December 3, 2024 • 32 mins
For Maryam, anorexia was a way to disappear. But outside the institutions meant to cure eating disorders, she learns to resist the binary of recovery or death.
This episode was produced by Maryam Gunja and Phoebe Unter.
And informed by…
Studying Hunger Journals by Bernadette Mayer
Hungry Bengal: War, Famine and the End of Empire by Janam Mukherjee
Saving our own lives: a liberatory practice of harm reduction by Shira Hassan
Unbearable Weight: Feminism, Western Culture, and the Body by Susan Bordo
We need to reject the false narratives around anorexia by Katy Waldman
Strangers Among Us by Rachel Aviv
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Hey, it's okay. Basket Case gets into some heavy topics
about mental health, and this episode contains detailed depictions of
disordered eating. Please take care while listening.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Do we need a content warning because we're undercutting the
predominant experience of eating disorders and neoliberal bullshit? I don't
want to patronize anyone, like, do I really need to
say out loud? I'm not ragging on recovery as a concept.
I'm only speaking to my personal lived experience with a
(00:34):
chronic gating disorder. And while I'm critical of treatment blind spots,
this isn't an outright dismissal of recovery more broadly. Or
do we need something more basic like the listeners should
take this as a content warning for discussion of trauma,
(00:57):
self harm, blima and orexia, audi image talk, dysmorphia.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
This is basket Case. I'm NKA. For as long as
I've known Miriam, she's had an eating disorder. She's anorexic.
I didn't always know that it wasn't immediately obvious, at
least not to me, And I didn't always know that
anorexia is a mental illness. This episode is a portrait
of that illness. For Miriam, restriction as a coping mechanism,
(01:44):
a way to keep something else some deeper pain or
darker feeling at Bay. Miriam is a poet, and as
a poet, she has a rich interior life, a true
talent for auto theorizing, and a tendency to resist convenient narratives.
She produced this episode with Phoebe, another friend of mine.
(02:05):
Phoebe and Miriam live on either side of the US,
and they weaved this story together over video chats and
through voice memos and also bedroom interview sessions on one
coast or the other. So what you're about to hear
the world you're about to enter is theirs is a
collage of different moments constructed from layers of time. It's
an archive of deepening intimacy. Miriam's story begins with the
(02:29):
ritual of restriction, fasting during rams on the Islamic Holy Days.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
The first queer community I ever had was on the Internet,
and it's interesting that folks happened to be like a
group of the Limic agnostic Muslims. I think there's something
about sharing those attributes that was enough, or that felt
(03:00):
like the closest I could ever feel to anyone the
new user name that I'd light up for on aim Messenger.
It was like a mashup of some radiohead song and
(03:23):
self mutilation in nuendo. She was also gamifying the month
of arms on right fastating longer than what was required.
We'd like puke our food together in the mornings, like ritualistically,
so we had like dream collaborative binges. We'd fantasize about
(03:45):
our dream meal like colors or texture is liquid form?
I want it frozen, I want it melted. And she'd
add to her like faux table assortment, mostly like high
salt content and butters and jams and crackers, really elaborate
baked goods, Nabisco soft baked cookies, chicken flavored ramen, bread
(04:10):
with syrup, waffled with syrup, anything with syrup. I saw
deprivations like the easy path to validation, especially whenever Ramzaon
came around. The culmination of the month of Fasting is
(04:31):
the celebration of ead and ed is about the rewards
of and obedient fasts. It all hinges around varying stories
of human turned archangels coming and granting wishes. But more immediately,
(04:57):
I'd get envelopes of cash from estranged that would dote
on me for not missing a day of fasting. And
every day when the sun would go down, there'd be
this really elaborate spread of rose water infused desserts and
these imported dates and fresh fruit and giant cadberry chocolate bars,
(05:23):
and I'd immediately smuggle some food with me, hiding my
room with a fan and like a cake scented candle,
just trying to fill up on the vapors to stave
off a binge. That was the way that I would
break my fast on the regular. There is something about sickness,
(05:47):
like deprivation and sickness in your body going to waste
that confuses others perceptions of you. Like the color of
my skin was always fluctuating, right, It was like a
way to disappear, and it was a way to like
change the contours of my body. I mean, especially when
you're that young, like it can be pretty dramatic. My
(06:10):
body was like always in like a state of emergency,
so it would often like you know, faint during choir
practice or whatnot. And I think that that heightened state
felt like it protected me. It was a pretty straightforward
coping tool from you know, like years of internalized racism.
(06:32):
I think I was under the helm of two poisonous
feedback loops, like one in school where I was bullied
about my nose, my jawline, my eyebrows, my hairy body,
and then at home and with like family friends cultural
(06:54):
norms like aunties, having a problem with my waistline or
complimenting my skin when I am you know, most pasty.
