WE ARE ALL LYING HERE: Food (cell challenge)
I was given the prompt to have a meal alone, without outside distractions, and write about it.
Which has proven to be extremely difficult. I've had my meal--six clubhouse crackers with all-natural peanut butter and blackberry jam--without distractions, save my cat coming in the room and sniffing at my plate, and I have little to say about the experience. I'm hungover from Boxing Day Karaoke last night so my focus was mostly on willing myself to keep the crackers down.
Without the distraction of the telly, or for me, usually a book, I realize how bland food actually is, and how strange. When focusing on the taste and texture exclusively, food I would call some of my favorites becomes a dry, gritty bland paste in mouth, rendered unenjoyable. I finished my crackers in about four minutes and have no desire for more, when typically, with book in hand, I would be going back for seconds.
I have a difficult time writing/talking about food, anyway. There's a lot of residual shame in it for me, leftover from the eating disorder I had through most of college. Even still, I feel the pull toward it. Both toward food, and the eating disorder.
My relationship with food has never been great. I am a "picky eater," who prefers foods "with no flavor." As a child my diet was mostly buttered noodles, and then various sugary treats. My mom let me eat ice cream for breakfast, gummy bears for dinner. Her reasoning was, "As long as she's eating something." I didn't eat a lot. Food was always a nuisance, and if I were caught up in a book or playing, I could--and would--go the entire day not even thinking to eat, so my mom had to monitor that and would try to entice me: In elementary school and middle school, she'd pack my lunch full of goodies--chips and brownies and string cheese and glistening grapes. I became popular at lunch time because I gave all my food away, keeping only the crustless white bread sandwich that had two slices of provolone cheese and ketchup on it and nothing else. Later, when I began packing my own lunches, my purple lunch sack held cucumber slices. That's it. I wasn't purposefully restricting, and I wouldn't call myself anorexic back then; I just didn't want or need much food.
Then depression hit and food became a comfort. My mom and I have exactly opposite responses to depression. She stops eating; I inhale everything in sight. I often cursed this and wondered why couldn't I have been like my mom in that regard.
I've never been a big person. I'm five-foot-six and didn't crack 100 pounds until eleventh grade. My highest weight was, I think, 121 pounds. But I have always seen myself as bigger. Even before the eating disorder began, even when I ate my orange for breakfast and cucumber slices for lunch, I would look in the mirror and see only the places where there was something more than bone & skin and those were the places I had to cover, hide. So while the eating disorder didn't start until college, I would say the body dysmorphia has always been there. When the depression-fueled eating began, things began to spiral.
It started in New York, at Pratt. I found myself eating, eating, eating. Pizza, Ben & Jerry's, tubs of Funfetti frosting, bottle after bottle of vanilla Coke. My roommate and I both had sweet-teeth, so we indulged together, laughing at the contents of our mini-fridge. People watched us and asked how we stayed so thin. My roommate was six feet tall, or nearly, and could eat whatever she wanted. I spent hours walking, running, moving (full disclosure: this was more a way to deal with the awful panic attacks I had than an attempt to lose weight). But then that wasn't enough. In high school I remember thinking, "If I ever have to wear anything larger than a size-three jean, I will kill myself." And I found myself sliding on those size-five Levis. I didn't kill myself, but I tried, indirectly--gone was the pizza, the ice cream. I would make myself a sandwich from the deli in the cafeteria: one roll, one slice of provolone, lettuce and cucumber slices. I would cut this in half--one half for lunch, the other for dinner.
I bought a scale. There was nothing so satisfying as watching the numbers drop and having people ask me, "Are you all right? You look really small." But I didn't think I looked small, even as I replaced those size fives with twos. I began sneaking to the third floor of the library, where tucked away in a corner was a bathroom with blue walls and a single stall that no one seemed to use. There I'd throw up my half of a sandwich.
