LJ Idol Survivor: Challenge 5: Caught in the Web

[flipflop_diva]

Her name was Kim. She was from Idaho, the letter in the mail said. And she was going to be my freshman year roommate. We were both the oldest child in our families, we both had never really been away from home before, and we both picked the all-female dorm because our parents didn’t want us living in a residence hall where there would be boys.

It was a perfect match, we thought as we began to write each other letters those few months before classes began.

And it was perfect. For a while anyway. We got along really well. We liked hanging out together. And we were able to confide in each other.

I made my friends and she made hers, but we ate meals together and spent most nights together, and when it came time to fill out the roommate and residence hall request forms for our sophomore year, it wasn’t a hard choice to decide to live together again.

But we also had a secret that only she and I shared.

It’s hard to remember how it started. It’s hard to remember who started it. It’s hard to even remember why it started.

Maybe it was after too many trips to the dessert bar. Maybe it was when our jeans started getting a little too snug. Maybe it was from watching the other girls in our dorm — the beautiful ones, the skinny ones, the ones who got all the boys. Maybe it was from something deeper — from the pressure and the uncertainty that is the first year of college, from feeling like you don’t quite belong no matter what you do, and from finding one other person who understood and wanted the same thing.

It started innocently enough, as most things do. Trips to the on-campus gym a couple times a week because it’s good to get some exercise once in a while. More salads and less brownies. Diet coke instead of regular coke. Just enough to hold off the freshman fifteen. Or at least that’s how it would appear to anyone who noticed.

We both went home for the summer, three months of our old lives and our old friends. Three months of eating out and not caring and just having fun.

But then sophomore year came and everything changed, little by little. Trips to the gym a couple times a week turned into trips to the gym every single day. Salads instead of brownies became salads instead of anything else, until some of the meals disappeared altogether. We spent more time together and less time with other people. We made excuses to skip parties and gatherings where there would be food, and when we did go, it was a conscious effort to appear like we were participating when really we weren’t at all.

Kim and I never talked about it, what was happening, not openly, not really. But it was there in the air, between us. What one did the other did. And we were all the encouragement the other one needed.

Until the holiday break. We each went home to our families, and I didn’t hear from her the whole time. I returned to school four weeks later, but Kim did not. One of her other friends, who lived in the same town in Idaho that Kim did, told me what happened: Her parents had checked her into a clinic for eating disorders.

That night I did something I’m not proud of. That night I read her journal. I sat on my bed and flipped through the pages and realized she had been doing so much more than I knew. She had been taking laxatives for months and vomiting up whatever food she did eat. She also had been reading my journal to make sure she lost more pounds than I did.

I should have been horrified. Horrified that this had been happening. Horrified that I didn’t know. Horrified that I didn’t stop her. But instead I felt anger that she hadn’t told me, anger that our unspoken partnership had become a competition without my consent, anger that she had made so much more progress than I had.

I wrote in my own journal that night, about what I had read and how I felt. I wanted her to know that I knew.

--

Kim returned a few weeks later. And for a little while, things were okay. I didn’t ask her what happened at the clinic and she didn’t tell me, but we spent time together like always and we went to the gym together like always (if a little less than normal) and we ate meals together like always (if a little more than normal). But I couldn’t stop reading her journal, to see what she said, and she couldn’t stop reading mine, and we lived in a cycle where we couldn’t trust each other but we couldn’t trust anyone else either. And in the end, we were bound together by fraying ropes that no one else could see.

We finished our sophomore year and agreed to live together our junior year. We would have an apartment then. With a kitchen. No more having to eat where other people could see.

I went home again for the summer. Kim got a job at the college and stayed on there. We traded emails off and on, and things were almost fine.

Things were almost fine when our junior year started, too. At least I thought they were. We spent more time together than we had in long time, watching TV and talking. It almost felt normal.

We still had our secret, but that was better too. I stopped reading her journal and I stopped writing in mine. I stopped going to the gym as well, too busy with classes and homework. Sometimes we even cooked actual meals together.

And we talked about the future. Two of Kim’s friends were looking at renting a little house in town with four bedrooms. We talked about all living together for our senior year.

Until the day I came home after class to find Kim waiting for me.

“We got the house,” she said.

“Oh, that was fast,” I said.

“I’m moving out tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?”

What was she talking about? It was only November. We couldn’t get out of our housing agreement with the school until the end of January.

“We decided it’s just going to be the three of us. We don’t want a fourth person.”

And there it was. I stared at her, hurt and confusion and bewilderment all scrambling my thoughts. I knew what had happened between us, but we were friends, right? Things had been better, right?

“It’s not personal,” she said. “We can still be friends.”

I stared at her some more. And I realized the truth. It was because I knew her secrets, because she couldn’t hide them from me and I couldn’t hide mine from her. They were too tangled together to ever be unraveled except for a clean break.

