Status: FYI: two chapters posted March 20; COMPLETED
Do Not Resuscitate
Chapter 27
Family Therapy
Date: It must be Thursday since I’m sitting on a couch, sandwiched between Mom and Dad, Val off on her own lounge chair, in Dr. Psychologist Barbie’s office, stuck in a hazy medicine-induced stupor and watching the interaction in a series of disjointed snapshots, of prompting and careful words, of questions and answers finally filling up my perpetually blank tests and quizzes and papers and homework assignments and life but still the answers are wrong and a bright red F will mar the test that is my life.
Name: Dannilynn Elizabeth, not Brianne, Sanders, no hyphens to include Mom’s last name because Mom wasn’t going to hyphenate.
Purpose, curtesy of Dr. Psychologist Barbie’s perfect mouth, an explanation to loosen my parents’ lips: Not to judge… Not to place blame… Here for a common goal… To help Dannilynn recover… Noble and unnecessary.
One hour. Time starts now. Begin.
Question 1: How are things going at home?
Answer, from Dad all decked out, a regular teacher’s pet, in a nice button up and slacks: [insert throat clearing] Good, good… Danny ate yesterday.
Cue oohs and ahs from Dr. Psychologist Barbie. This is the right answer. Good job, Dad. You get a gold star, and I get a painfully distended stomach from five bites of toast and one-fourth of a waffle, plain, no syrup or butter or powdered sugar, plain waffle-y bread.
Twenty-five hours, one minute, and ten seconds. Eleven seconds. Twelve seconds. The carbs are gestating inside of me. The pseudo morning sickness is knocking me on my ass. Dad, I need you and Val and Mom to stop hovering around me so I can deal with my food baby. But no one will let up the constant watch—there’s always someone, always someone, around me—and I’m stuck harboring a gluttonous mass of rotting food in my stomach, and they won’t stop talking about it in stilted-yet-tumbling sentences. Rubbing salt in wounds I have yet to lick. Shoving my nose in it. Stayed up with her… Hasn’t eaten… Better than nothing… Progress…
Correct answer, the one the kid in the back of the class just knows is right but she’s crippled by fear of failure and thus never throws it out into the ether: Nothing is good, Dr. Psychologist Barbie, nothing is ever good.
You don’t need to know that.
Question 2: I’m sensing some tension here. Between you two. Is that normal?
Answer, Mom’s turn, looking every bit the CEO using her lunch break to be at her daughter’s therapy session when she’d rather be with her people, holding court at her lunch table: We didn’t separate on the best terms.
A vague answer, incomplete, worthy of partial credit at the teacher’s discretion, but no one cares to expand. Dr. Psychologist Barbie, your probing techniques and confidentiality assurances are useless against the fear of tabloids. Give up. Move on. Pick up the brutal truth from their interactions, from their body language, from the words they refuse to say. You won’t get it any other way. No, what you get is Mom and Dad alternating between cautious responses. We were young… Immature… Wanted different things out of life… Music took up my… School… More difficult when you have a child… We tried but… Hard on Danny… She was so young… Didn’t understand when Val and I… Acted out… But that’s normal…
Correct answer: They are factions at war. The inciting incident, the little plus sign on the first pregnancy test.
The tests are long gone, hidden in the bottom of garbage cans by strategic teens so their parents wouldn’t find out, since decomposed in a trash heap somewhere, but their mistake can’t be pushed to the deep recesses of their minds to become a nostalgic memory of their stupidity. Because it’s still alive.
I’m. Still. Alive.
Question 3: And her relationship with food, did you see it change at all during that time?
Answer: [left blank]
Blank answer, blank stares, blank brains, blanks in the memories they desperately try to search through. The answer is there, somewhere, in the actions of three-, four-, five-year-old. The Halloween candies she refused to eat—but those were the gross candies, and no child eats candy that tastes like chalk—the time she vomited at Grandma Sanders’ house—but she had a fever and she was lethargic, and the doctor said it was just a tummy bug—when she started giving her cookies to a friend at daycare—but her friend’s parents were having money problems, and in her childish understanding of the world, she was doing what she thought was helping—how her favorite foods one day were her least favorite foods the next—but that’s typical of children and she… was never actually that picky—she ate, she always ate, she never stopped eating.