Cut to counting out ten pretzel sticks, five red hots, one teaspoon exactly of peanut butter--whatever I was allowing myself to eat that day. Cut to lists of foods' caloric content and menus for 200 calorie days, 400 calorie days. Cut to my exercising for hours. Cut to my calling my mom admitting to purging. Cut to Hollins, where I transferred my second year of college, and where I would quarter an apple and that would be my three meals and a snack for the day. Cut later to going to Kroger and buying boxes of cereal, bags of Hershey kisses, sleeves of cookies and eating them all in one sitting. Cut to me with my finger down my throat, face puffy, eyes bloodshot. Cut to being at home for the summer and having my grandfather admonishing me for eating a french fry. Cut to the group eating disorder therapy which was me and four middle-aged overweight women eyeing me evilly; cut to me locking myself in the bathroom and calling my mom, demanding she come get me out of there. Cut to abusing laxatives, swallowing handfuls of those little blue, then pink, pills and locking myself in the bathroom for hours. Cut to fitting into double zero jeans. Cut to my once tough-as-nails, once white and gleaming teeth becoming brittle and yellowed. Cut to my mind becoming a dull cloud, only able to think about food and exercise and the numbers on the scale. Cut to the university forcing weekly weigh-ins on me, with the stipulation being if I dropped below a certain number, they would kick me out.
I was never bad. So many people have it so much worse. I was "lucky" I guess. I never had to be hospitalized (for the eating). And I recovered mostly on my own, once I moved to Florida and had to live with housemates. The hardest part was learning how to eat again. Eating and sitting there with the food in you. Well, no, the hardest part was accepting the weight gain, getting rid of the double-zero jeans, having hips and thighs again. Losing my hipbones.
I eat, and I can even eat in front of other people, though I still think it's weird and shameful. I know no one is watching me and judging while, but I fear they are. I prefer to hide and eat, alone. I like getting rid of the evidence that I've eaten. I don't really like talking about food. I don't like having to admitI eat. If I talk about eating, or about foods I like, it feels like admitting this shameful secret, like saying I love pizza is tantamount to saying I love crack. I keep my daily meals during the week pretty strict, eating exactly the same thing for breakfast (oatmeal) and lunch (carrots, crackers), and then one of three or four things for dinner. My weight is consistently 113.5, which I know is still fairly small, though if you were to ask me, I'd say I'm "average" weight/size. I don't think the dysmorphia will ever go away.
So this is why I try to read or watch the telly when I eat, so I don't have to think about all this stuff. Because I do, still, think about all this stuff. I don't know if I'll ever stop thinking about this stuff. They say it's harder to recover from an eating disorder than from any other sort of addiction because you have to eat. You have to face that daily, and in a culture that champions the thinnest, sleekest, most toned bodies. In a culture that promotes weight-loss everywhere you turn. In a culture that heavily implies you're only worth a damn for your physicality. Which I know is bullshit, and yet..."Nothing tastes as good as thin feels."
Which has proven to be extremely difficult. I've had my meal--six clubhouse crackers with all-natural peanut butter and blackberry jam--without distractions, save my cat coming in the room and sniffing at my plate, and I have little to say about the experience. I'm hungover from Boxing Day Karaoke last night so my focus was mostly on willing myself to keep the crackers down.
Without the distraction of the telly, or for me, usually a book, I realize how bland food actually is, and how strange. When focusing on the taste and texture exclusively, food I would call some of my favorites becomes a dry, gritty bland paste in mouth, rendered unenjoyable. I finished my crackers in about four minutes and have no desire for more, when typically, with book in hand, I would be going back for seconds.
I have a difficult time writing/talking about food, anyway. There's a lot of residual shame in it for me, leftover from the eating disorder I had through most of college. Even still, I feel the pull toward it. Both toward food, and the eating disorder.
My relationship with food has never been great. I am a "picky eater," who prefers foods "with no flavor." As a child my diet was mostly buttered noodles, and then various sugary treats. My mom let me eat ice cream for breakfast, gummy bears for dinner. Her reasoning was, "As long as she's eating something." I didn't eat a lot. Food was always a nuisance, and if I were caught up in a book or playing, I could--and would--go the entire day not even thinking to eat, so my mom had to monitor that and would try to entice me: In elementary school and middle school, she'd pack my lunch full of goodies--chips and brownies and string cheese and glistening grapes. I became popular at lunch time because I gave all my food away, keeping only the crustless white bread sandwich that had two slices of provolone cheese and ketchup on it and nothing else. Later, when I began packing my own lunches, my purple lunch sack held cucumber slices. That's it. I wasn't purposefully restricting, and I wouldn't call myself anorexic back then; I just didn't want or need much food.
Then depression hit and food became a comfort. My mom and I have exactly opposite responses to depression. She stops eating; I inhale everything in sight. I often cursed this and wondered why couldn't I have been like my mom in that regard.
