THE WINTER I REFUSED By Claire Kinnane Submitted to the Faculty of the College of Arts and Sciences of American University in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Fine Arts In Creative Writing Chair: Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences . ~\ (\ (()\\) Date 2010 American University Washington, D.C. 20016 AMERIC~ UNiVERSITY LIBRARY UMI Number: 1484556 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a complete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. UMI __...Dissertation Publishing....___ UMI 1484556 Copyright 2010 by ProQuest LLC. All rights reserved. This edition of the work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States Code. Pro uesr ---· ProQuest LLC 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml48106-1346 ©COPYRIGHT by Claire Kinnane 2010 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED THE WINTER I REFUSED BY Claire Kinnane ABSTRACT The Winter I Refused is a nonfiction memoir of my hospitalization for anorexia nervosa in 1998. The 14-year-old speaker intimately describes the physical and psychological experience of anorexia. The retrospective voice, interwoven throughout the text, discovers that while the cause ofher illness remains mysterious, the nature of it reveals a profound sense of alienation that has little to do with weight and food. Compelled toward self-destruction not by trauma but overwhelming boredom, the speaker discovers the dangers of an idle sensitive mind. Her recovery involves reinventing her relationship with consciousness itself. Anorexia, in this memoir, becomes a metaphor for introversion gone haywire, for discovering passion for life only after toying dangerously with existence itself. 11 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ........................................................................................................................ ii Chapter 1. COLLAPSE ............................................................................................................. 1 2. I PROMISED MYSELF ........................................................................................ 14 3. INTENSIVE CARE ............................................................................................... 23 4. LUCK ..................................................................................................................... 45 5. NOTES ON REMEMBERING ............................................................................. 51 6. EMOTION LIST .................................................................................................... 54 7. THEPSYCHWARDPARADE ............................................................................ 76 8. TALKING DOESN'T HELP ................................................................................. 82 9. JESSICA AND WILLIAM .................................................................................... 87 10. NOTES ON (POSSffiLE) MEANING .................................................................. 97 11. ART THERAP¥ .................................................................................................. 100 12. I'M FINE ............................................................................................................. 106 13. HOME .................................................................................................................. l13 iii CHAPTER 1 COLLAPSE I'm fourteen years old, walking up Wisconsin Avenue towards National Cathedral. I'm wearing a leather jacket and a pair of corduroys held around my hips by yellow rope. I'm too skinny for my old belt. My bare hands are curled up, limp in my pockets. It's the middle ofFebruary in Washington, DC. I have a ski jacket at home, but I don't bother wearing it. I let most of my body heat go. I have chosen the Cathedral as a stopping point not because I want to see it, but because it is the next major landmark after CVS and the Junior League baseball field. The Cathedral is about three more blocks up Wisconsin, which is six more blocks (there and back) of calorie burning. When I reach the Cathedral, I sit down on a cold stone stoop on the periphery of the gardens. I stare absently at the ground, feeling my heart race under my jacket. My breasts are gone. I burned all the fat inside of them. My chest is a thin wall, so thin it feels like my heart is bumping directly against the silk lining of my jacket. I sit for a few minutes, conscious only of my heart and the way the bone in my backside rubs against the cold rock. I know from science class that this bone is the lower part of the pelvis. rm the only one in my class, though, who actually knows how its curved shape feels, who knows how much it hurts to have no padding between pelvis and 1 2 chair. I shift my weight a lot and when I do it feels like I'm rolling around on top of two pool balls. There must be a lot of nerves down there; I'm sore all the time. When I get up my legs are swimming in loose corduroy. I can feel every turn of my hips. Like a wooden doll, my body feels simple and mechanical. I enjoy counting my visible bones, as though keeping track of all my possessions. There is nothing more elegant or enthralling to me than the hint of my skeleton, that intimate architecture that is only mine, lying just below my skin. All the fat that rests between me and my bones I regard as pointless, peach-colored junk. I return from my walk just as dinner is served. "We were waiting for you," my mom says. She knows I won't eat. But she hopes I will. I take a seat next to the radiator. I like to rest my right arm on this until it gets too warm, then take it away, wait, and put my arm back again. This surge of warm air is heavenly. My mom puts a bowl ofhot chili in front of me. I eat a little ofthe sauce. My mom, stepdad and stepsisters have a conversation which I pay no attention to. I take a sip ofjuice. "Try to eat, Claire. It's good for you." My mom is looking at me. "It's not fattening, it's healthy." I know I'm not fat. In fact, I know I'm gruesomely thin. I'm not afraid of being fat so much as I despise fat itself. Sometimes I imagine the word food in big block letters or an actual slice of pizza with a black line slashing through it. "Don't you like it, Claire?" "I'm going downstairs," I say after a few more spoonfuls of sauce. 3 "Why won't you eat it, honey?" She sounds exasperated and looks as if she's about to cry. "You are getting too skinny," my stepfather says. "I'm gonna go downstairs now." My bedroom is in the basement, a little room without windows where I used to blast Nirvana, light candles, and talk with my best friend Dana for hours on the phone. I don't listen to music anymore. I prefer silence. Dana told me she was worried about me when she noticed I was getting thin, so I stopped talking to her. I lie on my bed, instead, counting my heartbeats per minute. I do this for amusement. My resting heart rate is somewhere in fifties. I want it to be in the forties, just high enough to keep me alive. I don't understand why but this activity calms me down after a tense dinner with my family. After I've been counting heartbeats for about a half an hour, my mother comes downstairs and knocks on my door. I ignore her. She knocks again. I ignore her again. She bangs loudly, screaming. "Claire. Answer me!" "What?" "You're killing yourselfl Don't you understand that? You will die." "No, I won't. Go away." She bangs harder on the door. This goes on for forty five minutes or so. I picture her face on the other side of the door: red, contorted, ugly with pain. The sound of her voice seems close to the floor. I think she's sitting down, leaning against the wall. She 4 says my name again, but this time she says it like a question. She says it softly, then sobs a little. Eventually she goes away and I continue counting heartbeats. As I lie in bed, I'm relieved by the thought that I might not wake up in the morning. If I don't wake up, I won't have to go to my weekly doctor's visit to "weigh in." I won't have to horde tap water all day long in order to trick the scale. I won't have to tape house keys to the inside of my underpants in order to weigh a little bit more. I won't have to go to therapy. My life is a nuisance -- so much planning and lying. More pleasurable than counting heartbeats is taking hot showers. The hot water warms my organs in ways that I cannot. It warms me from the outside in. Standing nude in the shower I admire my work. I take my right middle finger and my thumb and make a ring around my left arm. The circumference of my arm is so small, I can move the ring around a little. The bare space (where my ann should be) gets me high, the measurable lack of flesh. I used to sing in the shower. Now I'm careful to keep my lips shut. I don't want any water sneaking in. I know water doesn't have any calories, but it's a matter of principle. I keep my lips closed tight. I try not to touch my body too much. I let the force of the water do what my hands used to do -- wash my legs and chest. I like to look at my work, but touching it is different. I'm afraid if I grasp my hips, I'll feel a surge of panic. I'm afraid I'll mourn for myself, realize what I've done. I want to keep my addiction, not because I like it, but because I'm really good at it. It gives me something to do, or rather, something to be. When I get out of the shower, I see my mother has placed a book on my pillow: Reviving Ophelia. On its glossy cover is a picture of an ethereal, forlorn looking blonde 5 girl with blue eyes.