Letter from Provence

“It’s like Canyon Ranch,” my friend E. joked Wednesday, after telling me lunch – chicken, a chickpea and bulgur salad, and heirloom tomatoes -- would be ready in about 10 minutes.

“Better,” I said. “At Canyon Ranch I still have to make a lot of decisions about what to eat. You know I don’t do well with choice.”

I’m with E. and her husband and their 2-year-old son in a small town in the hills of Provence. It is exactly as idyllic as it sounds. (Well, except for my staying up two nights in a row to meet a deadline.)

I am teasing them that they should run a writers retreat, because I literally roll out of bed and to my computer and at regular intervals during the day am asked things like: “Are you ready for lunch?” and “You eat fish, right?” Then – because I asked her to; because she is that good of a friend and understands – I get served a plate. I try not to think too hard about the calories or what’s in it and try instead to adopt E’s view, which is that it’s all good, wholesome food, so what could be bad about it?

In not quite three days here, I’ve only become truly anxious about food twice: Yesterday, when I was handed the cheese plate after lunch and had to decide how much to have and wondered if I’d had too much. And this morning, when I had oatmeal for breakfast for the first time in nearly a year and was promptly starving about 20 minutes later, I think from lack of protein and fat with it. (I do occasionally open the refrigerator here and stare at the peach jam and think about eating it plain, something I only do when bingeing, but the thinking is more idle than any actual plan.)

The lack of anxiety about food would be notable even in the best of circumstances. But we are far from the best of circumstances: before I arrived here I binged for four days straight; horrible binges that swept through like tornadoes. Vintage binges: sneaking off to supermarkets, eating my way through airports; reckless binges where I nearly miss deadlines and planes just to get more more more. Binges because my clothes don’t fit and I’m afraid of getting dressed and maybe I’ll just eat more and then deal with it.

The four days of bingeing came after a binge at the wedding, and then, five days later, another three-day binge, followed by a few days of eating haphazardly, procrastinating madly, and generally being furious with myself for not getting work done but also not properly enjoying my time in London because I was worried about getting work done.

It is amazing how months of control can be undone literally in days. It makes me think of all the things I didn’t eat in New York; whether I’d be better off now if I’d eaten some of them. I honestly don’t know. A very wise friend says that I need to get to the point where no food-type situation is so vastly different than any other food situation: In other words, that I am not overly frightened, anxious, puzzled, or, yes, delighted to any binge-inducing extent.

Of course, for me food is just the gas doused on the spark. I don’t binge out of hunger; I binge to forget, to shut my mind down, to blot out fear and anxiety, to avoid doing things and handling situations I don’t think I can. It is classic for me to feel trapped by a particular situation and binge essentially to remove myself from it. Or to not want to do something and to binge so as to render myself incapacitated. Wouldn’t it be easier just to say no, or to say what I am feeling in the first place? Ah, hindsight.

***

I have written before about binging and the fear that I’ll never be able to stop. I felt it this time, too: fear and despair. I tried to remind myself that I’ve felt this way before and that I do eventually stop, but these binges, like these days, like this period in my life, are so unlike any I’ve ever had before that it was hard to trust. And I’ve never been good at trusting anyone, least of all myself, even at the best of times.

In London, I’d just gotten through three days without bingeing. I was eating a bit more than usual: Ben’s Cookies for snacks; bigger dinners, extra chocolate. But definitely not binges. On the Thursday night, I bought a couple of things for breakfast/lunch – disgustingly, I love carbs in their most naked form, and occasionally allow myself things like Scotch pancakes and crumpets. It’s a texture thing: I love the doughy-ness, and I can (and have) just crammed in one right after the other, feeling them expanding in my stomach.

Anyway, I had to be up at the crack of dawn for a flight, and I ended up staying up half the night doing all manner of procrastination. Partly it was work I’d been procrastinating about for two weeks, and partly it was that the friend I was going to see in Amsterdam wasn’t quite sure when she’d arrive because she was abroad for work and her flight had been cancelled. I got up on Friday after about an hour and a half’s sleep and just thought: I could murder those. And after a few minutes of wrestling with myself, I did. A package of Scotch pancakes. A package of crumpets. Whatever other snacks I had sitting in my bag. It kicked off a massive binge at the airport, which carried on to another massive binge in Frankfurt Airport. Flight break. Arrival at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport followed by more bingeing.

