WEBVTT - Kasha 0:00:00.200 --> 0:00:11.039 Family Secrets is a production of I Heart Radio. When 0:00:11.080 --> 0:00:14.840 I returned to Boulder, my body was different. A summer 0:00:14.880 --> 0:00:18.239 metamorphosis was a familiar plot line in the y A 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:22.239 novels I had once read. Often the teenage girl character 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:26.360 transformed by growing breasts or by getting her period, something 0:00:26.400 --> 0:00:30.160 that advanced her maturity. I felt I'd been forward to 0:00:30.840 --> 0:00:33.559 even though I turned back the clock, I was no 0:00:33.640 --> 0:00:36.920 longer menstruating. But if you had glimpsed me on the street, 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:40.120 then you would not have been startled or necessarily thought 0:00:40.479 --> 0:00:43.360 that girl needs to eat. You might have thought, as 0:00:43.400 --> 0:00:48.360 I did, then, that girl looks pretty. In my bathroom, 0:00:48.400 --> 0:00:51.040 I took off my pajamas and wrapped myself in the towel. 0:00:52.080 --> 0:00:54.760 Through my mother's bedroom door, I heard the fuzz of 0:00:54.800 --> 0:00:57.640 the shower. I waited a few minutes for her to 0:00:57.680 --> 0:01:01.120 be done. When I went into the master sweet she 0:01:01.200 --> 0:01:04.880 was in her closet choosing clothes. Morning Edition was playing 0:01:04.920 --> 0:01:08.640 through a clock radio. I entered her bathroom, hung my 0:01:08.720 --> 0:01:11.720 towel on the bar across the shower door, and stood 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:15.600 naked on the scale. This was the white scale from Target. 0:01:16.360 --> 0:01:18.320 I could go through all the scales we'd ever had. 0:01:19.040 --> 0:01:21.440 The one with the big round dial that my grandparents 0:01:21.440 --> 0:01:24.959 had sent the first digital scale we owned, where the 0:01:25.080 --> 0:01:28.440 led readout was raised on a stick. Now Here I 0:01:28.560 --> 0:01:30.959 was on a pebbly white surface at the beginning of 0:01:30.959 --> 0:01:35.800 a new year, lighter than I'd ever been. Lighter. Everything 0:01:35.840 --> 0:01:41.959 in that word air and joy and wonder. That's Susan Burton, 0:01:42.720 --> 0:01:47.600 reading from her recent memoir Empty. Susan's is the story 0:01:47.640 --> 0:01:52.080 of an addiction invisible on the surface to a substance 0:01:52.280 --> 0:01:57.760 that can't be quit. Food. We just can't quit food. 0:01:59.120 --> 0:02:03.440 But what happened when eating becomes so disordered that everything 0:02:03.480 --> 0:02:09.440 about it consuming? Purging, starving withholding binging is a dangerous 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:14.440 and consuming obsession that takes over a life. This is 0:02:14.480 --> 0:02:20.200 a story of hidden shame, distorted body image, perfectionism gone haywire, 0:02:21.000 --> 0:02:34.359 and ultimately what it takes to heal. I'm Danny Shapiro, 0:02:34.919 --> 0:02:38.160 and this is family secrets, the secrets that are kept 0:02:38.160 --> 0:02:41.280 from us, the secrets we keep from others, and the 0:02:41.320 --> 0:02:49.160 secrets we keep from ourselves. So described for me the 0:02:49.280 --> 0:02:54.360 landscape of your childhood. I was from two places, and 0:02:54.400 --> 0:02:59.360 that feeling of being from two places really defined my childhood. 0:03:00.040 --> 0:03:03.960 I was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and grew up 0:03:04.240 --> 0:03:08.680 in a suburb of that city called Aida. It was 0:03:09.560 --> 0:03:14.720 a landscape of kind of roller coaster hills and farmland 0:03:15.240 --> 0:03:19.800 that was now suburbia. I grew up in a you know, 0:03:20.000 --> 0:03:24.160 gray house with black shutters, kind of picture perfect. My 0:03:24.280 --> 0:03:28.440 mother decorated it with Laura Ashley, so there were you know, 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:35.160 Laura Ashley floral pleated lamp shades and balloon blinds. And 0:03:35.720 --> 0:03:39.240 I moved when I was thirteen to Boulder, Colorado. My 0:03:39.320 --> 0:03:43.680 parents got divorced, and my mother and sister and I 0:03:43.720 --> 0:03:48.240 went west. My mother had romantic notions about the frontier, 0:03:48.960 --> 0:03:54.680 and I sort of internalized that I didn't have any 0:03:54.720 --> 0:03:57.840 real understanding of the history of the American West. But 0:03:58.120 --> 0:04:01.760 I had my own amantic notions about the frontier too, 0:04:01.760 --> 0:04:06.120 because I wanted to reinvent myself in this new place. 