The cover of the book
«I wrote my experience to help those who are experiencing the same situation. Eating disorders are the consequence not the cause of the problem ».
On the occasion of the national day of the lilac bow, dedicated to nutrition and eating disorders, of which anorexia and bulimia nerve are the best known and widespread, Margherita Vaccari, 21 years old, author of the autobiographical book A suspended thread (St. Paul), tries to raise awareness on a theme “still too underestimated, especially in the initial phases, not to say trivialized, yet the cases of eating disorders are increasingly frequent after the pandemic, just think that they are the second cause of death among young people, the first the road accidents”.
And he does it by telling his personal story, the long one, difficult battle against anorexia that has pushed her several times on the verge of the abyss: “I had even come to want to die. I weighed 31 kilos, I had no desire for anything anymore, I felt without strength and misunderstood, especially when someone, who had not understood that it was a serious and disabling problem, said to me: “We lose weight because you want to be a model”. For those who cannot see the light this stereotype is mortifying».
Food disorders and mental health, an invisible link on which, perhaps, little is reflected, starting from the school. “In my case the depression was the cause of the eating disorder, but the reverse can happen, even if the two are not necessarily linked,” he explains.
Margherita, who is Emma in the book, today is a girl who has reinvented herself a life: she lives in Madrid and enrolled in the university in cultural studies, with many good intentions. Unlike the girls who did not make itshe managed to defeat her monsters because the desire to live was stronger than the evil of living, Because his strength is like the Rosa di Santa Rita da Cascia who has “laundry” the snow, it is that force that vibratingly sang Paolo Vallesi: “There is a force in us my / stronger love of the glitter / of this crazy and useless world / is stronger than an incomprehensible death / and of this nostalgia / that never leaves us / when you touch / the bottom with your fingers / the strength of life / / With him / love I don’t know you know / you will see a way out there is … ».
But how did he find himself inside this vortex that sucked it? «It is often the lack of having something under control, which is why you start to control food and weight. Personally I had many transfers because of my father’s work, a financial manager. I have lived in different countries, even culturally different: Traveling is beautiful, but it was very difficult to develop friendships, affections, habits ». He continues: “I was born and raised in Turin up to ten years, I made the middle school in Brazil, then I went back to Italy for high school and the last year I ended in Germany”.
The first symptoms at sixteen, but the situation worsens a year and a half later. «The sense of solitude has played a fundamental role. At one point in Germany my group of friends started crumblingfrom there the depression and control of food and physical training that I did obsessively to burn what I ate. At that time I didn’t even let myself be hugged by my mom. And, when I went to take a shower, from my room I ran to the bathroom so as not to show me naked with the bones that protruded. Then the hospitalizations began in Italy, four, the last in a community in Bologna ».
But in fragility the unexpected discovery of being strong. “When I decided to heal I started giving much more value to life. And to understand how many people loved me. In the end I wouldn’t change anything of what I spent, Because this experience made me grow, I feel a better person ». A theme, that of weakness and fragility, which often occurs in the letters of the apostle Paul (“When I am weak, it is then that I am strong”, he writes to the Corinthians). Pain is an integral part of the existence of each of us in one form or another, as Margherita implies, which has been able to transform an obstacle on its path into an opportunity. Evil does not always come to destroy us, but sometimes to fortify us. It is the darkness that allows us to get in touch with the depths of our being greatly limited.
Murakami said that “when the storm is over, you will probably not know even how you did to cross it and get out of it alive. In fact, you will not even be sure if it really ended. But on one point there is no doubt. And it is that you, who came out of that wind, will not be the same that has entered it ».