I was diagnosed with anxiety disorder and depression when I
(07:17):
was a teen and then promptly put on a high
dose of lexapra, which caused me to blow up in size,
and I like quickly retreated and lost thirty pounds and
at that point was like dangerously underweight, was a minor,
(07:40):
and so was forced into an impatient program that was
like bent on weight restoration. So I was like put
on a tiared meal plan where you have supervision during
all meals. You have a nutritionist, a psychiatrist, and a
therapist while working together crafting like a day to day
(08:06):
plan and lots of exposure therapy things like stepping on
a scale every day, stepping on a scale with food,
seeing certain foods in front of you, and forecasting foods
that you'll eat in a week or so, lots of
lots of really scary stuff that like still haunts me.
(08:33):
When you take a room full of people who have
very different eating disordered behaviors and you ask them to
sit around and make small talk and eat as we
imagine people to eat, it's like a pretty crude science experiment.
(08:54):
You know. I would binge for hours and maybe puke
it up and then need to like recover from that.
The thought of like eating a concerted meal like is absurd,
and it's absurd proposition for many reasons. During meal time,
(09:16):
my roommate was being like violently force fed by a
frustrated nurse, and my friend rattled out this like incredible
hiss with her teeth clamped in protest, and it like
shook the whole floor. We haven't talked about you who
(09:47):
you are.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Right, I'm Phoebe. I'm helping you make this. We're making
this together. I'm your friend, and I wanted to make
this with you because eating is also something I think
about a lot. Like around the time we were becoming friends,
(10:10):
my sister developed in eating disorder, and I was kind
of thrust into the reality that I really knew so
little about it, Like after school special levels of knowledge.
And I mean also when I was in high school,
I had a period where I was restrictive about food
and like secretly worked out a lot in my room.
(10:33):
And I think at that time it felt like it
was about wanting to be desirable. But it also feels
so interconnected with family. Even my mom stuff with food,
like growing up how that shaped her. She's one of
seven kids and didn't grow up with a lot of money,
so there was kind of like a scarcity around food
(10:55):
that shaped her and then trickled into how she raised us. Oh,
I guess I just feel like there's a lot to
talk about here.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah. I think the most common moralizing that biological parents
do when it's revealed that you have eating disorder, or
in the case of South Asian culture, just on a
regular basis the refrain that you should be grateful for
(11:27):
having the privilege to eat food. Lots of people don't
have food security. In my case, it was like finish
all your donnas, which means like all of your rice grains,
don't leave one donna on the plate. Just the sense
of like personal responsibility and guilt that is weighed on
you for not being able to like finish the food
(11:52):
that is shoveled at you. That speaks to like greater
generational trauma in history.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
We'll be right back after a short.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Break right now. Safe foods for me are verifiable foods.
(12:41):
Calories are way more important to me than nutrition or ingredients.
I do like to know how something was prepared. I'm
terrified of sauces, of dressings, of submersion of any sort.
If I need to stave off a fainting spell, I'll
grab a protein heavy snack like eggs or not or
(13:06):
clean meat. Those foods aren't safe. They play out as concessions.
But I'm making to be more connected or present in
the world. Feels like an easier justification than if I were.
I don't know satisfying hunger, which I routinely downplay as
(13:28):
like frivolous. It's also not just the food content. It's
like the proportions and the cutlery, like I deliberately use
shallow cups instead of bowls, forks instead of spoons. Every
choice feels like a forcing function to eat less. When
(13:49):
I'm a mist a heavy restriction cycle and my stomach shrinks,
it takes very little before false say shitty kicks in.
I'm constantly making these grand bargains with myself. You know,
I'll let myself exercise for four hours and start today
(14:14):
so that tomorrow I can go out with a friend
and eat a meal in public. I'm constantly like repairing
and preparing to be out in the world and calibrating
my energy and capacity. Everyone has like a very ritualized
(14:37):
practice of eating, and I would say for me personally,
as an anorexic, physiologically, my body is conditioned to figure
every meal as it's last. So I'm definitely stuck in
this torturous like binge starve cycle and prepare for that.
(15:00):
I have food dashed and like really strategic places like
protein bars and persipers and extra salted ruffles under the bed, sedatives, laxatives,
mouthwash strips, and books. It's like a very ritualized, precious routine.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
But I'm curious why, like now you want to talk
about this like with me and also like on the
internet for anyone to hear.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's rare to hear daily
accounts of the disease of like the real time drudgery
and pain and like boredom of it, unless it's tacked
onto some like four looking recovery story. I know what
(16:03):
my options are, and I am not willing now to
sacrifice my fairly high functioning routine and like the comforts
that come with it, for the greater uncertainty of a
more formal recovery situation. I mean, that might change, but
(16:26):
that's where.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
I am now.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Over the course of making this piece together, I learned
that Miriam had been admitted in both hospital and outpatient
care for her anorexia at various points in her twenties
and thirties. The one size fits all medical treatment she
encountered in these programs pushed weight restoration in a short
window of time and often led to relapse. In these
(16:52):
recovery programs, Mariam would sometimes make friends, but when she
would eventually drop out, she was excommunicated. Who were still
working toward recovery weren't allowed to talk to her. These
institutional support models often use fear mongering tactics to churn
out a fully recovered subject or escalate the patient to hospitalization.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I felt like my options were recovery or reinforcing my illness.