0:04:06.160 --> 0:04:08.880 I've been sort of a nerdy middle schooler, and I 0:04:08.960 --> 0:04:12.080 wanted to be um a popular girl in this place 0:04:12.080 --> 0:04:14.960 where nobody knew me. So Boulder, you know, it was 0:04:14.960 --> 0:04:20.479 a very different landscape than West Michigan. Boulder is where 0:04:20.480 --> 0:04:25.640 the Great Plains explode into the rocky mountains. Essential skyline 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:31.000 of the city is a dramatic rock backdrop called the 0:04:31.040 --> 0:04:34.159 flat Irons, and the white peaks of the Rockies are behind. 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:37.960 And it took a while for that landscape to feel 0:04:37.960 --> 0:04:41.120 like home for years. Not for years, but maybe for 0:04:41.160 --> 0:04:42.800 the first year it felt to me sort of like 0:04:42.839 --> 0:04:46.240 a Hollywood backdrop. But I don't live in the West anymore, 0:04:46.560 --> 0:04:49.320 and it's now a landscape that I longed for, the 0:04:49.360 --> 0:04:52.840 feeling of being in that dry air under you know, 0:04:52.880 --> 0:04:56.279 those enormous skies and that hot sun and you know 0:04:56.320 --> 0:05:01.160 sort of the daily thunderstorms in the sun er. There's 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:04.280 a lot about the openness of the West that I 0:05:04.320 --> 0:05:08.280 miss in both landscape and spirit. It's interesting that you 0:05:08.680 --> 0:05:13.320 use the phrase like a Hollywood backdrop, because then this 0:05:13.800 --> 0:05:17.440 sense of reinvention, for you know, self invention at the 0:05:17.440 --> 0:05:20.839 age of thirteen, starts to take root when you're a 0:05:20.880 --> 0:05:23.799 new kid in a new school, um starting a new chapter. 0:05:24.720 --> 0:05:30.320 Oh absolutely yeah. I'd been a very kind of studious 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:35.240 middle schooler, and once I knew that I was going 0:05:35.279 --> 0:05:37.119 to be in a new place where nobody knew my history, 0:05:37.360 --> 0:05:40.719 I had this fantasy that I could be a girl 0:05:40.839 --> 0:05:44.000 like the one in the pages of seventeen Maxine, which 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:46.560 I loved. But when I say I wanted to be 0:05:46.640 --> 0:05:51.600 like a girl in seventeen, I wasn't really thinking about body. 0:05:51.960 --> 0:05:56.039 It was more a question of personality for me. I 0:05:56.080 --> 0:05:59.000 wanted to be like a bubbly girl with like a 0:05:59.080 --> 0:06:03.599 side pony hail and a boyfriend, and I wanted to 0:06:03.640 --> 0:06:07.880 wear leg warmers and tam PACs like I It was. 0:06:08.279 --> 0:06:11.559 It was more of kind of a vibe I was after. 0:06:12.440 --> 0:06:17.440 But I think what's important is that I wasn't okay 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:21.360 with who I was. I wasn't okay with showing my 0:06:21.440 --> 0:06:24.640 real self and that there's something I have to hide, 0:06:25.040 --> 0:06:27.920 and that I need to pretend to be somebody else 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:32.560 in order to have friends in order to connect, in 0:06:32.680 --> 0:06:36.640 order to be okay. Could you describe both of your 0:06:36.640 --> 0:06:40.599 parents for me. Yeah. We lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:45.040 because my father was the news director of a local 0:06:45.160 --> 0:06:49.920 radio station called Wood and some my earliest memories are 0:06:50.000 --> 0:06:53.120 of sitting at the kitchen table eating an English muffin 0:06:53.279 --> 0:06:55.760 very early in the morning and hearing my father's voice 0:06:56.000 --> 0:06:59.320 come out of the radio behind me. He quit that 0:06:59.440 --> 0:07:02.720 job when I was six years old to write a 0:07:02.760 --> 0:07:08.200 novel and then did sort of various I guess now 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:11.480 we would call them passion projects at home in the study. 