Wintergirls

When Lia is released from New Seasons, a hospital for patients recovering from eating disorders, she moves in with her father, stepmother, and stepsister. Lia’s family trusts that she will eat, follow her doctors’ orders, and try to stay healthy. However, Lia’s eating disorder worsens without her father or stepmother, Jennifer, realizing how badly it has become. Lia has several tricks for lying about her eating habits. For example, Lia leaves dirty plates in the kitchen or makes a mess in the microwave to give the impression that she has eaten food. Every week, Jennifer must weigh Lia to make sure she has not fallen below an unhealthy weight. Lia sews quarters into the pockets of her bathrobe and tampers with the scale so that it will read as a heavier weight, even as Lia herself continues to lose weight. Lia’s parents want to trust that Lia is getting better, but Lia continues to find ways of deceiving them.

Lia also has trouble trusting doctors. While hospitalized, Lia realizes it is easy to tell doctors what they want to hear. Lia thinks, “I knew what he wanted to hear. He couldn’t stand me being sick. Nobody can. They only want to hear that you’re healing, you’re in recovery, taking it one day at a time” (83). After Lia tells the doctor the answer she thinks he wants to hear, he smiles. Lia realizes, “I had figured out that my eyes were broken long before that. But that day I started to worry that the people in charge couldn’t see either” (83). Even though Lia is lying, her answer satisfies the doctor. Lia worries that the doctors can’t really see that she isn’t recovering. This makes Lia lose trust in doctors.

Lia also has trouble trusting her therapist, Dr. Parker. At first, Lia opened up to Dr. Parker, but Lia starts to feel as though “she was moving things around in my brain without permission” (114). Since then, Lia stays mostly quiet during appointments. Lia finally opens up to Dr. Parker toward the end of the novel and admits to seeing Cassie haunting her, which makes Dr. Parker suggest Lia should be admitted to a psychiatric-care ward. This response causes Lia panic and take a cab from Dr. Parker’s office instead of waiting for Jennifer to arrive. Lia is reluctant to trust doctors because their diagnoses can be scary and because she may not always agree with them. When Lia is admitted to the hospital for patients with eating disorders for the third time, at the end of the novel, Lia says, “I don’t lie to the nurses this time […] I argue with the doctors because I don’t believe in their brand of magic, not a hundred percent, and it’s something I need to talk about. They listen” (276). Lia begins to trust the adults in her life, especially as it pertains to her recovery. Lia still doesn’t always trust doctors, but she doesn’t lie to them either. This shows Lia is making progress toward trusting others and trying to be more honest.