Those feel like the poles.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Those still feel like the poles. But she wants to
pursue another kind of support, not a path through recovery,
but a way to stay alive outside the institution, a
way that involves people like me, friends that share understanding
despite not having the lived experience of a chronic eating disorder.
(17:44):
There's this one time that I remember I was meeting
you for dinner with some friends, and I was running late,
as I often do, and I remember you texting me
and being like, I can't finish my food. I don't
want to eat this. I'm scared of this food or
I forget exactly what you said, but something like that,
and also like when you get here, can you can
(18:06):
you like finish my food? And I mean, honestly, my
first response was that I was like, oh, you're asking
me to do something for you, and I think I
just liked that you trusted me. And then like almost immediately,
I also was like, wait, this feels kind of weird
because like what if I didn't want to eat your food?
(18:31):
Like like then I also was like, oh, now I'm
like a little implicated or something.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
But you know, you have to remember that it's like
a choice that I'm consciously making and that I'm like
an agent, right but I guess.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
That time, and it's come up other times, this concern
I have that by engaging in your eating disorder, that
I'm somehow like enabling it or contributing to this harmful thing,
which sometimes I talk myself down from because this is
part of you and it's not necessarily something that needs
(19:05):
to be eradicated from you. But then there are consequences
sometimes of the starvation that do scare me and that
do affect you and sometimes call into question my rationale,
like when there's fainting or like seizures. When things like
(19:29):
that happen, I worry about how to navigate this. And
also the stakes are high because I'm like, I want
to like love you best as I can and how
you want to be loved, and like I don't want
to make you feel isolated. This has been like a
thing that has been like an inner conflict for you know,
(19:51):
as long as I've known you.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Mm hmm, I think that's really fair. Like I'm sarcastically
shrugging off the the consequences that do play out in
shared space with loved ones, so like that affects you
and that affects everyone, so I completely understand it. Actually
(20:16):
being much harder of like a judgment call on your end,
because it's like health and survival, and you know, if
I'm literally like unconscious, like you know, sometimes I ride
on the edge.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, I feel like we've kind of landed in a
sort of harm reduction place where I know some of
your preferences around like seizures and what you need in
those moments, and yes, like you're an agent, and yes
these are choices you're making, but also like you're making
these choices to cope.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
With other things.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
And it's also like an illness and an addiction. So
it does feel complicated in terms of like how much
to follow your lead. And sometimes the harm reduction stuff
feels satisfactory, and sometimes it feels like it's like a
band aid for a gaping wound. You know, it's really
helpful to hear like.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
The negotiations you have to make, and I've seen you
make them, and they're really hard, and they're also like
you know, they sometimes like ruin the night, like.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
And like kill the vibe.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, I don't mean to be little the danger of
the mental illness that has like the highest mortality rate.
I'm not interested in doing that. But I also don't
think it's like my responsibility to like carry that weight.
But also like you can set boundaries, you know, and
(21:47):
I would want you to feel like you could do that,
Like you don't have to treat me like the sick one,
where like everything I say is like right because I'm sick,
So I don't want to go too far that way.
I think it's more that we trust each other.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
After a short break, we'll be back.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I'm like really nostalgic for when pro Anna moderators owned
the internet.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Pro Anna was a corner of the early two thousands
microblogging internet. It lived on live journal, MySpace, Zanga, Tumblr,
and was an online subculture for people with eating disorders.
