Will You Walk Me To The Edge Again?

Kacie Rahm
Thought Experiment #3
Parasites
Will You Walk Me To The Edge Again?

I wrote about night terrors.
I wrote about Shivers.
I was not yet comfortable with my audience.
I had no idea what “the teacher wanted me to write.”
I chose a topic that I could relate to the class.
I felt nobody would want to read about what was really on my mind.
I thought it would be too much, too soon.
I was unsure of how I would be received.
I was not ready to talk about it.
I was embarrassed of my past.
I wanted to write about fear.
I wrote about something scary instead.
I have decided to own up to my thoughts.
I think that is the most honest “experiment” I can give at this point.
I explored in previous writings, but I did not experiment.
I did not experience.
I think I may never truly be ready.
I feel like it is time to reveal myself anyways.
I hear you are supposed to “write what you know.”
I know this:

I try really hard to come to terms with my fears, face them, and push them out of my mind. I once wrote, “I have decided that I'm not going to be afraid anymore.” This was a partial truth. I apologize for not being upfront, but I was not sure if I was ready to reveal my weaknesses.

I am the youngest child in my family. I am four years younger than my sister and twenty years younger than my half-brother. My parents treated me like “the baby” from birth until now, and who could blame them? Child order is a huge factor into the characteristics of any family. I have always felt a kind of weakness in comparison to the rest of my family. I don't know if I brought it upon myself, or if my parents allowed me to develop it by coddling me throughout my life. I don't think I'm completely helpless or incapable, but I require a bit more attention than my sister and tend to react more emotionally to situations than she does. My parents are both really powerful people that demand the attention of whatever room they strut into. My sister is definitely a reflection of them. I have found this to be an impossible shadow to peek out of, but I still try. I feign confidence until it becomes real.

The Child Development Institute lists the characteristics generally attached to the youngest child:
Behaves like only child.
Feels every one bigger and more capable.
Expects others to do things, make decisions, take responsibility.
Feels smallest and weakest. May not be taken seriously.
Becomes boss of family in getting service and own way.
Develops feelings of inferiority or becomes "speeder" and overtakes older siblings.
Remains "The Baby." Places others in service.

Jenna was four years old when I was born. I shattered her world that December 7, 1989. I was the center of attention, in the time of home videos I was the star. When my sister is in a state of drama she regales anyone and everyone in a tale of Rahm's Funniest Videos. Before remodeling our house in Chelan, my family decided to watch all the home videos that were about to be stored for an indefinite period of time. The first few were of Jenna in the time before I was born. Her first steps, a one-man-play she compiled from various Disney stories, her Christmas Cabbage Patch Kid among other things took precedence over everything else. Once I was born though, the videos turned into images of me as a baby, doing nothing of interest, with Jenna squealing in the background, “Mommy look what I'm doing!” After many more videos just like this, Jenna started complaining about what ignorant parents they had been and how they had probably damaged her psyche forever. The next video started with me in a high chair covered in funfetti cake. Jenna crossed her arms and said, “Oh look, another video of Kacie.” My mom insisted that I deserved the camera as it was obviously my Birthday. Like clockwork, the singing began. “Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday...” the camera pans to Jenna's visibly irritated 5-year-old face, “...dear Jenna, Happy Birthday to you.” That was the end of Rahm's Funniest Videos. I will never forget the look on either of her faces.

I had most of the traits of the youngest child. I was given a cell phone at the tender age of fourteen, my sister had gotten one just a year prior. I wouldn't so much as make my own hair appointments, my parents did everything for me. My sister and I had (and still have) a close relationship, so there wasn't much of a power struggle there. She enjoyed being a leader, she liked being self sufficient. We accepted the parameters of our birth order, and that was fine with us. My parents accepted it too, and even though we have all grown up two or three times over, the same dynamic is there. I still struggle to assert any kind of opinion in family discussions. It is assumed that I am siding with mom or dad or Jenna. Heaven forbid I formulate my own thought, I'm just a child after all. It didn't help that I happened to choose a college in the same city that offered my mom a job. With my parents so close by, it's easy to “be the baby.” I can still go to them when I need support rather than finding it elsewhere. My parents loved taking care of me. I never caused them any trouble until fifth grade. I was born on my due date, I was a good student, “gifted” in elementary school, I did adorable things for their friends, I played “school” with my sister, I followed the rules. Then I got food poisoning one November night in 1999.

