I forgot to mention one of the most unsettling parts of my trip last week: there was this girl (another prospective student) who I got to know pretty well, and I am 85% sure she had an eating disorder. She was pretty thin—not necessarily emaciated; it could have passed for "healthy thin"—so it didn't occur to me at first, but then came the food. We ate breakfast and lunch together, meaning I ate breakfast and lunch and she ate grapes and lettuce. Literally. And spent the whole time picking apart her food, cutting her lettuce leaves into slices, and jiggling her leg like crazy under the table.
Once upon a time this would have driven me insane with jealousy and competitiveness ("you wanna see how little I can eat??") but this time it just made sad. There is no part of me that wants to go back to that. To being skinny—yes, sometimes....but to starving? No. It all seems so ridiculous and pointless to me now. In some ways it made me feel a sort of kinship with her, but at the same time I felt myself wanting to pull away and have nothing to do with her.
Weird/depressing/perhaps unsurprising that this was the person of the whole group with whom I got along best and clicked most easily. I felt like we could have been really good friends.
It says SO much about where you are and where you're going that you reacted this way. So much. It's also devastating how often you'll run into really bright and wonderful people who are so entrenched in this mess. A billion years ago, when I was in (early) recovery and interviewing for programs I noticed I wasn't the only person drinking both milk and juice at lunch, and realized other person was also probably following a similar meal plan. Different kind of kinship, but similarly, I really clicked with her too.
ReplyDeleteI hope wherever you end up going in this whole next phase of grad school has good people-- it's hard as hell to gauge that stuff on interviews, so more unsolicited advice-- go to second looks if you can!