To Miriam, it was a medium for connecting with others
who had a similar relationship with food.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
There was a tumbler that was about food, just filling
up the frame, and there was something about that, like
seeing those images in quick succession, which was so fucking
eurotic to me.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
A lot of it was art.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
You know, like someone drawing their dream meal or there
was this one pro Ana tumbler. There were no pictures
of bodies. It was all just like a playground for
different color profiles. And they're basically like talking about alternative
(23:32):
modes to satiate yourself. People would also post their diary entries,
their fixes, their strategies, their diets, recipes, so like lots
of support, every other post would be about feelings and
navigating depression and anxiety. It's nice to know that it's
(23:56):
out there and someone else is suffering. Like that's what
I think. Feel sure, I like pick up tips here
and there, but the end of the day, like I'm
picking my method of self destruction that day, like in
response to lots of trauma, and I think, if anything,
I just feel a little less fucking alone in it,
(24:17):
you know.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Pro Anna content also became known as thinspo. It did
include close up photos of protruding hip bones and clavicles,
detailed accounts of deprivation, and advice for staving off hunger.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
What I came across was more like a desperation to
connect rather than just like a stream of thin like coquettish, deadened, pale,
wretching women.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
But pro anna content developed a reputation for glorifying starvation
and promoting disordered eating. So the more personal and vulnerable
forums of the early two thousands were heavily censored and buried.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Suddenly all of these communities were just shut down and
there was really aggressive quality control, but it meant for
saying like a pro recovery narrative. The loss of pro
and content was Like, it's pretty devastating to me because
(25:28):
the whole point is that, like there aren't actually institutional resources,
there aren't enough to go around for some reason. The
highest sakes question is how do we share these stories
without them being triggering or enabling instead of like, how
(25:48):
do we create support for those who share this lived reality.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Let's say you did recover. I mean, I know, even
if you recover, like institutionally, it doesn't mean that all
of this goes away, But like if it did all
go away, I'm curious what you would miss.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Some things that I like, actually really like about myself.
I think I owe to my eating disorder in some ways,
like the charisma I have when I'm worn down, the
way that I play with language, my obsession with painsaking details,
my curiosity. I mean, I think like.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
All of those.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Things have been enhanced by this, like vigilant attention to detail.
There's an obsessiveness that I think is actually it's a
skill set, Like I think I liked hadn't found a
(26:57):
way to use.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
My brain in a way.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
That I was like really engaging like intellectually or bodily
or whatever it may be.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Yeah, I think at some point you'd warned me, like
I'm not going to get better, And I do feel
like i've kind of i have accepted that you're not
going to recover. But I've also like seen changes in
the way that you eat. Like I think I've seen
(27:31):
you go through like different relationships where like based on
your different levels of comfort sharing, I've just noticed like
I was in Brooklyn once and we like went, I
got pizza, like a bunch of people you had a
dinner party when you lived in La Like that was
not a thing that we did.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Fucking love pizza.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
When you're like I'm not going to get better, I'm
not going to recover, it like prepared me for maybe
like nothing's going to change and it's always going to
be how it is right now. But I guess what
I'm trying to say is it's not linear progress, but
things do kind of shift.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, it changes all the time. I've never felt like
more open to foods, but that's like today and last week,
and you know, I think that like some friends that
I've met recently would be surprised to hear me say that,
and like might actually think that I'm pretty restrictive, but
like I'm measuring against my long reputation with food, you know,
(28:37):
and it just I find hope in that it changes
all the time, and that the hope that I feel
is that like I can change so much while still
being sick, you know, and like I'm just I'm not
interested in not being characterized that way. There's a feeling
(29:04):
that I remain another day to finally see you on
the Internet, to talk trash and share dreams of food
on long tables, soft greens and milk spittle, pineapple cutlets,
newly painted cabinets hang open for crumbs and trace lactose.
(29:26):
Where I kneel before my computer and punch my face cavity.
I don't see carbs. I only see God. I've learned
in my age TV is not something to overcome. My
second coffee makes me think of heaven because the astrological
establishment won't have me, So I lick my palm on
(29:49):
my death wish breakfast. Every unsealed condiment has caught up
with me and the stately heart attack I beat Most days,
New York gave out two hundred and sixty animatronic pets
to cure loneliness in the elderly instead of money to
cure everything. It's my fondest wish to have been a
(30:12):
product tester or a four to eight year old. It's
a hidden talent of mine to gauge suffering. The cat
I fed every day as a child wasn't mine, but
had human eyes.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
This episode was produced by Miriam Gunja and Phoebe Under
and edited by me Phoebe. Sound designed this episode with
music and soundscapes by Kasha Levine. The poem at the
end is Hot Moron by Miriam Gunja.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Thank you to Ari Mahia, Kamala, Pula Gondola, Phoenix Ocean,
Sharon Mashihi and mar Laser for listening and helping shape
this piece over many years. And thank you to Daniel
Has for the tech support.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Faska Case is a production of molten Heart and iHeart Podcasts.
The series is hosted, produced, and sound designed by me ENK.
Nicole Kelly. I co created the show with Jasmine J. T. Green,
who is also our executive producer. Production assistants by Siona
Petros and Ammani Leonard. Adrian Lillly is our mixed engineer.
Our theme is blue and orange by Command Jasmine. Our
(31:37):
show art was created by Sinay Rolson. Fact checking by
Serena Soln. Legal services provided by Rowan, Maren and File.
Our executive producer from My Heart podcast is Lindsay Hoffmann. Wow,
Person's gonna want me as President?
Speaker 2 (31:58):
And Anxiety
Hey, it's okay. Basket Case gets into some heavy topics
about mental health, and this episode contains detailed depictions of
disordered eating. Please take care while listening.
