To Rachna, With Love

This week is National Eating Disorders Awareness Week and in past years, I have done nothing to note the occasion. This year will be the first of many, hopefully, when I will mark this important week with the gravitas and attention it deserves. This year, I want to thank one of my favorite people in the world for a gift she unknowingly gave me many years ago.

When I was 19, my little sister, Rachna, saved my life.

At the time, I was going on my fourth day without food. My appetite was completely gone, and without the gnawing hunger that had been at my side for the past eight months as I whittled away 30 pounds and three jean sizes from my curvy, Indian 5’1” frame, I felt uncomfortably alone. Inside my mind, I heard only an uneasy silence, not unlike the quiet that follows turning off a quietly humming computer in standby mode. The stillness was almost unbearable.

I initially sought refuge in the busy campus grill, a central meeting location where I had often made dinners out of the free saltines (I would eat no more than five packs, totaling 100 calories) and water (enough consumed so my pee was regularly clear). That night, however, I couldn’t stand being in the warm, cheerful room. The buzzing hum of laughter and loud voices, punctuated with falling silverware and clinking plates felt piercingly loud. The smell of food was nauseating. A group of girlfriends waved and called me over to where they were eating bagel sandwiches and sharing pizza, and I waved back and pointed weakly toward the library. I left in a hurry, my head lowered as I hustled out the door, breathing shallow and fast as my anxiety rose.

The third floor of the library provided a much better sanctuary, and I could feel my heart rate slowing as I made my way to my favorite desk. I had stopped going to the dining hall for dinner, and I came here every night at six, studying with one five-minute break every hour until midnight. I had grown to love the floor’s quiet mustiness and faintly palpable scent of student panic. The perimeter was ringed with small but clean rectangular windows, revealing the library's front walk from the north side, and the peaceful residential streets beyond busy U.S. Highway 6 to the south. Under the gentle glow of 50-watt desk lamps, couples privately exchanged kisses between organic chemistry problems sets completed at adjoining desks, and friends recounted the previous night's debauchery in furious whispers.

It was also the perfect spot for hiding out. Night after night, I sat at my chosen desk of exile, diligently completing chemistry problems, reading chapters in my sociology book, and staring at the endless stream of cars and trucks on Highway 6.

Tonight, though, I couldn’t focus on anything except for the stillness in my head and in my body. Why wasn’t I hungry? I was majoring in biology with fuzzy plans to attend medical school at some distant point in the future, and I understood my hunger and the battle I had waged against it as a fight against my own survival instincts. I held myself to a rigid daily diet of no more than 1000 calories, and ran two miles a day religiously. I cut fat out of my life almost completely, eating one wheat bagel with jelly per day at my most restrictive, a paltry 300 calories to sustain me.

I watched my muscles grow long and lean after hours of running, and lamented constantly that my D-sized breasts (a source of pride for my Indian aunties) wouldn’t cooperate and slim down with the rest of my body. A floor mate named Jamison gasped in surprise when he saw me returning from a run wearing a sports bra and shorts. “I had no idea you were SO skinny,” he said, his tone shocked. “Your boobs make you look much bigger than you are.” I only took away “bigger than you are” from his comment, and began to seriously contemplate breast reduction to take away the only part of me that refused to yield to my will.

For every waking minute of that time, I was hungry.

I obsessed about food, and obsessed about how to keep my friends and family from learning about what I was doing. I stocked my bedroom with snacks and fun-size candy bars that I offered generously to anyone who came to visit, never touching any myself. Later, though the candies and snacks began to gather dust as I retreated further and further into isolation, I continued to replenish them regularly. Their presence reassured me that I was okay, that I loved food, that I was totally normal.

To further prove my normalcy, I let myself have one dessert every week at a Monday night staff meeting of RAs where our hall director, Holly, would bake us cupcakes and cookies, or buy us sticky sweet cinnamon rolls from the local Hy-Vee. Eating sweets publicly seemed to be a good way to ward off any questions about my dieting habits, and to my surprise, I began to look forward to Monday nights with an anticipation that scared me. I had to fight against a surge of uncontrollable anger the night Holly gave us only Chupa Chups lollipops, and an apology for not having time to get us something better as she had been away for the weekend. The other RAs laughed at Holly and thanked her for the lollipops, while I seethed quietly in a corner, sucking furiously on a strawberry cream candy. My hunger was eating away inside me, raging so strongly that I thought it strange that no one could hear its deafening roar.

And now, all of a sudden, it was gone.

I was scared. I could somehow sense the stillness in my mind and body wasn’t right. I felt like I had crossed a line that shouldn’t be crossed, which was a marked contrast to how I had felt four days earlier. The first day I realized I wasn’t hungry I had felt victorious and excited; I watched two students eating a bag of popcorn late at night and marveled at my lack of envy or desire. I was invincible, pure and empty and austere.