0:07:11.760 --> 0:07:16.360 For most of my childhood, my father was a very 0:07:16.440 --> 0:07:21.560 handsome and charismatic figure. He'd gone to and Over and Yale, 0:07:21.600 --> 0:07:25.160 both my parents had grown up in the Northeast, and 0:07:25.560 --> 0:07:29.480 he was very funny. But he had a temper, he 0:07:29.600 --> 0:07:33.000 had a darker side, and he had a tendency to isolate. 0:07:33.080 --> 0:07:35.120 You know. I think I bring up those passion projects 0:07:35.160 --> 0:07:38.000 in the study because my memories of my father are 0:07:38.080 --> 0:07:41.440 very tied to him sort of retreating, retreating into the study. 0:07:41.800 --> 0:07:43.880 In the basement, he had a dark room where he 0:07:44.040 --> 0:07:46.720 developed photographs, and he had a room he called his 0:07:46.800 --> 0:07:50.240 ham shack where he kept his ham radio equipment, and 0:07:50.320 --> 0:07:52.520 he would go down to those spaces. There was a 0:07:52.560 --> 0:07:55.880 real need to be alone, you know. He was somebody 0:07:55.960 --> 0:07:58.400 I wanted to do well for, I wanted to please. 0:07:58.680 --> 0:08:02.040 I feel very connected him. We share the same middle name, 0:08:02.680 --> 0:08:06.800 and we share similar looks. My mother and my sister 0:08:07.120 --> 0:08:09.800 are both dark haired and dark eyed, and my father 0:08:09.880 --> 0:08:12.760 and I are both fair and blue eyed. And it 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:15.239 was just, you know, one one way that I always 0:08:15.240 --> 0:08:18.160 felt very connected to him as a kid. I'm just 0:08:18.240 --> 0:08:20.680 I'm thinking about your mother too, and not looking like 0:08:20.760 --> 0:08:23.360 your mother. It's funny, you know when I say it, 0:08:23.360 --> 0:08:25.200 it sounds slight, but it's It was the kind of 0:08:25.200 --> 0:08:27.520 thing like I remember being a kid and being in 0:08:27.520 --> 0:08:30.200 the checkout line at the grocery store with my mother 0:08:30.520 --> 0:08:33.000 and you know, and a grocery store cashier saying, she 0:08:33.040 --> 0:08:36.400 doesn't look like your daughter, which is so strange to me. Now, 0:08:36.440 --> 0:08:38.680 if you were to see my like if my mother 0:08:38.720 --> 0:08:40.160 and I were walking down the sidewalk, it would be 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:41.720 so clear we were mother and daughter. We have very 0:08:41.760 --> 0:08:44.480 similar features, but I think the dark hair and kind 0:08:44.520 --> 0:08:46.440 of the you know, white blonde hair of of a 0:08:46.480 --> 0:08:49.839 young child maybe was so striking. So where my father 0:08:50.080 --> 0:08:52.880 was sort of charismatic and could command a room, it 0:08:53.000 --> 0:08:55.600 was literally a broadcaster, you know, holding a mic and 0:08:55.640 --> 0:09:00.439 asking questions. My mother was shyre. She always had lots 0:09:00.480 --> 0:09:03.040 of friends, but wasn't you know, it wasn't like she 0:09:03.080 --> 0:09:06.240 was like throwing dinner party. She had close friends. Both 0:09:06.240 --> 0:09:10.280 my parents were readers. My mother, more than anyone else 0:09:10.280 --> 0:09:11.920 in my life, is the person who made me a 0:09:11.960 --> 0:09:14.600 reader and a writer. I wouldn't say she was the 0:09:15.240 --> 0:09:17.680 She wasn't the kind of mother who would for example, 0:09:17.920 --> 0:09:20.200 sit down on the floor with me and play with 0:09:20.240 --> 0:09:24.559 my dollhouse. Which she was a mother who understood how 0:09:25.040 --> 0:09:28.360 potent and how wonderful it was to be a little 0:09:28.400 --> 0:09:31.120 girl playing with the dollhouse. So she she granted me 0:09:31.200 --> 0:09:34.800 a lot of like imaginative freedom and space. But they had, 0:09:34.840 --> 0:09:39.800 you know, they had a troubled marriage, and my mother's 0:09:39.840 --> 0:09:45.280 sort of acquiescence and passivity in their marriage, she sort 0:09:45.320 --> 0:09:47.960 of exploded that hall. She ended up leaving my father 0:09:48.160 --> 0:09:50.280 um when I was thirteen, and that's when we went 0:09:50.320 --> 0:09:56.080 to Boulder. So many stories of family secrets originate in shame. 