Speaker 2 (00:11):
Do we need a content warning because we're undercutting the
predominant experience of eating disorders and neoliberal bullshit? I don't
want to patronize anyone, like, do I really need to
say out loud? I'm not ragging on recovery as a concept.
I'm only speaking to my personal lived experience with a
(00:34):
chronic gating disorder. And while I'm critical of treatment blind spots,
this isn't an outright dismissal of recovery more broadly. Or
do we need something more basic like the listeners should
take this as a content warning for discussion of trauma,
(00:57):
self harm, blima and orexia, audi image talk, dysmorphia.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
This is basket Case. I'm NKA. For as long as
I've known Miriam, she's had an eating disorder. She's anorexic.
I didn't always know that it wasn't immediately obvious, at
least not to me, And I didn't always know that
anorexia is a mental illness. This episode is a portrait
of that illness. For Miriam, restriction as a coping mechanism,
(01:44):
a way to keep something else some deeper pain or
darker feeling at Bay. Miriam is a poet, and as
a poet, she has a rich interior life, a true
talent for auto theorizing, and a tendency to resist convenient narratives.
She produced this episode with Phoebe, another friend of mine.
(02:05):
Phoebe and Miriam live on either side of the US,
and they weaved this story together over video chats and
through voice memos and also bedroom interview sessions on one
coast or the other. So what you're about to hear
the world you're about to enter is theirs is a
collage of different moments constructed from layers of time. It's
an archive of deepening intimacy. Miriam's story begins with the
(02:29):
ritual of restriction, fasting during rams on the Islamic Holy Days.
Speaker 2 (02:36):
The first queer community I ever had was on the Internet,
and it's interesting that folks happened to be like a
group of the Limic agnostic Muslims. I think there's something
about sharing those attributes that was enough, or that felt
(03:00):
like the closest I could ever feel to anyone the
new user name that I'd light up for on aim Messenger.
It was like a mashup of some radiohead song and
(03:23):
self mutilation in nuendo. She was also gamifying the month
of arms on right fastating longer than what was required.
We'd like puke our food together in the mornings, like ritualistically,
so we had like dream collaborative binges. We'd fantasize about
(03:45):
our dream meal like colors or texture is liquid form?
I want it frozen, I want it melted. And she'd
add to her like faux table assortment, mostly like high
salt content and butters and jams and crackers, really elaborate
baked goods, Nabisco soft baked cookies, chicken flavored ramen, bread
(04:10):
with syrup, waffled with syrup, anything with syrup. I saw
deprivations like the easy path to validation, especially whenever Ramzaon
came around. The culmination of the month of Fasting is
(04:31):
the celebration of ead and ed is about the rewards
of and obedient fasts. It all hinges around varying stories
of human turned archangels coming and granting wishes. But more immediately,
(04:57):
I'd get envelopes of cash from estranged that would dote
on me for not missing a day of fasting. And
every day when the sun would go down, there'd be
this really elaborate spread of rose water infused desserts and
these imported dates and fresh fruit and giant cadberry chocolate bars,
(05:23):
and I'd immediately smuggle some food with me, hiding my
room with a fan and like a cake scented candle,
just trying to fill up on the vapors to stave
off a binge. That was the way that I would
break my fast on the regular. There is something about sickness,
(05:47):
like deprivation and sickness in your body going to waste
that confuses others perceptions of you. Like the color of
my skin was always fluctuating, right, It was like a
way to disappear, and it was a way to like
change the contours of my body. I mean, especially when
you're that young, like it can be pretty dramatic. My
(06:10):
body was like always in like a state of emergency,
so it would often like you know, faint during choir
practice or whatnot. And I think that that heightened state
felt like it protected me. It was a pretty straightforward
coping tool from you know, like years of internalized racism.
(06:32):
I think I was under the helm of two poisonous
feedback loops, like one in school where I was bullied
about my nose, my jawline, my eyebrows, my hairy body,
and then at home and with like family friends cultural
(06:54):
norms like aunties, having a problem with my waistline or
complimenting my skin when I am you know, most pasty.
I was diagnosed with anxiety disorder and depression when I
(07:17):
was a teen and then promptly put on a high
dose of lexapra, which caused me to blow up in size,
and I like quickly retreated and lost thirty pounds and
at that point was like dangerously underweight, was a minor,
(07:40):
and so was forced into an impatient program that was
like bent on weight restoration. So I was like put
on a tiared meal plan where you have supervision during
all meals. You have a nutritionist, a psychiatrist, and a
therapist while working together crafting like a day to day
(08:06):
plan and lots of exposure therapy things like stepping on
a scale every day, stepping on a scale with food,
seeing certain foods in front of you, and forecasting foods
that you'll eat in a week or so, lots of
lots of really scary stuff that like still haunts me.
(08:33):
When you take a room full of people who have
very different eating disordered behaviors and you ask them to
sit around and make small talk and eat as we
imagine people to eat, it's like a pretty crude science experiment.
