In Lorri Antosz Benson and Taryn Leigh Benson's memoir Distorted, the character Taryn is strugleing with an eating disorder. She is bulimic. Not only is she hurting herself but she is hurting her whole family as well. She goes on a huge roller coaster of up's and down's through the book.
From the beginning her mother, Lorri, has the idea of perfect, perfect, perfect. Nothing is wrong with them."I often told myself that if we just did everything right, if we gave our girls the right balance of love, respect, and discipline, we might get through the teen years without an incident." (1) Taryn had an eating disorder, and intill it got to the extremes, her mom looked at it as a phase. "Fat. Awful. Gross. I hate my body. I am going to lose 15 pounds and then i'll be perfect." (7) Perfect is how her mother looked at things so it's clear that its going to fall back on the children, and it did just that with Taryn.
When the eating disorder got so bad an uncontrolable, Taryn's mom convinced her to go to an eating disorder facility. When going there Taryn wasn't going to change, she didn't want to. With any type of addiction, a person is not going to change or get better unless they want to. She did get help but she changed her mind when she found out her mother had read her journal, "I knew it wasn't over. Two more weeks and i would e home again, and if all went according to plan, back into the eating disorder in less than three." (84) When Taryn is hurt, angry, sad, or anything her eating disorder brings her back to peace.
"I vomited it up on the plane a few hours later. I raced around the Atlanta airport on my layover, stocking up on binge food and purging twice more on the plane. " (97) She hasn't changed, she doesn't want to. She was purging more now than before she left. As time went on the disorder was way worse then the first time, off she went to another place. But this time it worked. She recovered, "Lucky for me, I never gave up on me. I finally fought back and learned what a waste of a person I was while bulimia ruled my life. More importantly I learned what an amazing person I actually am all by myself." (215) She changed because she wanted to.
In the end, the main point that is trying to get across, is that if you have a problem it's only going to get fixed if that person really wants it to, not everyone else. Taryn's mom tired so hard to convince Taryn to change but nothing happened, it wasn't until Taryn wanted to, that she did. Taryn says at the end of the book that she has reached for the light at the end of the dark tunnel. (212)
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