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Empty QUOTES

Empty QUOTES

1 " I was struck, though, that even as the women share their experiences, they seem to remain essentially alone in them. They tell their stories, but they do not seem to connect with the others in doing so, and in the end, the film depicts confession as empty. These women open themselves up but do not receive compassion, understanding, or closeness in the space they have freed. I wonder if this is in part why I didn't tell for so long, because of the fear of the hunger that might remain even after disclosure. "

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2 " ...It wasn't that I couldn't open up; it was just that I needed to control the information. I needed to think about it in advance, I needed to look at the pages of my journal in the middle of the night and consider which ones to type.

But I was disappointed. I wished I could do it over again and feel what it would have been like not to hold back. I had been given a chance to be known, and I had not taken it...Everyone else had taken a risk...and come out closer.

...for years I'd still be standing on that stage, not knowing what I wanted, to withhold or to reveal, to yield or to protect. Refusal was safer: less risk...The gestures I committed to were self-denial and containment. But was that really what I wanted? Because for years I'd still wonder what it would be like not to hold tight...what it would be like to say. "

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3 " ...it allowed me to engage with my experience intellectually instead of practically, to analyze it instead of trying to fix it. And it demonstrated how another woman, in another time, had struggled with a version of my problem and tried to make sense of her story in her own language. "

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4 " But at the beginning, empty allowed me to take everything in. At the start, empty meant receptivity and only later meant rejection. Empty—for years I still loved it. I found hollowness extremely satisfying. Like a straw, something you could blow through. That was some of the most relief I could get in life, was being empty. That was a way I knew I could be open to sensation, when I was diminished, slim. And when I was: It was a gliding feeling. I could do a bridge; I could do a backbend. I could straddle you. I could leave for the airport and just get on a flight. There was no problem with anything. There was no reason not to get dressed. I recognize that I am still attached to the word; my impulse is to defend it. Emptiness is possibility. Empty is the moment before the future gets filled in. But it’s a state of impoverishment, not sustenance, and my unwillingness to accept this has been my great mistake. Empty amounts to nothing. "

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5 " The fact that I was ashamed of my own story was among the reasons I finally decided to tell it. "

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6 " Eating disorders are so profoundly a coping mechanism for failures in human relationships that to get over one it’s essential to strengthen the capacity to relate to another, which is a lot of what happens in therapy. Underneath my desire "

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7 " Most people had a history in this region, but not my parents, and my early, defining relationship to my environment was a feeling of being not from here, even though I had never lived in any other place. "

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8 " But there were no after-school specials or first-person magazine stories about binge eating, which wasn’t recognized as a formal eating disorder diagnosis until 2013. "

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9 " It was one thing to recognize...the defining experience of my adolescence, but as a woman in my forties I hesitated to name it as the central aspect of my identity...The stories we tell about ourselves - whether for forty-five minutes at a stretch or over hundreds of pages - shape our self-inventions. What I have come to realize is that if...is at the core of my identity, it's because I've allowed it to roost there. And that the purpose of therapy isn't to ratify this identity but to redefine it.

The story I am figuring out with J. differs from the one in these pages. I fear that I might look back at this book and think: That's all wrong. Holy shit, that's so offensive! That's blind, naive, strange. You only scratched the surface. You left the most important part out...I know that will happen, and that knowledge is tormenting. But if you wait until you understand everything, you never say anything at all. You step down from the stage and spend the next thirty years wondering what would have happened if you'd revealed yourself. ..

Those sensations I always craved, light, relieved, unburdened: These are associated with the telling of secrets. But I am finding more sustenance in other sensations: transparency, alertness, generosity, and an interest in what else might be possible.

For years I came up with excuses about why therapy wouldn't be right - e.g., I didn't want someone else's language. I didn't want a psychological vocabulary replacing the words I might find to understand my experience. But, also, the illness kept me from it. The same old story: It was a risk to let anything, or anyone, in. It might contaminate me. It might compromise my integrity. But what, after all, was really compromising my integrity? The...I tried to contain in just the right prose remained in control of me.