Over the next three days, though, the emptiness began to feel less virtuous and more like a deep yawning hole that I couldn’t figure out how to fill. Since I had no appetite, the ritual of meticulously rationing, then taking tiny bites of my paltry meals until I just quelled my hunger was no longer necessary. I tried to run longer but found that my legs clomped heavily on the pavement, and my muscles burned after half a mile. Even worse, after struggling through miles that I had once run with ease, I no longer felt light and airy, but instead just more tired and emptier than ever.

Looking back now, I think this may be the tipping point between those who recover from anorexia and those who spiral into its depths. Even as I struggled to remind myself that it wasn’t right that I hadn’t eaten in days and that my appetite was gone, a significant part of me was still impressed with myself. I don’t think this is unlike the struggle a recovering alcoholic goes through when deciding whether or not to have another drink: on the one hand, you KNOW it isn’t right, but on the other, life is so much better when you’re buzzed.

Denying my constant hunger had been my buzz. Now in its absence, I instinctively realized that the silent emptiness I was feeling could be my new buzz, the same way an alcoholic knows to switch to mixed drinks when beer stops working. As I sat there, a wave of calm washed over me. I could do this. I could do this.

I opened my chemistry book with a new sense of purpose, and tried to ignore the nagging feeling that I was sauntering past a point of no return.

And that is when my sister saved me. After working a few problems, I felt restless and wandered toward the stairs aimlessly. I walked down one flight, then another, then another until I was in the basement of the library, where a lone phone sat nestled under the stairs. It was my favorite spot to call my family at night, and I rapidly dialed the calling card company, punched in the 16-digit code I had long since memorized and finally entered my parents’ phone number.

My 13-year old sister picked up the phone. “Hi!’ she said excitedly when she realized it was me.

“Hi!” I responded happily. “How are you?”

She got quiet. “Oh, I’m okay,” she said, her excitement fading. “I guess.”

“What’s going on? Is something wrong?” At thirteen, my sister was the same person she is now: a strong, opinionated extrovert with the courage of her convictions, and yet conversely, a painful awareness of any harsh words or criticism by others. I had worried for her when she entered middle school, remembering my own insecurities and the constant feeling that I was an overdressed Indian girl at a party where everyone was blond-haired and casually cool. To my surprise and delight, she seemed unshaken by the shift from elementary school to middle school, and chattered happily about new friends, the teachers on her team, her violin, and her continued involvement on a Jump Rope for Heart demonstration team of jump ropers her from elementary school.

She was quiet. “Well,” she began slowly. “I guess I’ve been feeling fat lately. I think my thighs are too big. No one else has thighs like mine.”

I felt my breath catch in my throat and I felt dizzy. I leaned against the wall and slid down until I was sitting on the carpeted floor with the phone grasped tightly in both hands.

“Why do you feel fat?” I asked, my voice calm and pleasant, belying none of the anxiety that I felt. “Did someone say something to you?”

“No,” she admitted. “I’ve just been noticing that when I sit down next to my friends, my legs are bigger than theirs. They are just skinnier than me.” She paused, and when she spoke again, her voice was quieter. “Do you ever feel fat?”

Did I ever feel fat? Did. I. Ever. Feel. Fat. A wave of nervous heat rose under my armpits and to the back of my neck. I could feel a bead of sweat slowly forming and then rolling down the middle of my back. Did she know about me?

My mind was racing as I tried to remember the days last summer when I had last been at home. I had been eating more then, I remembered with relief. I was working two jobs, which added up to over 60 hours a week. Every morning I got up early and ran for two miles, grabbing an apple for my breakfast and my small lunch as I ran out the door to my first job of the day. I was away for much of the day, and when I got home at night, I ate dinner with my family. My smaller portions had drawn attention from my parents, but my lying insistence that I had taken and eaten plenty of food during the day seemed reasonable. And truthfully, I had gained weight my freshman year from late night eating and lack of exercise, and my attention to my diet and exercise appeared to everyone to be a healthy move. I had lost 25 pounds that summer, but I didn’t look unhealthy to anyone, just more muscular and leaner. Even at my lowest weight of 117 pounds, I still didn’t look unhealthy, though the last time I had been that weight had been sixth grade.

