Speechless in Southwark

A lovely Scottish guy I’ve spoken to maybe four times in my life stopped me as I was walking from the kitchen back to my desk. He was standing at the photocopy machine. There was no one else within earshot.

“Beth,” he said. He paused. “I don’t really know you, but if you lose any more weight there’s not going to be anything left of you.”

What does one respond to that? I wasn’t at all angry, if that’s how I sound – just flummoxed. Speechless. “Thank you,” seemed the wrong response. But what is the right one?

* * *

I haven’t been in any immediate danger of bingeing, but I called the hospital four times (from answering machine, I was never quite sure I was leaving messages in the right place, and I couldn’t get a live person) and finally was rewarded with a call back. I’ve got an appointment in two weeks for an assessment. Part of me wonders if I’m jumping the gun calling after a handful of binges, and the other part of me knows that I have to do this. What makes this so difficult is that I spend my life presenting myself like I have it all together, and that whatever problem might crop up, I’ll solve it. It is hard to sublimate this instinct – the instinct to edit – at all, let alone to someone I don’t know and for long enough for her to figure out what’s wrong and how it might be solved.

This, I have been told by at least three different people in the binge-eating field, makes me an extremely difficult case.

She sounded very nice and sympathetic. She said she hadn’t wanted to call back until she’d read my file.

This sounds promising.

Just having an appointment makes me feel like everything is going to be OK.