You have no idea how much I ate, Dr. Psychologist Barbie, the number of times I risked my life to scale the counter for packs of cheap junk, the gross Halloween candies I dug out of the trash, the snacks I stole from behind the daycare teacher’s desk, the way I was too embarrassed to let Mom know my clothing had stopped fitting, the discomfort of my stomach hanging over my jeans, the way my thighs chaffed, and I still ate and ate and ate and ate and ate, and you changed the candy in your jar.
You can’t do that.
Question 3, continued, two minute beat exactly: I understand she was young, very young, and children tend to have picky eating habits, but wah wah womp wah wah womp womp womp?
You can’t change the candy in your jar like that.
Question, answer, I don’t fucking know: Wah wah wahhh.
Explain yourself.
Questions, answers, questions, and answers, blurred noise, unidentifiable words, Dr. Psychologist Barbie, Dad, Mom, even silent Val’s “voice of reason” tone: Womp womp womp womp wooomp wah wah womp wah womp womp wompity wah wah.
Your. Candy. Fucking. Jar. Is. Wrong.
I don’t understand. You changed the candies. From the hodgepodge of a rainbow to meticulously color-coded, neat, little lines confined in your Mason jar, a classic in shabby comfort chic that you seem to think makes your office more welcoming. Blue, purple, pink, blue, purple, pink. Blue and purple and pink. Just blue, purple, pink.
Dannilynn…
Bluepurplepink.
Does she prefer being called…
Even the ribbon around the mouth is bluepurplepink.
Danny…
You need counseling.
What are you…
Blue purple pink blue purple pink bluepurple pink blue purplepink bluepurplepink bluepurplepinkbluepurple—Blue. Only blue.
“Would you like one?”
I missed something. Time skipped. My memory is broken. The test has paused for a brief recess, pencils down, scantrons tucked into closed test booklets, and half of my comprehension section is blank. I am lost, and the blue candies filling the mouth of the jar are… blue. So, so blue. Mesmerizingly packed together in a solid layer of blue raspberry injected deliciousness. Hard, soft, the weird texture between the two that gets stuck on molars and glues teeth together in the most frustrating-yet-amazing fashion, and blue.
I take one.
A Starburst.
I touch it. Food hoarding behaviors… I roll it between my fingers. Common in eating disorder patients… I watch the light glint off the matte wrapper and the off-center S twist and turn. Even restrictive-type disorders… I scratch the triangle folds. You might have noticed… I press the lopsided end. Starts to smell… I rub the slightly rounded edges. Collections of wrappers… I clutch it hard until the pointed corners are pressing uncomfortably against my palm. Food missing from cabinets, the refrigerator… anything…
I need to leave. We see it often during treatment… I need to put my Starburst in the drawer. Inpatient especially… Next to my Tootsie Roll Pop or maybe next to my itty bitty apple cube or what else do I have in my drawer? Coping mechanism being taken… I should check, sort my growing collection, take everything out and stare and touch, put it back in a logical order. Having food hidden brings them… Healthy foods first, junk foods in the center, bread at the end, the way I’d eat it. Control… options… manipulation… comfort… Yes.
No. Something’s wrong, something’s not right, something’s off, and I don’t know what it is, but there’s heat climbing up my neck and the breath won’t fill my lungs and creepy-crawlies wiggle under my skin and those five bites of toast and one-fourth of a waffle are growing and growing and growing—twenty-five hours, thirty-two minutes, twenty seconds, bluepurplepink, twenty-one seconds, bluepurplepink, twenty-two seconds.
And the words drop into place, seeping through my defective brain, Dr. Psychologist Barbie’s pretty voice echoing in my head, blaring through the panic: “Check her bedside table.”
No.
No.
You cheated. You rigged the test. You don’t know anything. That food is mine.
The colors in the room ratchet up. Bright. Brighter. Painful. A hit of lightheaded dizziness makes the world tilt and turn and I can’t anchor myself. I’m going to hurl on my own lap. Right here in a shrink’s office like the certifiable lunatic I am. The cottony insides of my sweater grate my skin. Words are clogging my throat, choking me, desperate to come out. And she’s still talking, this constant buzzing stabbing at my ears. It’s too much. It’s too loud. I can’t do this. Shut up, shut up, please just…
“And the razors, those are probably—”
“Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up. Shut the fuck up.”