I can’t ever remember a day like that. I can’t remember ever waking up and bingeing almost from the moment I opened my eyes, and bingeing repeatedly in the same day.

I had hours to kill before I could get into my friend’s, and somehow I managed to stop myself from further bingeing, though that night I drank wine, ate a huge plate of fries with mayonnaise plus a (disappointing) rice pudding (this was more semolina; I wasn’t mad on the texture) with whipped cream.

The next morning I couldn’t find anything to wear. Not only were my jeans crazily tight, but my tops are mostly fitted and my stomach was poking out from all of them. It was pouring rain and far too cold for the maxi dress and cardigan combo I’d been slobbing about in in London. I borrowed a t-shirt from my friend and squeezed into my coat.

It’s hard to be calm when with every move you can feel your jeans, like a distress signal. But I tried – and succeeded – to eat exactly as my friend ate all day. Then it was nearly 6 pm and I was starving and we weren’t meeting for dinner until 8:30 pm.

She suggested a cheese sandwich.

I said I was going to buy some diet Coke and that I’d pick up the cheese.

And even though we were going to eat shortly, and even though I hadn’t exactly plotted for this binge (I can recall other binges where I spent hours or at least minutes waiting for my moment to slip off), and even though I knew I’d feel crummy later and even though even though I went down the street and bought a corn muffin and two small hamentashen. Then I went to the supermarket, literally shaking with fear of what I might eat and how miserable I would feel and what I would possibly be able to wear. I debated a package of apple cakes and various other things. What I really wanted was more muffins, but even I was too embarrassed to go back to the bakery. Then I stopped, thought about how miserable I’d feel all evening if I got too full now, and bought a huge chocolate bar with hazelnuts instead. (The calorie savings were negligible, I’m sure, but a chocolate bar certainly isn’t as filling – and exhausting – as a lot of cake.)

I went back to my friend’s and ate the cheese sandwich with butter she made me. If I could have, I probably would have eaten six. Not out of hunger, but out of avoidance: The last thing I felt like doing was trying to get dressed for a night out, especially when all I had access to was the fairly meager (and far too tight) contents of my suitcase – and my friend is an alum of the luxury fashion business.

I had a very summery navy dress with me I didn’t think I could wear because it was too cold and I couldn’t imagine what sort of tights I’d wear with it. But the friend is British and I forget that almost anything in England can be accessorized with black tights. So I ended up wearing the navy dress, black tights, and nude patent wedge espadrilles, not a combination I’d probably ever have left the house in on my own. But I went out and – even though my face was broken out, and even though I was feeling massive, and even though a million things – ended up going home with the only guy in our group, a rather adorable Brit. (But that’s a whole other story.)

The next morning, Sunday, I had the best of intentions, and it started out OK. I had a bowl of cereal and some yogurt, which was a little messy only because I had no idea how much I was eating and I can eat an awful lot of cereal. After a couple of hours the friend had another bowl of cereal, and so I decided to do the same. It got messier: cereal and milk is the sort of thing I binged on as a child. I served myself a bowl and wasn’t sure if it was too much so I took some bites in the kitchen, added a bit more, took some more bites and finally carried it out. That secret eating is always, always messy – once the idea that I can’t have more is in my head (which it is once I think I need to hide how much I really want to eat), things always go downhill.

My friend went back to sleep for a while and later, wanted feta to put on the salad she planned to make. I volunteered to go out and buy the cheese and – you guessed it – binged. A quick and dirty binge, almost a preventative binge; the I-might-be-hungry-later binge mixed with the I-might-want-to-binge-later-but-almost-certainly-cannot binge, and leavened with the desperation of too-tight jeans, no clothing choices, too many days of bingeing, and the fear and anxiety that I will never be able to stop, that really, yes really this is the time I put all the weight back on, and in about two weeks flat. Nor did it help that I needed a trip to the hairdresser, my face was (and is) still recovering from breaking out in hives, I had a story due the next day I still hadn’t started yet, I was afraid of riding a bike in Amsterdam (which she wanted to do), and even more afraid that my jeans would split while I did so – yes, bingeing is about everything and nothing, isn’t it?