I had school lunch that day: mashed potatoes and gravy. For dinner I had a T.V. dinner because my parents had a banquet to go to. I'm going to guess it was the gravy that had the consistency of cat food that made me sick. Around nine o'clock I called my mom begging her to come home and tend to me. I was in the bath, attempting to settle my stomach. I was toweled off and in pajamas when she walked in the door. As if I was waiting for her, I started throwing up immediately after. I threw up all night long, crying and panicking between each bout of nausea. My mom stayed home with me the next day, coaxing me to eat chicken noodle soup or at least drink some juice. All I could handle was about three liters of water. Nobody thought anything of it because I had just been sick.

Between my return to school the following day and the chaotic eating schedules within the members of my family, nobody noticed that I had yet to eat anything substantial a week later.

It took about three weeks for my parents to start watching my eating habits. I was sneaky though. I would take a bite of the banana or whatever they wanted me to eat and then spit it out and hide it under the napkin holder while their backs were turned. As soon as the banana was gone, so were my parents, at which point I would stuff it down the garbage disposal. It was easy to skip lunch because I was at school most days. Dinners consisted of pushing food around the plate and distracting my parents with conversation. I was deceiving everyone, and living off of a handful or so of goldfish and a juice box each day. After about two months of this, my sister cornered me in the bathroom as I flushed a mangled PB&J down the toilet. “I know what you're doing. So do mom and dad. They're scared and they don't know what to say to you, but they're not stupid. Jesus Kacie you look like shit,” she spat out in one breath. My parents started sitting down with me in the morning and watching as I choked down some applesauce or a piece of toast. I would cry and scream about how they were torturing me. I would gag on each bite, and the food would feel like a brick in my stomach all day. I noticed one of my teachers watching me at lunch time, and I knew people were starting to catch on. Still, I was resilient and I managed to hide most of my food back in my brown bag before tossing it in the trash. As my bones started poking out, my family got more and more present around meal time. Finally, I would just ice out my parents. I would stare at the food they were attempting to feed me, refusing to speak and shooting the stink eye. They tried promising me vacations or new clothes if I would just eat, but I would not. Nobody could seem to say or do the right thing, the thing that would make me normal again.

At four months they threw in the towel and sent me to a dietitian. It was a small town, and she was the mother of one of my classmates, so she pissed me off right from the start. She told me I had anorexia. I told her that was impossible. “I don't think I'm fat, and I don't have control issues.” I probably sounded like a whiny little brat, but to this day, no matter how many times I have thought about it, I honestly believe that I was not anorexic. I had an eating disorder, yes, but the roots were different. I didn't look in the mirror and pinch my bone feeling like an elephant. I didn't do push ups before bed. I didn't feel like my life was out of control and that food was the only thing I was in charge of.

In reality, I wanted to eat. I missed the many tastes that you get from food. I missed the feeling of being comfortably full. I missed the color in my cheeks, and the way that my clothes used to fit. I would fall asleep each night thinking, “tomorrow, I will start eating meals again.” I would have a good, healthy attitude until the food was set down in front of me. It would immediately flash my brain to a vision of that night I spent kneeling over the toilet bowl, crying and miserable. The mere sight of food put a bad taste in my mouth, a gag reflex in my throat, and a knot in my stomach. I had hated food poisoning so much, that my body rejected the cause, food. The fear of throwing up was so strong that it ignored my body's natural need for sustenance. No, this was not anorexia, this was something more. I didn't convince my dietitian, however. She ignored my explanations and put me on a strict plan to get me eating normal again in a few weeks.

The plan was to eat something about half the size of my fist each hour. This was manageable, as I had been eating daily minuscule portions already. After two weeks, I would eat something the size of my fist each 2 hours. After two weeks of that, I would be eating five small meals a day. It was embarrassing, because my teachers had to help facilitate this process. The feeble eleven year old minds of my peers could not comprehend why I was doing such a thing, and I lost a lot of friends along with twenty-five pounds in about two months. My mom would come to school every day and watch me eat at lunchtime, and this was a big red flag to the rest of Morgen Owings Elementary that something was wrong with me.