(08:54):
You know. I would binge for hours and maybe puke
it up and then need to like recover from that.
The thought of like eating a concerted meal like is absurd,
and it's absurd proposition for many reasons. During meal time,
(09:16):
my roommate was being like violently force fed by a
frustrated nurse, and my friend rattled out this like incredible
hiss with her teeth clamped in protest, and it like
shook the whole floor. We haven't talked about you who
(09:47):
you are.
Speaker 3 (09:48):
Right, I'm Phoebe. I'm helping you make this. We're making
this together. I'm your friend, and I wanted to make
this with you because eating is also something I think
about a lot. Like around the time we were becoming friends,
(10:10):
my sister developed in eating disorder, and I was kind
of thrust into the reality that I really knew so
little about it, Like after school special levels of knowledge.
And I mean also when I was in high school,
I had a period where I was restrictive about food
and like secretly worked out a lot in my room.
(10:33):
And I think at that time it felt like it
was about wanting to be desirable. But it also feels
so interconnected with family. Even my mom stuff with food,
like growing up how that shaped her. She's one of
seven kids and didn't grow up with a lot of money,
so there was kind of like a scarcity around food
(10:55):
that shaped her and then trickled into how she raised us. Oh,
I guess I just feel like there's a lot to
talk about here.
Speaker 2 (11:05):
Yeah. I think the most common moralizing that biological parents
do when it's revealed that you have eating disorder, or
in the case of South Asian culture, just on a
regular basis the refrain that you should be grateful for
(11:27):
having the privilege to eat food. Lots of people don't
have food security. In my case, it was like finish
all your donnas, which means like all of your rice grains,
don't leave one donna on the plate. Just the sense
of like personal responsibility and guilt that is weighed on
you for not being able to like finish the food
(11:52):
that is shoveled at you. That speaks to like greater
generational trauma in history.
Speaker 1 (12:12):
We'll be right back after a short.
Speaker 2 (12:14):
Break right now. Safe foods for me are verifiable foods.
(12:41):
Calories are way more important to me than nutrition or ingredients.
I do like to know how something was prepared. I'm
terrified of sauces, of dressings, of submersion of any sort.
If I need to stave off a fainting spell, I'll
grab a protein heavy snack like eggs or not or
(13:06):
clean meat. Those foods aren't safe. They play out as concessions.
But I'm making to be more connected or present in
the world. Feels like an easier justification than if I were.
I don't know satisfying hunger, which I routinely downplay as
(13:28):
like frivolous. It's also not just the food content. It's
like the proportions and the cutlery, like I deliberately use
shallow cups instead of bowls, forks instead of spoons. Every
choice feels like a forcing function to eat less. When
(13:49):
I'm a mist a heavy restriction cycle and my stomach shrinks,
it takes very little before false say shitty kicks in.
I'm constantly making these grand bargains with myself. You know,
I'll let myself exercise for four hours and start today
(14:14):
so that tomorrow I can go out with a friend
and eat a meal in public. I'm constantly like repairing
and preparing to be out in the world and calibrating
my energy and capacity. Everyone has like a very ritualized
(14:37):
practice of eating, and I would say for me personally,
as an anorexic, physiologically, my body is conditioned to figure
every meal as it's last. So I'm definitely stuck in
this torturous like binge starve cycle and prepare for that.
(15:00):
I have food dashed and like really strategic places like
protein bars and persipers and extra salted ruffles under the bed, sedatives, laxatives,
mouthwash strips, and books. It's like a very ritualized, precious routine.
Speaker 3 (15:27):
But I'm curious why, like now you want to talk
about this like with me and also like on the
internet for anyone to hear.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
Yeah, I mean, I think it's rare to hear daily
accounts of the disease of like the real time drudgery
and pain and like boredom of it, unless it's tacked
onto some like four looking recovery story. I know what
(16:03):
my options are, and I am not willing now to
sacrifice my fairly high functioning routine and like the comforts
that come with it, for the greater uncertainty of a
more formal recovery situation. I mean, that might change, but
(16:26):
that's where.
Speaker 1 (16:26):
I am now.
Speaker 3 (16:31):
Over the course of making this piece together, I learned
that Miriam had been admitted in both hospital and outpatient
care for her anorexia at various points in her twenties
and thirties. The one size fits all medical treatment she
encountered in these programs pushed weight restoration in a short
window of time and often led to relapse. In these
(16:52):
recovery programs, Mariam would sometimes make friends, but when she
would eventually drop out, she was excommunicated. Who were still
working toward recovery weren't allowed to talk to her. These
institutional support models often use fear mongering tactics to churn
out a fully recovered subject or escalate the patient to hospitalization.
Speaker 2 (17:15):
I felt like my options were recovery or reinforcing my illness.
