"Even now, I don’t truly understand why Kitty can’t pick up a fork and eat the way she used to, why she is suddenly obsessed with calories and getting fat. She’s never been fat; no one’s ever made fun of her because of her weight. She has always loved to eat. In one of our favorite family stories, Kitty, age four, ordered a huge bowl of mussels in a restaurant one night and devoured them, licking the insides of the shiny dark shells. The chef came out of the kitchen to see the child with the adult palate, and sent out a bowl of chocolate ice cream in appreciation. Which Kitty devoured.
I still don’t understand, but I’m beginning to know. To recognize the sick feeling in my stomach each time we sit down at the table and Kitty does not eat. I’m beginning to be able to predict how each meal will go: Jamie and I will take turns cajoling, pleading, ordering our daughter to eat, and she will turn aside everything we say with the skill of a fencer parrying a lunge. She will eat a few bites of lettuce, a handful of dry ramen noodles. She will count out six grapes and consume them with infinite slowness, peeling each one into strips and sucking it dry. She will pour her milk down the sink when she thinks we’re not looking, allow herself only five sips of water.
And at the end of the meal, she will climb the stairs to her room and do a hundred extra sit-ups, penance for the sin of feeding herself even these scraps. Which would not keep a dog alive.
Which will not keep her alive, either."
In Brave Girl Eating, the chronicle of a family’s struggle with anorexia nervosa, journalist, professor, and author Harriet Brown recounts in mesmerizing and horrifying detail her daughter Kitty’s journey. Brave Girl Eating is an intimate, shocking, compelling, and ultimately uplifting look at the ravages of a mental illness that affects more than 18 million Americans.
http://rapidgator.net/file/d64146b06d9f8d62390c7e013f6ab0f0/Harriet_Brown_-_Brave_Girl_Eating.pdf.html
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