This Mean Disease

Growing up in the shadow of my Mother's Anorexia Nervosa By Daniel Becker

This is the second memoir which has made me cry. I didn't learn much about eating disorders from it, other than what it is like to suffer from the other side; the side who is watching a family member melt away, seemingly willfully. But it was very well written, to the extent that I read it within a few days and didn't need to motivate myself to finish it.

‘As one Stanford doctor explained, “It’s the only disease I know about where people like their illness. They do not want to get rid of it.”

‘My conflicting feelings during visits with Mom always zigzagged between anger and guilt. The anger, which I first noticed on our trip to Israel, sprouted from Mom’s unwillingness to get better... I felt it most when I watched Mom push the food around her plate or listened to her chatter about restaurants and recipes.’

(the Dad) ‘” I was always optimistic that your mother would get better,” he told me. “ That is what kept me hanging in there for 20 years.”’

(the Dad) ‘”And then I realized: She’s never going to change. It would always be the same. I could no longer sit by and watch her destroy herself. I had to get out.”’