To Die For

Carol Lee

Century

Otago Daily Times, April 29th 2004

There have been a number of harrowing and inspiring personal accounts written of individual battles with the illness, but what is not often recognised is the equally traumatic experience of the friends and family of the patient. In addition, such books can unintentionally tempt those in recovery to return to the “sisterhood” of their addiction, or act as handbooks for those who want to “try” an eating disorder. For these reasons, it was with some trepidation that I picked up Carol Lee’s book To Die For-A young woman’s battle with anorexia.

As somebody who has struggled for more than half my life with this illness, I have been intellectually aware of how helpless and terrified my friends and family must have been to watch me starve myself to collapse over and over again.    Unfortunately, the selfishness and self-absorption of the disorder has allowed me to ignore their pain and the terrible toll it has taken on them. Carol Lee has brought the reality of their experience home to me. 

In To Die For, Lee details her god-daughter Emma’s struggle with both anorexia and bulimia, and her own involvement in the recovery process. What makes this particularly unusual is that it is a shared experience, based on diaries written by both women over a 5 year period spanning Emma’s decision to finally accept help and her slow and difficult return to health.

Carol Lee is an author and journalist who, in addition to six previous books, has written for such prestigious publications as the Guardian, the Observer and the Sunday Times. and her journalistic skills allow her to explain the contradictions and paradoxes of anorexia with a clarity and insightfulness I have seldom heard from somebody who has had an eating disorder. It is important to understand that an eating disorder is not primarily about weight or body image; it is a coping strategy for a life that seems uncontrollable, a solution to seemingly insurmountable difficulties, as well as a prison. This means that recovery is a series of pitched battles and a minefield of deception and manipulation. It is extremely difficult and painful, for one is trying to help somebody simultaneously craving and rejecting assistance. As Lee writes in the introduction, “difficult emotion stalked much of my time with Emma. I was angry with her as she was with me for trying to rescue her. We had many battles. But had I surrendered to her, we might not be where we are now…my anger was as necessary as hers.”    She also explains a critical aspect of the recovery process:  “At times she did not so much need looking after as being found out. For she lived a shadowy interior life which bore little relation to the world where I was standing. She needed somebody to know this, to know what she was up to, where she was hiding-and why.”

As critical as these insights are, the most essential message may be that there will be feelings of anger, frustration, rejection and betrayal, and that these are inevitable stages in the battle of recovery rather than a failure on your part. The illness can be unravelled with trust and patience, but it is a long, slow process, and you need to care for yourself if you are to provide help. Most importantly, you are not alone in feeling such emotions.To Die For is a valuable addition to the literature on eating disorders, and I recommend it to the family and friends of all those with anorexic or bulimia.