Come at Me, Bro.

Photography by Marissa Carney, Pix by Riss

A guest post by Marissa Carney…

Two years ago at this time, I was nearing the end of an inpatient stay at Johns Hopkins hospital for my anorexia.

The onset of my eating disorder had only occurred about a year or so prior, so it was new, but I had spiraled very quickly. When I was admitted, I had no idea what to expect. I’d never been to treatment for anything.

The other women and I were a blend of ages and dispositions. As a people-pleaser, I just wanted to support everyone and for them to like me. For the most part, that was pretty easy. There were two women, though, who were…challenging for me: Paige, in particular (not her real name).

A few years younger than me, Paige suffered much longer with anorexia than I had. By the time I met her, it was her entire life, her whole identity. I found her to be obnoxious, ridiculous, narcissistic, superficial, and exhausting. I also didn’t think she actually wanted to recover.

There was so much about eating disorders that I didn’t understand at the time, so looking back, although I’m pretty sure I would still think her to be all of those things, at least now I have empathy for her and how deeply entrenched she was in her disorder.

Paige and I moved from inpatient care to the day program at the same time where she rapidly spiraled into dangerous mental and physical places. We were discharged altogether around the same time, as well, and kept in touch sporadically. She was very clearly engaging in behaviors while I was trying to maintain my recovery path. I felt bad, but I just didn’t have space for her negativity.

I should have tried harder with her.

I figured Paige would never really recover, that she would make a career out of treatment. I did not figure that she would be dead five months later from anorexia.

The news hit me like a throat punch.

The day after I found out, I was in my car, and one of my favorite songs came on the radio —“Something Just Like This” by the Chainsmokers and Coldplay. Unbidden, I thought of Paige and how she would never hear it again. She’d never hear her own favorite songs, or any song again.

I turned the volume up as loud as it would go, letting the lyrics, the melody, the bass line, the vibrations sink into me. Tears came to my eyes. So many thoughts collided in my mind, so many emotions beat against my ribs. My heart ached for all that this illness took from her and all that could have been for her. My heart ached for all that anorexia had taken from me and was continuing to take. I was learning just how absurdly, ridiculously, unfairly difficult it is to maintain recovery from an eating disorder. How easy it is to lose hope, to give up, to give in. How easily Paige’s death could be my own.

—

I have a few things from Paige: a navy blue dress she handed down to me, a flowered tote bag, some colored markers. I also have a piece of artwork I asked her to do for me. It’s a painting of another painting I loved that was on our floor of Johns Hopkins. On the back of the paper, she wrote “To Marissa, xoxo, Stay Strong <3”

I’m trying really hard to do that. Eating disorders are complicated medical and psychiatric illnesses with no easy fix. Anorexia has the highest mortality rate of any mental illness. A rogue wave is heading for land, and I’m standing on the shore wearing swimmies.

I make mistakes, and I make wrong choices. I listen to the eating disorder voice when it whispers and when it screams, ignoring my own that is so desperate to be heard. I try to do the next right thing, and sometimes I screw that up, too. I am interchangeably determined, ambivalent, hopeful, angry, lonely, triumphant, anxious, unworthy, eager, and grateful. I am exhausted and frustrated. I am ashamed, and I am so sad.

But still, there I stand on that shore, defiant. “Come at me, bro.”

Still, I show up every day. I do the therapy. I do the support groups, read the books, write in the journals. I do the self-talk, resist the magnetic pull of the gym. I “sit in the suck,” and I do what scares me the most, what I must do to survive - I eat the food.

And it’s because I want this life. This incredible, bitter, beautiful, heartbreaking, disappointing, exhilarating life, with its big joys and simple delights. I want “something just like this.”

When I listen to that song and Johnny Buckland kicks his guitar into gear at 3:16, my nerve endings catch fire, my ribcage opens and all of the universe’s light and energy and atoms and its love and wisdom, the past, the future, the stars and their dust mixes with all that I am, and anything feels possible, even recovery.

Paige deserved moments like those and the promise of being her whole, free self without ED. I’m learning to at least accept, if not believe, that I do, too.

Adjusting my swimmies, and in a steady voice that is my own, I say, “Come at me, bro.”

- Marissa

The painting Paige created for me. It's her interpretation of another painting at Johns Hopkins that I loved depicting an angel.