At The Very Beginning of the Nightmare....(some ramblings)

I love this image of the last pencil drawing you were working on. It is so sweet, I
wish you could have finished it.....you were such an amazing artist.............a perfectionist!














One of the earliest memories I have of realizing that there was something very wrong in your life, is one evening while laying in bed, reading. You came into my room wearing a bright blue, tight fitting very pretty dress, borrowed from a friend. Dad and I had a bed with a bridge on top and attached was a gigantic mirror which was right behind me. You were looking at yourself in the mirror while I lay there, I looked at you with a feeling of astonishment. You looked abnormally thin in this dress. I think you were deciding whether to wear it to either homecoming or a wedding, I don't quite remember. I looked at you and said," Monica, you look VERY thin in that dress, how much did you lose"? I know you had started a diet several weeks earlier due to the fact that you were going to be entering a riding clinic of a very well known and respected professional in the Hunter Jumper world. He also had a reputation for making some of the young girls in his clinic, who may have had a few extra pounds on them, feel inadequate. He would make comments in front of bleachers full of paying customers watching his popular clinics and completely embarrass them. I remember you being so afraid that he would say something to you about your weight, that you actually started dieting weeks before the clinic. You managed to lose a few pounds with ease. The clinic went well and you were a star, he happened to be impressed with your riding.......however, you continued to lose more weight. You never needed to lose any weight to begin with since you were always slender and looked magnificent on Malmo........if I may say so myself. You appeared so proud of yourself for losing the weight and I do remember you received lots of attention from others who commented, " Oh you look so good" or " Did you lose weight, you look so much better"...etc. it definitely gave you a high and the desire to continue to lose.....until it just plain got "out of control". It was accompanied with the obsessive desire to weigh yourself. I'm not sure how many times a day you would weigh yourself, but I'm pretty confident that it was too many times! Another memory I have is being in the kitchen and looking down into the family room as you lay on the couch. It was morning and you had slept on the couch all night long. You told me that you were feeling so faint and weak that you were afraid to go to bed and fall asleep because you were fearful that you would not wake up.

I didn't know it at the time, but this weighing yourself behavior was accompanied by the compulsion to exercise. And so began the nightmare.........
I couldn't believe how everything changed about you at that time, it was incredibly scary for us.....I didn't know what to do...it was like you had gone away and we had this new person living with us who we didn't know anymore.

We took you back to the original doctor who first diagnosed you with anorexia, I would bring you there weekly, but I remember you were so angry, I didn't know then that anorexia was already taking over, taking hold of you. I always thought that anything can be fixed, we can work it out, we can do whatever is necessary to fix it. We were willing to go to whatever length we needed to for help and to understand what was happening to you.........
We did whatever the doctors said to do....the first major thing that was asked of us was to remove the scale from our home...what?? but you would be so upset, it was difficult for me to do that and listen to how it affected you emotionally. Me? the mom who found it nearly impossible to implement consequences during your early teens, the one who didn't want to upset you guys in any way. We were always so close, we were friends, I was the mom all your friends said they liked to be around.....

In the long run I ended up doing what was necessary at the time, I completely put my confidence in the doctors and specialists.

I used to have so much respect for doctors.......

I realized this wasn't going to be an easy fix.... it would be the battle your life!!


I miss you like crazy......m