0:09:57.040 --> 0:10:00.480 It is so often a shame that causes the islands 0:10:00.559 --> 0:10:04.679 in which secrets fester and grow, making it impossible or 0:10:04.679 --> 0:10:08.320 at least terrifying, to speak the truth of our inner lives. 0:10:09.559 --> 0:10:13.120 One particular evening, when Susan is thirteen, she hears her 0:10:13.120 --> 0:10:16.920 parents fighting, and she hears her father say something truly 0:10:16.960 --> 0:10:23.840 horrible to her mother. He calls her disgusting. Susan internalizes 0:10:23.960 --> 0:10:27.640 this word. In time, it becomes a weapon she turns 0:10:27.679 --> 0:10:32.640 on herself. I was thirteen, I was in eighth grade. 0:10:33.160 --> 0:10:37.160 I had a friend sleeping over and I remember waking 0:10:37.200 --> 0:10:40.360 early in the morning and I heard my parents. You know, 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:43.200 people talk about their parents fighting. I sort of don't 0:10:43.200 --> 0:10:46.760 think of my parents as fighting, and this sounds cruel, 0:10:46.800 --> 0:10:49.040 but but I think of my father be rating my mother. 0:10:49.280 --> 0:10:51.520 And that was essentially what was happening in their room 0:10:51.559 --> 0:10:54.560 across the landing. And at one point I heard my 0:10:54.640 --> 0:10:59.640 father say, you disgusted me, You're disgusting, And then I 0:10:59.679 --> 0:11:03.360 heard him leave the room and walked down the stairs, 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:05.400 opened the door and closed the door and go running. 0:11:06.520 --> 0:11:10.360 It was a frightening moment. I was thirteen years old. 0:11:10.559 --> 0:11:13.559 Part of me was wondering about my friend. Was she asleep, 0:11:13.679 --> 0:11:17.319 had she heard? But I really wondered what my father 0:11:17.520 --> 0:11:24.080 found disgusting about my mother. And the answer that seemed 0:11:25.000 --> 0:11:27.400 the realist to me in that moment. The answer my 0:11:27.720 --> 0:11:29.520 you know, my head sort of offered up was that 0:11:29.559 --> 0:11:33.800 he was disgusted by her body, and not just her 0:11:33.840 --> 0:11:36.880 body in general, but in my mind, it was a 0:11:36.880 --> 0:11:40.960 specific part of her body. He was disgusted by her stomach. 0:11:41.559 --> 0:11:44.560 She was often talking about how she had a little 0:11:44.600 --> 0:11:47.480 pot belly. There was a lot of focus among the 0:11:47.520 --> 0:11:51.040 women in my family on stomachs, and reflecting on that, 0:11:51.080 --> 0:11:56.120 now you know the specificity of that with which that 0:11:56.240 --> 0:11:58.880 rose up for me at thirteen. I mean, my god, 0:11:59.280 --> 0:12:02.040 was I not going to, you know, spend decades having 0:12:02.040 --> 0:12:03.880 a seating disorder where I was focused on my stomach 0:12:04.000 --> 0:12:05.839 like it was just it was all, it was all 0:12:05.920 --> 0:12:08.640 right there for me already I assumed that was the 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:13.560 site of his disgust. Yeah, that's that's so interesting because 0:12:13.640 --> 0:12:18.320 throughout your book you write about hip bones and the 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:24.920 different variations of emptiness and fullness, and the ideal in 0:12:24.960 --> 0:12:29.760 the midst of your eating disorders being that when you're 0:12:29.800 --> 0:12:33.120 not just lying down but actually standing up, your hip 0:12:33.120 --> 0:12:36.040 bones like a ruler could be put across them, that 0:12:36.120 --> 0:12:38.280 there would be no stomach, you know, kind of in 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:44.280 the way, which is actually something that I feel so 0:12:44.400 --> 0:12:50.720 many young women contend with in varying degrees. And you know, 0:12:50.800 --> 0:12:53.160 I think of eating disorders as like sort of being 0:12:53.200 --> 0:12:57.079 on a slide rule in some way, or there's problematic 0:12:57.559 --> 0:13:03.120 eating or not eating, and then there's a place where 0:13:03.120 --> 0:13:08.440 a switch gets flipped and it becomes dangerous and pernicious. 