By the time my sixteenth birthday came around, the maladaptive high school behaviour had begun to take a particularly ominous turn. Always somewhat obsessive about body size and weight, such as comparing myself constantly to other girls and feeling massive beside them, I decided that I would finally do something about it. Thus began my initiation into the wonderful world of dieting, a place that would nearly be my eventual mausoleum six months later.

Society was still very much, in 1971, reeling giddily from the impact of Twiggymania. As the fashion industry gained more and more influence over young girls and women in Western civilization, it became increasingly necessary for us to resemble stick figures. My role model was Susan Dey, one of the stars of the Partridge family, a youth-oriented television show that was a megahit in the early seventies, thanks to teen heartthrob David Cassidy.

I yearned desperately to look like the lissome Laurie Partridge, beautiful, poised, and most importantly, impossibly thin. I read in 16 Magazine, the teenage Bible of entertainment rags, that Dey had once been somewhat plump. Her mother had then insisted that she go on a strict regimen of lean meats, plenty of fruits and vegetables, and absolutely no fats or sugars. "So that's how she did it", I marvelled, vowing to follow this perfect physical specimen's example and pare at least twenty pounds from my hideously obese (or so I imagined) frame. I was heavily steeped in teenage negativism concerning my sense of self-worth.

Though I wasn't actually overweight, and never had been, I was what my father termed "chunky" (a word I grew to despise). I knew at a very young age that my father preferred skinny women, and one of the things that had attracted him to my mother was the fact that when they met, she had had only one hundred twelve pounds on her five-foot eight inch frame.

As a doleful adolescent who desperately craved Daddy's affection, I wondered then that if I was really thin, he'd pay more attention to me. That's how young girls' minds work; I was nothing unique. At five foot three and one hundred ten pounds, I was certainly not Twiggy material, and thus I set about to transform myself into a sylph-like vision of loveliness. Nothing, I vowed, summing up every fibre of stubbornness in my tortured teenage soul, would stop me from achieving this stellar goal.

Mimicking Susan Dey, I immediately cut out anything with any fat or sugar content. These included all desserts, sugar in my tea and on cereal, and butter on vegetables. Of course, all snacking was forbidden. It was not as difficult as I thought it would be; in fact, denying myself treats and fattening foods felt sublimely virtuous and hunger pangs were something with which I was to feel familiar and happy. It felt good to be in discomfort, and so my self-abuse manifested itself in hunger and craving. Again, I'd stumbled upon something to take a bit of the sting out of my emotional swarm of insipid hornets.

To my extreme joy, I lost three pounds that first week, and knew that my chunkiness would soon be a fading memory. I relinquished my invitation to our Latin teacher, Mrs. Wright's end of the year dinner for all of us at her place, because she would be serving spaghetti and that was verboten. I'd recently cut out starches as well, which meant any form of pasta. I simply told her I had other plans for that Saturday.

My mother was getting a bit suspicious of my eating habits, wondering why I refused all desserts and was starting to pick at my meals, but I appeased her by saying I was "eating healthier" and replacing artery-choking sweets with fruit. That must have appealed to the nurse in her, so she stopped questioning me.

Another strong motivating force for my stringent dieting was Meike and her drastic weight loss on the Stillman Water Diet. Appalled that she'd stuffed herself with Maple Buds and accumulated far too many pounds of blubber, Meike, along with her mother, took up this rather unbalanced regimen with a vengeance. They ate a cup of oatmeal with Sucaryl for breakfast, a hard boiled egg for lunch, a small broiled hamburger pattie for supper, plus eight glasses of water per day.

Tired of being called "Aunt Jemima" by mean neighbourhood kids, she possessed an iron-willed determination. Within six weeks Meike lost twenty-five pounds and was actually on the skinny side. Ecstatic, she went out and bought a new wardrobe of flashy, mod clothes and suddenly found herself exceedingly popular.

I bubbled over with jealousy, as the girl was now thinner than I, and I felt absolutely enormous beside her. So, by the time school ended for the summer, I'd lost seven pounds and knew that I could adequately compete with "show-off Meike".

Early in July, I visited Karen in Belle River. Although I had my customary wonderful time swimming, water skiing and spending long summer evenings playing board games with her ever-tight family, something bizarre was starting to happen. My dieting began to show signs of becoming obsessive. Since Mom was over a hundred miles away, I figured that I could easily get away with eating as little as possible. After all, my weight loss had slowed down ands it was necessary to cut back even further if I was going to achieve my goal.