I've never been a big person. I'm five-foot-six and didn't crack 100 pounds until eleventh grade. My highest weight was, I think, 121 pounds. But I have always seen myself as bigger. Even before the eating disorder began, even when I ate my orange for breakfast and cucumber slices for lunch, I would look in the mirror and see only the places where there was something more than bone & skin and those were the places I had to cover, hide. So while the eating disorder didn't start until college, I would say the body dysmorphia has always been there. When the depression-fueled eating began, things began to spiral.
It started in New York, at Pratt. I found myself eating, eating, eating. Pizza, Ben & Jerry's, tubs of Funfetti frosting, bottle after bottle of vanilla Coke. My roommate and I both had sweet-teeth, so we indulged together, laughing at the contents of our mini-fridge. People watched us and asked how we stayed so thin. My roommate was six feet tall, or nearly, and could eat whatever she wanted. I spent hours walking, running, moving (full disclosure: this was more a way to deal with the awful panic attacks I had than an attempt to lose weight). But then that wasn't enough. In high school I remember thinking, "If I ever have to wear anything larger than a size-three jean, I will kill myself." And I found myself sliding on those size-five Levis. I didn't kill myself, but I tried, indirectly--gone was the pizza, the ice cream. I would make myself a sandwich from the deli in the cafeteria: one roll, one slice of provolone, lettuce and cucumber slices. I would cut this in half--one half for lunch, the other for dinner.
I bought a scale. There was nothing so satisfying as watching the numbers drop and having people ask me, "Are you all right? You look really small." But I didn't think I looked small, even as I replaced those size fives with twos. I began sneaking to the third floor of the library, where tucked away in a corner was a bathroom with blue walls and a single stall that no one seemed to use. There I'd throw up my half of a sandwich.
Cut to counting out ten pretzel sticks, five red hots, one teaspoon exactly of peanut butter--whatever I was allowing myself to eat that day. Cut to lists of foods' caloric content and menus for 200 calorie days, 400 calorie days. Cut to my exercising for hours. Cut to my calling my mom admitting to purging. Cut to Hollins, where I transferred my second year of college, and where I would quarter an apple and that would be my three meals and a snack for the day. Cut later to going to Kroger and buying boxes of cereal, bags of Hershey kisses, sleeves of cookies and eating them all in one sitting. Cut to me with my finger down my throat, face puffy, eyes bloodshot. Cut to being at home for the summer and having my grandfather admonishing me for eating a french fry. Cut to the group eating disorder therapy which was me and four middle-aged overweight women eyeing me evilly; cut to me locking myself in the bathroom and calling my mom, demanding she come get me out of there. Cut to abusing laxatives, swallowing handfuls of those little blue, then pink, pills and locking myself in the bathroom for hours. Cut to fitting into double zero jeans. Cut to my once tough-as-nails, once white and gleaming teeth becoming brittle and yellowed. Cut to my mind becoming a dull cloud, only able to think about food and exercise and the numbers on the scale. Cut to the university forcing weekly weigh-ins on me, with the stipulation being if I dropped below a certain number, they would kick me out.
I was never bad. So many people have it so much worse. I was "lucky" I guess. I never had to be hospitalized (for the eating). And I recovered mostly on my own, once I moved to Florida and had to live with housemates. The hardest part was learning how to eat again. Eating and sitting there with the food in you. Well, no, the hardest part was accepting the weight gain, getting rid of the double-zero jeans, having hips and thighs again. Losing my hipbones.
I eat, and I can even eat in front of other people, though I still think it's weird and shameful. I know no one is watching me and judging while, but I fear they are. I prefer to hide and eat, alone. I like getting rid of the evidence that I've eaten. I don't really like talking about food. I don't like having to admitI eat. If I talk about eating, or about foods I like, it feels like admitting this shameful secret, like saying I love pizza is tantamount to saying I love crack. I keep my daily meals during the week pretty strict, eating exactly the same thing for breakfast (oatmeal) and lunch (carrots, crackers), and then one of three or four things for dinner. My weight is consistently 113.5, which I know is still fairly small, though if you were to ask me, I'd say I'm "average" weight/size. I don't think the dysmorphia will ever go away.
So this is why I try to read or watch the telly when I eat, so I don't have to think about all this stuff. Because I do, still, think about all this stuff. I don't know if I'll ever stop thinking about this stuff. They say it's harder to recover from an eating disorder than from any other sort of addiction because you have to eat. You have to face that daily, and in a culture that champions the thinnest, sleekest, most toned bodies. In a culture that promotes weight-loss everywhere you turn. In a culture that heavily implies you're only worth a damn for your physicality. Which I know is bullshit, and yet..."Nothing tastes as good as thin feels."