The Word Disorder by Allison Field Bell
In her essay “The Word Disorder,” Allison Field Bell describes a narrator in a moment of crisis—one that is familiar to anyone who has ever struggled with body image, or paid the heavy cost of an eating disorder. In her author’s note, Field Bell writes, “It is painful—the writing of it, the experience of it.” Writing and reflecting on trauma can be incredibly harrowing. But to write about a seminal moment of trauma with minimal reflection, “in-scene,” is that much more difficult, and effective. Honesty at all costs.
Because this flash essay is told in both present and future tense, Field Bell allows even the reader with no experience with this sort of trauma to imagine themselves experiencing it. There is no introductory context, or lengthy backstory. We are all in the dressing room with Field Bell’s narrator, staring at the purple dress. The short, staccato sentences (“A wedding. My cousin’s.”) and at times punctuation-less phrases (“The fat the muscle the body.”) add a litheness to the pace that strips away extraneous story in deference to a close narrative distance.
In his essay “On Writing Trauma in Creative Nonfiction,” Travis Harman writes, “I wanted to let the reader into my mind either during or after the event—no matter how ugly…the author must capture this from the character’s perspective to present a truthful experience for the reader.” And Field Bell spares no feelings. She writes, about her mother, “Sometimes I resent her. Her giant breasts, her sixty-year-old gut.” When confronted about her disorder, she snaps: “I’ll say, Fuck you.” These are devastating moments, and ones that a less experienced author might censor for their own pride. But Allison Field Bell’s method of storytelling is brave and without shame. It is a trauma narrative that leaves the reader mid-scene, without resolution but pointed toward realization. —CRAFT
I insist I need a corset for under my dress. A wedding. My cousin’s. A purple strapless with a layer of chiffon. My mother is outside the dressing room. She asks if anything fits.
I stare down the mirror. All I can see are curves. Hips and breasts and stomach.
I don’t know how much weight I’ve lost since I began. I don’t weigh myself. I tell this to everyone who asks. Who says, Wow you look great. They mean: you’ve lost weight. And it’s true: I have shrunk. I’ve had to dig another hole into my belt loop. I pull it as tight as it can go: a tourniquet.
In the dressing room, I smooth my hands over the black satin material of the corset. It flattens my stomach, presses my breasts up against gravity. Then I turn sideways: the same silhouette that haunts me.
I am a double zero now, and in my head I say the word gut about my body. I say the word fat.
That gap between my thighs, that vanished muscle: I want more of it.
I want it all to disappear. The fat the muscle the body.
And in the dressing room, my face is hot and streaked with tears.
My mother asks, Are you okay in there?
I snap at her, I’m fat.
She sighs.
It is and isn’t her fault. Genetics. Sometimes I resent her. Her giant breasts, her sixty-year-old gut.
The word gut.
She says, You’re tiny.
I scoff from behind the door, but my eyes are wet and fixed on that damn bulge of flesh at my stomach.
I was told once that some women’s hips tilt forward, some back. If your hips tilt back, you’re screwed. Destined to have a belly no matter how thin you make yourself.
My hips tilt back. They must.
She says, You really don’t need this.
I say, What do you know.
My mother is gentle with me. Maybe she can hear the strain in my voice, the tears. Gentle is not what I need. I need someone to tell me this is not okay, someone to say stop. Someone to say the word disorder.
Instead, my mother says, The dress looked great on you. You’re so thin.
A few weeks later, someone will say stop. Will say disorder. Will say, I’m worried about you. A friend. She’ll sit me down with another friend. They’ll have an intervention. They’ll say, We can hear you in the bathroom. I’ll say, Fuck you.
In the dressing room, I want to scream. I want to carve off my flesh like you cut the fat off a steak. I want a different body. A body that obeys me.
I am weeping now. The word weep.
Outside the door, my mother says, Allie. She says, Are you still there?
How to answer her.
ALLISON FIELD BELL is a multigenre writer originally from California. She is a PhD candidate in creative writing at the University of Utah, and she has an MFA in fiction from New Mexico State University. Allison is the author of the poetry chapbook Without Woman or Body, forthcoming from Finishing Line Press in June 2025, and the creative nonfiction chapbook Edge of the Sea, forthcoming from CutBank Books in Spring 2025. Her prose appears or is forthcoming in SmokeLong Quarterly, DIAGRAM, The Gettysburg Review, The Adroit Journal, West Branch, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. Her poems appear or are forthcoming in The Cincinnati Review, THRUSH Poetry Journal, Passages North, RHINO Poetry, The Greensboro Review, and elsewhere. Find her on Twitter @afb16.
Featured image by Henry & Co, courtesy of Unsplash
