Progress is for Lovers

Last night, I got home from my four hour shift at the cafe where I bake cookies a couple of days a week.
It was 9:30pm, and I wasn't sure if I was hungry. You know that weird space where you just can't tell if you are actually hungry or if you just think you should eat something? That feeling.

If you have ever struggled with disordered eating, then you know this feeling is torture.

It's the devil.

The big fuck you.

If you aren't comfortable with talking about this stuff by now then you should probably just bugger off. I know there are literally 1.5 people who read this thing, and they're probably just bots, but I keep writing it because it helps me, and well...who knows...maybe someone who needs to see this will see if at exactly the right time.
Anyway,
so having disordered eating of any kind means you are constantly in a tornado of confusion, guilt, distrust, and bodily function.
Your body is doing its best to just keep you alive, sending you its signals to eat, pee, dance, sleep, or whatever, and your ED is taking any information it sends you at all and making it all about your worth and food. It's trying to make the organic, complex, messy balance of sustenance some kind of puzzle you can solve and then miraculously be thinner and by virtue of that thinness happier, wealthier, more confident, blah blah bullshit.

After years of this abuse, you get so out of touch with your body's signals that any feelings of hunger and fullness can have all kinds of emotional significance.

If you had peered into my life three or five, or even thirteen years ago, you would have seen a person absolutely twisted by conflict upon returning home from work.

Let's unpack this.

I used to always skip breakfast. In fact, every morning was an opportunity to see "how long I could go without eating."
And every goddamn day, I would make it to a certain time, sometimes noon, sometimes four p.m. sometimes ten thirty in the morning, and I wouldn't be able to go any longer.
And the binge/diet mentality would take over and I would eat everything in sight. Then I would be overfull, uncomfortable, and guilt stricken, swearing up and down that I would not eat for longer, that I would exercise to burn it all off, atone atone atone.

A few years back, coming home from a late shift was permission to eat everything in my cupboards. It was the perfect scenario. Nobody else was awake to see me do it. There was a hollow ache in my gut where, even if I had eaten a normal amount of food during the day, I was already anticipating the next day's restriction, so I would feel like I HAD to eat in excess to survive it.

Inevitably I found myself engaging in the most damaging behaviors, shoving food down my throat that I didn't want until I felt full and nauseated, crying and raging at my failure at the restriction and control I so desperately sought, and then crawling into bed to feel bloated and ashamed for a night of fitful sleep. Only to start the whole cycle over again the next day.

I would refuse offers of bites of cookie from friends at cafes, only to come home and eat row after row of oreos so I wouldn't feel deprived.

I would order the salad, or the lightest possible option at a restaurant, load my plate with vegetables at barbecues, skip desserts, and smile virtuously as others split the key lime pie slice, only to go home and scoop out half the peanut butter jar using cheez its as spoons.

Finding myself in last night's position to begin with, would never have happened.
















Yesterday it was beautiful out.
The unseasonably warm weather, made going for a long walk seem entirely delightful. There was nothing about it that screamed "punishment" or "atonement." It was just beautiful, and I wanted to enjoy soaking up the vitamin d with the baby.

I had a smoothie for breakfast, I made it with spinach, banana, cherries, and milk. I sprinkled it with sunflower seeds and I ate it with a handful of salted peanuts. It was filling and delicious.
Then I went for my walk with the babe.
We ended up going further than I'd thought we would because it was just so pleasant to be outside after being trapped indoors all winter. On the way there, we ate some barbecue potato chips and a big coconut water because eating salty chips while walking is treaty and nice.
We walked for close to two hours, and then spent a third bouncing around a playground.
When we came home, it was four in the afternoon, and we were both ravenous.

Rather than trying to put off that hunger, push it further, like I used to, I sat down and made vegetarian nachos with crackers instead of chips. I piled them high with black beans and cheese and salsa. We shared them with our hands and they were great! We laughed a lot and licked our fingers.

