Yesterday I went to see Let the Right One In. I thought it was going to be a film about vampires but actually, the whole super-natural thing was kind of incidental. What the story was really about was the relationship between a 12-year-old boy who gets bullied to shit in school, and a lonely girl who just happens to be a vampire.
The story is incredibly moving. The little girl doesn’t want to be a vampire. A devoted grandfather figure takes care of her in a poverty-stricken flat and makes the killings for her. In one scene where she is forced to kill her own victim, she ends up crying over the body in the snow, blood dripping from her mouth and tears falling from her eyes. The murdering vampire-ess is, in fact, the biggest victim in the film.
The bullied boy becomes the girl's first friend. When he spontaneously hugs her cold and rigid body in the snow she says, “Would you still like me if I wasn’t a girl?” He guesses so. After all, he too knows what it feels like not to be accepted for you are - he feels it every day in the playground. These vampire feelings are human after all.
But what moved me so completely was that I too empathized with this little girl. For the last year and a half, I have felt something of what she has felt. I have been disconnected from the mainstream, lonely, cold and isolated. I have been suffering from anorexia.
The parallels go further than you think. In a scene that leads the boy to discover the girl’s secret, he slices his palm with a knife and asks her to mix blood with him as a sign of commitment. Half crazy with craving, the girl drops to the floor and starts licking the spilt drops of blood off the carpet, shouting at him to get away. I too have been made to feel like a freak for urges I can’t control. I too am ashamed by what I eat and how I eat it - the need to pour pints of water into my cereal bowl to water down the milk, to eat freakishly slowly with my hands, tearing sandwiches into tiny mouthfuls piece by piece, sucking rather than chewing. I too am ashamed by the food rules that govern my life, but I do not feel I have a choice over them. So instead - like the little girl - I withdraw, eating alone and shutting myself off. I carry on with my practises in the fearful shadow of my own and others’ judgement, unable to let them go.
About a month ago I also started a relationship with a stranger who didn’t know my past. Now, like the girl, I have to decide whether to trust this guy with my shameful secret and risk his judgement, or refuse to let him in and go cold when he gets too close. I don’t want to see myself reflected as a freak in his eyes, but I want him to fall in love with me rather than the image I present. The bind is crushing, and to see it played out in the little girl on the screen in front of me was terrifying.
The little girl decides to take her chances, and I won’t ruin the film by saying whether it pays off. But travelling back on the tube, I wondered if I had the guts she had to speak truth unto love whatever the outcome. Unlike her, I have the power to recover from the thing that separates me from others. If he’s the kind of guy I want to be with, perhaps he’ll understand. It’s time to take a chance on letting the right one in.
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You do indeed have the power to recover and I hope that you'll get the support you need from your boyfriend as well as from your doctor and family and friends.
I wish you good luck.
I took the same plunge about 3 months ago and it was such a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I hope your bf can be an ally in the battle and good luck with recovery, it's so hard but you can do it!
I've seen the movie and plan to read the book. But I read on the Wikipedia page that the "Would you still like me if I wasn't a girl?" was hinting at something in the novel. Eli wasn't a girl, he was castrated before becoming a vampire.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Recovering from an easting disorder, or just learning to live with what you need to do in the present, is difficult and different for everyone. But it is possible, and I hope that you can pull yourself away from this.
if this person that you want to connect with is any good at all, if he cares about you, he'll make an attempt to understand you and accept you, and he'll offer you whatever help and support you need. Sometimes people don't know how to react to someone telling them a difficult secret, but it's not an impossible thing to accept. I hope it works out for you.
I thought this was really interesting. I've battled with anorexia/bulimia for the last seven years and I always have to make that stupid choice between telling someone why you're not eating and having them ask stupid questions like 'why won't you let me see you eat?' and having to count calories in secret. spending hours re-sculpting your body in your mind. ergh.
just be yourself. the people who are right to love you and cherish you will accept you and embrace you - all the flaws and perfections.
x
I saw the movie this weekend, and I had a completely different reading of it. Thank you for sharing your perspective.
I wish you strength in sharing your secret, and dealing with your binds.
You should definitely read the book. I finished it a few days ago, and yes, Eli is actually a boy (sorry, this has nothing really to do with your post). The last quarter of the book refers to Eli as "He."
And in regards to your post...I like what Aileen had to say.
I loved that movie in so many ways!
But anyway, what I wanted to say is just that I've had similar experiences and I send you my sympathy. I suffered from alternating bulimia and anorexia for about 3 years or so, years ago. When I finally told my SO at the time that I had been bulimic for a year (we'd been dating for about 2 or so) his reaction was to accuse me of being a liar and he insisted that if I had been hiding that from him then I MUST be hiding other things from him (that I had been cheating on him, which I had not).
Needless to say, not the reaction I needed. I never told anyone else or asked anyone for help after that, and recovery seemed like it would never come. But it did and I hope it does for you as well. And I also hope you are able to surround yourself with supportive and patient people through it all.