I stopped talking then, and asked, ‘Why do you want to know?’
Annika took her time to answer, as if she was giving it some thought, then she said, ‘Well, sometimes, when we feel confused, or we’re struggling to process our feelings, or feeling like we don’t have much control over our world, we do things that bring us comfort. These habits. Do you feel a sense of comfort when you do these things?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just do them. They’re just things I do. Doesn’t everyone?’
Annika replied, ‘Yes, to some degree we all have funny habits, personal habits, but some of us have more than others. Sometimes it’s useful to begin observing when you do them, and whether you do them more when you’re anxious. And it’s also helpful to learn to calm our minds in peaceful ways, like meditating, rather than feeling trapped all the time with the games we play to make ourselves feel safe.’
Speaking of which, this whole conversation was making me feel tight in the throat; I didn’t like being called out like that. I told myself she was talking gobbledygook and wondered when she was going to give me a diet to follow. I noticed for the first time that as my mind raced, my hands seemed to automatically start playing their little 1/3/5 patterns. Weird, I thought.
That day, Annika guided me through my first-ever meditation, a slow one in which she asked me to imagine I was a rose, blooming. At first I was worried she was going to somehow brainwash me so I was determined to stay alert, but soon, through no effort, I felt peaceful. Relaxed. It was an unfamiliar feeling, but I liked it.
At the end of the session, though, when Annika asked if I would practise the meditation on my own as homework, I thought, hang on, I’ve been coming now for two weeks and I haven’t lost a pound. Why hasn’t she given me a diet yet? Why haven’t we talked about food? Does she think I’m crazy? I don’t want to be told I’m crazy. I just want to be thin.
Even though it had now been clearly explained to me, I still didn’t realise at the time that what I was struggling with was not just a problem with diets and my weight, but a problem with my mind and my feelings and the stories I was telling myself. Like the sticky thoughts from my childhood and my guilt about Rowena’s death, the thought of food also presented itself as an ongoing sticky thought—a point of obsession, more pleasant than the guilt, but nonetheless addictive. I had no way of understanding then that Annika was trying to draw my feelings to the surface, and she was succeeding. All I knew was that, despite the lovely feeling I gained from the meditation, outside her room I was feeling more scared than before. In the past week, my thoughts had been flooded with questions about Rowena, and what happened to her. Old images and feelings; things I had no way to explain, and nowhere to put. I felt out of control, and I didn’t like it. Not one bit.
On the car trip home that day, Mum asked me what had happened in my appointment, but I didn’t want to talk about it. I looked out the window and played Tap Tap.
When we arrived home, I headed straight to the kitchen and, through a mouthful of gherkin and cheese on toast, told Mum I didn’t want to see Annika again. It was too far away, and too expensive for her and Dad, and just too weird.
She told me not to worry about the money: ‘Don’t be silly!’ But I did worry as I didn’t want to be a burden. I just kept telling her that I was fine now, until she believed me.
‘Are you sure?’ Mum asked.
‘Yes,’ I replied. If Annika wasn’t going to make me thin, I thought, what was the point of going to see her?
Looking back now, I wish I had stuck with the process. But the truth is that I was just too scared. Seeing Annika was like taking the lid off a garbage can. I was so scared that, if I let her get to know me, she would discover the thing I was most scared of, the thing I already suspected to be true: that there was something very wrong with my brain.
I still believed my biggest problem was not with my head, but with my weight, and if only I could find the right diet, all would be well.
Over the next six years, I did go on to become a true world champion—in the art of failing diets. If you named a diet, I’d have tried it. I’m not just talking the one-pagers from the ladies’ magazines, either—I’m talking the real deal: the Cabbage Soup Diet, the Egg Diet, the Grapefruit Diet, the Royal Jelly Diet, the Meal Replacement Shakes Diet, the Lean Cuisine Diet, the Cottage Cheese Diet, Gloria Marshall, Weight Watchers (four times), the Drink-Diet-Coke-And-Chew-Sugarless-Gum-And-Smoke-A-Lot-And-Don’t-Sleep Diet, as well as several dozen rounds of Monday morning ‘Just don’t eat at all’ attempts, and the Atkins Diet (turns out you can eat too much bacon). I am pleased to say I never tried Jenny Craig, but that’s only because it cost money and I was a broke student.
It would be a long time before I understood why I ate, and dieted, the way I did. I had no concept back then that the way we eat, and the way we feel, are often entwined. I see it now, clear as day—my ‘piano accordion’ body was trying to do me a favour, was trying to tell me something.
It would take me some time yet to work out what that something was.
4
Amazing life
You want an amazing life
But you can’t decide
You think you’re supposed to be
Fully formed, already,
Don’t you?
‘AMAZING LIFE’
(The Winter I Chose Happiness, 2012)
‘Good
