Fossilized Fear & Prehistoric Luggage

Like a toddler who's just learned to walk, I am terrifyingly easy to knock off balance.

I was feeling like I was finding my footing in New York. Last week I went to a film preview, met an old colleague for a drink, attended a journalism school seminar on productivity, went to my French class, and worked an awful, awful lot. I landed a couple of new assignments. I got some good news.

I went to the gym. I did not binge.

I felt this nagging sense that there would be some payment coming for my sudden, well, lightness of being (if not body).

And when you look for something, it seems, you find it.

Midafternoon Friday I found out that a piece I wrote for The New York Times – and that I'd been looking forward to seeing published – was being held for space, and may not run as prominently as originally scheduled (if and when it runs at all). Against my better judgement I had told a few people it was running, and so relaying the disappointing news did not help.

I was exhausted, thanks to a lot of work and deadline – and having gotten up at 5 am to join a bunch of Wall Street guys in Central Park for something I was hoping would be a story. And not just any story, but a story for a publication I've always dreamed of writing for. I don't think it's a story – and by the way, I felt like the wimpy fat girl in gym class doing a workout with these guys (and they were all guys) this morning. I hate running down steps in the near-dark when they're slick with rain!

The physical tiredness combined with my general mental fatigue probably is partly to blame for my lapse into checking up on the Married Guy online. And then Googling various people, which basically is code for spending a couple of hours comparing my career and life to theirs and finding myself lacking.

And so I slouched further towards depression.

Suddenly all I could think about was how dark it already was in New York, how much work I had to do this weekend – and what I could have for dinner that would seem like a treat.

I recognized myself falling, and yet I felt powerless to do anything about it. I could not think of a single thing that would make me feel better, and that made me feel worse. I reminded myself that at least I wasn't bingeing; that everything really would be worse if I had to struggle through disgust and despair on top of it.

I tried to read a magazine, but the noise from the bar downstairs was so loud it felt like my bed was in the middle of a party I hadn't been invited to. Somewhere north of 1 am I remembered some earplugs I'd taken from the spin studio and dug them out of my bag. Finally, I fell asleep.

***

The weekend did not get easier.

On Saturday I saw friends visiting from London. When I left them in the early evening, I headed home feeling disconnected – a stray molecule who doesn't really belong in London anymore, but doesn't belong in New York either.

I walked home without music – I didn't have the heart even for that. The sounds of Saturday night were all around me, and all I could think about was getting a huge slice of cake from Magnolia Bakery, where we'd been earlier (I hadn't had any) and chasing it with all manner of cheap pre-packaged pastry from the bodega.

I had to work cake but I didn't know how I would manage it. Cake. Cake. I reminded myself, as I have eleventeen billion times cake cake, that I will have to get better about saying no to work, and that the price of cake finding balance may be cake less money. Cake. Cake. Cake. Cake.

F**k it all, I thought. De facto, life is supposed to be better when I'm not bingeing, and this just sucks. I might as well just eat what I want. Caaaaake.

But what would that accomplish? I asked myself. You can go and have a piece of cake, but in this state you're not even going to enjoy it and chances are you won't be able to stop.

I was unconvinced.

Then I did something I have never ever in my life had the willingness to do. When I want to binge all I want to do is binge, and I don't want to be distracted from it. But Saturday night I picked up the phone and called a friend. And then another. And another. After leaving messages – of the non-hysterical variety -- for seven friends I'd nonetheless worked myself up into a state that bordered on tearful.

What the hell is the point of this? I thought. I'm supposed to feel better and not worse.

And then I realized the binge spell was broken.

And then someone called me back. I told her I'd started feeling like I didn't belong in London anymore and feared that the option to go back was vanishing; a shimmering road that is only a mirage.

"You don't have to figure it out right now," she said. "Wherever you are right now is still better than where you were two months ago."

***

I worked all day Sunday without stopping. It sucked. It did no favors for my mood but I had four stories due today and therefore no choice.

I woke up today feeling grumpy and resentful and hungry the minute I finished my breakfast. I did not want to write another word. I did not want to do an interview I had scheduled. I did not want to fetch my tax return from FedEx and then send it off. I did not want to answer questions about stories I'd already filed. I did not want to exercise.

But slowly I started to tick things off my list. I started to feel better. And then I ran into a spin instructor acquaintance who invited me to a class he was teaching in a half hour. I'm hungry, I thought. I'm too busy. I don't wanna. But considering it was going to be that or no workout – I couldn't imagine motivating myself to do anything – I decided to do it.

I spent two-thirds of the workout resenting every minute of it. And then suddenly it was over, and I felt better. I felt good.

Forty-eight days without a binge.