Congruity (Home)

In Italy, there is a tradition called “sciopero bianco” - the white strike. Here, it is known as work-to-rule. Workers who are not permitted to strike fight their bosses by doing only what is required of them - to the letter. Nurses refuse to answer phones that ring at 17:01. Transport workers make safety checks so rigid that trains run hours behind schedule. Eating disorders, particularly anorexia, are to riots in the streets what a white strike is to a factory occupation: women, precarious workers, young people and others for whom the lassitudes of modern life routinely produce acute distress and for whom the stakes of social non-conformity are high, lash out by doing only what is required of them, to the point of extremity. Work hard; eat less; consume frantically; be thin and perfect and good; conform and comply; push yourself to the point of collapse. It is no accident that eating disorders are often associated with obsessive overwork and perfectionism at school, in the workplace or in the home. We followed all the rules, sufferers seem to be saying - now look what you made us do.

During our time on this street we heard and encountered many tragedies, people who faced all manners of diseases and degradations, who nearly died, who actually died, whose children had been killed. There is no escaping the horror and tragedy in the interior of people’s lives. But it was particularly after meeting George that we found ourselves in tears after leaving his flat. Because in every other instance there was a sense that, at least, that person had once lived. With George, by contrast, one simply couldn’t escape the conclusion that this was a man, more or less waiting for his time on Earth to be over, but who at the age of seventy-six had never seen his life actually begin. And, worse still, he knew it.