For the Sake of Breaking the Rules
How an act of defiance taught me a new way to define growing up.
It is early June 2012. I’ve been living in an eating disorder treatment facility—a house in a quiet neighborhood with lawns full of wildflowers the residents take for granted but that I find fascinating in their newness—in Downey, California, for almost two months. The front door opens into a large sitting room with two offices to the left, where we meet with various therapists individually and in groups. To the right is a long, open room that’s half dining room (connected to a kitchen area) and half living room, with bedrooms behind the kitchen and living room walls. A wide sliding glass door opens to a concrete patio on the far side. I’ve spent more afternoons than I can count watching the sunlight seep through that sliding glass door.
We rarely leave the house, so I’m deeply familiar with its ceilings, corners, and furniture—the best spot on each couch and the nicest lamps to read by. I know every inch except for the backyard, which is inaccessible thanks to the plain, no-nonsense oval of a pool whose water has glinted, beckoned, and taunted me every day since I arrived.
A few weeks earlier, a girl was taken away in an ambulance because she couldn’t stop exercising. I say ‘couldn’t’ because ‘refused’ isn’t accurate; if you’ve experienced an addiction, you’ll understand when I say there was no choice left. Anya (all names have been changed for privacy) was a sweet girl with blue eyes and a shy smile who reminded me of an anxious hummingbird: tiny-limbed, always moving, and unable to stop fluttering. She did jumping jacks before we went to bed and snuck into the sitting room to do wind sprints in the early morning.
Another girl threw up in her dirty laundry and immediately washed her clothes to erase all evidence of her bulimia with Tide and hot water. I know because she is proud of her cunning and tells me about it; she does a lot of laundry. Her cleft chin and loud voice felt grating when we first met. Now, though, her spirit soothes me. She knows about Hawaii surf culture, and her sun-fried hair reminds me of home. Jessie was one of the first to welcome me into the house when my nervous system was on fire, and my heart ached with homesickness.
It's almost time for me to return home, and it’s been over two months since I’ve swum in the ocean. The California spring is turning to summer, and we’re far enough inland for the midday heat to fill the house daily with a stuffiness I find utterly outrageous we must bear considering the aforementioned pool.
I’ve hardly pushed back since I arrived. I haven’t secretly exercised, tried to hide my food under the table, or thrown up in my dirty laundry. My mind enjoys rules and structure, but it doesn’t mean I’m healed. It only means that these rules, for now, have replaced the ones that got me here, my brain teetering on the edge of knowing I’ll go back once I leave and hoping I won’t. I’ve cried and laughed and danced with these girls, arguing over outings, being and dealing with the typical obnoxiousness that’s inevitable in a room full of neurotic teenagers.
Then, there are the counselors and nurses who work in rotations throughout the week. Bethany is my favorite; she is beautiful in the blue-eyed, brown hair, tan skin, and big smile way that I love and cannot imagine for myself. Her freeness in body and spirit is the exact opposite of my morose shrinking. Her sternness, along with the sternness of all the counselors, pisses some girls off because they hate being told what to do—but I find comfort in outsourcing my decision-making to someone I trust, knowing that my decisions are bullshit (they got me here, after all).
When I first arrived, I quickly learned one of the things that makes inpatient treatment so utterly different from real life. At any time, day or night, we can ‘check in’ with a counselor or nurse and process our feelings. We could be in the middle of lunch, raise our hands, and ask to talk or walk into the sitting room and cry for whatever reason without judgment. Bethany and I check in often, and she leads several of the weekly groups. Plus, we chat during afternoon walks once I’m allowed to go. We see neighborhood dogs and sneak glances at people’s everyday lives as our group of oddball girls walks around the cul-de-sac.
She is the one I sit with when my homesickness reaches a crescendo, or my body begins changing, and though I feel closest to Bethany, I love all the staff. This is nothing like what I’d pictured when my therapist back home told my mom I needed a higher level of care. I’d imagined fluorescent lighting, strict and unsmiling nurses, and doors that locked from the outside.
Mostly, it is being baffled by the beauty of the last paragraphs of 100 Years of Solitude, sitting on the couch in my sweatpants. It is a pile of us in the minivan, girls who don’t believe we fit anywhere, so we ruthlessly tried to shrink ourselves (to prove a point?), scream-singing Somebody That I Used to Know and We Are Young at the tops of our lungs—the radio bangers of that year that none of us managed to tire of. The sad melodiousness of Somebody I Used to Know spoke to the abusive relationships we maintained with ourselves. We heard ourselves in the negotiation of love and loss, while We Are Young’s chorus catapulted us into a far-away world where we could set the world on fire instead of ourselves.
It is fear and heartache and anger; it is crying and loss; it is also connection, joy, and family. A cocoon where we re-gr0w ourselves, surrounded by women who hold space for everything each of us has starved, purged, and exercised into oblivion to rise and break the surface.
