Elena Vanishing

“What is a face? Nothing but the sum of its parts. If each part is right, the sum will be right, too.”

Elena’s concern about how she looks is obsessive and unhealthy. She constantly analyzes and criticizes herself. She wants to give the impression that she is in control, even when she is hospitalized and extremely ill. She keeps a makeup bag under her pillow, fearing how others might see her if she shows them her true self, which supports the theme of The Desire for Perfection and Total Self-Control.

“Is this a movie? Is this real? Do I care what’s real?”

In depicting the periods of time in which Elena experiences dissociation or blackouts, the narrative becomes highly interior. As Elena travels from Germany to the United States, she struggles to distinguish what is real from what her mind is imagining because of diminished health paired with extreme stress. It demonstrates a combination of The Physical and Psychological Experiences of Living with an Eating Disorder.

“Hey, you big bad psychiatrists and bitchy nurses, I’m not your victim. I’m not some cute little girl who’s going to get yelled at and cry. You want to lock me up? Go right ahead! But you better want what you want as much as I do.”

The memoir suggests that The Patient-Practitioner Relationship is a major influence on whether a patient recovers, particularly if the illness is psychological in origin. Elena’s attitude toward the professionals who try to help her is mistrustful and damaging to her chances of recovery, and it takes years for Elena to realize this and finally lean into therapy fully.

“They’re staring down at huge plates of food like they’re looking into the muzzle of a gun.”

Elena’s first experience in a treatment center is filled with negativity and judgment, and she can tell that the other patients there are struggling just as much as she is. This hyperbolic simile illustrates the psychological experience of being forced to eat when food seems like an enemy and when perfection is the only goal.

“You’re a failure! wails the voice in my head. You can’t even do self-destruction right! You think they care about getting you healthy? You’re not even sick enough for them to care!”

When a doctor admits that he isn’t sure whether Elena has anorexia or not, it affirms Elena’s own misguided beliefs about her illness and her health. Elena sees her case as “not as severe” as people who “actually” have anorexia. At the same time, she considers herself to have failed to meet those same standards—ironically, a clear indication that she does have an eating disorder. This kind of distorted logic is characteristic of anorexia, the memoir suggests.

“I feel bored. That girl isn’t me. This is a movie I’m watching about someone I don’t know. It’s not even an interesting movie.”

When Elena and her mother watch the footage of Elena dissociating and having what they believe is a psychologically induced seizure, Elena feels removed from the situation, as though she were watching a film or a stranger on camera. Because Elena doesn’t remember these experiences at the height of their severity, she can’t connect or relate to what she is seeing.

“I feel like Wonder Woman. I feel fantastic. Nothing brings on a quicker high than purging. I’m not losing my touch. No fear and no pity. This is going to be a great senior year.”

When Elena starts using purging as a way to achieve “perfection,” she does so because everyone in her life is trying to coax or force her into eating. This is Elena’s way of adapting to what she is being told to do, without having to do it. Elena’s eating disorder thus evolves into a form of anorexia nervosa that includes binging and purging.

“Images of her hang in my mind, framed by the strong wooden doorposts like pictures in an art gallery.”

Doors are used as a motif in Elena’s memoir to symbolize the obstacles and blockades in her life and in her relationships, as well as acting as sources of protection between Elena and the problems that truly bother her. Elena felt betrayed when her sister left and has been unable to forgive her since then. Walking past Valerie’s door in the family home thus becomes a painful reminder of these feelings of abandonment.

“Tomorrow, I will be Wonder Woman. Tomorrow, I will be alert and in control. I will accomplish everything I set out to do. I will be perfect.”

The desire for perfection and total self-control affects every aspect of Elena’s life and is a constant motivating thought in her mind. She continues to live in denial and tells herself that she still has her life in control, even though her physical and mental health are quickly declining.

“Life is a combat zone. People who say it isn’t have already lost the war.”

Elena holds the perspective of life as being full of pain and difficult experiences, and she deals with this by acting out with aggression and anger before anyone is able to come close to hurting her. Elena sees every day as a battle for survival and self-control, and she looks down upon those whom she views as weak or less disciplined.

“That beautiful, hostile face isn’t where I can see her. I don’t need to see her. I know every single minute of every single day that she’s there. Anorexia is a part of who I am. She’s how I deal with the world around me.”

Elena’s first tattoo is of a mermaid, and she has it placed on her back where she cannot see it. The mermaid tattoo represents Elena’s anorexia and how it will always be a part of her; however, keeping it on her back means that she has control over when she sees it. Although the tattoo is in many respects a positive acknowledgment of her disorder’s reality, its placement also hints at an unresolved need for control: It effectively allows Elena to address her eating disorder directly only when she has the strength to do so.