0:13:08.720 --> 0:13:11.840 I mean, can you talk about the first time that 0:13:11.840 --> 0:13:16.360 that switch that flipped for you? Yeah, I mean I 0:13:16.400 --> 0:13:19.640 think that you're, uh, the analogy of a slide rule 0:13:19.800 --> 0:13:23.600 I think is really smart because um so, I'll mention 0:13:23.640 --> 0:13:25.960 a couple like markers on the slide rule before I 0:13:25.960 --> 0:13:27.960 get to the switch flip. But I mean, I think 0:13:28.120 --> 0:13:30.160 one thing that's important to know is that I was 0:13:30.200 --> 0:13:34.560 always a really kind of restricted eater as a kid, 0:13:34.720 --> 0:13:37.600 and not in a way of limiting calories, although that 0:13:37.679 --> 0:13:39.560 was there too. I went on my first diet when 0:13:39.600 --> 0:13:41.640 I was nine, but I was scared of a lot 0:13:41.640 --> 0:13:44.240 of food. I was the kid who at the birthday 0:13:44.240 --> 0:13:47.680 party wouldn't eat pizza. Um. I didn't like soda. I 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:51.120 didn't like potato chips. I had a lot of fears 0:13:51.200 --> 0:13:54.160 about tastes. I had a lot of fears that food 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:56.480 would make me sick. So there was something kind of 0:13:56.520 --> 0:14:00.080 fraud for me with food early on. Another import and 0:14:00.160 --> 0:14:02.400 thing that happened is that I got my period when 0:14:02.440 --> 0:14:07.080 I was ten. Um So, this is in n and 0:14:07.200 --> 0:14:09.880 not a lot of other girls had their periods at ten. 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:11.840 And not only did I have my period, but I had, 0:14:11.840 --> 0:14:13.880 you know, everything that went along with it. I had 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:19.720 hips and breasts and waste. And I was profoundly destabilized 0:14:19.760 --> 0:14:25.360 by this. I didn't feel at home in this new body. 0:14:25.640 --> 0:14:29.800 I wanted my old body. And that feeling of wanting 0:14:29.840 --> 0:14:34.320 my old body wasn't something I did something about right away, 0:14:34.520 --> 0:14:37.680 but it was something that kind of haunted me throughout 0:14:37.800 --> 0:14:42.240 my early adolescence. So when I was a sophomore in 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:46.120 high school, I was fifteen, I got a stomach bug 0:14:46.480 --> 0:14:49.880 over Christmas break and I lost a couple of pounds, 0:14:50.960 --> 0:14:54.440 And at Christmas dinner, I mentioned it to everyone at 0:14:54.440 --> 0:14:56.160 the table. That was the kind of thing women in 0:14:56.160 --> 0:14:58.120 my family mentioned to each other, you know, I lost 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:00.800 a couple of pounds, and my aunt said, you know, 0:15:00.840 --> 0:15:05.160 it's just waterway, You'll mean it back, but um, I didn't. 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:09.560 And I found that I liked the feeling of being 0:15:09.680 --> 0:15:12.680 just a little bit lighter. There was something about it 0:15:12.720 --> 0:15:17.680 that felt like an unburdening. I liked the feeling of 0:15:17.720 --> 0:15:22.360 my pants having a little more you know, air inside them, 0:15:22.400 --> 0:15:26.160 if that makes sense. I liked the feeling of emptiness, 0:15:26.560 --> 0:15:29.520 and I saw it more of that feeling that I craved. 