But I was not going to give her the satisfaction of getting to be the good guy. Not like this.

“Yes, it is,” I said, my voice shaking. “And no we can’t.”

I called my friend Tiffani a few minutes later — my real friend who I had met the first day of college when she was wondering the halls — and told her what happened, asked her if I could come over to her apartment.

“For as long as you want,” she said.

I didn’t come back to my apartment for three days. When I did, all of Kim’s stuff was gone, like she had never been there at all.

I closed the door to her room, so I wouldn’t have to see into it, and went to the kitchen and made myself a snack. A real snack.

It was time to figure out who I was. Without her.






Non-fiction.

This one was hard to write. My very first season of Idol, I wrote about struggling with an eating disorder but I kind of glossed over the co-dependent and really unhealthy relationship with Kim and how that played into all of it. But this time I wanted to be more honest.

Kim struggled with it a lot more than I did, but looking back on it now, it was probably a really good thing that she moved out like she did. At the time it wasn't. I was really hurt and angry and betrayed, and I never actually talked to her again after that, but it was easier to get better when I was surrounded by people who never knew how bad it had gotten.




Thank you for reading! This was written for a new adventure in the therealljidol world — Survivor Idol! You can see all the entries here. Voting should be up on Monday night!

I'm on the LaMina tribe, so I would super appreciate if you could vote for me and all of my teammates:
eeyore_grrl
flipflop_diva
gunwithoutmusic
impoetry
minikin25

Comments

[adoptedwriter]

Glad you were able to break away from a toxic "friendship". My daughter had her roommate in college "desert" her. They were never good friends or even "frienemies", but it was weird. We were actually super worried b/c the girl was diabetic, and no one knew she'd left for good. (We found out she was ok, but it was still weird.)

[bleodswean]

This is raw and honest and I applaud you for writing it and sharing it. I had an utterly hellacious first two years of college and I try to tell the stories, I try to explain dorm life...and no one listens. My sister had a total nervous breakdown. Another sister's son had a total nervous breakdown. I think we need to bring the variety of negative dorm stories to light, not to shame anyone or bully anyone but to show another side of what is too often perceived as a bright shiny coin.

I'm glad you were able to survive this and to get a clean, albeit painful, break from it.

[gunwithoutmusic]

I felt anger that she hadn’t told me, anger that our unspoken partnership had become a competition without my consent, anger that she had made so much more progress than I had.

This line really got me. I love how real and raw this whole piece is, but that line was the probably the best thing I've read in a while. Being able to be honest with ourselves is almost certainly the hardest thing that we can do, and I just love this little bit of honesty - you were angry at the betrayal, you were angry at how your friend was hurting herself without saying anything... but there was still that part of you that was angry that she was winning. You say you were angry that the unspoken partnership had turned into a competition, but in the very same breath admit to yourself that you had also seen it as one the whole time. But as you say, both of you were too tangled up to really see.

Really good work, and I'm glad you're doing better. :)

[eeyore_grrl]

I am so glad you are doing better and it sounds like you have far better friendships elsewhere; Far healthier anyway. Thank you for sharing something so personal.

[murielle]

I am so impressed by your honesty and courage. Thank you for sharing this very difficult truth with us. As meaningful as your friendship with Kim was, I'm glad that you two were able to move out of one another's lives and you were able to break free from your eating disorder. I hope Kim was able to do the same thing.

Well done! Well done on everything!

[bsgsix]

This is so honest, and I'm glad you shared this story. I feel for Kim AND for you - as someone who has dealt with an eating disorder since the age of 8, the struggle is so painful and real. I remember going into a hospital for it, right after my freshman year of college, and - it's just so EASY to slip into. The control. The power.

The destruction.

I'm glad you told this story and that you are doing better. This is raw and so hard to read, but you tell it wonderfully. Thank you for sharing such an intimate piece of your life with us, friend. *hugs* <3

[brkfastatholly.livejournal.com]

Ooof, this one hits me close to home. Definitely have been in that cycle of "friendship" and eating disorder too. :|
As ever though, you've taken something incredibly personal and turned it into a beautiful piece of writing AND totally made me tear up and want to hug teenage you (and also current you, duh) <33333

[halfshellvenus]

It would be impossible not to feel betrayed when you'd lived with and shared secrets with someone for two years and started a third (with plans for a fourth), and then suddenly they bail out and leave you hanging and clearly are trying to get away from you.

I'm so glad you stood your ground, though, in the face of that B.S. about still being friends. No one should get to hurt you like that and then walk away with the impression that it wasn't a crappy, devastating thing to do.

I don't know if it was better for Kim that you lived apart after that, but it sure sounds as if it was better for you. And that's wonderful, even though it was so terribly hard at the time.

[alycewilson]

Oh, this is so raw and so painful. You do a great job of taking us there to this codependent relationship full of tangled secrets.