When the camera freezes on the faint smile on Eli's face, I realize that the movie is over.
To the Bone, a story about Eating Disorder (eating disorder), it more truly restores the struggles and choices of a patient with an eating disorder. For a person who has also suffered from ED, after watching the movie, his heart is hard to calm down.
The girl in the story, Eli, likes to paint and is quite talented. She is a small "net celebrity" who started Tumblr, a Rexie-a person who suffers from Anorexia nervosa (anorexia nervosa) and is proud of it. He has thick eyebrows and big eyes, fair skin, a slender figure, and wearing loose clothes. He is straightforward and casual, with a somewhat mean sense of humor.
She has a variety of behavior patterns familiar to people with eating disorders: back-to-back calories from all foods, picking and picking with a knife and fork when eating, but not sending it to her mouth, doing a lot of sit-ups when nothing happens, causing bruises on her spine. , The body also grows thick hair because of lack of fat to keep out the cold.
The family was helpless: the biological mother chose to send her to her father, but the father was busy with work for a long time, and the stepmother was a person who was not good at listening and understanding. Only the half-sister Kelly could be in touch with her, but she also had difficulty understanding Eli. Causes of anorexia.
In fact, Eli herself didn't understand why she fell into anorexia, she just chose to do it suddenly. After her mother came out and the family collapsed during her childhood, anorexia became her life-saving straw, a protective mechanism. She regained her sense of control over the world by firmly controlling her stomach, and used a self-enclosed indifferent posture in an attempt to protect herself from emotional harm.
When the external pressure is overwhelmed, restraint or torture of oneself becomes the only choice to give oneself control. That kind of unstoppable eating or extremely harsh fasting can bring indescribable achievements, and thus becomes a An addictive behavior. The appearance of ED is paranoia about food, and at a deeper level, we just hope to be numb to the status quo and to divert our attention through paranoia about another matter.
Dr. Beckham, the doctor who runs the Threshold Self-Help Center, is an admirer of meaning therapy. He hopes to help everyone find the meaning of life and gain the courage to overcome ED. He is extremely enthusiastic about his career, and he is extremely dedicated to his patients.
When meeting Eli for the first time, he bluntly stated his request: "I don't save those who don't want to live."
This is not only an attitude, but also a temptation and stimulation. He wanted to touch the protective shell Eli created for himself with such straightforward words: In that small world, she thought everything was under her control, she enjoyed the illusory and numb sense of security, but deliberately ignored it. As a result, people around me are suffering tremendously, as well as the fact that my body is withering day by day.
Eli challenged, and she promised to come to Threshold, but still protected herself under the hard shell to keep others from approaching.
It's just that the people who get along day and night are different from her family. They are also troubled by ED, they also have an unfortunate family and a tragic past, and they know how to sympathize with each other.
They ate together, encouraged the pregnant Megan to eat, and were happy for the growth of the child; Anna kept a secret for Eli's crazy sit-ups every day, and she also closed one eye to Anna's vomiting; Pony was so thin that she needed it. The catheter was used to maintain life, so everyone worked hard to take care of her emotions; and the "cheerleader" Luke, who was full of rehabilitation enthusiasm, used words and deeds to beat everyone up every day.
Sometimes we can indeed be encouraged or saved by others around us. Just like the kind of warm tolerance that Eli slowly experienced in Threshold, she felt understood and loved. She was struggling a little, because of this short-term sense of security, and the shell that wrapped her was also loosening a little bit.
But in fact, the promotion from the environment is limited after all, and no one can solve the problem for you once and for all. Those help are only external forces. Even if they are effective, they are only short-lived. Soon, life changed. Megan lost the baby and left. Luke also broke up with Eli. Her weight fell below the lower limit again, and she was only one step away from the catheter.
Eli sat on the opposite side of the sofa and said numbly: I don't know the meaning of life. For the first time, she confided her own voice, the kind of "nothingness of existence" that she had fallen into after being struck by too many changes when she was young.
And Dr. Beckham also told her frankly: We don't know the answer to this question at the moment.
I think what he originally wanted to say is that before the end of the movie of life, we can't assert its exact meaning. Furthermore, it doesn't matter what we expect from life, what matters is what life expects from us. We should accept the questions of life, think about ourselves, and choose the right action through the understanding of our own life.