0:15:30.080 --> 0:15:35.560 And several months later I'd lost my period. I was intorexic, 0:15:36.440 --> 0:15:41.680 and really quickly after that, the anorexia shifted into binge eating, 0:15:42.040 --> 0:15:45.840 which is a really typical trajectory. Though I didn't know 0:15:45.960 --> 0:15:49.640 this at the time, So that switch flipping happens for me, 0:15:50.240 --> 0:15:52.640 you know, kind of fifteen going on sixteen, at the 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:56.680 very beginning of my junior year of high school. You know, 0:15:56.720 --> 0:16:00.920 at one point you describe a paper that you read 0:16:00.960 --> 0:16:07.480 in article in Psychological bulletin, and it describes binge eating 0:16:07.600 --> 0:16:13.960 as a short term escape from an adversive awareness of self. 0:16:14.680 --> 0:16:18.280 And that was like such a powerful phrase for me. 0:16:18.920 --> 0:16:22.360 I think it could actually describe any number of addictions 0:16:23.640 --> 0:16:27.200 at their root with well short term escape. First of all, 0:16:27.320 --> 0:16:30.600 it's always a short term escape, you know, it's never 0:16:30.680 --> 0:16:35.880 a long term escape um from an adversive awareness of self. 0:16:36.000 --> 0:16:39.600 And you know what you've been describing with that sense 0:16:40.120 --> 0:16:43.160 of the pot bellies of the women in your family 0:16:43.200 --> 0:16:45.160 and the way that women would talk about their bodies 0:16:45.960 --> 0:16:49.640 and your own sense of yourself getting your period at 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:53.120 the age of ten, is that adversive sense of self 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:58.560 that just I think like lights up all the switchboards mentally, psychologically, emotionally, 0:16:58.840 --> 0:17:01.920 for you know, I need to turn this down and 0:17:01.960 --> 0:17:05.080 find a way to not feel this or hear this noise. 0:17:05.920 --> 0:17:10.560 Mm hmmm. Yeah, I'm so glad that that line, that 0:17:10.600 --> 0:17:12.920 that sentence spoke to you because it's still to me 0:17:13.040 --> 0:17:16.479 is among the best descriptions of what it is to binge, 0:17:16.760 --> 0:17:20.000 and to some degree with anorexia too, although the quality 0:17:20.359 --> 0:17:22.800 of not eating for me is slightly different than the 0:17:22.840 --> 0:17:25.960 quality of eating too much. But I mean, the thing 0:17:26.000 --> 0:17:31.040 with a binge is that as long as I was eating, 0:17:31.480 --> 0:17:34.919 as long as my hand was on my way to 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:37.639 my mouth, as long as I was chewing something, I 0:17:37.720 --> 0:17:42.320 didn't have to think about anything. There was only this. 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:46.000 I didn't have to think about any loss or pain 0:17:46.600 --> 0:17:50.200 or longing. And even when it was over and there 0:17:50.280 --> 0:17:53.720 was kind of a wave of self loathing that still 0:17:53.880 --> 0:17:57.240 prevented me from thinking about anything else other than my 0:17:57.280 --> 0:18:01.439 own disappointment in myself and the first of awareness that 0:18:01.520 --> 0:18:04.679 I was trying to escape. Sure was certainly some of 0:18:04.720 --> 0:18:06.880 it was about body, but but so much of it 0:18:06.920 --> 0:18:12.560 was just about feelings of isolation or inadequacy or flawed 0:18:12.600 --> 0:18:14.680 parts of myself that I didn't want to face, lack 0:18:14.720 --> 0:18:17.320 of connection. A lot of this for me was happening 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:20.919 in high school and college, so you know, somebody hadn't 0:18:20.960 --> 0:18:24.159 invited me to the party, or I wanted to be 0:18:24.200 --> 0:18:26.040 close to someone who didn't want to be close to me, 0:18:26.680 --> 0:18:30.679 or deeper things I didn't want to face, like my 0:18:30.800 --> 0:18:34.760 parents divorce, things that were hard to look at about 0:18:34.760 --> 0:18:40.240 my father. And then there's also your mother's drinking, which 0:18:40.440 --> 0:18:46.320 runs throughout your teenage years, and then certainly your college 0:18:46.400 --> 0:18:51.159 years becomes more serious as as you're starting to become 0:18:51.200 --> 0:18:57.520 a late teen right mm hmmm. Susan's mom hides her 0:18:57.600 --> 0:19:00.800 drinking and in a way become is a model of 0:19:00.840 --> 0:19:04.680 how to have and maintain a hidden life. Susan's binge 0:19:04.720 --> 0:19:07.760 eating is also very possible for her to maintain in 0:19:07.840 --> 0:19:12.399 secret at this point. After all, she excels academically and 0:19:12.560 --> 0:19:15.960 is admitted to Yale, but