Connie
Ok, Ok, I admit it. I'm a control freak. I have to be able to control everything, and, for that matter, everyone. My husband is a prime example. Will Curtis is a second. If I can't control them then there's the chance they can control me and I couldn't have that. Won't have that.
I remember when it started. How it started. I was 8. My mother, a repeat sufferer of chronic clinical depression (clearly hereditary) wiped herself off of the face of the earth with 120 aspirin and a bottle of gin. Daddy and I came home from the swimming baths to find her dead on the floor. I've seen a number of dead bodies since, but I can assure you, none of them has ever affected me like that did.
I reacted by making myself the centre of my daddy's universe. It wasn't difficult. I was 8 years old, I'd just lost my mother, and he was willing to do whatever was necessary to keep little Connie happy.
Toys, day trips, foreign holidays, you name it.
It sounds like I was a mercenary little bitch but be reasonable. Mummy had left me - out of choice, I was scared daddy would do the same. If he bought me stuff, took me places it proved he still loved me, and if he loved me he wouldn't leave.
Fact. I didn't have a babysitter from the day mummy died until well after my 12th birthday. If daddy wanted to go out, daddy took me. When I wasn't in school I was sat at a desk opposite his in his office.
Another fact. I was proficient audio typist by the age of 11. I could work as a secretary tomorrow if I wanted. The perks of being 'daddy's special little girl'.
It must have been a drain on the poor bastard. He'd lost his wife and was saddled with a daughter who emotionally blackmailed him every time he tried to leave her side. There were even occasions when I spat the dummy out about being made to go to school.
"Why do I have to go? Are you going to take pills while I'm gone?"
Vile little brat.
It's no wonder that during my second year at Grammar School daddy decided he'd had enough.
Don't
get me wrong, I didn't drive him to suicide as well. He didn't even
take me to the local orphanage, although I admit I'd have deserved
it. No, daddy did the worst thing he possibly could.
Daddy met
another woman.
Her.
Even
now, on the rare occasions I deem to meet up with my father we still
row about her. About my attitude towards her. About the fact I refuse
to refer to her by name. My father maintains that she's actually,
really, rather nice and that if I'd ever given her a chance we might
have got on well.
This is the singular biggest lie my father has
ever told me. Except for that time at my mother's funeral when he
told me that I was the most important person in his life and always
would be.
She is not nice. She's not fit to lick mummy's boots, let alone fill them. I know mummy wasn't perfect. I've known that ever since she didn't come to my first nativity play because she couldn't get out of bed, but she was my mummy and she loved me. And I loved her.
As for that woman… well… it's simple. I hate her. I hated her the first time we met, I hated her on her wedding day when I was forced to dress in puce (!) satin and follow her down the aisle where I watched her take my daddy away and I still hate her now.
I'll grant her one thing. She did try with me. She bought a parenting manual and tried every trick in the book.
But guess who read the manual quicker than she did….
When she'd exhausted the official tricks, she resorted to lower things.
Bribing me with chocolate mainly. And cooking all my favourite dinners, 'like mama used to make.'.
except when she was off her face of tranquillisers and daddy and I had to cook.
The only problem was, the dinners provided me with a prime opportunity to get the control back.
Ok, so I was no longer at the centre of the fathers' universe. He'd still moved her into my house.
They still went out for romantic dinners without me. I was no longer THE next of kin.
But that didn't mean I had to eat the food she served.
And when I didn't eat it she'd get upset. Think she was a bad mother.
Bad? Yes. Mother? Not fucking likely.
She wanted me to eat. And I didn't.
1 - 0 to me.
You can probably see where this is going. They married when I was 13 and 11 months. By 14 and
2 months I was a fully paid up member of Club Anorexia.
I looked awful. I can see that now. I still have the photos incase I should ever forget. Mind you, if you look at group photos of our so called family from that time she looks nearly as bad as I do.
Worse even.
You see she knew as well as I did. It was her fault. I ate perfectly normally before she came along. I grant you it was at some of the best restaurants and usually at Business Dinners with my father
but I ate all the same.
