Innocence Lost - A Memoir

de Debra McLain

PREFACE I remember the exact year my eating disorder started. In 1981, I bought two books at the school book fair: ‘The Best Little Girl in the World’ by Steven Levenkron, and ‘Second Star to the Right’ by Deborah Hautzig. These two books changed my life, and not for the better. For a teenager with traumas, they became ‘how to destroy myself’ guidebooks. To be fair, the books did not give me anorexia. They just motivated me to do what I already wanted to do... Have control over at least one thing in my life. I was in my junior year of high school and Mom had just married husband number five. With every one of her marriages, I was pushed further down on her list of priorities... At first, I lost weight for attention. That changed as soon as I realized Mom did not care. Starvation became a way to punish myself for being unworthy of love... Or as my brother would say, for being a complete waste of space.