And then there is the pool: sparkling blue and serene, still water under a hot sun, just outside the glass doors, that no one can swim. In my last weeks here, I have become obsessed with the pool. The other girls don’t balk at the ridiculousness of the situation like I do.
“Why even have a house with a pool no one can swim in?” I groan.
“It’s so stuuuupid!” I whine in classic sixteen-year-old angst.
Bethany keeps telling me they need one lifeguard for every three girls (or something insane like that).
To this day, I don’t know if that was true or if they just didn’t want a bunch of girls with devastating body dysmorphia running around in bikinis. Or maybe access to the pool would have made the whole experience too close to a vacation, taking away the seriousness of why we were all there. But I still believe Bethany about the lifeguards because I know she wouldn’t have lied to me.
She knows I want to swim in the pool more than anything. Not only am I annoyed by its presence, going unused day after day—but I also argue it’s utterly ridiculous that I, in particular, can’t swim. I live in Hawaii, and after all, I surf!
I cajole and plead, but no one will budge.
We’re returning from an outing to a park overlooking ocean cliffs. Seeing the waves crash on the rocks, feeling the sun’s heat on my face, and knowing I’m leaving soon are the fire I need to officially decide that today is the day as the van pulls into the driveway.
I am now at the ‘top’ of the hierarchy, a veteran making strides in my recovery, welcoming new girls, showing them the ropes, and offering support just as the blonde girl with the cleft chin did for me. I am not ‘cured’—that will come years later—but I am better, finding answers in myself that go beyond ‘feeling fat,’ which is not a feeling, as we are all reminded. My surface has begun to crack.
I have rehab street cred now (yes, it’s a thing), giving me the leniency necessary to pull off my plan.
From the living room on the right side of the house, we can sit in the sun on the concrete patio. We aren’t supposed to go around back and out of sight—which connects to the pool—ever. We all split off to shower before dinner. I see my chance and take it, sneaking out the side and around the back, where a fence blocks the pool. Kindergarten monkey bars and tree-climbing champ that I am, I scale it quickly and stealthily.
I creep the last few feet where the house still blocks me from discovery. Knowing I have only one chance, I take a running leap, fully clothed, and cannonball into the cool water, immediately enveloped by deep satisfaction. It’s like riding a bike and every other cliché; I am home and free and not myself and all of myself. I rise to the surface with a huge grin, knowing I will be in trouble and not caring—the pure joy of this moment is worth any consequence.
And there is Bethany, pulling open the sliding glass doors to see me treading water with my goofy grin, and just for a moment, she smiles right back, using all her willpower not to laugh with me. She pulls herself together, putting on her most stern face, hands me a towel, and tells me I’ve lost my shower privileges for the day. I smile, giddy with this newfound freedom, and dry off to get ready for dinner.
Soon after that, it is my final day; I am graduating. All of us sit in a circle. Each participant shares what they see or appreciate about me, as is tradition to do for the ‘graduate.’ When Bethany’s turn comes, there are tears in our eyes.
She says she knew how far I'd come in my recovery when she walked out and saw me floating in the pool.
Back then, I couldn’t quite grasp why Bethany was proud of me for my blatant rule-breaking. Now I do. Following their rules was better than breaking them, but it was always a replacement of one voice for another—none were mine. Her voice had my best interest at heart, but it wasn’t my voice. In that decision was a glimmer of the me beneath it all. I didn’t break the rules so I could adhere to their definitions or my eating disorder’s. (It was only in writing this that I realized jumping into pools is one of my recurring themes.)
Bethany loved seeing me break that rule because, for the first time in a very long time, I decided to listen to myself before anyone else, one entirely for me and unmotivated by people-pleasing or perfectionism or sickness. A freedom, a self, that said, “Today, this is what I want, and none of you can stop me.” I would love to say that I returned home after that day cured, but I would be lying. I spent years more battling my addictions and my eating disorder, necessarily outsourcing my choices to people with healthier intentions along the way.
For over a decade, I followed self-prescribed rules about what I could eat, how I could think, and who I could be. I listened to other people’s ideas of how to make better choices and what measures truly mattered. For years, I believed responsibility was an either/or. Either you were responsible, an adult, or you were irresponsible, a child. Back in that house, I was afraid of losing control of my body, my emotions, and myself. Now I realize I wasn’t scared at all.
I didn’t know that responsibility is an ‘and.’ It’s being adult and child, teacher and student. Outside measures and milestones don’t define the essence of my growing up. It is simply listening sincerely enough to find the little girl in me who knows exactly what she wants and needs.
Hello Savannah.
I find the brutal honesty of your writing to be such a refreshing feeling in a day and age of constant mis information. You reveal your inner soul in a simple and honest way despite the years of addiction which could have muted your inner voice.
Thank you once again for sharing this beautiful piec.
Very best wishes, Phillip.
Great story. Thanks for sharing Savannah!