Elena Vanishing

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of mental illness (including psychosis and OCD), disordered eating (anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa), self-harm, pregnancy loss, and rape.

Elena is in treatment at Clove House and hates almost every aspect of it. She doesn’t like her therapist, Emily, because Emily admitted to having a nose job and Elena can’t take what she says about self-acceptance seriously. Elena also hates being made to eat, especially around other people. She takes pills but isn’t sure what they’re for and doesn’t bother to ask. Sometimes, Elena feels like she’s in a kindergarten classroom. 

One afternoon, a younger girl named Sam comments on one of Elena’s tattoos: a man’s face on her upper arm. Elena explains that the man was named Rupert Brooke and that she loves his poetry. She reads out a poem about love of various things, which several girls sit around and listen to. In group therapy later on, Elena is asked to share her personal history. She describes how her mother almost bled to death when she was born, had cancer when she was young, and later discovered she had anemia as well. The thought of blood brings back memories of Elena’s miscarriage, and she becomes upset.