Light as a Butterfly is the title of philosopher Michela Marzano's latest book (see review). Does it refer to the featherweight the author reached when she fell ill with anorexia, or to the true freedom she discovered after her recovery? In this essay, she returns to her experience.
I thought I would never speak about it. It was my secret. I had no intention of letting anyone see my fragility or my failures. But gradually, the desire to tell my story grew. Because anorexia is nothing to be ashamed of. It's not a disgrace, not an illness like any other.
Anorexia is a symptom. It is the tip of an iceberg of inner suffering. A desperate attempt to get attention—to be recognized and loved for who you are, not for who you're supposed to be. It is also an expression of a terrible fear of losing the love of others. Because you're afraid, you do everything to protect yourself from everything. Yet in protecting yourself, you risk dying. And to learn to live, you must have the courage to give meaning to that suffering.
Sick with Perfection
For me, understanding this symptom came only gradually. At twenty, I simply felt I had to eat less and less. I felt guilty whenever I let myself satisfy hunger. But the strange part was my conviction that everyone felt this same guilt around food. Only when I spoke with a friend and saw that she didn't understand what this guilt could possibly mean did I slowly realize that something in me was wrong.
Despite what the word anorexia literally means—"without hunger"—someone with anorexia is always hungry. The hunger grows as you starve yourself. It is hunger for everything, not just food. Hunger for love, for recognition, for joy. But the fear of not getting any of it is so great that you convince yourself you need nothing and no one. Little by little, your world shrinks to a single symptom. You become consumed by the need to control food.
By the time I defended my dissertation, I weighed only 77 pounds. I was hospitalized several times. But I could only begin to understand what lay behind this symptom—and to start my way out—when I began psychoanalysis. I wasn't in conflict with my femininity or in a sick relationship with my mother. I wasn't chasing some fashion-magazine ideal of beauty. From my earliest childhood, I had simply wanted to be exactly what my father wanted me to be—what my teachers and professors wanted me to be: perfect. I was first in my class at school.
I got my degree and doctorate before others. I got a position at the CNRS first, then became a university professor. I succeeded at everything. I had everything. Everything, that is, except the joy of living. What did I have to sacrifice to be always "perfect"? So perfect that along the way I forgot what I wanted. Worse: I forgot who I was.
A Real Joy of Living
It took me twenty years to escape that race for perfection and social recognition. Twenty years to draw a line between my father and myself, between "having to be" and "being."
Today I am well because I have freed myself from anorexia. This doesn't mean everything is fine. Today I suffer, but I suffer like everyone else. Because life is hard for all of us. What no longer exists for me is that excessive suffering that once kept me from living.
There are no magic formulas for overcoming anorexia. Some claim there are. Others hope there might be. But there is something far more precious than simple recipes: the power of words. Words that allow you to say the same things over and over—the same moments, the same doubts, the same griefs. Words that sometimes vanish and sometimes sustain us. Words you can search for for years, then one day they return to name what cannot be named.
Words help you find the thread you lost. Those moments of fear and violence that made you who you are. Those spaces of being unseen and abandoned. Those "no"s to anything that hadn't been planned in advance, decided by my father, calculated for my "own good." Those years when something broke forever: the joy of living. Freedom. The simple desire to do anything at all.
For a long time I believed I could forget it all "as if" nothing had ever happened. As if I could hide behind rational arguments to make sense of my existence. As if coherence and logical rigor were what mattered. For a long time I believed that philosophy was this: explaining the world to control it better. Only later did I discover that abstract theories are often ridiculous. Sometimes useless, sterile prejudices. Sometimes pretentious chatter. The only thing worth staying true to is the search for meaning in our lives—a meaning that never stops eluding us: the vulnerability of the human condition.
If I had not lived through everything I describe in Light as a Butterfly, I would probably not have become who I am. I might never have understood that philosophy is, above all, a way of telling about our limits and our joy. Our contradictions and our paradoxes. The immense courage it takes to stop suffering, and the fragility of love that gives life its meaning.
Michela Marzano, 2012
from O&L no. 185