A HUNGRY AND HURTING: EMOTIONAL AND PHYSICAL ABUSE (CAROLYN’S STORY)

CAROLYN: "Sweets just seemed to be happy food. I thought if I ate them I would get happy."

Carolyn is a thirty-one-year-old heterosexual African-American woman who grew up in a middle-class family in New York City. She understands her eating problems to have begun when she was six years old when she first remembers "turning to food for things." At the time, she didn't know why she frequently ate whatever she could find. As she understands it now, she began to binge in response to the physical and emotional tension in her family. Her father beat her mother and punished her emotionally, especially if she did anything without his permission. He never allowed her out of the house without him and falsely accused her of having affairs, although he flaunted his adultery, including affairs with relatives. He routinely stalked her, claiming her time as his. If, for example, he called home while she was going to the mailbox and could not hear the phone, he would drive an hour and a half from his workplace to accuse her of having affairs.

Carolyn's father was very strict with the children, and although her mother objected, she could not defend them without being abused. Carolyn's mother "was taking her life into her hands" when she defied him. Even taking her children out trick-or-treating would make him angry. When Carolyn sided with her mother, he beat Carolyn. She remembers her father choking and beating her when she was nine and again at fourteen. She always felt on the edge emotionally, bracing for an explosion:

I remember my niece asking me one night if I was cold because she thought I was shivering. But I wasn't cold. I was shaking with fear. There was so much tension. My bedroom was right next to theirs so I could hear everything. I would hear him say, "I am getting the gun." I don't even know if he had a gun.

When she was about six, Carolyn began to binge. It was an immediate source of comfort that she couldn't get anywhere else; as is typical of battered mothers, Carolyn's mother was robbed of the vital energy she needed to care for herself and her children. Carolyn ate big portions at meals with her family, then ate secretly too. Eating calmed her, which is why, she says, "I refer to it now as a drug because it numbed me out." Music offered another powerful escape. When it was turned up very loud, it seemed as if nothing else were happening in her world. She could stay up in her room for hours at a time and listen to music, buffered from her violent environment—an especially valuable escape since her father often would not allow her to leave the house. She could listen to music and eat sweets on her own, without having to rely on anyone else.

If Carolyn didn't have her allowance money, she would go into her mother's purse and take the money to buy food for a binge. She felt as if she were stealing hundreds of dollars and told herself she would pay it back. Despite her guilt, she felt desperate for the food, her "drug."

When Carolyn first began to binge, she believed it was normal. Like many girls who binge when they are very young, she didn't really think about whether anyone else did it. In her mind, it was simply something she did. But as she grew older, she became self-conscious about her weight and learned that her mother didn't like her chunky size. Carolyn knew better than to confess about her binges. Guilt about stealing the money coupled with her fear of eating a lot stopped her from talking about her bingeing with anyone. By keeping her secret, she protected herself from her mother's judgments. Thus Carolyn's coping mechanism remained hidden from view; while it wrapped her in guilt, it nevertheless soothed her.

Recently, Carolyn realized that she liked sweets, especially birthday cakes, so much because they symbolized family harmony and relaxation. Her mother liked to bake, and Carolyn associated sweets with being happy. Birthday cakes were the centerpiece of her childhood. She lived for family birthdays — or rather for the cakes, which in her mind stood for family happiness and peace. The candle-lighting ritual at a birthday party was the one occasion when the family wasn't arguing: "Sweets just seemed to be happy food. I thought if I ate them I would get happy. It seemed so simple." Carolyn's turning to food for comfort was logical since eating was a positive and celebrated part of her childhood. Carolyn waited for the family celebrations, hoping the tension would disappear.

When she was ten years old, she ran away from home with her twelve-year-old sister. She continued to run away until she was sixteen and left for college. She and her sister went to stay at friends' houses in a neighboring town for days and weeks at a time. Once she moved away from home, her bingeing and her appetite subsided. When Carolyn's mother left her father, Carolyn began to live with her mother again. Her problems with food were minimal until she began to diet, pressured by her mother, her boyfriend, and her friends to be thin.

*24\241\2*