“I Should Have Worn a Curtain 1, 2” by Samyra Alexander

The novella “I Should Have Worn a Curtain” by Samyra Alexander opens up a door to a nightmarish room that has a “bulimia” sign on it.

The author does an excellent job in drawing a bleak picture of the life of someone, who suffers from an eating disorder. It’s probably difficult – if not completely impossible – for those, who never had a similar experience – to fully understand that every aspect of a person’s life is affected by this condition.

Shaene is a young girl, whose life could be so much brighter and happier if she wasn’t confined in the walls that bulimia had built around her. Her friends are not real friends, but only colleagues she chats with during a lunch break. Her boyfriend is not a real boyfriend, but an ambitious man, who wants to build a career as a fitness specialist and uses Shaene as a project to achieve that goal. Her family is real, but due to what they had gone through, she’s not very close with them.

In “I Should Have Worn a Curtain 2” Samyra Alexander continues the story of Shaena, a young woman, who suffers from an eating disorder.

What I especially liked about this book is that the author doesn’t try to make Shaena look perfect, while the whole world is against her. This is true, a lot of people deny things like depression, bulimia, anorexia, etc., proclaiming these problems to be illusionary and simply the consequences of a lack of willpower. But at the same time, some people tend to blame the world for their problems.

Samyra Alexander draws a truthful portrait of someone, who suffers from bulimia, with flaws, sometimes unfair judgements, as well as illogical actions.

I liked the way the author depicts the relationship between Shaena and her family. Every family has its ups and downs, but the most important thing is that these ties are not to be broken easily, and even after many years of misunderstandings they can be fixed.

I would recommend both books to everyone, who wants to feel what it’s really like to suffer from an eating disorder.