At Least Buying Cleaning Supplies

Yesterday I called the hospital to ask about some follow-up binge-eating treatment.

I had promised myself I would call if I binged again in the month following the wedding binge (Sept. 28). Well, I made my own deadline – I binged last Saturday night, three weeks later.

I can spot a pattern in all of my recent binges – five since July. They have all occurred after I’ve been drinking. They seem to be triggered, in part, by romantic despair. (Hello, don’t I sound tragic?) But for example, on the Friday before Binge Saturday, I’d been out having a few drinks, thought briefly and urgently about chocolate, started hunting for an open shop, then resolutely put myself in a taxi and went home (and did not stop at the 24-hour shop on my block). Did denying myself chocolate Friday contribute to the severity of the binge on Saturday? I don’t know. Maybe.

While five binges may not seem like a lot when you consider that at one point I was doing it almost every day, these have been severe ones. And just watching the intervals between the five binges shrink is frightening for me. This is how it has been in the past: I manage months without bingeing, couple that with a diet and exercise and lose weight. Then I have one binge. Then a couple of months later another one. Then one maybe a month later. And then two or three weeks. And then it’s once a week. And then I’m kicking myself for giving away my fat clothes and not wanting to leave the house at all (let alone in the one pair of too-tight black trousers that still sorta fits as long as I don’t wash it too often).

I know that doesn’t have to happen this time. But I also know that I have a big problem waiting until things get out of control – avoiding and waiting to be forced to do something instead of behaving like an adult and sorting things out when things start to get messy, as opposed to when they reach epic frat-house disaster level. I do this with my flat. I do this with my desk. I do this with my job. I did this, a couple of years ago, with a cavity (dumb move). I’m not proud of this trait, but it – like the bingeing, I guess – is something I recognize and I’m working on.

Anyway, of course the hospital hasn’t called me back. But I’m not going to let myself get away with that – if I don’t hear by next Wednesday I’ll call again. I make a living by being persistent, so one would think I could apply this to my life with some effect.

* * *

Yesterday, lest I be too pleased with myself after a Pilates teacher commented on my “bony” bits, I was at Selfridges killing time before a party started.

“Could you please explain the James Perse sizing?” I asked the salesgirl, seeing shirts numbered 1 to 4.

She looked me up and down. “If you’re a 16, you’ll need the 4.”

Ouch.