At Sea

Weeks and years from now, when I look back, I will divide my life in to Before Friday the 9th and After Friday the 9th.

Before Friday, I worried about food and weight and whether I’d ever get out of this crummy yet addictive relationship with BN2 / be able to make it as a freelance writer / finish – well, start – my novel / get round to clearing my flat.

Then – in the space of an evening – I destroyed my life, and with it the luxury of normal (or vaguely normal) worries.

Some things are too personal to share even anonymously with the Internet. But there is no melodrama in the “destroyed,” I can promise you that. Under the influence of a vat of white wine (actually, a colleague there that night said when he arrived – probably about the time I was finishing my first drink – he wondered if I were “having a bad reaction to something”), I did something illegal. And got caught. On top of that, it was an evening out with work people, and the people I work with are journalists. We gossip for a living.

I didn’t kill or hurt anyone – only myself. I made amends. But the consequences of what I did are still rolling as hard and fast as a high tide. I feel under water. On Monday the traffic light was broken at a busy intersection by my flat, and twice I crossed it without looking.

I saw a counselor yesterday who told me this kind of thing can happen to food addicts – that nearly all of his bulimic patients need to give up alcohol. He told me that almost everyone – non-addicts included -- has done things when drunk that were against their values. I felt a bit better. And then came another wave of consequences, and I wondered if I might drown.

Today I watched people on the Tube, wondering what secrets they might be hiding. I got frustrated with the incompetence of a salesman at the Carphone Warehouse, who managed to lock me out of an entire mobile network and several credit cards in the space of about five minutes. When I was asked if I wanted to make a formal complaint, I started to, and then stopped. Maybe there are extenuating circumstances in his life.

I haven’t eaten very healthily – twice in three days I’ve had pork pies for lunch, don’t ask me why they appeal – but I haven’t binged or even gone above my usual approximate calorie count. I stepped on the scale yesterday and 10 stone 13 ½ (153.5 lbs) flashed up. Post-Christmas, post-binge (Friday was also a food binge) – normally I’d have felt relieved to see that number. I felt nothing.