Editor's Note: This article reflects the experiences of an individual whose mother represents the extreme - severe anorexia - and its effect on the dynamics of a family. The experiences of this family highlight the need for a comprehensive therapy for eating disorders. Many women with anorexia and bulimia deal with these disorders while successfully parenting well-adjusted children. Here, though, is Mark's story:
"A hamburger on whole wheat toast and don't cut it." Those words are ineradicably etched in my mind. That's how my mother would order whenever we ate out. Although the hamburger was never to her liking, and she would never eat the toast, the order was always the same. I recall the extraordinary patience of waiters and waitresses trying to please someone who was unpleasable. My mother had anorexia nervosa.
She died at age 49. I was 17.
As an attractive young woman, my mother, at five feet, four inches, weighed a voluptuous 135 pounds. During the course of her illness, she weighed as little as 60 pounds, while exercising to exhaustion.
The circumstances surrounding her illness had caused me to become socially withdrawn years earlier. I am now 34 years old and have only recently begun to emerge from isolation.
I knew very early on that my mother was different from other mothers. She was a perfectionist. She checked my homework, and if it wasn't letter perfect, I'd get screamed at and slapped violently. She was also obsessed with cleanliness.
Happier Times: my mother at
age 29 in 1957.
My mother's desire for control included controlling me so much that my social growth was stunted. When I was about 7, I made a Little League team. When it came time for me to practice, my mother forcibly restrained me from leaving the house. My dad tried to get me into the Cub Scouts, but my mother so belittled the Scouts representative that visited us that she fled the apartment. That was the beginning of my social isolation.
Small and thin for my age, I was teased and picked on at school. I was hyperactive. My teachers said I had "behavior problems." Mom had frequent conferences with them. I never felt that I had any friends. For several years, I had a school phobia, and my dad had to coax me into class.
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