Those feel like the poles.
Speaker 3 (17:21):
Those still feel like the poles. But she wants to
pursue another kind of support, not a path through recovery,
but a way to stay alive outside the institution, a
way that involves people like me, friends that share understanding
despite not having the lived experience of a chronic eating disorder.
(17:44):
There's this one time that I remember I was meeting
you for dinner with some friends, and I was running late,
as I often do, and I remember you texting me
and being like, I can't finish my food. I don't
want to eat this. I'm scared of this food or
I forget exactly what you said, but something like that,
and also like when you get here, can you can
(18:06):
you like finish my food? And I mean, honestly, my
first response was that I was like, oh, you're asking
me to do something for you, and I think I
just liked that you trusted me. And then like almost immediately,
I also was like, wait, this feels kind of weird
because like what if I didn't want to eat your food?
(18:31):
Like like then I also was like, oh, now I'm
like a little implicated or something.
Speaker 2 (18:35):
But you know, you have to remember that it's like
a choice that I'm consciously making and that I'm like
an agent, right but I guess.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
That time, and it's come up other times, this concern
I have that by engaging in your eating disorder, that
I'm somehow like enabling it or contributing to this harmful thing,
which sometimes I talk myself down from because this is
part of you and it's not necessarily something that needs
(19:05):
to be eradicated from you. But then there are consequences
sometimes of the starvation that do scare me and that
do affect you and sometimes call into question my rationale,
like when there's fainting or like seizures. When things like
(19:29):
that happen, I worry about how to navigate this. And
also the stakes are high because I'm like, I want
to like love you best as I can and how
you want to be loved, and like I don't want
to make you feel isolated. This has been like a
thing that has been like an inner conflict for you know,
(19:51):
as long as I've known you.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
Mm hmm, I think that's really fair. Like I'm sarcastically
shrugging off the the consequences that do play out in
shared space with loved ones, so like that affects you
and that affects everyone, so I completely understand it. Actually
(20:16):
being much harder of like a judgment call on your end,
because it's like health and survival, and you know, if
I'm literally like unconscious, like you know, sometimes I ride
on the edge.
Speaker 3 (20:31):
Yeah, I feel like we've kind of landed in a
sort of harm reduction place where I know some of
your preferences around like seizures and what you need in
those moments, and yes, like you're an agent, and yes
these are choices you're making, but also like you're making
these choices to cope.
Speaker 1 (20:51):
With other things.
Speaker 3 (20:52):
And it's also like an illness and an addiction. So
it does feel complicated in terms of like how much
to follow your lead. And sometimes the harm reduction stuff
feels satisfactory, and sometimes it feels like it's like a
band aid for a gaping wound. You know, it's really
helpful to hear like.
Speaker 2 (21:13):
The negotiations you have to make, and I've seen you
make them, and they're really hard, and they're also like
you know, they sometimes like ruin the night, like.
Speaker 3 (21:24):
And like kill the vibe.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Yeah, I don't mean to be little the danger of
the mental illness that has like the highest mortality rate.
I'm not interested in doing that. But I also don't
think it's like my responsibility to like carry that weight.
But also like you can set boundaries, you know, and
(21:47):
I would want you to feel like you could do that,
Like you don't have to treat me like the sick one,
where like everything I say is like right because I'm sick,
So I don't want to go too far that way.
I think it's more that we trust each other.
Speaker 1 (22:13):
After a short break, we'll be back.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
I'm like really nostalgic for when pro Anna moderators owned
the internet.
Speaker 3 (22:37):
Pro Anna was a corner of the early two thousands
microblogging internet. It lived on live journal, MySpace, Zanga, Tumblr,
and was an online subculture for people with eating disorders.
To Miriam, it was a medium for connecting with others
who had a similar relationship with food.
Speaker 2 (22:55):
There was a tumbler that was about food, just filling
up the frame, and there was something about that, like
seeing those images in quick succession, which was so fucking
eurotic to me.
Speaker 3 (23:09):
A lot of it was art.
Speaker 2 (23:11):
You know, like someone drawing their dream meal or there
was this one pro Ana tumbler. There were no pictures
of bodies. It was all just like a playground for
different color profiles. And they're basically like talking about alternative
(23:32):
modes to satiate yourself. People would also post their diary entries,
their fixes, their strategies, their diets, recipes, so like lots
of support, every other post would be about feelings and
navigating depression and anxiety. It's nice to know that it's
(23:56):
out there and someone else is suffering. Like that's what
I think. Feel sure, I like pick up tips here
and there, but the end of the day, like I'm
picking my method of self destruction that day, like in
response to lots of trauma, and I think, if anything,
I just feel a little less fucking alone in it,
(24:17):
you know.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Pro Anna content also became known as thinspo. It did
include close up photos of protruding hip bones and clavicles,
detailed accounts of deprivation, and advice for staving off hunger.
