I'm Still Standing

I have seen photos taken during hurricanes where there is one thing standing against incredible odds, when everything around it has been reduced to rubble. Often it’s a tree; in one instance it was a child clinging to a tree, her hair looking like it was about to be ripped off her head from the wind.

I’m still standing. Barely, it seems.

Over the past 48 hours I’ve endured beseeching and probably manipulative texts and emails and phone calls (actually voicemails, because I haven’t picked up). His best friend called me to "check that I was okay." BN2 bcc’d me on an email to his parents with photos of his daughter taken Sunday. He was in my neighborhood last night and this morning (his best friend lives down the road). He dropped off a package containing my watch and a note saying he still had a handful of my things, “a reminder of happy times.”

This morning I received a couple of emails, followed by a text and then an extremely difficult phone call, all from his mother. I took notes during the call, trying to be a detached journalist, but I burst into tears anyway.

I told her I would think about what she’d said, but that I didn’t think I’d do anything today. Mercifully, I haven’t heard from him since midafternoon.

I stopped by an exhibition opening that included three portraits painted by BN2’s best friend S. I knew BN2 himself wouldn’t be there – it’s his night to look after his daughter.

I was fine until my awkward goodbye to S, when I burst into tears. I cried the whole way home.

I am so very very tired and sad. Also very tired of being sad. Has it really only been four days since I left?

* * *

At this time last week I was happily getting pissed on champagne in the House of Commons.

First I was on the terrace – the most fabulous view in London. I chatted about Jimmy Choos with Kate Adie. I listened to Cabinet ministers gossip, and then gossip drunkenly and cattily and definitely unadvisedly. (Can you imagine Congressmen getting drunk and gossiping? I can’t.)

I ended up in the Strangers’ Bar, an MP’s-only bar in the House of Commons, singing Burt Bacharach songs at the top of my lungs with a couple of Cabinet ministers.

I felt alive and happy, something I hadn’t felt for a while. I was glad I’d lied to BN2, blaming the Tube for my late arrival at the (work-related) party, and saying given the hour I’d finish, it would be best for me to go back to my own flat.
I knew he wouldn’t be happy, and that we’d probably fight about it, but right then, I didn’t care.

Later, a male journalist friend and I went on to a private members club in Soho and drank more. I ran upstairs and had a mini-binge: a huge oatmeal cookie and a chocolate bar, I think. In the club, I crammed down handfuls of prawn crackers and popcorn so quickly I was ashamed.

It was my second binge of the week, my first being a massive one on the Monday, when a female friend and I plotted how I should overthrow BN2. I didn’t think I could do it (and the plan we hatched is not, in fact, what I did – Sunday was not premeditated) and so I ate instead. Feeling trapped has always been a binge trigger for me.

I feared I would instantly balloon from 2 binges – me, the girl who could go from a size 12 to a 16 in about two days flat. But I didn’t. Instead, the scale this morning read 10 stone 2 (142 lbs). Earlier this week, the counselor I’m seeing told me I shouldn’t lose any more weight without discussing it with him.

I’ve been fairly relaxed on the restaurant meals and the drinks over the past few days. Maybe I’ll even live a little and have the Victoria sponge I’ve been craving…