Anorexia Diaries

Mother Linda and daughter Tara chronicle the years of Tara's eating disorder through their diaries in this honest, raw account. As Tara, diagnosed with bulimarexia in high school, explains: ""Basically, I eat very little and whatever I do eat I throw up."" Feeling abandoned by a mother focused on developing her career, Tara directed the anger she felt toward Linda and her sometimes volatile family toward herself. ""All I know for sure is that from the moment I hung my head over the toilet and felt the rush of adrenaline reach my temples, I knew I was in love. Like a heroine addict longing for the next hit, I would sit in class and daydream about when I would get the next opportunity to vomit,"" Tara writes in one of the""Looking Back"" sections that contextualize and reflect upon the diary entries. When Linda learns of Tara's vomiting, she writes, ""I'm not going to waste any time in getting her (us!) help....That damn kid is sick--really sick....Oh god...grant me some wisdom."" The diary entries are striking counterpoints to each other, and reveal their authors' struggles as Tara's eating disorder and a suicide attempt land her in a mental hospital and Linda agonizes about Tara's""depressive obsessions"" and her own ability to be a good mother. Their later commentaries, which bookend each chapter, and Johnson's concluding advice and information in Part II are especially useful to anyone trying to understand these issues. The double entries sometimes repeat unessential facts, and as the book progresses, it loses some focus as Tara goes to college and deals with other difficult experiences, including a sexual assault. This is not a book about triumph, in the end, but about the long and arduous path to recovery. For those dealing with similar problems, it should offer insight and hope.