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The Other Image
When you look in the mirror, do you see what others see? Or do you see an image that isn't really true?
By Jessica Fink
Staff Writer
illustration by Shelley Bartosh
Imagine being 20 pounds under your ideal weight. The
fat surrounding and cushioning your internal organs is gone. To
compensate for the loss of body heat, you have thick hair all over
your body, except on your head. There, your hair has fallen out in
handfuls due to malnutrition. Your bones give you bruises every time you
sit or lie down. Imagine you're anorexic.
Sophomore Megan Shupp knows this world personally. In
the spring of her freshman year, Shupp was hospitalized for
severe dehydration in connection with anorexia. Later she spent a month
in an eating disorder treatment facility at Swedish Hospital. But
like others with an eating disorder, Megan was in denial. "I didn't
realize I had a problem until I was better," she said. "Last month I looked
at pictures of myself from then and I looked terrible."
For Shupp, anorexia wasn't something that happened
overnight. "I didn't just decide to lose weight," she said. "The idea's been
there since I was little. I've always been self-conscious about my
weight. In sixth grade I started taking an upper level dance class with a lot
of skinny people. So then I thought, well, I'm going to get in really
good shape. It started by me wanting to be healthy and then went
overboard."
"There's a lot of kids who try to diet and lose weight
inappropriately," said school nurse Marilyn Fenn. "They exercise too much
and don't eat enough to compensate."
But what causes an
anorexic to go from self-esteem to self destruct? "[Anorexics]
mostly want to punish themselves but they think that only stupid
people cut themselves with knives," said Shupp. "You want to
punish yourself for feeling so bad. A lot of them end up cutting
themselves anyway."
Anorexics usually end up punishing the people who
love them, as well as themselves. "I couldn't stop thinking about her," said sophomore Jacqui
Jakoubek, Shupp's step-sister. "It made me wonder what I could do to help
her and what I was doing wrong."
"It really made me feel like I wasn't worthwhile," said
sophomore Whitney Emrich, Shupp's best friend. "I tried to do so much
for her and she wouldn't do anything about it. I sent her cards and
little gifts and tried to make her feel good and she'd send me cards
back that said stuff like, 'Thanks for being such a good friend even
though I don't deserve it.' She would always put herself down."
But watching the anorexic suffer is one of the hardest parts for friends and family. "When I first saw her [in the hospital] she scared me,"
said Emrich. "I wasn't scared of her, I was scared for her. She was
a walking skeleton."
For anorexics denial is an obstacle to be overcome
before treatment. "I had major problems while we were learning
about eating disorders in health," said Shupp. "Every time we talked
about it, I got nervous."
Treatment for anorexics is more complex than just gaining
the weight back. "The treatment has to be a three-pronged
attempt working on the medical, nutritional, and psychological
areas of the disease," said Fenn. "You really need experts in all
three areas to get change."
"[Treatment] was a nightmare. I couldn't believe
I was [at the hospital]," said Shupp. "You're so scared of
doing the things they wanted you to. In the beginning, all
they wanted was for me to gain weight and that was really hard for
me. They told me that either I'd eat or they'd stick me with needles. So I ate."
"There was a reason for all this," said Shupp. "I wasn't just
a stupid person trying to kill myself. I was angry at people I loved
but I didn't think that you could be angry and love someone at the
same time. So I put the anger on myself." Now Megan is trying to get
on with her life. Unfortunately, anorexia is something that is
always with you. "You can push it back so you're not obsessed with it
but it's always a shadow in the back of you mind," said Shupp. "It's
a constant battle but when I feel myself slipping, I think of what I
was like and what I went through. I didn't want to live. Now I do."
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