So failing to see that I was literally killing myself I actually started to feel quite smug.
The best cure of smugness?
'Family' (please note the inverted commas) therapy.
Appointment 1.
My beloved daddy breaks down in tears. My beloved daddy breaks down in tears the way he used to when mummy drank too much. Or refused to come out of her room.
There was never an Appointment 2.
Largely because I got straight home from Appointment 1 and scoffed several portions of her homemade lasagne.
Daddy looked so proud.
She on the other hand couldn't have been more fucking smug.
Which is why, I'm now ashamed to admit I vomited the whole lot up 10 minutes later.
Self induced. Naturally.
Insane as it sounds it was brilliant. She thought she'd got the last laugh. I knew I had.
And so I went on.
Eat.
Vomit.
Eat.
Vomit.
Eat.
Vomit.
Eat.
Study.
Studying was pretty much all that broke up the eat/vomit cycle. I was as dedicated to my studies as I was to getting rid of her crappy cooking. There was no way I could have been anything else, not given my chosen career.
Medicine.
I hadn't chosen a specialism then, although I was pretty much convinced that I wouldn't make a great dietician. I just knew I was going to be the best, no matter what I chose to practice in.As it happens it was medicine that eventually removed my fingers from their perpetual home down my throat. It took a few years though. By that time my father had discovered my dirty little secret, largely because I looked like death and had taken to collapsing all over the place. He dragged me from shrink to shrink and informed my school but by that point it didn't matter to me anymore. He could have cried enough to flood the Atlantic Ocean and I wouldn't have stopped because nothing mattered to me except being in control.
I did get threatened with the dreaded 'Being Sectioned' thing on more than one occasion but I came adept at avoiding it. I just pled my case that if he did that I'd "never achieve my dream to work in medicine" and traded a plate of chips for my freedom. It changed nothing. 24 hours down the line my head was back down the toilet.
However, as previously stated, my beloved medicine saved me. I applied to medical school, several medical schools infact and at every interview I got told the same thing.
"Amazing
predicted grades…"
"…Exemplary school
record…"
"…Obvious passion for medicine…"
"…But
we won't take you with the eating disorder."
I couldn't con them with a plate of chips. This was obvious. I was dealing with professionals. If I was to win them over and get my chosen career on the road I only had one choice. I had to start eating and digesting and acting sane.
Easier said than done.
Every bit of food I swallowed felt wrong.
Every bit of food was kept down because THEY wanted it to be.
They. Not me.
They had the control. I didn't.
It wasn't easy. I struggled I'll be honest. But, in the back of my head I knew that if I didn't take control I would never be a medical student. I'd never be a JHO. An SHO. A registrar. A consultant. All I'd ever wanted to be.
It was painfully slow but I beat it. I found my own counsellor and gradually more and more meals stayed down. My counsellor wrote to my chosen university. I was accepted.
There were conditions. I had to carry on seeing someone. I had to have a guidance counsellor. If 'it' came back I'd be off the course.
I knew the conditions and the consequences and I wasn't prepared to let them happen. Medicine was all that mattered.
Off I went to university.
Cured.
Yeah right.
You can take the bulimia out of the girl if you try hard enough, but you can't stop her being a control freak.
I started off ok, but it only was a matter of time.
I don't remember what sparked it. A less than perfect test result maybe… not having the man I wanted fall at my feet… missing the bus… I don't remember the details of why I only remember what happened next.
I wasn't in control anymore. I wanted to eat every Kit Kat in the student union vending machine and then force the whole lot back up again.
Can't control what I am but can control what I eat…
I
wasn't stupid though. I knew the Kit Kats would lead to my dinner and
my dinner would lead to breakfast, and breakfast would lead to the
crap sandwiches they sold in the refectory and before I knew it I'd
have the telltale bite marks on my fingers and bad breath and weigh
absolutely nothing.
And then I'd be sent back home to my father
and her.
A failure.
Not bloody likely.
But,
I had to do something. Had to take control somehow. I was driven. It
was a compulsion.