Speaker 2 (24:34):
What I came across was more like a desperation to
connect rather than just like a stream of thin like coquettish, deadened, pale,
wretching women.
Speaker 3 (24:51):
But pro anna content developed a reputation for glorifying starvation
and promoting disordered eating. So the more personal and vulnerable
forums of the early two thousands were heavily censored and buried.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
Suddenly all of these communities were just shut down and
there was really aggressive quality control, but it meant for
saying like a pro recovery narrative. The loss of pro
and content was Like, it's pretty devastating to me because
(25:28):
the whole point is that, like there aren't actually institutional resources,
there aren't enough to go around for some reason. The
highest sakes question is how do we share these stories
without them being triggering or enabling instead of like, how
(25:48):
do we create support for those who share this lived reality.
Speaker 3 (25:56):
Let's say you did recover. I mean, I know, even
if you recover, like institutionally, it doesn't mean that all
of this goes away, But like if it did all
go away, I'm curious what you would miss.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Some things that I like, actually really like about myself.
I think I owe to my eating disorder in some ways,
like the charisma I have when I'm worn down, the
way that I play with language, my obsession with painsaking details,
my curiosity. I mean, I think like.
Speaker 3 (26:35):
All of those.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Things have been enhanced by this, like vigilant attention to detail.
There's an obsessiveness that I think is actually it's a
skill set, Like I think I liked hadn't found a
(26:57):
way to use.
Speaker 1 (27:01):
My brain in a way.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
That I was like really engaging like intellectually or bodily
or whatever it may be.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
Yeah, I think at some point you'd warned me, like
I'm not going to get better, And I do feel
like i've kind of i have accepted that you're not
going to recover. But I've also like seen changes in
the way that you eat. Like I think I've seen
(27:31):
you go through like different relationships where like based on
your different levels of comfort sharing, I've just noticed like
I was in Brooklyn once and we like went, I
got pizza, like a bunch of people you had a
dinner party when you lived in La Like that was
not a thing that we did.
Speaker 2 (27:50):
Fucking love pizza.
Speaker 3 (27:52):
When you're like I'm not going to get better, I'm
not going to recover, it like prepared me for maybe
like nothing's going to change and it's always going to
be how it is right now. But I guess what
I'm trying to say is it's not linear progress, but
things do kind of shift.
Speaker 2 (28:08):
Yeah, it changes all the time. I've never felt like
more open to foods, but that's like today and last week,
and you know, I think that like some friends that
I've met recently would be surprised to hear me say that,
and like might actually think that I'm pretty restrictive, but
like I'm measuring against my long reputation with food, you know,
(28:37):
and it just I find hope in that it changes
all the time, and that the hope that I feel
is that like I can change so much while still
being sick, you know, and like I'm just I'm not
interested in not being characterized that way. There's a feeling
(29:04):
that I remain another day to finally see you on
the Internet, to talk trash and share dreams of food
on long tables, soft greens and milk spittle, pineapple cutlets,
newly painted cabinets hang open for crumbs and trace lactose.
(29:26):
Where I kneel before my computer and punch my face cavity.
I don't see carbs. I only see God. I've learned
in my age TV is not something to overcome. My
second coffee makes me think of heaven because the astrological
establishment won't have me, So I lick my palm on
(29:49):
my death wish breakfast. Every unsealed condiment has caught up
with me and the stately heart attack I beat Most days,
New York gave out two hundred and sixty animatronic pets
to cure loneliness in the elderly instead of money to
cure everything. It's my fondest wish to have been a
(30:12):
product tester or a four to eight year old. It's
a hidden talent of mine to gauge suffering. The cat
I fed every day as a child wasn't mine, but
had human eyes.
Speaker 1 (30:36):
This episode was produced by Miriam Gunja and Phoebe Under
and edited by me Phoebe. Sound designed this episode with
music and soundscapes by Kasha Levine. The poem at the
end is Hot Moron by Miriam Gunja.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
Thank you to Ari Mahia, Kamala, Pula Gondola, Phoenix Ocean,
Sharon Mashihi and mar Laser for listening and helping shape
this piece over many years. And thank you to Daniel
Has for the tech support.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
Faska Case is a production of molten Heart and iHeart Podcasts.
The series is hosted, produced, and sound designed by me ENK.
Nicole Kelly. I co created the show with Jasmine J. T. Green,
who is also our executive producer. Production assistants by Siona
Petros and Ammani Leonard. Adrian Lillly is our mixed engineer.
Our theme is blue and orange by Command Jasmine. Our
(31:37):
show art was created by Sinay Rolson. Fact checking by
Serena Soln. Legal services provided by Rowan, Maren and File.
Our executive producer from My Heart podcast is Lindsay Hoffmann. Wow,
Person's gonna want me as President?
Speaker 2 (31:58):
And Anxiety
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