I decided to eat only half of what the others did, sticking to my guns about avoiding all sugars, fats and starches on top of that. The result was that I ingested very little and began to suffer some ills effects of denying myself to such an extent. I started feeling weak and dizzy and found that I was starting to think about food a lot more as it took on an increasingly prominent place in my daily meditation.

I mentally calculated the number of calories in everything that went into my mouth, something that would eventually make me a virtual slave to numbers. Fearing that my figures might be wrong, I invested in a brand name calorie counter which told the numbers of every supermarket product from Cool Whip to frozen entrees.

I carried this valuable volume everywhere and memorized it for hours at a time. I played little numbers games, like saving up a day's calories in order to splurge on a slice of pizza, for instance. I would only allow myself to consume six hundred calories a day and my mind ached with fatigue as I constantly calculated and plotted.

Karen began to voice some concern for my health and asked, "Aren't you getting a bit carried away with all this dieting stuff?" This happened one night after I'd picked at supper and opted instead for a dish of sugarless jello.

"What do you mean?" I snapped defensively, not wanting any intruders in my world of denial. "I'm just being careful. Maybe I want to look more like you and less like a jersey cow. Okay?"

Karen shook her head and fell silent, knowing from past experience that when I took that unpleasant tone, it was best leave matters alone. Karen despised arguing and raised voices. I remained in Belle River an extra week, as I wished to make up to my friend for my recent moodiness and also to continue my strict dieting away from Mom's prying eyes.

Swimming began to lose its relaxing, fun aspect and became a means to burn more calories. Thus the exercising rituals began during that extra week at Karen's. I decided that when I returned home, I'd swim every day at the Woodcrest Community Pool for at least an hour a day. Biking would be a good idea as well.

Upon my arrival back in London, Mom seemed distant and preoccupied. This usually meant that she was having difficulties with Dad or Jim, perhaps both. One evening, she broke away from her own dark thoughts long enough to mention that my arms looked thinner. However, she then quickly added that it was probably because of my tan. I agreed, sighing inwardly with relief and changed the subject.

No-one could find out about my increasingly complicated dieting rituals, especially Mom, who could be given to theatrical outbursts. I never felt further apart from my family as I did that summer, as for the first time I was being secretive and even lying to achieve my goal of slim perfection. Something about it gave me an odd feeling of exhilaration.

As more of my time was invested in calculating calories and exercising, less was devoted to keeping my room tidy. For the first time, it began to appear quite dishevelled. Always a neat- freak, I now left dirty clothes strewn all over the floor and let my waste basket overflow with papers and garbage. Worst of all, I felt no twinge of guilt for such blatant slovenliness. It just didn't seem important anymore.

Luckily, I was to travel by plane to Barrington, Rhode Island early in August to spend a couple of weeks with Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Ray. I knew then, with perverse glee, that I could get away with murder as far as dieting and exercise went. I hadn't stepped on the scale for awhile, as it depressed me when the numbers weren't low enough. ven so, I knew that I wanted to lose more weight, or at least not gain any back. That was absolutely imperative, for I thought that this would happen if I didn't practically starve myself.

When I reached Barrington, a horrifying transformation began to take place. I was no longer controlling the diet; it was slowly and cruelly manipulating me. It wasn't a matter of choice anymore, but one of urgent necessity. A new, disturbing element was added to the bizarre mixture: Fear. It propelled my dwindling body into wild spasms of exercise to such an alarming extent that my physical movements became forced and exaggerated.

Each morning, I'd get on my cousin Jimmy's bike, accompanied by Aunt Elizabeth on her own vehicle and peddle ferociously. I searched out steep hills and worked up lathers of sweat as I steeled myself against the enemies of fatigue and aching muscles. "God, I'm not working hard enough!" I despaired, grasping the handlebars in white-knuckled panic. I was barely aware of my aunt struggling to keep up the frenetic pace that I had set.

This free-floating fear became my constant companion and would not loosen its grip on my heart for months. I was still fat, unspeakably so and those despised pounds were not going to disappear unless I worked out religiously to the point of near- paralysis.

I began to ignore my body's pitiful signals to slow down, as if switches labelled "Fatigue" and "Hunger" were permanently turned to the off position. These distressing feelings were created only to keep me obese and had no relevance in my world anymore. They were simply cruel obstacles designed for deceitful purposes.

Accompanying the manic exercise routines was an increase in social isolation. My communication skills had never been a strong suit. So, as the ritualistic activities enveloped more and more of my life, my relationship with my cousin, Susan, faded into oblivion.

