Keep It Messy If You Can't Keep It Clean

So my chat with the New York editor got postponed until Monday. My dad asked about whether the delay carried any "negative implications," as he put it, and I realized – quite honestly – that I don't care. One thing I've realized in considering this job, or the possibility of it, is that no matter what happens I will be fine. These 18 months of freelancing have been absolutely gruelling, but I'm very cautiously optimistic that the worst is behind me. I'll be perfectly fine without a work blackberry, access to all the free magazines my heart desires, and a Conde Nast expense account. And if I take the job in NYC and I hate it? Well, I know now that I can freelance, and after a year in New York (which is all my little brain can handle thinking about) I'll probably have better contacts.

But I reserve the right to come completely unglued next week when faced with actual details and an actual timetable for decision-making, moving, the works...

***

Last night I managed to prevent overeating from turning into a binge – a major, major victory in my book. In a lot of ways, I find stopping overeating harder than not starting in the first place.

I did a massive gym session (about once a week I do an hour of arms and abs, and then about 50 minutes of cardio), then raced to meet a couple of friends for drinks. Tired and dehydrated, the first drink hit me hard, but of course I didn't quit while I was ahead. We had a couple more drinks waiting for our third friend to show up. She was nearly 45 minutes late – which, at 8.30ish, post-massive-gym-session and drinks, was becoming a fairly dangerous hour for me to first be contemplating food.

I ordered the first thing I knew would be OK: a sweet potato, mackerel and beet salad. My friends ordered the same thing. Too late, I realized it probably wouldn't be quite big enough and there was no bread or anything of the sort on the table. Not good.

I scarfed my dinner in record time and immediately started thinking about what shops were in the area and what I could get to eat. I wanted bread and cake and something with heft. I looked at the pudding menu: No cake. Definitely not good – I could see myself ordering something I didn't really want, then going and bingeing out of frustration.

Frankly, I already was frustrated. I ordered the same pavlova my friends ordered. Then I went to the bathroom to eat the chocolate bar and plot my binge. Then I stopped, thought about how less than 2 weeks ago I feared I'd never be able to stop eating, and thought about the wedding celebration I'm attending this weekend that is also a binge trigger. I won't know anyone there – do I really want to arrive feeling fat, exhausted, and crummy about myself post-binge? (It doesn't exactly make one the life of the party.)

So last night I told myself I could still binge but that I had to text a friend first. And I did. I went and ate my pavlova (a very, very poor substitute for Peridot's, it must be said), still thinking about bingeing. I was maybe an inch from the ledge.

Friend responds saying it is never too late not to keep going down "that road," and that her new motto is to keep it messy if she can't keep it clean – that anything is better than bingeing. "I'll try if you will," she writes. "And no judgements either way."

Still I think about what I can eat on the way home. Instead I order a tea, which I know will come with biscuits, and it does. I eat my two (so do the friends) and somehow feel calmer.

I still want cake and about 10 other things – want them so badly I can taste them, and can picture exactly where I'll go and what I'll do. But more than I want anything else to eat, I realize, I want to wake up the next morning not having binged.

And amazingly, that is what happens.

Honestly, I could have cartwheeled. I could have hugged strangers on the street. I did none of those things, but despite a day filled with little slights and big stresses, I walked around with a huge, stupid grin.