Living with Anorexia
I met Margarita a few months ago when she came to the school. She was dressed in black oversized clothes, the kind that would cloak every inch of skin. At seventeen, Margarita had light chestnut hair, cut multiple times to its roots. My boss at the dance school warned me that she had “problems” and often resorted to self-harm through the cuts and bruises on her arms.
The first time I had seen the scars was when she came in wearing a T-shirt one day. Her forearms were bare, unveiling a display of vertical cuts and burn wounds. It was as if she had renounced hiding her inner battles. Even though I recognized that she was her own enemy, I still asked her after each warm up session, “How do you feel?”
“I’m fine…” She would say, in a high-pitched voice. Then an awkward silence would ensue, and we would carry on with the set choreography. She would hand me her phone to take a video of her dancing the routine. If she wasn’t happy with the result, she would roll up her sleeves, slick her chestnut hair back and asked me to film the video for a second, third or fourth time.
She was a trained perfectionist.
One day, I asked her if she wanted some boba tea which I wanted to order through a food delivery app. She told me that all she drinks is this vitamin shake that her doctor prescribes her. That was when the penny…