Susan, nearly two years my senior, was a bubbly, intense and extremely outgoing teenager. She was blessed with a winning personality and a healthy dose of self-esteem. Sue had graduated high school that spring, where she'd been surrounded by copious close friends and had thoroughly enjoyed herself and her overwhelming popularity. Susan possessed an easy, infectious laugh, was perkily cute, loving and had embraced a multitude of extracurricular activities. These included gymnastics, in which she excelled.

I'd recall ruminating that this girl was my polar opposite in every conceivable way. I twitched with envy at Susan's innate ability to care strongly about each and every individual that entered her universe with effortless abandon and wide-eyed acceptance. She was a tiny, fine-boned girl who could eat anything and everything she wanted without gaining an ounce. Yes, I thought dismally, my cousin had it all. It seemed inconceivable to me that we shared many of the same genes.

Sue hassled me frequently about my paltry eating habits, telling me of her friend, Marcia, who starved herself to the point of emaciation, becoming quite sick in the process. I countered with an abrupt, "I'm not like that. Don't compare me to your friends".

After graduation, Sue had studied to become an X-ray technician. She was currently employed at Miriam Hospital, working at something she loved and garnering a new set of friends. I accompanied her many days to work, dressed in one of her uniforms and easily blended in with the medical atmosphere. I watched, with reluctant admiration as she took X-rays of a wide variety of patients, exuding confidence. My bubbly cousin kibbutzed with them before telling them firmly, "Don't breathe," then zapped them with radiation.

I didn't particularly like the look, smell and sounds of the hospital, for they caused fingers of quivering uneasiness to run haphazardly up and down my spine. I trudged throughout this green-walled, crowded facility, behind my energy-buoyed cousin for eight interminable hours a day, feeling as though my joints were composed of gelatinous material and my muscles were shot full of Novocaine. Weakness and dramatic periods of dizziness overcame me more frequently as the days progressed, but I staunchly refused to relent.

My diet now consisted of a glass of orange juice for breakfast, a container of non-fat yogurt for lunch and a bullion cube and small serving of custard for supper. I adhered to this regimen faithfully, adding an hour of swimming per day along with the three hours of cycling.

The pounds loosened their grip on my frame and disintegrated into delicious oblivion by the middle of August. I discovered with morbid fascination that I weighed only ninety pounds and it seemed as though I had achieved my goal. The months of hunger and exhaustion had not been in vain.

My joy was shortlived, however, as I quickly became obsessed with that now-familiar fear once more. I can't let myself gain any of it back! I must keep up my strict dieting and exercising without any lapses or I'll balloon out to one hundred ten again. That would be a fate worse than death!

Much to my aunt, uncle and cousins' chagrin, I kept my food intake very low and forced the strenuous work-outs, even as I resembled, as Susan said, "a tiny bird curled up in a little ball".

Happily, I shopped for new clothes, revelling in the sight of a now-svelte body in garments I'd never had the guts to wear before. "Laurie Partridge, eat your heart out," I smirked, admiring this unrecognizable thinness of mine in a department store mirror. "Wait'll I get back to school. Nobody will recognize me."

The only drawback to this newfound paradise was the constant and all-enveloping tiredness that muffled my excitement and unabashed gloating. Getting out of bed in the morning became more difficult. As I lay there on my side, knee bones rubbing against each other with reassuring sharp friction, I fought the intense desire to vegetate for the rest of the day. But of course, that was forbidden. There was so much to do to keep those evil calories from conspiring to transform me back into an unsightly mountain of shivering flesh.

Both Susan and Aunt Elizabeth coerced me to eat more, both obviously concerned that I was becoming sick and suffering from malnutrition. I made them promise not to mention anything to Mom, but they must have felt torn and confused. All they knew for certain was that I was retreating further and further into a self-destructive world and that even I was incapable of stopping the process.

What stuck most firmly in my mind about that transitional summer in Rhode Island was the way in which I became less aware of what was going on around me. My senses turned in on themselves and the outside world faded into a dissolving memory. Many years later, as the process recurred, I would refer to it as "encompassing myself in my own concentration camp."And what was my crime? Being a chunky kid in a society that worshipped and paid homage to the sylph.

* * * * * * * *
I spent all of August with the Holtzes and upon my return to London in early fall, everyone went absolutely bananas. My family freaked when they caught a glimpse of what used to be their daughter, sister and granddaughter and they all wondered what I had done to myself. After putting her arm around me and feeling nothing but bones, my semi-hysterical mother hauled me onto the bathroom scales and was mortified to see that the number read only eighty-seven pounds.