About six months after the food poisoning, I was finally eating normally. Possibly even overeating, as I had denied my body nutrients for so long that I felt insatiable. It took about another year to get back to a healthy weight. My parents asked if I needed counseling, but I declined. They didn't really know what else to do and feared that any little comment could set me off. I think the resolve I had when I would refuse to eat really frightened them. Everyone was so happy that I was eating, they didn't want to disrupt it. Everyone assumed I had body issues and I let them believe I had been anorexic, I even believed it myself for a while. It made a whole lot more sense to me than the truth: that I was ridiculously afraid of a natural body process.

At the age of fourteen I was struggling with my earlier stages of insomnia, and began getting lost in the world wide web. I followed some kind of hyper link trail to a list of the ten most common phobias in the world. I almost stopped breathing when I got to number seven: emetophobia, the fear of vomiting. The fear of throwing up. There were people who had a phobia of throwing up, and a lot of them. It is one of the most common phobias in the world. I Googled this new word, emetophobia, and found a wealth of information and support. Not only was this a legitimate phobia, but the irrational behaviors I had were being experienced by thousands of other people: abstaining from alcohol, fear of pregnancy (morning sickness), fear of boats and planes (motion sickness), getting panic attacks whenever you have a stomach ache, obsessing over expiration dates and the way food is prepared. I printed out an FAQ page and wrote my mother a heartfelt note explaining that this was what I was experiencing and that my eating disorder had been a direct result of that night I spent in the fetal position on her bathroom floor with food poisoning.

She told me the next day that dad was also emetophobic, that it was important not to dwell in the past, and that the important thing was that I felt better about the situation. It was one of those insanely “mom” moments where she manages to say everything right, then end it. She did treat me differently after that though. I was held like a child whenever I went into one of my sick-stomach panic attacks, even though I never actually threw up as a result. I was no longer given a good cop/bad cop inquisition from my parents if I said I wasn't hungry at dinnertime. I had my life back, and the trust of my family. Simply knowing that I hadn't made up my fear, and that others struggled with it too was enough for us to collectively move on.

This story has been living within my brain, festering for almost ten years. I used to write poetry, a lot of it. I would write a poem almost ever day. I felt like a liberated person then. There was a subject I just wasn't willing to touch though, or two really: my eating disorder, and my emetophobia. I would write about my brother and his addiction, or living in my sister's shadow, or whatever guy I had a crush on that week. I would not write about things that I could be judged on. I felt like people in Chelan were beginning to forget about my eating disorder, or at least had found some new scandal to concern themselves with. Why remind them?

But now I remember the cathartic process of writing. The release, like once it is written down it exists in the world and it is no longer in my hands. I think that if I have learned anything in the past couple of months, it is that you can't truly own a thought, or change it, until you can look at it from the outside. You have to be your own excluded opinion sometimes, and the easiest way to exclude yourself is to read the situation from another place. This is not the same as distancing yourself from it. I have distanced myself from my past long enough, and it has not accomplished anything. You can never really escape from the memories that live within you, but if you express them and put them into the universe, you might be able to live with them.

I made a decision at the beginning of this thought experiment. I decided that I would write the entire thing in one sitting. I decided that I would write it after dark and would not sleep until it was complete. I decided that I would not delete anything when I edited it. It may not be a poem, but now I know that I can write such a thing. It is something completely true and honest. It is an experiment in my readiness to speak. It is an experience that I have enjoyed, despite being awake until after 5 am writing it. It is the culmination of my thoughts since the first day I sat in English 203. It is not weak.


Things I Cited

The title of this paper can be found at:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTOKnYNI3tU

My very first piece of writing for Parasites can be found at:
http://kaciesays.blogspot.com/2010/01/i-tremble-theyre-gonna-eat-me-alive.html

Information on Birth Order can be found at: http://www.childdevelopmentinfo.com/development/birth_order.shtml

Information on emetophobia can be found at:
http://emetophobia.bravepages.com/

All of my poetry can be found at:
http://www.authorsden.com/kacispoetry