Chapter 22: Claire Dover: Less Becomes More
By: Kristen Pizzo
Tags: Fiction, Transgender, Eating Disorders, LGBTQ, Body Image

Chapter 22: Claire Dover: Less Becomes More

Trigger Warning: Eating Disorder content

Photo by Benjamin Wong

I managed to skip breakfast and lunch every day for two full weeks. The control I felt was electrifying; it gave me a high only copious amounts of caffeine could bring about. I saw the world with a sharp, beautiful clarity and felt like I could accomplish anything. I was strong, powerful, and unstoppable. The newfound willpower and restraint I had seemed unreal, but I guess it was the vision of who I could become that kept me going. I had spent so long without taking action, imprisoned in a body I despised. I could not procrastinate change any longer. No more “maybe tomorrow” or “when I’m older and long gone from here.” It was then or never.

I fell apart on the third week; my resolve unwinding like a ball of yarn more and more each day. I would come home from school and start eating. First just a piece of fruit like a banana or sometimes a cup of applesauce. I figured if I did have to eat, at least I could make healthy choices.

But then I began to crave salt and carbs, all the snack foods I always ate before and after practice. Pretzels, cheese crackers, energy bars, the occasional candy bar…Never before had I given a thought to what I put in my body. I was so ravenous after meets that I simply just ate. For the two weeks I had gone without two-thirds of the day’s meals, I hadn’t had to think either. I just simply didn’t eat.

But when I began to eat again, I couldn’t stop.

A bowl of cheese crackers became the whole bag in one sitting as I did homework after practice. A candy bar I decided to divide up piece by piece over a period of several days was gone before dinner one night, only hours after it was initially unwrapped.

A one-pound bag of pretzel twists was empty within two days. At dinner, though I was hardly hungry after an afternoon and early evening spent raiding cupboards, I cleaned my plate each night to please my mother and even went for seconds once she had gone to bed; unpacking the neatly stored leftovers like Christmas gifts and inhaling half their contents in the privacy of my bedroom. My mother wouldn’t notice the next evening, and would assume I’d eaten the leftovers for lunch or a snack.

On the days I didn’t have practice, I ate just the same. Unfortunately, it was my job to do the grocery shopping, so I was able to restock my favorite snacks without the shame of having to ask my mother to buy them again and again each week. We had a strict budget of sixty dollars a week for groceries, but luckily for me, junk is cheap, so I managed to buy all the items my mother had scrawled on the list and everything I wanted.

My binges did not seem to be motivated by conscious decisions. During each one, I felt much like I had that night at the party while being assaulted: aware of all that was happening, but unable to stop it. The amount I consumed increased in size as the weeks dragged on, and by the third week, I was terrified. I was back to my normal weight, if not heavier. I couldn’t know for sure, I’d never used my mother’s scale before. Even the workouts in cross country were not enough to burn off the immense amount of calories I was taking in each day. Where was my willpower? My restraint? How had it all dissolved so quickly? I was going the opposite direction of where I had set out to.

That needed to change. And fast.