Anorexia: an emotional disorder characterized by an obsessive desire to lose weight by refusing to eat Candor: the quality of being open and honest in expression; frankness Summary: The book Wasted by Marya Hornbacher is about her battle with first bulimia which turned into anorexia later on in her life. She began becoming bulimic when she was just 9 years-old. When Marya began school in the fall when she was nine, she would look at the lunch tray and think, if she threw up then she would have to do it again. Marya would remember when she was five how her and her friend used to look for food to eat in Marya’s kitchen.They were competitive about what foods they both have at home and which foods were unhealthy and made you fat.
Growing up as a child she never ate normally like an average kid would. In 1989, she was 15 and thought she was old enough to do whatever she wanted and she did. Marya would smoke, skip school, and come in and out of school drunk and high. When ninth grade ended, for summer she got a job at McDonald’s. There she flirted with guys asking for their orders, and vomited every single day she worked there.
When she finished high school, Marya went away to college and finally noticed that she was all grown up. During her time in college, she met these girls who were exactly like her; bulimics. After two years in college, she final convinced her that it was time to check in to a treatment facility.
Marya made an appointment to check if she was okay but she wasn’t. She weighed eighty four pounds and was in need for treatment, her doctor then checked her in a Methodist hospital in which after a period of time her bulimia became anorexia.After being looked at by nurses who envied her, going through therapy, and trying to fight her anorexia, she checked out of the hospital and resumed school in the University of Minnesota. When she finished school in Minnesota, she then moved on to a college in Washington in the fall; she was still struggling with her anorexia. During a school break in February, she was reported to a hospital and was given a week to live. At that time she was a 21 year old woman refusing to eat and only weighed fifty two pounds.
Marya then noticed that being skinny was not everything and it wasn’t worth dying either. At the end of the memoir, she describes her live as waking up next to her husband and still concerned about her weight. Marya still looks back on those days of struggling with bulimia and anorexia, thinking of what life will throw her way unexpectedly next. Recommendation: I would recommend this book to others because I believe that this book teaches you that your weight and how you look is not all that there is to life.
Life isn’t about being skinny because society thinks that’s the way people should look and it is not worth losing your life over it either. I think that this book shows you a different perspective on life through the eyes of someone who has been through anorexia and bulimia. Hundreds of people are in the battle of eating disorders, this memoir might help lower that amount of people by showing them what a horrible experience it is and making them think twice before they doing something that might ruin their lives forever.
