The 14 year old me had been in Western for over two months. It was July. Without being required to go to my father’s every weekend, I began to get a fuller picture of life in Western. They had a thing called “Incentive Activities.” Strangely, staff thought that they could change our behavior by dangling the latest incentive activity before us.
We had Incentive Movies, Incentive Dances, Incentive Walks, Incentive Trips. It was yet another tool to make me toe the line either with arm cutting or my other favorite subject—food.
I had never been a big eater. In fact, eating had been problematic since I was in sixth grade and my stomach started hurting. The doctors could find no reason for it. I did a barium swallowing test. Everything was normal. So for the year of sixth grade, I ate blueberry yogurt. Just blueberry yogurt. It seemed to be the only thing that didn’t make my stomach hurt.
As a result, upon entry to Western, I was a 5’10.5” teenager that weighed 112 pounds on a good day. One of the missions of staff at Western was to get me to gain weight. Naturally, this involved me eating more. No one thought that the quality of the food they provided might be a problem.
We were fortunate in that a cook, Rachel, came into Child Study & Treatment Center weekday mornings to make breakfast. I could eat breakfast. Eggs and toast were recognizable and tasted normal. The problem was the other two meals.
Institutional food came in trays from the main hospital. Not only did it appear to be unidentifiable, it also had a terrible smell. I cannot eat things that smell terrible regardless of how hungry I might be. Since I had not been eating much during the preceding years, being chronically hungry was my normal. I found little bits of this and that like maybe some cottage cheese to snack on. Mostly, I didn’t eat.
We had a patient store at the main hospital that we got to go to as an incentive activity. I was able to buy a couple of three musketeers bars to tide me over for those dinners made of mystery food-in-a-tray. I broke the bars in quarters. I would have a quarter to augment whatever I could find eatable for dinner. Sometimes, we had also ice cream bars at ten in the evening before bed. I could easily down an ice cream bar or two to add to my light dinner fare.
In these modern times, I would be identified as anorexic. In the early 70s, that term wasn’t bantered about. I didn’t hear it until I was much older. I wasn’t labeled with the term. But, my weight was a constant target for the staff.
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One of the incentive activities during the summer was a back pack trip. If we didn’t get to go on the trip, we’d have to stay at Western with no other girls and a couple of staff. This sounded exceptionally boring. The staff came up with this plan that if I gained three pounds I could go. I weighed 112 so if I got up to 115 I could go.
No one that I recall ever asked me what the problem was with eating. I don’t know if I could have verbalized it anyway. But, they began this program to get me to gain three pounds. There was never any discussion about healthy eating or protein or calories. Instead, they just wanted me to eat and gain weight.
I found myself with a conundrum. It seems that half the staff was encouraging me to eat a variety of things. I have no memory what these things were. The other half of the staff felt sorry for me and were telling me to eat bananas and milk so I would be constipated and tip the scales that way. At 112 pounds, a little constipation can go a long way.
Despite this contradictory messaging, I did manage to come close enough to three pounds that I got to go. Based on my adult knowledge of human resources, I imagine there could have been staff motivation to have us all go so they could get time off because us girls were safely off back packing with the recreation staff. I have nothing to confirm that adult suspicion however.