That afternoon we rode bikes, ate apple pie, and then I got stuck down the end of the bar at an impossibly trendy restaurant, feeling both incredibly fat and ugly and also trapped. I was seated next to a particularly boy-crazy friend of my friend’s who only wanted to analyze every man in the room. I spent much of the time ruing that I wasn’t working on my story but that I wasn’t having fun either, and the other bit just wishing I could go off and binge. We had cocktails and bar food and later, more junk.

And on it went. Monday I woke up late (I was and am still sleeping haphazardly) and anxious about getting my bike back to the shop and getting back in time to get to the airport. Also, yes, whether my jeans would fit, whether I’d split them on the bike, and whether I’d split them en route to Provence. I proceeded to binge my way through Schiphol, eat airplane food (which I never do, but I must say Lufthansa served this surprisingly delicious cherry cake), and binge more in Frankfurt, nearly missing my connecting flight to buy a pretzel. I arrived in sunny Marseilles wearing jeans and a big jacket to hide the fact that every time I moved my tummy was poking out. (I actually managed not to freak out that my luggage didn’t arrive – almost the perfect excuse to sit around in pajamas for a day. Wheee!)

“Are you cold?” said E., looking concerned. I almost always am, so it was a fair question.

“No,” I said. “I’ve just eaten so much I need to hide.”
I didn’t want to lie, but I hated telling the truth. The past bunch of times I’ve been with E. have all happened to be when I am post-binge fragile. And she is so considerate I want to hug her and beg to stay here for days, and at the same time so blissfully unaware of all the mental ways I contort myself around food that I want to protect her from it. I don’t want her to know, because I love that these things never ever occur to her. And at the same time the fact that these things never occur to her makes me feel a little crazy.

An example: E. cleaned out the refrigerator before I arrived. Even before she knew I’d been bingeing, she wanted me to open it and only see lovely, healthy things to eat: peaches and nectarines (white and yellow), figs, heirloom tomatoes, yogurt, fish, cheese. But one of the first times I opened the refrigerator what leaped out at me was a half-used jar of Bonne Maman peach jam. It’s her mother-in-law’s, she later told me; E. herself doesn’t think it’s great and started rhapsodizing about some homemade peach jam she wants to open. But to me it was a binge food: If there is nothing else to binge on I have been known to binge on, yes, jam – good or bad. Eating jam for me is like when I start picking at the sugar cubes in a restaurant: It means there will be a binge, and it is going to get ugly.

* * *
I last binged Monday afternoon. It’s now late afternoon Friday. I don’t know how or why, but I just got up on Tuesday and put one foot in front of the other. I told E. on Monday night not to let me go to the shops on my own, and I knew just by saying it aloud that I wouldn’t even try. On Tuesday I worked out for the first time since Thursday: a half hour run in the hills that was so unbelievably difficult because I just felt so heavy; my stomach so hugely distended. Wednesday was a little bit easier: I managed 45 minutes. I was pressed for time yesterday and just did 40. I’m managing not to give myself a hard time for the fact that I’m not doing my usual 60, even though my instinct would be that I must must must because of all the bingeing and the fact that I’m not controlling my food the way I normally would.

I’ve had buffalo mozzarella and heirloom tomatoes and tuna steak and couscous and green beans and coconut yogurt and peaches and nectarines and figs and strawberries and apricots and a bit of bread. I’ve also had all manner of French cheese and dark chocolate and some seriously delicious Turron ice cream. Occasionally I panic about the portions and whether I’ve eaten too much and the amount of oil and how much more this probably is than what I usually eat. Sometimes I panic slightly because I think I’m hungry and didn’t I eat more than enough for X meal? And then I have a peach or a nectarine and a square of dark chocolate and go back to my work, and my friend, and my life.