her binge eating takes on 0:19:16.040 --> 0:19:19.200 a whole new level of intensity once she's away from 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:23.080 home and on her own for the first time. It 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:28.119 was so upsetting to me because I thought that being 0:19:28.760 --> 0:19:31.159 out of my mother's house, being out of that kitchen 0:19:31.240 --> 0:19:33.520 would fix it. That it was so you know, it 0:19:33.640 --> 0:19:35.720 was just it was just habit, it was just setting, 0:19:35.760 --> 0:19:39.840 it was just environment. And getting to Yale and finding 0:19:39.880 --> 0:19:43.560 out very quickly that it wasn't was just devastating. I mean, 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:47.200 I would wake up in the morning, I would get 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:51.720 dressed in one of the you know, three elastic waist 0:19:51.760 --> 0:19:54.879 skirts I had that that fit I would put on 0:19:54.880 --> 0:19:58.399 my broken stocks because that was one thing that happened 0:19:58.440 --> 0:20:01.720 in those years was I felt again that I could 0:20:01.760 --> 0:20:05.880 not be myself and I felt I could not be 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:09.240 kind of a slender perfectionist I had once been because 0:20:09.280 --> 0:20:12.399 I was no longer that girl, and I sort of 0:20:12.440 --> 0:20:18.520 developed this new persona to accommodate my body. I embraced 0:20:18.720 --> 0:20:22.520 being from Boulder. I smoked a lot of pot, which 0:20:22.560 --> 0:20:26.480 I hated. I was. I'm one of the people. Uh 0:20:26.600 --> 0:20:29.679 pot doesn't relax me, it just makes me paranoid. But 0:20:29.960 --> 0:20:33.719 I was so you know, disconnected from who I was 0:20:33.760 --> 0:20:36.119 in my own desires that I did it anyway because 0:20:36.119 --> 0:20:40.200 I felt it matched the person I needed to be anyway. 0:20:40.240 --> 0:20:42.119 So so I would, you know, get up, put in 0:20:42.200 --> 0:20:45.560 my elastic waistkirt, my birkenstocks, go to the dining hall 0:20:46.080 --> 0:20:50.480 resolving to you know, eat granola and soy milk. You 0:20:50.560 --> 0:20:53.600 actually develop an alter ego, right, I mean she has 0:20:53.640 --> 0:21:00.680 a name. Yes, Kasha Susan's alter ego's name is Kasha. 0:21:01.600 --> 0:21:07.800 Susan is small, almost elphin, elegant, delicate. She's intense electric 0:21:08.720 --> 0:21:12.560 as Kasha She wears birken stocks and a knee length skirt, 0:21:12.960 --> 0:21:16.240 and she walks around campus dreamily, spooning ice cream into 0:21:16.280 --> 0:21:21.280 her mouth. She is rubic and dazed, dreamy, an earth 0:21:21.400 --> 0:21:24.720 mama who doesn't care about her size, doesn't even think 0:21:24.760 --> 0:21:29.760 about it. So there's again this kind of attempt to 0:21:30.600 --> 0:21:34.040 put on an identity, to create an identity. And you 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:36.679 actually you right at one point that Kasha could carry 0:21:36.680 --> 0:21:39.760 the weight like you. Susan couldn't carry the weight, but 0:21:39.840 --> 0:21:44.480 Kasha could, right, And you know, I wish, I wish 0:21:44.520 --> 0:21:47.080 i'd know that Susan could carry the weight, and that 0:21:47.200 --> 0:21:50.680 Susan needed to carry the weight. But I was hiding, 0:21:51.119 --> 0:21:53.360 you know, I was hiding who I was, and I 0:21:53.400 --> 0:21:56.840 was hiding the binging. And it was hard to hide 0:21:56.920 --> 0:22:00.000 the midging. I mean, anybody who's been in a college 0:22:00.119 --> 0:22:04.040 dorm situation, the feeling of never having a space to 0:22:04.080 --> 0:22:07.439 myself was so strong in those early days. UM I 0:22:07.520 --> 0:22:13.000 would kind of make my rounds of different food shops 0:22:13.000 --> 0:22:17.320 on campus, and I would almost inevitably wind up on 0:22:17.440 --> 0:22:21.320 the top floor of the stacks in the library with 0:22:21.440 --> 0:22:23.560 kind of whatever. The tail end of the binge was 0:22:23.680 --> 0:22:27.760 usually like a scone in a brown paper bag, and 0:22:27.840 --> 0:22:31.560 then I would