I smiled inwardly, even as I was given a crass ultimatum: "Eat or you're going into the hospital." Hospital? I flinched at the mere thought of such a horrifying notion. Surely they were issuing empty threats, designed simply to scare the hell out of me.

School was about to begin and I revelled in the anticipation of dazzling my contemporaries with my new look. However, I felt somewhat uneasy about being able to keep up the kind of energy- charged pace that grade eleven would require along with my exercise routine. I was now struggling to do the swimming and cycling, as my muscles seemed to be being gnawed on by invisible, hungry beasts and my blood thinned by camphor. Surely the simple act of refusing food wasn't producing all this agony?

My head swam in little ripples of undulating seasick waves, blurring my vision and muffling my ears and produced a constant humming that made it difficult to decipher what people were saying. I fought the craving for constant sleep, and made the unpleasant discovery that I was unable to concentrate on anything that I tried to read. What was I going to do with a difficult subject like physics?

Shoving all those distasteful thoughts out of my head on the first day of school, I decided to bask in the attention I was getting for having lost twenty-five pounds. Reaction varied from blatant jealousy ("Geez, how did you do it? That's fantastic!") to the left-handed compliment ("You sure look better than you used to.")

Beverly was the sole voice of reason, although I didn't appreciate it at the time. "Good God, Jane. What the hell did you do to yourself?!"

I brushed my friend's concern off like invisible particles of dandruff from an expensive new suit. These disparaging comments were not going to dampen my glorious moment in the sun.

That moment was short-lived, however. Even though I'd initially made a positive impression on my classmates, I felt no more a part of their exclusive world than I had at one hundred ten pounds. As a matter of fact, it now seemed as though I was encased in some kind of isolation bubble, peering out at everyone from an antiseptic, untouchable realm that forbade any interacting or mingling.

Locked in my prison of denial and forced physical activity, I had no energy or thought processes left over for anything or anyone else. And what was more, I seemed to be condemned here forever, continually being punished for the crime of striving for perfection in an imperfect world. Saunders Secondary School, in the fall of 1971, could and would not appreciate what I'd endured to get where I was at that time.

It didn't know what it had cost me to try to mix in and become indistinguishable from the students who swished and swaggered so effortlessly through the halls, exchanging meaningful glances with one another and wearing the close-fitting garb of the divinely inherited.

I still sat alone in the cafeteria at lunchtime, chewing morosely on my egg white and watching them enjoying the fruits of popularity and inherent coolness, all long-haired, mini-skirted and bell-bottomed non-conforming teenage chic. Damn them, damn them all.

I made ambitious plans to try out for the cheerleading team, something I'd always wanted but deemed unthinkable, as well as the volleyball and basketball teams. I was under the mistaken impression that thinness rendered one virtually infallible and capable of astounding feats of daring and social occupancy of the shrineof the upper echelon.

Now, at a sleek and glamour-gilded eighty-five pounds, I could even compete with Sandy, and the other kids would then speak her name and mine in the same staccato breath. Then that smug, egotistical Jason would be all slack-jawed and oggle-eyed over me too. Sarah was a former hefty-weight who lost an amazing number of excess pounds the year before and emerged surprisingly sensual and crackling with the vibrant vivacity of Popularity Personified.

She was thus transformed from a shy, reclusive butt of numerous and cruel fat jokes to the object of every post- pubescent boy's fantasies. Suave, cocky Jason practically bronzed her discarded sugarless bubble gum in his embarrassing efforts to win her affections. Well, now I was thinner than Sarah, so logically I should now shine as "The Number One Girl Who Had It All and Worked Damned Hard To Get It".

Reality came thundering down upon me like heavy, dislodged boulders and crushed any hopes for high school utopia in a dustcloud of sad finality. I failed miserably at cheerleading, volleyball and basketball, as my movements were all misdirected, spastic energy and lacking any precision and muscular coordination.

My chief objective was burning calories and in my obsessive, narrow-fielded vision, I lost sight of the real purpose of these sports: namely, teamwork and the pleasures of being together with other kids. My habits of the past several months had rendered me even more socially isolated than ever, and completely incapable of enjoying anyone's company.

It all smacked of bitter irony: I had lost all the weight in order to gain acceptance by my peers, but something about the methods I'd employed were unhealthy and repugnant. Nobody wanted to be around a sick person, I thought darkly. A sick person--- could that be possible? Was there something wrong with me after all, as my family claimed as they wrung their collective hands and bemoaned my appalling transformation?

As September wore on and the days shortened, I began to notice how incredibly cold I was all the time. It penetrated every cell, cramping my wasted muscles and making my teeth chatter. I would walk stiffly about with my body tensed against the discomfort, clamping my jaws and rubbing clammy skin to erase some of the numbing goosebumps.

