Summary

In Chapter Two, "Abandon," Jamison reflects upon her time as an undergraduate at Harvard, when she first learned about the efficiency of drinking on an empty stomach. Jamison became anorexic her freshman year. She kept a calorie notebook in which she recorded her daily meals. One night she took a jar of peanut butter to the dumpster downstairs in her dorm's basement. Before she tossed it, she scooped some peanut butter out with her fingers. Then she tossed it, took the elevator back up, and then went back down, found the jar, and stuck her fingers back in. As she did so, it occurred to her that this was the truth of her, not the skinny girl who never ate "but that girl with dirty fingers, leaning in the trash" (40). Jamison joined Harvard's literary magazine, the Advocate. It was at their initiation party that...