“I have an eating disorder. And when I was in the treatment center, I learned that eating disorders come in all shapes and sizes.”

Elena’s attitude toward her eating disorder shifts from denial to acceptance and even being willing to share publicly that she has had this experience. Unfortunately, Elena is almost immediately stigmatized and discriminated against as a result; she is accused of being a poor role model for new students, even though she is a survivor and a hard worker.

“You’ve gotten fat since yesterday.”

The voice in Elena’s mind constantly berates, insults, and judges her. This voice represents Elena’s own fears and self-hatred, which is why she never feels quite good enough. Elena’s voice is also illogical at times, particularly when it accuses her of doing things that are physically impossible, like “getting fat” in one day.

“I shouldn’t have gone for this type of food. I can’t believe I ate this stuff. I never eat this stuff! Oh my God, oh my God, I’ll be morbidly obese in no time. I’m so sorry I lost control. Please please please stop this from happening!”

Elena has an experience in which her mind starts to crave fast food to an extreme degree, even though she usually avoids it. The psychological state that Elena finds herself in is the result of having deprived herself of nutrition for so long, leading to a binging and purging episode along with a deep sense of shame.

“I turn over details in my mind, trying to piece together what happened. Trying to figure out What Went Wrong.”

Introducing the chapter that details her miscarriage and the events leading up to it, Elena foreshadows a terrible event in her life and her resulting feelings of confusion and denial of her own grief. The words “What Went Wrong” are intentionally capitalized to emphasize the significance that the miscarriage had in Elena’s life and how it changed her as a person.

“This isn’t a lifestyle. It’s suicide. I’m killing myself. And I just killed my baby.”

After the miscarriage, Elena comes to her anagnorisis and fully admits to herself that her eating disorder has become a danger to herself and anyone else whom she might love. Elena spent years in denial and years after that trying to hide her eating disorder from the world. Because her mind was focused on achieving perfection, she ended up sacrificing her health and her youth.

“The worst part of being in treatment is getting picked apart in therapy. Except for all the other worse parts.”

Even when Elena admits to herself that her eating disorder is causing serious harm in her life, she continues to be leery of therapists and treatment in general. After several negative experiences in treatment, as well as years without recovering, Elena no longer believes that anyone can help her and resists treatment once again.

“Even at my lowest weight, I didn’t like my body. I wanted it slimmer, smaller, finer, until it erased itself completely. I wanted my body to melt away like mud sliding off a sheet of glass, until the clarity of my soul could shine through.”

For Elena, part of living with an eating disorder is a feeling of constant dissatisfaction and the desire for perfection and total self-control. Drawing on a simile with strong visual imagery, Elena compares the feeling of weight loss to becoming cleansed, as though her anorexia was just an attempt to rid herself of the horrible experiences that she has had in her life.

“It’s just that hanging out with anorexics on the outside can be risky. We give each other away. It’s like an escaped prisoner partying with other escaped prisoners: spend enough time with them and you’ll find yourself back in jail.”

Elena foreshadows the discrimination that she and the other patients face while out shopping one day. She notes that people who have eating disorders seem to somehow emphasize each other’s symptoms when they are seen together, and this proves to be true when the group is denied entry into a store because of a fear that they will scare customers. For people who are battling an obsession with appearance, this type of discrimination only worsens matters.

“I want to be stable and even if I can’t be happy, I want to at least be somewhat satisfied with myself.”

Elena starts to come closer to a healthy sense of reality and gains more realistic expectations of herself and her goals for recovery. She learns that recovery is a lifelong journey and that having a stable and predictable life is the key to a strong recovery. She knows, too, that perfection is unattainable and that her goal should instead be self-acceptance.

“I was aglow with emotion, on fire to change the world. Where did that bold, ambitious little girl go?”

Looking back on letters she wrote in her first years of boarding school, Elena sees the passion and spunk in herself that she has long since lost. After being raped, and then going through years of having an eating disorder, Elena has become a stranger to herself and longs to feel the sense of drive and lust for life that she once had.

“That’s how I see my eating disorder. It’s twenty-four-hour confinement with a witch.”

Elena feels like her eating disorder is a trap or a prison, one that talks to her and constantly tries to get her to revert to her old habits. This means that fighting against it is a constant battle, a largely psychological experience of wrestling with one’s own mind.

“The voice of my fears is trying to protect me. It protects me by starving me and abusing me and calling me every loathsome name it can dream up. If that’s the protection, what’s it like without the protection? How much worse is the monster hiding behind it?”

Elena’s therapist at Sandalwood helps her examine her own emotions and where they stem from. Elena comes to realize that the anger she feels toward the world, particularly women, is the result of a deeper fear and feelings of hatred toward herself: Elena blames herself for being raped and for having a miscarriage.