Episode One: Re-Feeding Farts

I should warn you: when I gave up the body of a fourteen year old boy, I was gifted with the sense-of-humor of one. And on that note, welcome to this entry, dedicated to…

Pooping and Farting!

But really just farting.

In my inpatient treatment process, the first step towards recovery was called re-feeding. It’s exactly what it sounds like. But just to over-explain it anyway... as a baby, you didn’t know how to feed yourself. Your body was used to womb-sandwiches and your poop was all sorts of liquid-y awfulness. Then your mom fed you some delicious breast milk* and your poops learned how to be a little less awful. Then you eat some solid-ish foods and your poops became barely tolerable. Once you were eating things that made your poops solid, your parents no longer had to change your diaper, and you pooped out turds right into the toilet. The way I see it, your body’s first task was learning to eat and then poop in a way that didn’t make your parents get rid of you. Task number two (no pun intended) was to learn the violin.

As a non-infant, if you stop eating, your body kinda forgets how to eat. So, you have to re-feed it.

Actually, a much better metaphor would have been this: when you let a car run out of gas, you refuel it so that it can run again. When people let their bodies run out of food, you re-feed them so they can live again. But I really wanted to talk about baby poop because my brother just had a baby, and poop is fascinating.

Just like little babies who are learning to eat, anorexics going through re-feeding get some horrible stuff coming out of the butt. Among these things are re-feeding farts.

I like to believe that re-feeding farts smell slightly different on a person-by-person basis. Mine were frequently described as a dumpster filled with four-day-old, baby-diarrhea-soaked diapers. Not only did re-feeding farts smell like death, but I am certain that these farts had a slightly greater density than regular farts. Thus, anyone in the vicinity not only smelled your fart, they tasted it. They felt it. I guess people with synesthesia probably saw a very specific color when they encountered your re-feeding gas. Furthermore, the weighty density caused the cloud-of-fart to linger in the area of emission much longer than a run-of-the-mill fart. If you had an enemy in treatment, you could fart near her and then leave. If you had a best friend in treatment, you could grab the nearest blanket and dutch oven each other, just like lovers do. If you were annoyed at the nurse who weighed you every morning, you could treat her to the first fart of the day.

Another thing you should know about re-feeding farts: they were primarily silent. The good old Silent But Deadlies. This made them super easy to blame on someone, or something, else. Realizing this during my own re-feeding, I decided my farts could be used for evil, and I quickly became skilled in the act of guerrilla crop dusting.

For one of our inpatient group outings (OMG just like in the movie Girl Interrupted!), my treatment mates and I elected to go on an accompanied shopping trip to Target to buy gifts for an impending Secret Santa exchange. We each got some spending cash and headed to the aisles.

As I was perusing the lip glosses, a beautiful woman and her boyfriend strolled up next to me. Laughing and hugging, I was instantly annoyed by her carefree attitude, her joy, her ambivalence, her beauty, her boyfriend ... so I silently let one rip. And I moved one aisle away. And I listened as the couple tried to identify the sewage-like aroma that filled their mouths. And I laughed to myself as they ran away. No lip-gloss for you, non-eating-disordered, happy lady. Not today.

Clearly, re-feeding farts were a venue for hilarious acts of revenge on strangers who you hated for entirely arbitrary reasons. But re-feeding farts also had the power to push me further into the social isolation and the depression that loves to team up with anorexia.

While sick, I sometimes felt the desire to recover. In these instances, I would muster up my courage, head out with friends, and mimic what they ate in a desperate stab at normalcy. And, though brief, these flirtatious glances at recovery always ended with... re-feeding farts.

Once, a friend was house-sitting near campus. She invited a few of us over to break free from dorm life and spend the night enjoying such luxuries as non-bunked beds and free laundry. For dinner, we cooked a meal together and I cautiously ate our home-cooked pasta and chocolate cake, mimicking the portion sizes and bite sizes and chewing motions I saw around me.

After dinner, as we all settled and snuggled to watch movies, I felt my stomach start to quiver and spasm. At this discomfort, combined with my mental anguish at having eaten what felt like a sumo-wrestler’s daily intake, I came up with some excuse to retire for the evening. But what I really needed to do was hide and let out the farts, maybe cry a little. Tucked safely into a bed, I must have stayed up for hours. Panic attack-induced chest pains, fueled by my caloric consumption, alternated with intense, burning abdominal cramps that painfully pushed their way out my tush only to punish my nostrils with the foul scent of my anorexic insides.

The next morning, I woke to say hi to my friends, drink some coffee, and hang out in pajama mode. When I returned to the bedroom to get dressed and prepare to head back to campus, I was strangled by the smell that had sunk into the entire bedroom area. Throughout the entire night, the gas had been pooling, churning, metastasizing. I was embarrassed, and I needed to leave.

By some rare force of kindness, empathy, or damaged olfactory receptors, none of my friends pointed out the noxious smell that filled the the upstairs hallways of this otherwise pleasant home. Unfortunately, the entire experience made me more reluctant to combine eating and social interactions. I loved the friends who had invited me out that night, but I found myself turning down invitations to grab pizza, Indian food, and attend a Friends-giving.

Critics will be quick to point out the potential downfalls of group treatment programs. However, there is nothing like the sense of support you feel when during yoga therapy sessions, surrounded by a handful of people going through the same physical changes you are, you slip into full wind release pose at the same time.

*I do in fact have the taste of breast milk in my memory. My youngest sister is seven years younger than I am, and she was breast-fed until I was about nine. This meant we had pre-pumped breast milk just lying around in the fridge and freezer. My dad used to cook with it as a cow’s milk replacement when we had guests, just to freak them out. I used to drink it straight just to freak people out. Tasted kinda like cantaloupe.