Page 68 of Since She's Been Gone

MY SOPHOMORE YEARin high school had started with Mom alive and ended with her gone and me recovering from an eating disorder.

My return home after Better Horizons had been bumpy. Being in school felt like an ongoing contact sport. Navigating all the usual teenage stuff while ED was still in my ear was not easy.

Going to my outpatient recovery group three nights a week helped. Listening to older women discuss how their lives had been destroyed by ED served as a reminder of what was at stake for me.

But I also knew that big picture, I needed something to focus on, a sense of purpose, to maintain my recovery. I had tried joining various clubs at school—the debate team, the math club, a classic film group. But I still hadn’t found anything that spoke to me deeply until I met Jessica.

One night, she arrived to speak with us when we were eating dinner at the outpatient recovery center. She had been a patient years before, sitting in these same chairs, when she was recovering from bulimia.

She shared her history with us, how she had first developed bulimia in high school after watching a TV show about eating disorders in which a girl described how she had made herself sick enough to throw up. Afterward, Jessica went to the bathroom, pulled her hair back, and used the same technique to make herself sick, which marked the beginning of a decade-long battle with the eating disorder.

“For a long time, I was obsessed with that TV show,” Jessica told us. “I blamed my eating disorder on it. But after years of therapy, I understand that while it might’ve been the match that lit the fire, it wasn’t the only reason. I have anxiety and perfectionistic tendencies, which made me vulnerable to developing an eating disorder. I now realize I have the power to choose recovery, even when it’s hard.”

Her words made me think about how much I had blamed my eating disorder on Mom’s death. And I realized that, like Jessica, I would have to move past that narrative to maintain long-term recovery. This revelation was profound and wasn’t my only one during her visit.

Another light bulb went off when she spoke about the therapist who changed her life. “I don’t know what I would’ve done without my therapist,” Jessica said. “She made me believe I could be someone in this world. Because of our work together, I wanted to help people the way she had helped me, so I went back to school to become a therapist. Without the sense of purpose my work gives me, I don’t think I would’ve been able to maintain my recovery this long. Your life has to have meaning, not just to others, but to you too.”

I thought about Dr. Larsen and how she had helped me. And I thought about Mom and all the patients she had helped in her career. Succumbing to ED would’ve meant Mom’s death defining my life. But I wanted my mom’s life to be her legacy, and choosing to follow in her professional footsteps meant just that.

After my sophomore year ended, I volunteered at a local counseling center near our house for the summer. Listening to other people’s struggles didn’t shrink the magnitude of my own, but it did help put mine in perspective and made me feel less alone.

I spent the remaining years of high school volunteering at the center before heading to UCLA for college, where I majored in psychology. Like Jessica, I had found my purpose.

CHAPTER41

“SOMEONE WANTS TOsay hi to you,” Eddie says, putting Sarah on the phone. Every Thursday, they have early dismissal at her school, so they’re already home.

“Hi, Beans,” she says.

“How was school today?” I ask her.

“It was Mackenzie’s birthday. We had chocolate cake. I saved you some, but then I ate it,” she says.

I flash to the first birthday party Eddie invited me to for a boy in Sarah’s class about six months after we had started dating. It was the first time I was to meet her classmates’ parents, and I remember how nervous I felt, unsure of whether I’d fit in.

When we arrived at the large backyard party in Cheviot Hills filled with balloons and a giant bouncy house, a Lululemon mom named Dedra immediately cornered me.

“Do you have kids of your own?” she asked, narrowing her eyes at me.

“No,” I said, feeling the word catch in my throat.

“What do you do?” she continued.

“I’m a psychologist,” I answered.

She nodded and took a sip of water from a pink hydro flask bottle that dangled on her right pointer finger.

“Well, you snagged a great guy,” she told me. “I tried to set him up with my girlfriend, but he said he wasn’t ready. I don’t think he’s been with anyone but you since Sarah’s mom died.”

Thankfully, at that moment, the birthday boy’s parents carried a large, blazing cake into the yard, and I was able to excuse myself from the conversation, which felt more like an interrogation.

After everyone sang happy birthday, Sarah walked over to me and sat down with a slice of cake, while Eddie talked with a few dads.

She chatted about the bouncy house, and I felt so much joy sitting with her talking—the kind of thing I had ached to do with my mom for as long as I could remember.

But then what happened when I was pregnant crept into my consciousness. And I thought about how if Eddie knew the truth, how I’d been restricting food and lost the pregnancy, he might not have asked me to come to the party in the first place, how he might not want me to be in Sarah’s life at all.

That’s the problem with secrets. They don’t stay in small corners. They permeate the air, smoldering until they engulf everything like a Malibu fire.

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