And then, later in the fall of my sophomore year, I began experiencing severe pain in my abdomen. It would keep me up at night, gasping and in tears, alone in a dorm room, far from home. I went to the infirmary, which was not known for any kind of competence, and the staff asked me, over and over, if I might be pregnant. That was, in their minds, the most likely problem a teenage girl could have. I wasn’t pregnant, but they weren’t really interested in investigating further. They sent me on my way each time, not seeming to take me seriously. The medical community is not particularly interested in taking the pain of women seriously.
One night, I crawled to the door of the resident faculty member on my floor, a woman who, during my freshman year, had imitated me in a game of charades by widening her arms and waddling around the room until someone guessed my name as the clue. When she finally woke and came to the door, I was cold and sweating and clammy. Campus security took me to the local hospital, where the doctors discovered I had gallstones. I called my parents, terrified, and my dad told me not to worry. He told me to close my eyes and that in the morning, he would be there. I did as he said and when I woke up, there he was. That is the kind of father he has always been. I had emergency surgery, and my gallbladder was removed. It turned out the high-protein diet I had been on for the summer had not done my gallbladder any favors. I spent about ten days in the infirmary, and ended up with a wicked new scar, tender to the touch.
During my recovery, I was still in pain, and before long, doctors discovered that the surgeon had left some gallstones inside me—such tiny objects causing so much pain. I was rushed to Mass General in Boston, my first ambulance ride, and I was scared again, but also excited in the way of a child who does not quite understand mortality. This time, both my parents came and fretted over me until I was better. Before long, I went back to school. I had lost weight with all the sickness, so once again, I had work to do to make my body bigger and bigger and bigger and safer.
19
Though I mostly sat in the counselor’s office silently and sullenly, I continued to go to therapy throughout high school.
I didn’t make a lot of progress, but it was a space where I could escape the pressure of needing to earn good grades at an
aggressively demanding school. I could escape from being an unpopular and awkward teenager who was desperately lonely. I could
escape from being a disappointing daughter.
Eventually, I was assigned to a woman counselor and she gave me a copy of The Courage to Heal, by Ellen Bass and Laura Davis. At first, I hated the book because it included a “workbook,” as well as cheesy exercises I
couldn’t possibly take seriously. The language was too flowery and full of affirmations that also made me distrustful.
Many of the theories that book espouses have now been discredited, but at that time, when I was so scared and shattered, The Courage to Heal gave me a vocabulary for what I had been through. I needed that book as much as I hated it for all the infantile exercises
it encouraged. I learned about victims and survivors and trauma, and that getting past trauma was possible. I learned that
I was not alone. I learned that being raped wasn’t my fault, and though I didn’t believe everything I learned, it was important
to know such ideas, such truths, were out there. I didn’t feel like I was healing and I didn’t feel like I could ever reshape
myself into what that book suggested healing looked like, but I did feel like at least there was something of a map I could
follow to get to a place where healing felt possible. I needed that solidarity and hope, even if I couldn’t imagine a time
when I would become whole again.
20
There was one place where I could forget myself and my hurt—the theater department. In high school, I became a passionate drama geek, and fell in love with technical theater—all the backstage work that makes any given show possible. When I was working behind the scenes, my newfound girth didn’t matter. My shyness didn’t matter. I could be part of something without anyone in a show’s audience knowing I was part of something.
The first show I ever worked on was Little Shop of Horrors, my freshman year. I worked in the sound booth, managing sound cues, and befriended Michael, the handsome young postgraduate student (or fifth-year senior) who manned the giant plant that comes out at the end of the show. At the end of the year, Michael would take me to his prom on a cruise around the Boston Harbor. He was so kind to me and never wanted anything from me but friendship. That was something of a revelation to me, that a young man could be kind.
As a theater geek, I learned how to build flats and paint the taut canvas to look like any backdrop or setting a show needed.
I learned how to design sound effects and hang lights and endure the endless hours of a tech rehearsal. I wandered through the musty costume barn to find specific costume pieces and helped locate or create the props needed for a given show. When I was in the theater, all darkened and dusty, I was useful. I was competent. People told me to do things and I did those things.
I could apply myself to the tasks at hand and forget about the boys in the woods and what they did to my body.
I got to watch plays and musicals brought to life. No matter the show, I loved the spectacle and the quirks of the actors who successfully pretended they were so much more than high school students. Our faculty members, Mrs. Ogami-Sherwood and Mr. Bateman, had big personalities and a passion for the theater. They held all of us drama geeks in their thrall. Mr. Bateman was notorious for walking around with a tumbler filled with Diet Coke and vodka. He was balding, but what hair he did have was unruly, standing on edge. He favored black turtlenecks. Shortly after I graduated in 1992, he was convicted of possessing child pornography and sending that pornography across state lines. He was sentenced to five years in prison. Mrs. Ogami-Sherwood had a thick head of long, curly hair. She was small in stature but tall in every other way. She tolerated no nonsense, and most of us were scared of her while yearning for her attention.
On show nights, I was often a stagehand. I would dress in all black and be part of the invisible machine that keeps a show running. I knew all the lines to any show I worked on, and with the other drama geeks who were as obsessed with theater as I was, we found a way to have a lot of fun and make a little magic. High school was terrible, but in the theater, we created, for one another, a place where we could fit in for a few hours at a time.
21
Camp Kingsmont is a weight-loss and fitness camp that, when I attended, the summer after my sophomore year, was nestled in the picturesque Berkshires of Massachusetts. The brochure made everything look bucolic and inviting, so I knew, instantly, not to trust such propaganda. My parents sent me to Kingsmont for several weeks—another attempt to solve the problem of my body. I did not have much say in the matter because they were determined to make me lose weight by any means necessary, and I had learned the lesson that saying no meant nothing, so it was off to camp I went.