That card from the bursar with my class rank on it, by the way, said number one. Uno. First. Primero Zuerst. The one hundred seventy other students in my class had a GPA lower than mine. I’d exceeded my goal of landing in the top half of the class, which, after my less-than-mediocre score on the LSAT—I never could figure out when Uriah should have his conference—seemed like a stretch goal. I should have been thrilled. I should have been opening zero-balance credit cards. Shopping for Louboutin heels. Signing the lease on a new apartment on the Gold Coast. Instead, I was first in my class and jealous of the lead singer of INXS who died of autoerotic asphyxiation.
What the hell was wrong with me? I wore size-six pants, had D-cup breasts, and pulled in enough student loan money to cover a studio apartment in an up-and-coming neighborhood on the north side of Chicago. For eight years, I’d been a member of a 12-step program that taught me how to eat without sticking my finger down my throat thirty minutes later. My future gleamed before me like Grandma’s polished silver. I had every reason to be optimistic. But self-disgust about my stuckness—I was far away from other people, aeons away from a romantic relationship—lodged in every cell of my body. There was some reason that I felt so apart and alone, a reason why my heart was so slick. I didn’t know what it was, but I felt it pulsing as I fell asleep and wished to not wake up.
I was already in a 12-step program. I’d done a fourth-step inventory with my sponsor who lived in Texas and made amends to the people I’d harmed. I’d returned to Ursuline Academy, my all-girl high school, with a one-hundred-dollar check as restitution for money I stole while managing parking-lot fees junior year. Twelve-step recovery had arrested the worst of my disordered eating, and I credited it with saving my life. Why was I now wishing that life away? I confessed to my sponsor who lived in Texas that I’d been having dark thoughts.
“I wish for death every day.” She told me to double up on my meetings.
I tripled them, and felt more alone than ever.
2
A few days after I learned my class rank, a woman named Marnie invited me to dinner following a 12-step meeting. Like me, she was a recovering bulimic. Unlike me, she had a super-together life: She was only a few years older, but she worked at a lab focused on cutting-edge experiments for breast cancer treatments; she and her husband had recently painted the entryway of her colonial Sherwin-Williams’s Osage Orange; she was tracking her ovulation. Her life wasn’t perfect—her marriage was often stormy—but she chased what she wanted. My instinct was to say no to her dinner offer so I could go home, take off my bra, and eat my four ounces of ground turkey and roasted carrots alone in front of Scrubs. That’s what I usually did—beg off—when people after meetings invited me to join them for coffee or dinner. “Fellowship,” as they called it. But before I could decline, Marnie touched my elbow. “Just come. Pat’s out of town, and I don’t want to eat alone.”
We sat across from each other at the type of “healthy” diner that serves sprouted bread and sweet potato fries. Marnie seemed extra buoyant. Was she wearing lip gloss?
“You seem happy,” I said.
“It’s my new therapist.” I chased a spinach leaf around my plate with my fork. Could a therapist help me? I let the hope flicker. The summer before law school, I availed myself of eight free sessions with a social worker, courtesy of an Employee Assistance Program. I’d been assigned a meek woman named June who wore prairie skirts without irony. I didn’t tell her any of my secrets because I was afraid of upsetting her. Therapy, like being truly close to people, seemed like an experience I had to stand on the outside of, my face pressed to the window.
“I’m doing an all-women’s group.”
“Group?” My neck tensed immediately. I had a deep mistrust of groups after a bad experience in fifth grade when my parents transferred me to a local public school from my small Catholic school where class size was dwindling. At the new school, I fell in with the popular girls, led by Bianca, who gave out Jolly Ranchers every lunch period and had solid gold orbs on her add-a-bead necklace. I once spent the night at Bianca’s house, and her mom took us in her silver Mercedes to see Footloose. But Bianca turned on me midyear. She thought her boyfriend liked me because we sat near each other in history. One day at lunch, she offered everyone at the table a Jolly Rancher except me. She slipped a note under my lunch bag: We don’t want you at our table. All the girls had signed it. By then, I knew something was off in the connection between me and other people. I sensed in my gut that I didn’t know how to stay connected, how not to be cast aside. I could tolerate 12-step groups because the membership at every meeting shifted. You could come and go as you pleased, and no one knew your last name. There was no one in charge at a 12-step meeting—no Queen Bee Bianca who could oust other members. A set of spiritual principles held a 12-step group together: anonymity, humility, integrity, unity, service. Without those, I never would have stayed. Plus, the cost of a meeting was basically free, though they suggested a two-dollar donation. For the cost of a Diet Coke I could spend sixty minutes acknowledging my eating disorder and listening to other people’s pain