Date: It must be Thursday since I’m sitting on a couch, sandwiched between Mom and Dad, Val off on her own lounge chair, in Dr. Psychologist Barbie’s office, stuck in a hazy medicine-induced stupor and watching the interaction in a series of disjointed snapshots, of prompting and careful words, of questions and answers finally filling up my perpetually blank tests and quizzes and papers and homework assignments and life but still the answers are wrong and a bright red F will mar the test that is my life.
Name: Dannilynn Elizabeth, not Brianne, Sanders, no hyphens to include Mom’s last name because Mom wasn’t going to hyphenate.
Purpose, curtesy of Dr. Psychologist Barbie’s perfect mouth, an explanation to loosen my parents’ lips: Not to judge… Not to place blame… Here for a common goal… To help Dannilynn recover… Noble and unnecessary.
One hour. Time starts now. Begin.
Question 1: How are things going at home?
Answer, from Dad all decked out, a regular teacher’s pet, in a nice button up and slacks: [insert throat clearing] Good, good… Danny ate yesterday.
Cue oohs and ahs from Dr. Psychologist Barbie. This is the right answer. Good job, Dad. You get a gold star, and I get a painfully distended stomach from five bites of toast and one-fourth of a waffle, plain, no syrup or butter or powdered sugar, plain waffle-y bread.
Twenty-five hours, one minute, and ten seconds. Eleven seconds. Twelve seconds. The carbs are gestating inside of me. The pseudo morning sickness is knocking me on my ass. Dad, I need you and Val and Mom to stop hovering around me so I can deal with my food baby. But no one will let up the constant watch—there’s always someone, always someone, around me—and I’m stuck harboring a gluttonous mass of rotting food in my stomach, and they won’t stop talking about it in stilted-yet-tumbling sentences. Rubbing salt in wounds I have yet to lick. Shoving my nose in it. Stayed up with her… Hasn’t eaten… Better than nothing… Progress…
Correct answer, the one the kid in the back of the class just knows is right but she’s crippled by fear of failure and thus never throws it out into the ether: Nothing is good, Dr. Psychologist Barbie, nothing is ever good.
You don’t need to know that.
Question 2: I’m sensing some tension here. Between you two. Is that normal?
Answer, Mom’s turn, looking every bit the CEO using her lunch break to be at her daughter’s therapy session when she’d rather be with her people, holding court at her lunch table: We didn’t separate on the best terms.
A vague answer, incomplete, worthy of partial credit at the teacher’s discretion, but no one cares to expand. Dr. Psychologist Barbie, your probing techniques and confidentiality assurances are useless against the fear of tabloids. Give up. Move on. Pick up the brutal truth from their interactions, from their body language, from the words they refuse to say. You won’t get it any other way. No, what you get is Mom and Dad alternating between cautious responses. We were young… Immature… Wanted different things out of life… Music took up my… School… More difficult when you have a child… We tried but… Hard on Danny… She was so young… Didn’t understand when Val and I… Acted out… But that’s normal…
Correct answer: They are factions at war. The inciting incident, the little plus sign on the first pregnancy test.
The tests are long gone, hidden in the bottom of garbage cans by strategic teens so their parents wouldn’t find out, since decomposed in a trash heap somewhere, but their mistake can’t be pushed to the deep recesses of their minds to become a nostalgic memory of their stupidity. Because it’s still alive.
I’m. Still. Alive.
Question 3: And her relationship with food, did you see it change at all during that time?
Answer: [left blank]
Blank answer, blank stares, blank brains, blanks in the memories they desperately try to search through. The answer is there, somewhere, in the actions of three-, four-, five-year-old. The Halloween candies she refused to eat—but those were the gross candies, and no child eats candy that tastes like chalk—the time she vomited at Grandma Sanders’ house—but she had a fever and she was lethargic, and the doctor said it was just a tummy bug—when she started giving her cookies to a friend at daycare—but her friend’s parents were having money problems, and in her childish understanding of the world, she was doing what she thought was helping—how her favorite foods one day were her least favorite foods the next—but that’s typical of children and she… was never actually that picky—she ate, she always ate, she never stopped eating.