I was still determined to go away and address this on my own without anyone knowing. I wanted to solve it in the notebook I wrote in by a little arched window and come down from the tower graceful and renewed...But now that I have finished this book, I see that I have not ended the story so much as claimed it. "

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10 " Disgusting gross hate myself kill myself want to cry. The day was already ruined. Want my mom, even though she was here and I didn’t want her, even though that didn’t make any sense. "

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11 " For so long I was scared to write...Once I did, I imagined who might read what I wrote. I imagined adolescent girls..., also people I was close to, and scientists. But because it felt arrogant to imagine that what I wrote might offer solace..., and uncomfortable to imagine the people I was close to, I focused on the scientists...

Science! Yes, here was a way I could make something of this experience. Here was a way I could redeem the waste...

So I hope that scientists would find my writing. But I also hoped they would find me. They would find me and say, We read your paper...But we noticed your discussion section never really arrives at a conclusion...but don't worry. We are scientists. We have already drafted a conclusion based on the evidence you provided, We think you will be pleased with our analysis. We think it will be the paragraph that makes sense of this for you. "

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12 " I could just stay there, in the place where I was always different. For years...I held myself apart. I will not commit to you. Though I am here, my real life is elsewhere. It was the only stance I knew how to take. "

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13 " It showed me one thing that being an adult meant. You were no longer limited to observing the world: Now you can join in. Instead of just being a fan of things you loved, you could get inside them. You could make them yourself. I was thrilled to know this. I was twenty-one years old and I was going to move to New York, get a job at a magazine, and become a writer. "

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14 " And I desperately wanted to return to the world! I didn't want to waste any more time. I was determined, so determined, not to waste time ever again. "

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15 " While I couldn’t have identified a reason for my behavior, even that weekend I could have named the feeling that drove me to the cupboard. Want something else. Something more. Want more.) "

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16 " Far more than I wanted people’s bodies next to mine, I wanted them to be mine. Not in a covetous cosmetic way, like, Oh, I wish I had that supermodel’s flat stomach. I didn’t want parts of bodies. I looked at other people’s bodies and I wanted to inhabit them. I wanted to feel what they did. I wanted to feel the way I once had. "

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17 " I knew that my remaining "preoccupation"...was not normal. I tried to fix it, and I couldn't. At the same time, I believed someday I would fix it and that fixing it would fix everything, would be the transformation that would lead to all other transformations, to wisdom, generosity, maturity. That's what I thought even through the writing of this book. That's what I thought until I met J.

...I was telling her the metaphor I had for the...stuff, which is something from sound editing: The...stuff was a track that ran in my brain under all the other tracks. Sometimes it would get so loud that it would drown out all the other tracks; sometimes I could lower the volume, but I was never able to remove the track from the session. Deleting the track was the wrong idea, J said; lowering the volume was good, but the main thing was to boost the other tracks. Develop other strengths and ways to cope; raise the signal on all I'd neglected. This had seriously never occurred to me...it wasn't subtraction that I needed; it was addition.

How could I raise the signal on the other tracks?
"Who's the engineer?" J. said. It was just the right question. "

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18 " Empty, what does that word evoke? Shall I free-associate? Hollow, bereft, going clear. Empty is vapid, zero, of no interest. Empty is absence. So different than the valence the word carried for me! Empty was promise. Empty was power. Empty was the ultimate security. "

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19 " Writing...is in a way a renunciation of empty...Because I'll fill the blank white pages, I'll fill the emptiness in; and inevitably I will get it wrong, it will not be perfect. I'll feel somehow as if I've ruined it, as if I've wrecked it; and I will have to live with that. I will have to learn to live with something other than the blankness and the possibility of a future in which everything is exactly right. I will have to learn that I can feel regret, disappointment, discomfort; that I can have those feelings, any feeling, and still be okay. And maybe, finally, I will learn to feel full. "

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20 " I would walk around the kitchen shoving food in my mouth, even if I only had ten minutes. Ten minutes was enough to ruin everything. How was it that in such a small unit of time you could make an entire day into a total wreck? "

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