It has been argued that food and eating have replaced sex as our foremost cultural taboo. To some extent I agree with this but would point out that the taboo is not against food, or sex, or flesh, but against a loss of control.
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Marya Hornbacher
Marya Justine Hornbacher (born April 4, 1974) is an American author and freelance journalist. Her book Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia, is a Pulitzer Prize nominated autobiographical account of her struggle with eating disorders, written when she was twenty-three. This is the book which originally brought attention to Hornbacher. It has been translated into sixteen languages and sold over a million copies in the U.S. 2Bibliography Her first book was Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia (see above). This book was updated in May 2014, 15 years after the original date of publication, with a Post Script by Marya Hornbacher, "Hornbacher, an authority in the field of eating disorders, argues that recovery is not only possible, it is necessary. But the journey is not easy or guaranteed. With a new ending to her story that adds a contemporary edge, Wasted continues to be timely and relevant." Her second book is the critically praised 2005 novel, The Center of Winter, which follows a family in the aftermath of a suicide. Her third book, published in April 2008, a memoir titled Madness: A Bipolar Life, chronicles the years following Wasted: A Memoir of Anorexia and Bulimia when she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Her fourth book, published in 2010, is the recovery handbook Sane: Mental Illness, Addiction, and the Twelve Steps written as a guide to working the Twelve Steps for people who suffer from both addiction and mental illness. Her fifth book, published in 2011, Waiting: A Nonbeliever's Higher Power, explores spirituality and what that can mean to someone recovering—from addiction, mental illness, or both—who does not believe in Go
We grew up with the impression that underneath all this normal flesh, buried deep in the excessive recesses of our healthy bodies, there was a Perfect Body just waiting to break out. It would look exactly like everyone else's perfect body.
There are women in my closet, hanging on my hangers, a different woman for each suit, each dress, each pair of shoes.
Somewhere in the back of my brain there exists this certainty: The body is no more than a costume, and can be changed at will. That the changing of bodies, like costumes, would make me into a different character, a character who might, finally, be all right. I learned very early to choose my lines…
Some people who are obsessed with food become gourmet chefs. Others get eating disorders.
An eating disorder is in many ways a rather logical elaboration on a cultural idea.
An eating disorder is in many ways a rather logical elaboration on a cultural idea.
And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.
I did not like to be touched, but it was a strange dislike. I did not like to be touched because I craved it too much. I wanted to be held very tight so I would not break.
And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.
I did not like to be touched, but it was a strange dislike. I did not like to be touched because I craved it too much. I wanted to be held very tight so I would not break.
When you realize you hate yourself so much, when you realize that you cannot stand who you are, and this deep spite has been the motivation behind your behavior for many years, your brain can’t quite deal with it. It will try very hard to avoid that realization; it will try, in a last-ditch effort…
I did not like to be touched, but it was a strange dislike. I did not like to be touched because I craved it too much. I wanted to be held very tight so I would not break.
You never come back, not all the way. Always there is an odd distance between you and the people you love and the people you meet, a barrier thin as the glass of a mirror, you never come all the way out of the mirror; you stand, for the rest of your life, with one foot in this world and one in…