“In the meantime, I want Dina to limit her exercise and try not to throw up. Could you try, Dina?”
Eyes wide, she nodded.
“Dina, if you don’t mind, could you wait in the other room while I give your mom the referral information?” I needed to speak with her mother privately.
She left the room and her mother began to softly cry.
“I didn’t know. What kind of a mother doesn’t know?”
“She didn’t want you to know. She’s kept it hidden from everyone, including me. The important thing is to get her help immediately. I’ll call the treatment center to see if I can get Dina in right away. Until then, I’d appreciate it if you didn’t try and change Dina’s behavior. I know it’s hard, but I don’t want to scare her. Can you do that?”
“Yes. Whatever we need to get my baby better.”
Dina and her mother left my office as my next client arrived. At eight o’clock, I sat at my desk to process the day’s events.
I couldn’t help but beat myself up for missing all the signs of Dina’s bulimia. What kind of psychologist was I? If anyone understood what it was like to feel fat, it was me.
Dina had relied on her best friend Christine, who in turn betrayed her trust. Coupled with what she deemed as rejection by Robby, the boy she liked, she felt a loss of control. She possessed an inability to express her emotions as she obsessed over the event I presumed pushed her over the edge. Furthermore, she withdrew from social situations and didn’t appear to have any close friends. She blamed her body for it all, deciding being thin would bring her happiness.
After I left a message for my contact at the treatment facility, my mom walked into my office and sat on the couch. She waited for my explanation. I didn’t know where to start.
I told her when I returned from Israel, I had already decided to end my relationship with Caleb. He set the scene with the media and trapped me into accepting his marriage proposal.
I told her about falling in love with a man in Israel who professed to love me, too, except he never wanted to get married. I didn’t tell her it was Adam. It would be too awkward when he joined one of our family functions. She’d try to play matchmaker, and I couldn’t allow him to hurt me again.
Then I filled her in on Dina, without mentioning her by name. My mother showed great interest in my self-contempt over missing the signs of Dina’s eating disorder. I wanted to know why.
“Sara, sometimes it’s difficult to see in our client what we ignore in ourselves. You both have body issues. Weight is just a symptom of a disease.”
The little girl in me wanted to protest and slam the door to show my mom she was wrong. The woman in me felt shame and guilt because someone else had uncovered the secrets I assumed I kept well hidden. The psychologist in me agreed with my mom.
“Have you ever tried an OA meeting?”
“You mean Overeaters Anonymous? Aren’t the people there like four hundred pounds and anorexics and bulimics?” Familiar with the Twelve Step organization, I never met anyone who attended meetings. I couldn’t picture myself in a room filled with people talking about God.
“There are people of all shapes and sizes in OA. Yes, some of them may be obese or extremely thin, but you’ll find lots of men and women at a normal weight who still have an addiction to food.”
Did I have an addiction to food? I had kept my weight within ten or so pounds for the last couple of years, but in order to do it, I had to restrict my diet to cancel out the binges. Surely that placed me in the same position as most women in this country.
“I’m not sure I’d call myself an addict,” I protested. My mom rose from the couch and gave me a hug.
“Just go to one meeting. See what it’s like. If you don’t want to go back, you don’t have to.”
I hadn’t eaten since breakfast and my body craved the comfort of a batch of chocolate chip cookies fresh from the oven. How could I give up food, the one thing that makes me happy? Especially now that I had lost Adam?
Still, I had promised Adam to make changes in my life. Even though we’d never end up together, I owed it to myself to honor my promise.
“I’ll go. I’ll find a meeting from their website and go tomorrow.” I hugged my mom back and then remembered I had a cat waiting for me at home.
“Sara, I’m very proud of you. Never forget that,” my mom said as she kissed my cheek.
“Thanks, Mom.” I wiped a tear from my cheek. At least one person was proud of me. Now I just had to learn how to be proud of myself.
CHAPTER 31
JULY 13, 2012
DETROIT, MICHIGAN
WEIGHT: ?
STATUS: SINGLE