I want to share my experience with starvation or near starvation, not to draw attention to something that happened to me in the far past, but to shed some light on what I believe these kids endured. I was starved for 29 months from 15-17.5. The experience still haunts me decades later. My weight dropped rapidly the first weeks of my captivity. I remember on day three climbing off my upper bunk and my legs literally collapsing under me. We were fed three small measured and rationed meals a day two meals on Saturday and Sunday. but those meals were predicated on perfect behavior. Girls who had lost the privilege to eat had to sit and watch the others eat. Girls who were not allowed to eat had to still help prepare, harvest, store and clean up food. Garbage cans were sealed and secured locks on refrigerators, doors etc. The never ending hunger was all consuming. All we thought about was food. Eventually we were forbidden to talk about food because we were all so obsessed. Girls risked bloody beatings to slip a muddy baby potato in their mouth while gardening or eat a crumb off the floor while mopping the kitchen. Girls licked their hands compulsively for the salty flavor and we ate our scabs, snot, paper anything leather we chewed on.
Sometimes there would be a feast, food our bodies desperately needed but created a shock to our systems. After one of these special occasion feasts girls would be doubled over and rocking in pain and vomiting. (Bear in mind that anyone who vomited was beaten for gluttony)
When visitors like board members or parents were scheduled food would be improved. I suspect to fatten us up a bit. We were weighed every Saturday morning and our weight charted publicly for some reason. over weight girls who arrived were put on half portions or our meager fare. That was literally a half cup of food. The for was unspeakably bad. Nothing normal people would eat. Raw bran like you would feed a horse was breakfast. Dinner might be a cup of boiled beans and a cup of boiled greens. None of us menstruated from the first week we were there. We all regressed to look like young children instead of teens and this was proclaimed to be evidence of the work of the Holy spirit softening our hard rebellious countenances and hearts. Our sudden childlike appearance was further enforced by the knee high socks and silly childish pinafore uniforms we wore each day. Bathroom use was considered a privilege and brutally regulated causing some girls to lose control of their bladders. That humiliation was not enough, Diapers were used in a very open and invasive way to further break down these poor souls.
I remember how my joints hurt all the time. Sitting in a metal chair for hours at a time was agony, a fine pelt of hair grew up my spine while my pubic hair and under arm hair disappeared. I was cold always and sleeping was hard on the thin mattresses because my hips and arms and spine had no cushion or protection. I remember that I would intentionally soak the arms of my flannel nightgown when I used the bathroom before bed so I could suck on the sleeves and get some relief from the horrible dryness of my mouth and throat when I slept. I remember that my hips and thighs were so small that I had to either hang on to the sides of the toilet or spread my legs wide so I did not slip in. My knees were the largest part of my legs. Mostly, over everything else, the gnawing pain of hunger. When there was food we ate all of it, as much as we could because we were compelled to by our depleted bodies. One time we were served freezer burned cow tongue baked on cookie sheets in an oven with no seasoning. The taste was awful and the meat was so tough it took us forever to chew it enough to swallow it, our jaws ached, but we sat and chewed and chewed and chewed that precious morsel of vile meat because we had too, our bodies demanded it.
When I left that place I suffered excruciated pain after eating fatty rich foods. Once I even ended up in an emergency room. I gained weight quickly and went from 88 pounds to a healthy 145 for my height in less than 5 months. I was covered in stretch marks, between my fingers, my neck, my breast exploded from a 30 AAA to a 34 DDD and I went through puberty all over again in a matter of months. I have struggled with food every since. I want all of the food all of the time. I feel sick if I have to throw away food and find myself planning for "next time" I cannot get food all the time. That was just 29 months......just a fraction, a parentheses, compared to what these poor children endured.