Yes, medicine took my fingers out of my throat,
but to my chagrin and that of my legs and torso it wrapped them
straight around a razor blade.
And
a bottle top.
And a piece of glass.
And a scapel.
These
among other things of course.
And judge me all you want, but what the medical profession can't see, they can't punish you for…
So yes, in my desire not to be bulimic I became a cutter.
Tasteful eh?
I'll never forget the first time, although like I said, the reasons why are vague. I was sat on the floor of my room in halls. I used a razor because that was what I thought you had to do. I've learnt since that anything sharp does the job. Even teeth are sufficient, as a scar on my shoulder will bear testimony to.
I wouldn't say it's a good feeling. It hurts like fuck , makes a mess of your sheets and means you can't sunbathe publicly unless your skin is as thick as a rhinos. And if its as thick as a rhinos you'd be hard pushed to bite though it. Unless you're some kind of vampire.
But enough of the metaphors.
It was control though. Possibly even more than I had with the bulimia. No one carted me off to therapy anyway. Largely because no one knew.
Did I say knew?
I meant knows.
Actually, that isn't quite true. My husband of 15 years is more than aware of the fact that his darling wife loves her collection of pointy implements more than she loves him. He'd be hard pushed to miss the fact given that over the years his darling wife has managed to scar practically every inch of her body that usually remains clothed.
It's a shame, if anyone else saw those scars they might do something about it but not Michael.
Michael has demons of his own.
I
have Mr Razor Blade.
Michael has Snow White.
Once upon a time he thought he could get me down the same road. Tried to tell me that I should control my life with cocaine instead of cutting. What he failed to mention, and what I later found out when I put that shit up my nose, was that there's no control involved with it - once its in your system you don't know who you are or what you're doing.
You feel nothing.
You can never make that accusation about cutting.
So yes, I keep Michael's secret and he keeps mine.
Perfect.
You're wondering about Ric right, and Mubbs?
That's the thing with one night stands. No questions asked. And if anyone is ever rude enough to ask them then you tell them to mind their own business. Ric and Mubbs knew the rules. They didn't ask.
Ric wants to. I can see it in his eyes when we meet in the corridors. Now he knows we're not a one night stand but colleagues he longs to ask, longs to be able to help, longs to be able to take away whatever pain makes me to do it to myself. Not all men would care that much, but he's a doctor, taking away pain is what doctors do.
Sometimes I even look down at the scars and the fresh cuts and want to take them away myself.
It'll never happen. I couldn't take them away if I wanted to now. They're part of me.
Always.
I don't know where it will all end. Michael likes to throw at me, during our most furious of rows, that I'll end up like my mum, dead on the floor with half a pharmacy in my gut. I think he's wrong. I spend my days saving lives the last thing I'm going to do is intentionally wipe mine out. Although, that said, choosing when to end your life has to be the ultimate in control…
I
wouldn't.
I couldn't.
And if I did, and I changed my mind, there'd be no coming back, and that would be the ultimate in lack of control wouldn't it.
At least that's what I keep telling myself.
I'm in trouble though. I know that. The minute you cease to be able to maintain a 'normal life' then you have to learn to face it, and I gave up the right to a normal life years ago.
So did Michael.
We'll never have children, there's too much risk involved. We could 'give it a go' and hope that it worked out ok, but there'd always be that chance that the resultant offspring would end up mistaking its fathers cocaine stash for a sherbet dib-dab. Or walking in on its mother scraping a ripped tea-light casing back and forth over her thigh because she likes the noise it makes when it snags the skin.
It's hardly worth the risk is it? I know that deep down. I watched 'About A Boy' the other night and sobbed myself stupid because I know that if I ever did become a mother I'd fall completely in the same category as Toni Collette's character.
Just like my mum.
So maybe Michael has a point.
Only one thing keeps me going. The job. If the job were gone tomorrow I'd be nothing but another statistic, another cutter with no rhyme, reason or redeeming qualities. But I'm not. I'm a leading CT surgeon.
I'm Connie Beauchamp.
End of.