Then we went into the other room to play.
Shortly after getting in there I realized I was still a little hungry, but I also wanted something kind of sweet.
I got up and made a thick piece of toast with peanut butter, a drizzle of maple syrup, and a handful of chocolate chips. I also recognized that my impulse to eat in a binge kind of way was there, lurking, like it often still is when I eat more than what my ED brain is programmed to think of as "a healthy portion." I am still training my brain not to have those associations. It is taking time.

One way that I battle this is by getting a glass of water when I get whatever it is I am craving at that time, Ice Cream, Peanut Butter, Chocolate, all those things that I used to make myself sick on, are still a little nerve racking to eat, so I bring a glass of water, and I drink it when I am finished with my snack, and then, if I am still hungry or still craving that thing, I have some more, but a lot of the time I am satisfied.
One thing I NEVER DID while bingeing was drink water. I knew it would take up space in my stomach that I was planning to cram full of food, so I avoided it like the plague, as a result, not only was I often really uncomfortable, but horrendously dehydrated both during and after a binge.

I ate my toast, and the baby helped me eat some of of chocolate chips, so I got up and sprinkled on some more. I drank my water.

It was totally nice.

Of course, when the time for my shift came around, I was reluctant to go, but I also really enjoy having time away from the baby now (full disclosure). It reminds me to miss him, which is very necessary after spending a day chasing him, getting bopped on the head by him, cleaning up after him, rescuing him from tantrums, etc.

So I went to my shift, and I made cookies, for four hours. Since I was adequately fed, I didn't feel crazy around them, which is SUCH A HUGE DEAL.
I drank a couple of cans of seltzer because I'd had a lot of salt, and I was very thirsty.
It wasn't until about 8:30pm that I took a few bites of a chocolate chip and marshmallow cookie I made as an experiment and a rice krispie treat sprinkled with sea salt. They both turned out really well, and I was pleased, but I didn't feel like I needed more than a bite or two to tell how good they were. I didn't want more.

I CANNOT TELL YOU WHAT A FUCKING CRAZY THING THAT IS TO WRITE.

As recently as three years ago, I would have been sobbing if you told me I could ever take a bite of cookie and then leave the rest. My brain was so rewired to believe that one bite was equal to the fall of the roman empire that I would have presumed a binge was inevitable. I would have forced myself to binge, fulfilled my own prophecy, because I didn't know how to forgive myself, I didn't know that there was nothing to forgive.

So I came home, and both the baby and the husband were asleep, and I was alone, in my kitchen at ten o clock at night, the most dangerous time for me to be in those circumstances.

And I stopped and I checked in with my body.

It went like this.

Hey Body.
Oh hey.
I know we had a couple of bites of that cookie at work, but it's been a good five hours since you had a meal. Are you hungry?
Uh...I'm not sure actually. I'm not starving, if that's what you mean, but I don't know if I'm good to wait until morning before I eat again. Do you want me to wake you up in a few hours?
No. No Body, I really need my sleep.
Oh. Okay, so what should we do then?
Well, how about we have a bowl of cereal and see how we feel after?
Oh yeah, that sounds nice.

And that's what I did.

I didn't keep cereal in my house for ten years.

TEN FUCKING YEARS.
Because it was a trigger food.

But a few weeks ago, I realized that it was perfect for occasions just like this one, where I wasn't hungry enough to eat something big, but I needed a little something to get me through until I was really hungry.

So I poured out a bowl of Cinnamon Life, which is my current jam, topped it with a handful of sunflower seeds for salt and crunch and protein, and I sat down and ate it while kind of defragging from the night.
I didn't look at my phone. I didn't mindlessly shovel it in as fast as I could. I didn't need to. I enjoyed it, and about halfway through, I realized, I probably could eat more. I probably could eat about three more bowls of cereal, maybe with chocolate chips thrown in, and peanut butter, and and and...

But that was just my old ED/Binge voice trying to get its say in.

So I rinsed my spoon and cup, brushed my teeth, and said.

Hey Body.
Hmm?
Are you hungrier or sleepier right now?
Mmm sleepier for sure.
Cool.

Because I knew if it was hungrier, it would wake me up, and i could eat again.


There are no more starvation nights. No more days devoted to trying to control my will power.

