Andrea Cladis

Tatsimou, Hold On! Andrea Cladis

Lonely, despondent, and hopeless, Andrea, a junior in high school, is determined to become perfect. She sets out to master the scale, to smite her mother, and to bury depression in what becomes an all-consuming, life-threatening eating disorder. When her physician-father is unable to heal her as she hovers at 70 pounds and below, has manipulated all forms of counseling, has lost all friendships, and is terrified of ingesting the calories of food, her Greek family continues to rally around her, despite her caustic attitude towards them. When she stares death in the face during a hot summer run with purpose to destroy calories, she encounters God and it is her renewed faith in Christ - her hope in His will for her life - that enables her to slowly overcome her self-inflicted trauma and to embark on a journey towards health, wellness, and living not for the desires of self, but for the contentment of others. Set in the Western suburbs of Chicago, "Tatsimou, Hold On" is a retrospective memoir chronicling the psychological distortion of anorexia and its destructive wide-ranging effects on family relationships, personal growth, and spirituality. An obsession with control, family tension, resistance to cultural norms, grief, and unexpected triumph are predominant themes throughout this memoir. Told in a linear fashion with moments of flashback and foreshadowing to reveal character growth, it is a generative memoir with dynamic characters, a tangible setting, and the pulsing belief that through faith, fitness, and prayer, hope can remain in the cracking fissures of the human heart.