You have no idea how much I ate, Dr. Psychologist Barbie, the number of times I risked my life to scale the counter for packs of cheap junk, the gross Halloween candies I dug out of the trash, the snacks I stole from behind the daycare teacher’s desk, the way I was too embarrassed to let Mom know my clothing had stopped fitting, the discomfort of my stomach hanging over my jeans, the way my thighs chaffed, and I still ate and ate and ate and ate and ate, and you changed the candy in your jar.
You can’t do that.
Question 3, continued, two minute beat exactly: I understand she was young, very young, and children tend to have picky eating habits, but wah wah womp wah wah womp womp womp?
You can’t change the candy in your jar like that.
Question, answer, I don’t fucking know: Wah wah wahhh.
Explain yourself.
Questions, answers, questions, and answers, blurred noise, unidentifiable words, Dr. Psychologist Barbie, Dad, Mom, even silent Val’s “voice of reason” tone: Womp womp womp womp wooomp wah wah womp wah womp womp wompity wah wah.
Your. Candy. Fucking. Jar. Is. Wrong.
I don’t understand. You changed the candies. From the hodgepodge of a rainbow to meticulously color-coded, neat, little lines confined in your Mason jar, a classic in shabby comfort chic that you seem to think makes your office more welcoming. Blue, purple, pink, blue, purple, pink. Blue and purple and pink. Just blue, purple, pink.
Dannilynn…
Bluepurplepink.
Does she prefer being called…
Even the ribbon around the mouth is bluepurplepink.
Danny…
You need counseling.
What are you…
Blue purple pink blue purple pink bluepurple pink blue purplepink bluepurplepink bluepurplepinkbluepurple—Blue. Only blue.
“Would you like one?”
I missed something. Time skipped. My memory is broken. The test has paused for a brief recess, pencils down, scantrons tucked into closed test booklets, and half of my comprehension section is blank. I am lost, and the blue candies filling the mouth of the jar are… blue. So, so blue. Mesmerizingly packed together in a solid layer of blue raspberry injected deliciousness. Hard, soft, the weird texture between the two that gets stuck on molars and glues teeth together in the most frustrating-yet-amazing fashion, and blue.
I take one.
A Starburst.
I touch it. Food hoarding behaviors… I roll it between my fingers. Common in eating disorder patients… I watch the light glint off the matte wrapper and the off-center S twist and turn. Even restrictive-type disorders… I scratch the triangle folds. You might have noticed… I press the lopsided end. Starts to smell… I rub the slightly rounded edges. Collections of wrappers… I clutch it hard until the pointed corners are pressing uncomfortably against my palm. Food missing from cabinets, the refrigerator… anything…
I need to leave. We see it often during treatment… I need to put my Starburst in the drawer. Inpatient especially… Next to my Tootsie Roll Pop or maybe next to my itty bitty apple cube or what else do I have in my drawer? Coping mechanism being taken… I should check, sort my growing collection, take everything out and stare and touch, put it back in a logical order. Having food hidden brings them… Healthy foods first, junk foods in the center, bread at the end, the way I’d eat it. Control… options… manipulation… comfort… Yes.
No. Something’s wrong, something’s not right, something’s off, and I don’t know what it is, but there’s heat climbing up my neck and the breath won’t fill my lungs and creepy-crawlies wiggle under my skin and those five bites of toast and one-fourth of a waffle are growing and growing and growing—twenty-five hours, thirty-two minutes, twenty seconds, bluepurplepink, twenty-one seconds, bluepurplepink, twenty-two seconds.
And the words drop into place, seeping through my defective brain, Dr. Psychologist Barbie’s pretty voice echoing in my head, blaring through the panic: “Check her bedside table.”
No.
No.
You cheated. You rigged the test. You don’t know anything. That food is mine.
The colors in the room ratchet up. Bright. Brighter. Painful. A hit of lightheaded dizziness makes the world tilt and turn and I can’t anchor myself. I’m going to hurl on my own lap. Right here in a shrink’s office like the certifiable lunatic I am. The cottony insides of my sweater grate my skin. Words are clogging my throat, choking me, desperate to come out. And she’s still talking, this constant buzzing stabbing at my ears. It’s too much. It’s too loud. I can’t do this. Shut up, shut up, please just…
“And the razors, those are probably—”
“Shut up. Shut up, shut up, shut up. Shut the fuck up.”