sit up at this little steady carol 0:22:31.680 --> 0:22:36.160 beside this little arched window, and I would write. Writing 0:22:36.280 --> 0:22:40.840 for me was a purgative act, kind of this ritual 0:22:40.960 --> 0:22:44.560 purification that almost inevitably followed a binge. And I would 0:22:44.600 --> 0:22:46.960 sit up there and I would read the two eating 0:22:47.000 --> 0:22:50.199 disorder memoirs um that were in the library's collection. Then 0:22:50.200 --> 0:22:54.440 it was, And there are many more eating disorder memoirs now, 0:22:54.480 --> 0:22:57.159 but there were fewer than the librarhead too, and I 0:22:57.240 --> 0:23:01.000 read them over and over again. I felt so isolated 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:04.720 and so alone, and I found real solace in these 0:23:04.720 --> 0:23:09.200 other women's stories. You also described trying to research eating 0:23:09.200 --> 0:23:11.600 disorders at a certain point in the library and the 0:23:11.640 --> 0:23:16.000 books being constantly checked out. Yeah. I knew I couldn't 0:23:16.040 --> 0:23:19.760 be the only one going through this, but it was 0:23:19.800 --> 0:23:24.639 impossible for me to imagine telling someone, Although that's not 0:23:24.800 --> 0:23:30.200 entirely true. As much as I fantasized about quitting, about 0:23:30.280 --> 0:23:35.800 not binging anymore, I fantasized about telling UM. So I 0:23:35.840 --> 0:23:41.800 was committed to secrecy, but I simultaneously wanted to tell 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:45.199 so badly. But I only wanted to tell once I 0:23:45.280 --> 0:23:49.040 was over it. I had a very concrete fantasy actually 0:23:49.080 --> 0:23:52.160 about what that would look like. Freshman year of college. 0:23:52.200 --> 0:23:55.640 I would sit in my dorm room and my little 0:23:55.680 --> 0:24:00.639 Macintosh um and I would write letters to best friend 0:24:00.840 --> 0:24:04.080 cheva Um. But the letters were set in the future. 0:24:04.359 --> 0:24:07.520 The letters were written from the me six months Hence, 0:24:08.160 --> 0:24:11.879 I would be in Boulder for the summer and I 0:24:11.920 --> 0:24:15.720 would write to my friend from this future me that 0:24:15.800 --> 0:24:19.280 you know, I'd started attending this eating disorders group, and 0:24:19.280 --> 0:24:21.360 then I would sort of lay out my story, lay 0:24:21.359 --> 0:24:25.439 out what was going on for me. And I wanted 0:24:25.480 --> 0:24:31.720 to tell because and eating disorder, like any addiction, it 0:24:31.840 --> 0:24:35.280 leads to erratic behavior. It leads to guardedness, it leads 0:24:35.320 --> 0:24:38.800 to hiding, that leads to deception, to you know, not 0:24:38.880 --> 0:24:41.919 not telling the whole story. But I also desperately wanted 0:24:41.960 --> 0:24:46.919 to be known and understood and close to people. But 0:24:47.040 --> 0:24:50.520 it was it was too impossible to imagine telling until 0:24:50.560 --> 0:24:52.119 I was over it. And then once I was over it, 0:24:52.560 --> 0:24:55.400 the urge to tell went dormant for a long time. 0:24:58.880 --> 0:25:00.600 We're going to take a quick a cure for a 0:25:00.600 --> 0:25:11.639 word from our sponsor. There is such tension in Susan's 0:25:11.680 --> 0:25:15.280 story between longing to be seen and known, but feeling 0:25:15.359 --> 0:25:19.680 completely unable to share her deepest and most shameful secret. 0:25:20.720 --> 0:25:23.800 We can't be known if we don't allow ourselves to 0:25:23.840 --> 0:25:27.720 be open and vulnerable, but our secrets shut us down. 0:25:28.920 --> 0:25:31.800 Susan has a very close friend in high school, Julie, 0:25:32.280 --> 0:25:35.040 who she comes close to telling the truth, but she 0:25:35.119 --> 0:25:39.359 stops herself. The two women lose touch for twenty years, 0:25:40.000 --> 0:25:44.280 and then Susan sees Julie again at a reunion. She's 0:25:44.320 --> 0:25:48.320 now thirty seven years old. Susan thinks of finally telling 0:25:48.400 --> 0:25:51.119 Julie what she had been going through beginning in high school. 0:25:51.840 --> 0:25:55.000 After all, now Susan has a loving family and a 0:25:55.080 --> 0:25:59.480