COLUMN: The road less traveled

From Sonja Stumacher's, "Fragments of the Sun," Fall '96 From Sonja Stumacher's, "Fragments of the Sun," Fall '96Eating disorders representFrom Sonja Stumacher's, "Fragments of the Sun," Fall '96Eating disorders representa disire for self-controlFrom Sonja Stumacher's, "Fragments of the Sun," Fall '96Eating disorders representa disire for self-controlgone horribly awry. From Sonja Stumacher's, "Fragments of the Sun," Fall '96Eating disorders representa disire for self-controlgone horribly awry.Today I shall tread upon ground that many of you will find painfully familiar. Indeed, I've seen your well-worn tracks sinking slowly into the soil. Others of you, though, have never walked this way. It is for you I write these words, so that you might, for a moment, strap on the shoes that so many of your peers wear fastened to their feet. A wave of acid nausea twists in your stomach, a sharp fear of the angry voice in your mind, the one that drags you from your slumber and shoves your feet into your running shoes. The one that fumbles with the latch, opens the door and throws your trembling body out into the streets where you run and run until there is nothing left. Little by little you have somehow become a slave to this voice. Despite your weariness and fear, something about its speech fills you with a sort of mystical power. The voice promises full command of the world in which you live, a world that sometimes makes no sense. The voice creates a certainty in your uncertain existence, conjures a force that seems to blend mind and body, binding them into a single current of pure, electric will power. You blindly believe that your obedience renders you the embodiment of absolute strength. But still, buried deeply beneath the shiny surface of your empowered world, you despise yourself. You're not good enough. Your fear is without end. Your uncertainty is without limit. Your hunger is without measure. You are empty, and you are alone. What am I talking about? Some of you know very well. It is a phenomenon that spreads widely throughout this campus and even around world. This disease has robbed us of our ability to function normally, to smile and breathe and feel the passage of time. We are lost. We've forgotten how to live, to sleep, to feel, to love, to weep -- and, most importantly, how to eat. We are starving. We hate our bodies, and we hate ourselves. Many of us have been ravaged by eating disorders. This term is a loaded one, meaning different things to different people. The unknowing masses will think instantly of a textbookish binge-purge definition: an addictive behavioral pattern of enormous food consumption followed by vomiting or excessive exercise. Those of us who know a little better, though, will remember all the rest. We'll remember how it feels. We'll remember that bulimia and anorexia actually signify far more than what the textbooks claim. In reality, an eating disorder is truly an addictive way of thinking, a way of organizing the world, of making sense out of uncertainty. It's a way of trying to control what seems irretrievably beyond control, of securing that without which we feel we would surely collapse, fall to pieces. People who struggle to nourish themselves properly struggle also to feed needs that transcend physical hunger. They wish desperately to secure comfort, love, acceptance and companionship in their lives. So who doesn't, you ask? The critical difference, though, between you and someone with an eating disorder is that you have at some moment learned, perhaps unconsciously, to accept that there are certain elements of life that one cannot unconditionally secure. The anorexic or bulimic, on the other hand, has not been able to accept this fact. She (yes, most are women) depends heavily upon the approval of others, without which she feels she would not be a worthy human being. So she has created a formula for insuring that she will forever be loved, accepted and cherished. It's quite simple: she must be beautiful, and she must be thin. Let's dig a little deeper still. Why does she require this external approval in order to validate her existence? Maybe it's because she's been born into a world where it seems promises of magical happiness are reserved only for the beautiful, smiling and confident. Maybe she doesn't think she matches the ideal. Maybe she doesn't thinks she measures up. And maybe she simply can't foster that elemental, internal love within her own heart, without which she cannot find peace. So there you have it. This is the path many of us have followed, and perhaps the rest of you will now realize how it feels to wear these shoes. They are easy to fasten but difficult to remove. Some of us still have them clamped tightly onto our feet. Some, however, have managed to take them off and let our feet feel the warmth of the sunshine and the cool freshness of the air. But regardless of where we stand in the road, at least we might gather what comfort we can from knowing you now understand why we walk upon this well-trodden trail. And why, somewhere deep inside, we might still be struggling to break free.