The Films
Becoming Invisible
Violent nightmares, suicidal wishes and an inability to live in your own skin. This film explores the dynamics that can drive young people to develop eating disorders beyond talk of the Size Zero culture and peer pressure. Nicole wanted to reduce her seize not to ‘look good’ or fit smaller clothes. Feeling alone and disconnected from everything and everyone around her, she became severely anorexic because she wanted to ‘occupy less space in the world’, become invisible and ultimately disappear.
Director: Andy Glynne
Voice: Nicole
Animation Director: Bille Loebner
Music: Chris White
Transcript
I have a very vivid memory of sitting alone in my bedroom and was saying to myself, “there is something very wrong with me”. I was like a sudden very vivid awareness. It was something almost intangible, but I felt it very strongly within me. It felt very much like I was living in black and white – while the rest of the world was living in colour.
It’s strange, I have never, ever, felt like I belonged anywhere. At school, I made friends or teachers or in the classroom or in the home I always felt once, twice removed from people. I’ve gone through periods of bingeing and purging – periods of extreme restriction of food intake. Sometimes I would have nothing at all in a day. I did want to reduce myself in size, but it wasn’t to fit my clothes, it wasn’t to look good, it was to disappear. It was to take up less space in the world – I wanted to become invisible.
I became incredibly good at adopting a mask to the outside world, because it was the only way of really existing in it. I had to present a face that was compatible with the rest of the world. I became, um, almost a master of projecting this image of myself. If you had been in my head, or in my skin, what you would have heard or seen would have been “I am terrified, I don’t know how to live in my skin and I am so alone and I don’t know how to voice this”…and yet, no-one can see it. When I began to resort to sleeping, to cope, then it began to feel like it, rather than being my decision, the sleep began to control me and I would literally feel drugged – I couldn’t for the life of me keep my eyes open or keep my head up. Quite often, very, sort of, violent nightmare’s; over and over walking to the top of the stairs in my old house and throwing myself down, and the impact at the bottom never being violent enough. And so, I would have to climb back up the stairs and hurl myself down again – over and over and over again, all night. For years I dreamt the same thing. With awareness comes a taking of responsibility. Wanting to dies, and kill myself, was just so simple. It’s the not wanting, it’s the deciding that actually I want to live and give this my best shot that is so much more difficult.
