawling down my mother's cheek as Dr Linda explains that she's understands what a hard past few days it's been for us. Look at that crease on your dad's forehead, worry folding itself into his skin. You've caused that, Katherine Greene. 

Now, I glance at the clock on the wall. Almost three thirty. Time to go. 

"See you tomorrow, Kat," Dr Linda says with a warm smile. Always kind.

And see, that's the thing. I'd gotten so used to telling myself that I had every right to starve myself because nobody knew how I was feeling, nobody ever understood (apart from Ashton, perhaps, but don't think about him) but Dr Linda really gets me. And that's what makes it so hard. I can't brush her off, saying well, it's not like she understands what's going on. Because she does. And that makes me feel as though I'll have to get better. 

Which seems impossible. 

I know what comes next in my day. It's always the same. 

3:00- 4:30 Visiting time; Ava asks to come every day after school but I haven't let her. Only three or four times a week. "You can see me all the time when I'm better," I told her. "You have homework to do, haven't you?" 

To tell the truth, I don't want her to see me like this. With shaking hands and tears every meal. Unable to even walk herself to the bathroom, not allowed to shave without supervision in case I use the razor to cut open my skin. 

Yesterday, Polly visited. The card she sent me was almost unbearably kind, the sort of kindness that makes you feel guilty without really knowing why. But Ashton didn't leave a message, didn't even sign his name- 

6:30 Dinner. Chicken with gravy and boiled vegetables, accompanied by a white bread roll and a small fruit cup. Some kind of jelly or custard as well; the kind you get in plastic cups. A bottle of Fortijuce follows soon after, the cardboard flavor barely disguised underneath the apple and orange. 

I always sleep at eight o'clock. Or try to. 

My mom glances up from the book she's reading and smiles as the nurse wheels me into the room and helps me get back into my bed, tucking the covers neatly under me. My mother's smile is more tired now, though, fatigue hanging off the corners of her lips. She looks like she hasn't rested properly in weeks. 

It's my fault. 

"Have a nap, Mom," I say quietly. "You look like you need it."

"Only if you have one too, sweetie." Perhaps she doesn't know what I'll do if she takes her eyes off me. Start doing sit-ups like a madman, perhaps. Go into a fully fledged breakdown. Run to the bathroom so I can stick my fingers down my throat. Anything to make myself feel better. 

My mom comes closer and puts her hand on my forehead, almost as if I've got a fever. Which is funny because I'm usually cold. "We all love you, Kat," she says. 

I bite my lip to keep the tears from coming. I know they love me, and I know how much it's hurting them to see me like this. "I know," I mumble. "I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize," she answers quickly. "None of this is your fault."

Then whose fault is it, huh?  "Just sleep, Mom. You look really tired." I try to snuggle into the blankets and smile. "See, I'm going to have a nap too."

My mom goes back to the dark blue recliner several feet away from my bed; it's what she spends almost all of her waking hours in. It can't be comfortable. I close my eyes, but peek out from underneath my eyelids. She falls asleep almost immediately.

I try to stay awake, but I'm tired. 

So, so tired.