AMANDA'S DESCENT

A story about anorexia nervosa and self injury.

    It was in August 1984 the first time Amanda tried to do it, to cut herself. She had been feeling depressed for several months but at the time hadn’t known that was what was wrong with her. But summer had been very dark and troubling for her so far.

    Amanda had already cut back on eating, thinking if she ate less she’d feel better. She did feel better about herself as she lost weight. At 18 years of age and standing at 5feet 8 ½ inches and weighing 128 pounds she had never thought of herself as fat. Actually, in high school she had been teased for being skinny. But just because she had never thought of herself as fat didn’t matter to her. She just wanted to have control and eating was the one thing she knew she could control.

    Now after high school graduation was long past and this being the summer before moving out of her home and into the university dorm she was feeling nervous and dreading the big move. She thought she should be excited about this change and that the summer would be full of lots of fun times with her friends.

    Her friends wanted to go on an overnight camping trip this weekend but Amanda was having her period and she always had really awful painful ones so she didn’t want to go. Her friends didn’t want to postpone the trip to the following weekend. That hurt Amanda’s feelings. It was like they didn’t want her to come very badly at all. And she wanted to go and she was bitterly disappointed in them and felt a familiar surge of hatred toward her body for betraying her like this. Having her period start when she had been planning and so looking forward to this overnight camping trip with her friends.

    Her friends wanted her to come along, sure, said they were disappointed and hadn’t put any pressure on her to come anyway. The girls knew how it was; the boys just didn’t want to go there. Even so, they wouldn’t change the date, too many scheduling conflicts with everyone else.

    Sitting alone in her bedroom trying to read the The Howling by Gary Brandner the awful dark feelings crashed around her. Feelings Amanda had become all too familiar with. She felt numb and thoughts of killing herself filled her mind. It wasn’t the first time she had thought about suicide. She had a bottle of Excedrin, 100 count, with only a few tablets missing sitting on her dresser. She had considered taking an overdose of these on many different occasions.

    She looked at the bottle now and sighed, setting her paperback book aside. Not even a story about werewolves could hold her interest at the moment. She could have been camping right now with her friends. She regretted not going with her friends. She should have just gone anyway, no matter the pain she was experiencing right now. Damn her stupid female body for torturing her every month like this with those awful, painful crippling cramps.

    I’ll starve my body to death, Amanda thought in anger, I will kill this stupid fleshly prison I’m trapped in. I just want to be free of this stupid body and all its stupid needs. Eating. Sleeping. Going to the bathroom. Bleeding every month. Hurting from all sorts of stupid pains and getting sick too!

    She wanted to cry but tears wouldn’t come. She decided it was time to cut back more on her eating. She had lost 10 pounds since she had started cutting back on her eating. She was now down to 118 pounds and she felt very proud at her accomplishment. At least I can succeed at something, she thought, a lot of people want to lose weight, go on diets and can’t lose any weight at all! I can and have! Amanda felt strong.

    But she should be with her friends right now having a good time. It was the summer before they all went to the university and they weren’t all going to the same schools. It was the last summer they might have a chance to be together and she was sitting at home suffering period cramps! She felt the darkness in her increasing in strength. Amanda hated her body and the pain it gave her. She hated having to take time for all its stupid physical needs.

    Then a thought came to her. She didn’t know where the thought came from. It wasn’t like she’d ever read a book about it or ever heard of someone else doing it. It was like how she came up on her own to starve to lose weight. She could use a knife to cut herself. Make herself bleed. She knew doing that would relieve some of the guilt and disappointment she was feeling about missing the trip with her friends.

    The thought made her excited and she left her bedroom and went downstairs and entered the kitchen. Her parents weren’t home thankfully and her siblings were out doing their own things.

    She got the butcher knife and hurried back to her bedroom. She sat on her bed and feeling excited about what she was about to do, making that first cut and seeing how deep she could go, she put the knife to her left arm and pressed.

    It didn’t cut! She pressed harder and drew the blade back and forth across her arm as she did. It wouldn’t cut! She couldn’t figure out why. She tried her hardest but it was no use. The blade was not going to slice open her skin. The dark feelings increased and Amanda felt like she was nothing more than a failure. She put the butcher knife back in the drawer in the kitchen not caring enough to bother washing it off.

 

    A month later she was lying in her room watching Doctor Who on PBS when razor blades popped into her head seeming from out of no where. First she had been watching Tom Baker as the Doctor wearing his floppy wide brimmed hat on his wildly curly haired head, his long coat and amazingly long scarf wrapped around his neck, draping down his back and dragging on the ground behind him when the razor blade thought came to her.

    Of course! Amanda thought, a razor blade! It’s so obvious! But she didn’t have a razor blade but she did have disposable shavers.

    She got one out and using a hammer crashed it. With eager anticipation she took the small blades from the broken plastic. They were sharp and cut her fingertips.

   This will work! I know it! These blades are sharp; they’ve already cut my fingertips. Her fingertips were slippery with blood as she held the tiny silver blade to her left arm and pressed down, dragging the blade a little as she did.

    Her skin parted and blood bloomed in the cut on her arm. She smiled, not feeling any pain from this at all. She repeated this several times until she had 10 cuts on her arm, all bleeding rivulets of crimson. How pretty, she thought, how pretty all these moving lines of blood on my arm look!

    She held her arm over a towel she had in her room. Blood dripped from her arm onto the towel. Crimson beads, beautiful crimson beads. A lot of blood dripped from her arm onto the towel.  

    Amanda watched the rivulets of blood as they dropped their crimson pearls onto the towel feeling suddenly relaxed and calm, as if a storm had suddenly passed. She hadn’t felt this relaxed in she didn’t know how long. It was a wonderful feeling and cutting had given that to her!