To my surprise, I saw that I was beginning to grow fine hair, like soft duck down all over my body. I reassured myself that nature was seeing to it that I didn't freeze to death. For some reason, the sight didn't repulse or frighten me, but was oddly comforting and pleasurable.

My bouts of exercising had become sporadic lately and ceased altogether toward the middle of the month. I was just too weak, tired and drained to do more than drag myself to and from school. Upon my arrival home, I'd collapse into our black leather lazyboy chair and remain motionless until bedtime.

I became less and less aware of the clamour and chaos all around me. My parents dragged me onto the scales every few days, despairing as my weight plunged further and further to critical levels. Mom implored me to eat, wailing that I was going to die if I persisted in starving myself, and Dad became moody, distant and grim. He was secretly very frightened but outwardly uncommunicative.

Jim reacted with fourteen-year-old disgust and revulsion, taunting me that my hands looked skeletal and that I was acting "really weird." I knew he cared, though, even with his negative comments. But teenage boys don't come out and say that to their sister. It was one of the unwritten rules of adolescence.

Studying became futile. I could no longer comprehend anything I was reading and went about my classes in a semi-somnambulistic state. I remember sitting in class, but not really feeling as though I was there. I would feel my bones digging into the hard seats and be overwhelmed with the cold and was too weak to push a pen across the page.

Karen came to town for the Western Fair, as always, and I recall struggling to keep up with her. I begged to stay in the Progress Building where it was warmer and was overwhelmed by the permeating aromas of corndogs, caramel corn and fries that wafted about everywhere.

My hunger had past the point of voracious and had reached a level I'd never experienced before. It was all-encompassing, a distressing, yet comfortingly familiar companion. It assured me that I was being "good" and not giving in to the powerful desire to eat.

The best way to describe it was to say that it was comparable to having a metal prong stuck deep into your leg. Although you knew that it would be a wonderful rush of relief to remove it, you would no longer be aware that you could feel pain. Pain assured you that you were alive and a part of the world, and thus, starvation meant that you were empty and thin.

Karen was terribly worried as she saw me shrinking before her very eyes, my clothes hanging limply as if there was nobody inside them. I talked little to her, not fully aware of her presence and too overcome with exhaustion to carry on any kind of a conversation. She must have feared for my life then, as everyone did. I told her that everything was fine, that I would eat when I got back home. "All the food here is full of fat," I objected.

Throughout this disquieting period of my life, I never thought of myself as suffering from anorexia nervosa until just before I was hospitalized in October. Even as my weight plummeted to seventy-five pounds, most of my hair fell out in large handfuls, the calves of my legs swelled enormously from the edema of starvation and my teeth got alarmingly loose, I maintained stubbornly that I was not Fiona in any way, shape or form.

Fiona was the daughter of John and Sally Gerard, who were colleagues of Dad's and friends of the family for many years. Mom has a photo of Fiona and me as little children at Port Stanley, and I'd spent time with her off and on for most of my life in London, both before and after Halifax.

After Fiona returned from boarding school several years before, her parents were distressed to see that she was absolutely emaciated and refused to eat. She was later diagnosed with anorexia nervosa and I looked at my friend with morbid fascination as all her bones protruded out of her baggy clothes. She seemed oblivious to the way she looked.

By 1971, Fiona was still critically anorexic and had spent a lot of time in the hospital. Evidently she'd been very unhappy at boarding school and had kept to herself most of the time. She was unusually bright and a quiet, kind-hearted girl, and I truly felt sorry for her. But certainly my problem was not anorexia; it couldn't possibly be.

I was completely unaware of how I looked to others and imagined myself to be much heavier than the spindly Fiona. Perhaps I had a lot of problems, but she was really sick.

Mom had taken me to various physicians since my return home, including our pediatrician, Dr. Stewart. I gave him a concocted fairly tale about having stomach pains and he swallowed it, ordering Gravol and telling me to "try to eat something. You really should weigh more at your age."

One of the few fond memories I have of this time was of my father taking me clothes shopping. He'd never done this before, and I noticed that since I had lost all the weight, we'd grown closer. My convoluted thinking resulted in assuming that this was because I looked so much more attractive, but the poor guy was worried sick about his little girl.

Perhaps he wanted to spend time with me while I was still alive, for I got the impression that everyone was becoming resigned to my starvation routine. My family had recently ceased begging me to eat and let me sit glumly at the table staring at my untouched plate.