Books
J.J. Johnson

Believarexic

Asking for help is only the first step
Jennifer can’t go on like this—binging, purging, starving, all while trying to appear like she’s got it all together. But when she finally confesses her secret to her parents and is hospitalized at the Samuel Tuke Center, her journey is only beginning.
As Jennifer progresses through her treatment, she learns to recognize her relationships with food, friends, and family—and how each relationship is healthy or unhealthy. She has to learn to trust herself and her own instincts, but that’s easier than it sounds. She has to believe—after many years of being a believarexic.
Using her trademark dark humor and powerful emotion, J. J. Johnson tells an inspiring story that is based on her own experience of being hospitalized for an eating disorder as a teenager. The innovative format—which tells Jennifer’s story through blank verse and prose, with changes in tense and voice, and uses forms, workbooks, and journal entries—mirrors the protagonist’s progress toward a healthy body and mind.
328 printed pages
Original publication
2015
Publication year
2015
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Quotes

  • cvrritchiehas quoted5 years ago
    “It’s like…it’s like Megan and my other friends, they think
    happiness is a bouquet of helium balloons.
    Picture everyone in the world,
    each holding a bunch of balloons on strings.
    Most people’s balloons are plump and bouncy,
    and they float really well.
    Some people’s balloons might be droopy
    because they’re sad, or sick, or something.
    So my friends think my balloons are saggy,
    and they try to help. They say, Here, have some helium.
    Let’s get your balloons all floaty again.”
    “Because plump balloons would indicate
    that you are happy,” Dr. Prakash says.
    “Right,” says Jennifer. “But the problem is,
    I’m not holding droopy balloons.
    I’m not holding any balloons at all.
    I’m standing there with strings that lead to nothing.
    So even if my friends gave me helium—
    tanks and tanks of helium—
    there’s nothing to put it in.
    My balloons are just completely missing.”
  • cvrritchiehas quoted5 years ago
    Jennifer has tried, and failed,
    at pure, restriction-only anorexia.
    Bulimarexia was the best she could do.
    Anorexia is flawlessness.
    Anorexics are iron-clad in their willpower,
    untainted by overeating, ever.
    They are, have always been, the highest,
    most accomplished,
    most emulated,
  • cvrritchiehas quoted5 years ago
    Will you get the monster out
    before you kill it,
    or will you murder it
    while it’s still in me?
    Will I walk around,
    always,
    with a monster carcass rattling inside?
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