Trigger Warning: Mentions of eating disorders and descriptions of treatment.
When I was first admitted to the residential unit, fourteen years old and newly diagnosed with severe anorexia nervosa, I immediately became cognizant of how trapped I truly was. It was often weeks between breaths of fresh air. O-u-t-s-i-d-e. I am cursed by those seven letters. The air in the unit was nothing short of stale: a dull mix of sanitizer, unwashed pajamas, and teenage girls who weren’t always allowed a shower. Thankfully, the building’s architect allotted for large windows looking out on Bow Street from the medical and group therapy rooms. No matter what was happening within the confines of CEDC, Harvard Square carried on.
You’ve walked past it a thousand times. Passing by Berryline, walking home from class, or headed to the 5 o’clock mass at St. Paul’s, students and Cambridge residents alike leisurely walk by the windows of 3 Bow Street, only it never registers as anything more than another building. You would never guess that there are thirty women watching the outside world from their windows, working through the hardest stages of recovery on the inside.
The Cambridge Eating Disorder Center (CEDC), nestled in the tiny downhill section of Bow Street, is an eating disorder clinic for girls and women with both residential and outpatient programs. The third floor, home to thirteen adolescent girls at a time, became my home during the winter of my freshman year of high school. While living there, going outside for the day’s outing was not an option unless you were fully compliant with the program for forty-eight consecutive hours.
Nothing screams abnormal like living in a residential facility, but the Square gave me a taste of everyday life. In the mornings, I watched as drops of sun poured over Lamont, warming my body through the little blue hospital gown. During group therapy, I leaned over the couch and made faces at the pigeons nesting in the planters outside. I watched pillowy snowflakes flutter while a pulsing blood pressure cuff squeezed my bicep, yearning for a snowflake to fall on the tip of my tongue. When I couldn’t bear to watch the phlebotomist coaxing vials of blood from my forearm veins, I tilted my head towards the sun, trying to make out shapes in the clouds.
All of this seems trivial. But at the time, I needed something to push me forward. I’d like to think I don’t back down from a challenge, but an eating disorder is like a parasite, and a human is its hapless host. Between the toll on your organs, hormones, and weight, and the immense mental struggle, it’s easy to get stuck under the iron rule of anorexia. And after awhile, I just couldn’t listen to the staff play one more TED talk about life being too short to count your cornflakes.
The people I found most inspiring were the college students I obsessively observed. For nearly three months, I examined Harvard’s undergraduates walking to class, sipping Tatte lattes, heading out on Saturday nights. Harvard students were more holistic than I imagined. It wasn’t uncommon for me to see the same students day by day, sporting a heavy backpack at noon and cocktail or clubbing outfit several hours later. I’m not saying that you can’t be all of those things at other schools. Just that my perception of college was a place where people chose what kind of student they wanted to be – studious, outgoing, artsy, or social, and Harvard gave me the idea that I could be everything I wanted, all at once. In my mind, my existence post-recovery would go back to as it was before. I hadn’t considered that the future might hold something fresh and exciting. The students I surveyed quickly became a vessel for the rich, well-rounded life I imagined leading.
I never thought that my road to recovery would start at the hands of a sprinkle shortbread cookie. But it did. To this day, I am confused as to why the program thought it would be a good idea to force the patients to bake on a weekly basis. Cookies, brownies, even tempeh one day. During one particularly difficult session, frozen oranges were thrown and tears were shed over a stick of butter. We lost it. I distinctly remember thinking of the zillion times I saw students scarfing down ice creams, pastries, cookies, bagels on their way to class. How could I be everything I wanted, just like them, and lose it over a dessert? That night, I ate two sprinkle shortbread cookies for the evening snack, and so began the beginning of my commitment to recovery.
Over the course of the next nine months, I was exposed to a wide variety of treatments following a deep relapse and, eventually, a diagnosis of refeeding syndrome: inpatient treatment with nasogastric intubation, a psychiatric ward, outpatient therapies, and family-based treatment. But most impactful was the winter I spent on Bow Street. I would not be a student here today without the ones who came before me, who, without knowing it, facilitated much of my recovery.
Harvard is where I learned to live again, and Harvard is where I will continue to grow. As you go about your days, hopefully some of them on Bow Street, I hope you think of the girls in CEDC. I promise they are watching, and I promise you mean something to them.
This author requests that you do not draw attention to or try to enter the Cambridge Eating Disorder Center. Let the patients heal in peace and privacy, knowing that you may impact and inspire them just by living your life.