There is just a soft, gentle conversation between me and my body, and I am so grateful to her for being here and doing her part, after so many long years of abuse.

And believe me, if I can get here, Fucking anybody can.


Nobody was so certain that she was beyond broken, fucked, and unrepairable than I was.
And sometimes it is still a struggle, and I slide backwards, and I binge, and I restrict, and I mess up, and that's okay.

I breathe, and I keep talking to her, and she keeps talking back, and we listen.

The Very Temporary Toddler Reality

Right this moment, i am able to put my fingers on a keyboard and type sentences because my 26 month old son is only requiring me to intermittently make wadges of play dough turn magically into marbles between my palms.
We are now stoutly in the times of the toddler, and so my days are the least my own they have been since we first brought the baby home from the hospital.
At any given moment he is climbing, hiding, running, hopping, smashing, thieving, masticating, harassing, exploring, touching, and generally using every other verb that exists.
There is no stasis, no time to recover, only time enough to use my adult logic to guess at what he's headed for next.
At the library we cannot make it through storytime without at meltdown that ends with me bundling up his thirty three pounds in my arms and marching out of the room as he squalls and flails.
On walks, he picks up pebbles and chunks of asphalt and tucks them happily into his pockets for me to retrieve later and throw out my front door lest he get the idea to swallow them at some point.
His favorite words are buddy, mama, and no.
He likes reading books but not nearly as much as he likes watching Trollhunters (the cartoon on netflix), he loves peeling bananas but only eats them about half as much.
He hugs everybody, but sometimes hits, and he roars with utter abandon.

He is wonderful.
I love him harder and more ferociously every day, but I am also so thoroughly exhausted by him and in desperate need of a break by five o clock than I ever was when he was a small milkfed pudgeball.

It's a mutual sadness my beard and I muse over constantly, how it is possible to love him and be so delighted by him while also so infuriated and fatigued by him.
Is this why parents scream so much? I wonder. Is this the place that we all get to when our kids reach perception and is it why our first memories of our parents are their tyrannical rule?

It's neverending, the catching and protecting and worrying. BEfore you can pour milk in your coffee in the morning, the little fingers have stuffed the plump cheeks with dogfood that you must first pry out of the mouth and then hide away. Then provide some substitute, some consolation, and another activity of a less gravel chomping nature, by which time the coffee is cold and the milk is tepid.

Still this is the age of magic.

And it is flying by.

Each day he grasps more and teeters on the edge of lucid understanding of the world around him in all its awe and horror.

I find myself relying on an afternoon movie every day to assUAGE SOME OF THE MADNESS. LIKE THE FACT THAT HE HAS NOW PUSHED THE CAPSLOCK BUTTON AND I CANNOT TU`RN IT OFF.

IF THE WEATHER WERE BETTER, I TELL MYSELF, WE WOULD SPEND THIS TIME OUTSIDE, PARTYING IN THE MUD, RUNNING ON THE BEACH, COMBING THE SAND AND THE GRASS FOR ACORN CAPS AND PEBBLES, SUCKING IN GREAT GUSTS OF FRESH AIR AND SINGING THE MADE UP SONGS OF HAPPY GO LUCKY CHILDHOOD.

BUT THANKS TO New England's nasty late winter days, we are more often than not just about frantic by 3pm, and in order to not scream cry in front of my child for the following two hours, I put on the muppets, the trollhunters, the disney cartoons, and berate myself for the shit job I am doing as a parent.

In those brief moments of respite, it is possible to remind myself that this is the briefest time, and it will feel so sad and ancient ten to twelve years from now, when he is running out the door with his friends and shooting me judgey looks over the dinner table. In five years when he's seven, he'll already be so different from the sweet, cuddly tornado he is now, I will probably have already forgotten how I used to stress cry in the bathroom while the Fraggles sang, or drank a glass of wine at four pm on a Friday just to remind myself that I was an adult and got to treat myself once in a while.

Which is why, in the ten minutes it has taken to write this confession, the play dough has lost its spellbinding powers, and I am now forced to abandon it without anything close to a resolution.

Time as they say and Toddler, wait for no man.