Kitty isn’t feeling well. I feel a sense of distance from them, as if I’m standing at the edge of a precipice, watching the world as I know it fall away. I need to be near Kitty as much as she needs to be near me. She eats the lunches I pack, watching DVDs on a laptop behind my closed office door as I try and mostly fail to work.
By calling everyone I know and following every lead, I’ve found another therapist, Ms. Susan, whom we all like. Ms. Susan is a clinical specialist in psychiatric mental health nursing—a nurse psychotherapist, as she puts it. Her office, in a business park ten minutes from our house, is small and friendly, with soft lighting, candles, and a comfortable couch big enough for Kitty to stretch out on, her head in my lap. After our disastrous meeting with Dr. V., I feel a certain amount of anxiety about therapy, but Ms. Susan speaks in a low, musical voice, makes eye contact with Kitty, and speaks to me easily. Her calm feels contagious.
In our first session, she asks Kitty what anorexia feels like to her, and Kitty actually responds. “It’s like a voice in my head,” she whispers. She’s lying on the couch next to me, her head in my lap, so it’s hard to hear her words.
Ms. Susan doesn’t press her, just says, “Lots of people describe it that way, like a voice in their heads that can get pretty scary. That will get quieter and eventually go away as you recover.”
I can feel Kitty’s relief as much as my own. Ms. Susan, too, thinks Kitty can recover.
Ms. Susan tells us Kitty will improve with time and food. She also says that she runs a twice-weekly lunch group with a group of young women who are recovering from a variety of eating disorders. Kitty lifts her head from my lap and asks, “Can I go?” It’s the first sign of interest she’s shown in weeks.
Ms. Susan smiles, and her whole face lights up. “We meet on Tuesdays and Fridays,” she says. After the session, she sends Kitty out to the waiting room so we can talk for a minute. “I’ve seen a lot of teenagers with eating disorders,” she says. “Your daughter is unusually open. It’s rare for someone this age and who’s this sick to have any insight about the illness.”
Really? I think. Kitty doesn’t seem terribly open to me. But over time I come to realize that Ms. Susan is right. Most teens with anorexia turn away from their families, a process that’s encouraged by most therapists and treatment providers. Kitty turns toward us, and toward the people she trusts—Dr. Beth and Ms. Susan. Which doesn’t mean that her recovery is easier than others’ recoveries, or that the voice is somehow less powerful in Kitty’s mind. But it does mean that she accepts our help on a fundamental level.
I hope this will carry us through the worst times and help us repair our family once the anorexia has gone. I can’t stand the idea that we might ruin our relationship with Kitty in the process of helping her recover. But I accept the risk. It’s better than the alternatives, way better.
I thank Ms. Susan for the encouraging words and arrange to bring Kitty to the next lunch group. We leave with a few weeks of appointments set up.
These days of keeping Kitty close represent an oddly peaceful interlude in the surreal world we now inhabit, Jamie and Emma and I and this new Kitty, with her pointed chin and enormous eyes and will of iron. I try to remember my daughter as she was just a few months before, dancing through the house, laughing and affectionate, talking on the phone or going out with friends. Already this new Kitty, gaunt and tense and slow-moving, seems normal. Human beings can adapt to anything, from infinite riches to the horrors of Auschwitz. I don’t want to adapt to the way things are now. I want to scream, howl, tear the hair from my head in mourning and rage at what’s happening to my daughter. I can hardly muster the energy to cry.
A few days after Kitty comes home from the ICU, a neighbor drags me to a support group meeting she’s read about, for friends and families of people with eating disorders. In the hospital meeting room we find no other parents, only two young women in recovery from eating disorders themselves.