But Eli, who was caught in her own emotions at the time, couldn't understand the meaning. She thought that Dr. Beckham deliberately underestimated her pain, so she said angrily: I know I'm at the bottom of the valley, but you should teach me how to get up!
And Dr. Beckham bluntly exposed her excuse: you know what to do. Don't wait for life to get better automatically, and don't expect who will be the hero who will save you. Actually you are strong enough. As long as you face all this calmly and take responsibility for yourself, you can have a very good life.
Dr. Beckham cleverly pushed Eli with words, so that she finally broke through the bottom line because of her emotional out of control, and fell into a free fall. While the psychological line of defense collapsed, her protective shell was also shattered.
Eli went back to Phenix in the car to find his mother, with his bruised heart and scrawny body. In the cabin late at night, the mother confessed her guilt to her for the first time, and Eli finally put aside the protective cover of self-deception and truly touched her mother's fear and pain of losing her. They hugged and wept. Eli curled up in his mother's arms to receive her feeding like a child, crying bitterly, and completely venting the depression and helplessness he had suppressed since childhood. This is the first awakening.
At night, amidst the collapse and hallucinations caused by severe nutritional deficiencies, she swayed up the hillside. In a daze, she seemed to be sitting on a vibrant green tree, and Luke kissed her lips and told her that her beauty was dazzling. In this extremely beautiful joy, she lowered her head, but saw another thin and dying herself lying on the ground, her pale body shriveled and lifeless.
"You did not fondle the weakness inside you though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal that you kept swallowing."
She was shocked, and for the first time realized that her life was so fragile and vulnerable. When she woke up from a dehydrated violent dry cough, she couldn't help feeling her pulse, and thanked her heartily: It's good, I'm not dead yet. This is the second awakening.
The final awakening came when she finally returned home and embraced her stepmother and Kelly. She hugged the two dear ones in front of her tightly, muttered to her, and also said to herself: I will get better.
Yes, Eli will get better because she made the choice. It's not because the hurt in the past no longer troubles her heart, nor is she touched by the tolerance, support and care of the people around her, but because she finally chose to step out of the small circle where she is a prison, face her own life, and be responsible for herself.
It is mentioned in the book "The Meaning of Living Life" on meaning therapy that some uncontrollable forces may take away many things from you, but the only thing it cannot deprive is your freedom to choose how to deal with different situations. You cannot control what happens in life, but you can control your emotions and actions when facing these things. Life ultimately means taking on and accepting all challenges and accomplishing the immense responsibility of accomplishing the tasks one should accomplish. In other words, responsibility is the essence of human existence.
As Dr. Beckham said at a dinner party: "Bad things do happen in life, and those are inevitable. But what we can choose is how to face it."
This sounds like a stupid self-deception, a bad check, but it is actually a cure for the "nothingness of existence".
There are three ways to find the meaning of life. The first is to engage in some kind of creative work, the second is to experience something or to truly love someone, and the most important is the third-even in a desperate situation, facing The unchangeable doom can still surpass oneself and change oneself by this.
Curled up in the cage of ED, expecting to use food to paralyze one's senses, and unable to face the current predicament, is the root of many people's struggles. We are trapped in the emptiness of existence, and it is difficult to extricate ourselves. Just like Eli who was troubled at the beginning, even if we clearly know all the truths, we still can’t change. , Can really awaken.
When Eli returned to Threshold firmly again, took a deep breath, and walked towards Dr. Beckham and Luke who greeted her, the story came to an abrupt end.
There is no extra pen and ink to describe whether she finally walked out of the shadow of ED, just like life, always giving ED patients an open ending.
Whether you want to step out of the shadows and face life directly depends on everyone's own choice, and depends on whether you dare to take that step and take responsibility for your own life again.
As far as I am concerned, thinking about the ins and outs of the whole thing is already something later. I just woke up in the early morning of a certain day, watching the morning light through the window, suddenly grateful for my life from the bottom of my heart, and wanted to get better. Not for the meaning of life that I cannot see clearly, but because I believe from the bottom of my heart that life itself must have meaning, and my choice determines whether I will have the opportunity to weave the ending of this story by myself.
Dostoevsky once said: "I am only afraid of one thing-that is not worthy of the pain I have suffered."
And I only want to hear that one day you said to me that you finally held up your head. With the heavy crown of pain, you walk firmly past that old self, open your arms, and embrace this life like a new life.
everything will get better.
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