I felt relief as I realized that she couldn’t have noticed. It was replaced suddenly by horror as a picture of my sister in six years’ time flashed through my mind. I imagined her huddled on the floor like me, days gone by without a bite to eat, and friends she hadn’t seen in weeks out of fear and embarrassment. I imagined my beautiful Indian sister seriously considering breast reduction as I done in the past month, and from that empty hole inside, a searing rage began to boil and rise. Of course you don’t look like some Germanic blond-haired, waif of a white girl! I wanted to scream. We have a totally different body type than them. You have beautiful, muscular thighs without an ounce of fat on them! And who cares if you did have fat on them? What does that even say about you?

Rage continued to pulsate through me as I remembered how in high school I would cheerfully order a cheeseburger and French fries for dinner, while three of my girlfriends would chirp out in turn, “Salad, please. Honey mustard dressing on the side.” In those days, I had thought nothing of it, and had happily wolfed down my cheeseburger and shared my fries with my friends, each of them nibbling daintily on a single French fry, lamenting how they were going to get fat if they had more than one. And though I had realized I was bigger than them, I also realized that I wasn’t a white girl, but a curvy Indian one, brown and muscular, where they were pale and lean. Years of dance and gymnastics and competitive swimming had rendered my body sturdy and strong, and my appetite was at times insatiable as I ran from activity to activity.

My sister was turning out just like me, I realized. She was busy and strong and athletic and I felt a loss for what I had become. I thought of my beautiful, opinionated sister succumbing to this empty, solitary life I had created, and something in me snapped.

“You are not fat at all,” I said gently. “I used to feel fat when I was younger because there aren’t a lot of girls who look like us at school. We’re just built curvy and strong, you know? I mean, we have boobs before they do, right?”

She laughed. “Yeah,” she said. “Some of my friends don’t even have ANY boobs at all.”

I laughed with her. “I know. And you know what else? Lots of them won’t get their periods until they are 17 or 18. Isn’t that crazy? Of course they’re not going to have boobs until later. They’re still like little girls inside! It took me a long time to realize that they were small because they were like I was in sixth grade, before I got my period. I sometimes used to think I was fat, which is just untrue.”

I could almost see her nodding on the other end of the phone. “Yeah,” she said slowly. “I guess that’s true.”

“Well, do you think I’m fat?” I asked her. The last time she had seen me was the end of summer, when I looked as I had in high school.

“NO!” she said. “You’re not fat at all.”

“Well, then, you’re not fat either, right? I mean, you look like me. We have the same body type. We’re sisters. We’re just different from them, that’s all.”

“Yeah,” she said, more sure this time. “We are just different.”

“But it is hard sometimes,” I admitted. “I used to feel that way, too. You can’t let it get to you, though, okay? We’re just different. If you want to talk about it, you can always call me. It is hard sometimes to remember.”

As we talked, I could feel the hole inside me getting filled slowly. Lest you think my life changed in that one day, let me assure you, it did not. My struggle to overcome this nasty disease took three years, the support of my family and friends, compassionate counseling, and consistent reminding to control my life from the outside and not from within. Even with all of that, I relapsed more than a few times.

But in that moment, ten years ago, my beautiful little sister saved my life by reminding me she was still paying attention to me. From the moment she was born, she has held my heart in her hands. I had carried her from room to room when I was six and she was a newborn, holding her swaddled in blankets, so excited to have a real-life doll of my own. As she grew into a strong little person, I colored with her, and dressed Barbies with her, and taught her the five basic ballet positions when she started dance lessons at my dance school. My brother and I read her chapters of books every night and tucked her in, positioning extra pillows on the sides of her bed to protect her from falling out.

I felt like I had spent a lifetime protecting my sister, and I would have done anything to prevent her from becoming me, trapped in a lonely cycle of calorie counting and running from an emptiness inside. Even if I had to fake it at first (and I did), I would do nothing that would lead her to believe that our beautiful, curvy Indian bodies were anything less than perfect. I vowed to spend a lifetime protecting her from any suggestion that she was anything less than beautiful.

To my surprise, as I began to understand my disease more and more, she became an unending source of motivation as she effortlessly took control of the environment around her, without imploding inside as I had done. She grew into a confident Indian-American woman, who hooked pride rings I had given her to her backpack in response to a homophobic comment of a classmate, despite the fact that we lived in a violently homophobic suburb. She spoke out when her friends were catty, and told me nonchalantly that she didn’t like mean girls. She proudly wore a beautiful Indian lehenga to her junior prom when all the white girls wore pastel-colored, strapless ball gowns. In a world where women are still taught to hold it all in, she continues to be my inspiration as she giggles uncontrollably when she’s happy, sobs violently when she’s sad, yells when she’s angry, and seeks out help when she needs it.

On this week that marks our struggle to take control of our lives, I want to thank my little sister Rachna for that moment ten years ago when she unknowingly reminded me that I needed to do it, if not for me, than for her.

And for all the years since then, for showing me how.