   The dark feelings that plagued her constantly faded away. She felt tears come to her eyes but she still couldn’t cry. She hadn’t been able to cry in so long she wasn’t surprised she still couldn’t. As she watched the blood dripping from her arm she felt more alive than she had in a long time. She had to be alive if she was bleeding. Dead people don’t bleed.

    My dripping blood is my tears, Amanda thought, they are the tears I cannot cry and spilling my blood is my way of crying. She continued to watch her blood dripping. I will do this again and I will continue to eat less. She was now down to 110 pounds and decided to try for 105 pounds. And she would do it. I am strong and in control of my body now. I can do it, lose more weight, she thought. She finally wrapped her bleeding arm in the towel and stretched out on her bed and watched what little bit of Doctor Who that was left.

 

    Amanda cut daily with her little silver razor blade. She thought about getting the traditional size blades but felt loyal to the little blade. Her first. She continued to lose weight. She went out with her friends on shopping trips and day trips around the state and they all talked about how excited they were to be going to university in a short time. Amanda was starting to feel terrified about the idea of leaving home and moving onto campus away from her family and her friends. She was dreading the move and the darkness increased when she thought too much about it. No one admitted they were scared so Amanda wasn’t going to. Admitting she dreaded going to school would be shameful.

     When she reached 101 pounds Amanda thought of burning herself. The idea seemed to come from no where just like the starving and cutting herself had. She thought, Why not, why not burn myself?

    She was sure it would help her feel better, to deal with these changes in her life that she was facing. She snuck a cigarette of her moms and a book of matches. She didn’t at all feel comfortable holding the cigarette; she didn’t smoke and never planned to. She went to her room and lit the cigarette and pressed it to her arm.

    Amanda expected to feel something. Cutting didn’t hurt but she had been certain burning herself would. The wound it left didn’t amount to anything. She didn’t feel better at all. Actually she felt worse, like a failure her idea didn’t work. She decided to try to burn herself with the paper matches from the match book but they turned out to be utterly useless. They wouldn’t burn her at all.

 

    Her departure date to move into the university dorm was only a few days away. Her summer had flown by. It had been an okay summer over all. She did have some fun times with her friends. She had lost a lot of weight; she was down to 98 pounds now and had found new ways of dealing with the blackness in her. Her friends noticed her weight loss and told her she looked great, her girl friends had all been trying to lose weight but had failed. Amanda felt proud she had succeeded where they had failed. But they didn’t know she was hurting herself. She kept her scars hidden from view. She never failed in doing that.

    Feeling sick with dread at leaving one day Amanda came upon a book of wooden matches in the house. She only wondered briefly what someone was doing with these wooden matches because she knew these would work! I can burn myself with these! I know they will work! The dark feelings surged and Amanda picked up the box of wooden matches and hurried to her bedroom. The starving and the cutting helped her deal with her darkness and she knew these wooden matches would too.

    She sat on her bed with the box of wooden matches in her hands. This will help me feel better. She opened the box and took out a wooden match. She struck it on the side of the box and it ignited. She stared at the little flame that had just sprung to life. Amanda took a deep breath and laid the burning wooden match on her arm. She gasped! Intense! This is very very intense! Holding her breath she let the match lay there burning her for as long as she could. When she reached the limit of her endurance and the match had gone out she shook it off.

    How incredible! I feel so much better! Such a relief! How incredible! She had a nice burn on her arm. It gave her such a relieved feeling as she stared at it. She had to do it again. She burned herself 10 times with the wooden matches. Some of the wounds blistered right away, some blistered later. And taking care of the wounds while they healed gave her a sense of comfort she would discover soon. She felt strong. Look at all she could do that others couldn’t. She could starve, cut herself and burn herself. Yes, she was strong and in control now.

    She would be able to deal with moving to the university and attending classes. She had what she needed to deal with the darkness. She would make it. She was strong.

    Amanda left a couple days later to move into the university dorm and she took her starving, cutting and burning with her. She would miss her home, her family and her friends but she had her starving, her razor blade and her wooden matches so she could deal with it and be a success at school. Amanda knew with these she was strong.

   

   

Reviews

[Star Wolf]

This creates a very tragic and painful story that rings to in that this does happen to a lot of people. No one really understood these problems well in the 80s. It would make suffering them that much more difficult and make getting real help real hard. Awesome and fantastic job on this!!

[Larry Dyson]

BTDT..I do understand these feelings ...but being on the other side of healing...I see no wanrnings for teens or adult content?..did they leave them off in the contest version?

[Eric Cox]

A very sad story. I couldn't help but feel bad for Amanda. I hope somewhere along the way she gets help.

[Theresa]

I think you nailed the emotional aspect of the story, making the reader feel exactly what Amanda was going through. The part where you described the cutting couldn't be more real. I dated a guy who cut and exactly what you described, the release and relief she felt after doing so is exactly how he described it to me. To tie the eating disorder, the cutting and the burning all into one character really made me feel for her. I wanted to jump into the story and help her. A very sad story yet it is more real than most and I think it is amazing,. Nicely done.

[Black Cat Fever]

A very vivid and painful story of a young woman's descent, just about into madness. I felt tense reading this, just wanting to reach out and help her, to make her stop. Powerfully written, that's for sure!!! It just about pulled me in!

[Ladysue]

What a very sad story, tragic and not all that uncommon these days. I gasped at this part...they are the tears I cannot cry...my heart felt for her. I think you captured this very well. Fantastic writing....

[Jenny Nelson]

Very sad, especially since it's a very real situation for more and more people. Too much stress and not enough compassion out there. Great description. I hope your piece will open some eyes. Well done.