Yet

Suddenly, I am tagging every sentence with the word "yet."

I have never started a binge on cottage cheese (yet).

Or on raisins (yet).

Or on broccoli (yet).

But I could. Because only as recently as two months ago, I had never started a binge on fruit. Or Cliff bars. Or mini Luna bars that had been sitting around my apartment for at least 8 months, including through a very hot and sticky New York summer. I had not binged more than twice in a single day.

I don't cling to "well, at least I don't do X" – because I am becoming aware that it could be a matter of time.

It could be, I recognize, but it doesn't have to be. I am still in the game.

***

One Saturday morning a couple of weeks ago I was at the gym in Toronto, happily noting that my arms had a bit more definition than I'd seen in a while. Hours later I could not stop eating.

The bingeing – multiple times a day – continued all through the three-day weekend. It was so bad I could not button my coat that Monday night. I managed to get ahold of myself for three days, then plunged headlong into another round on the Friday, which carried on all that weekend.

I mostly avoided mirrors this week. I don't need to get on a scale to know I'm heavier than I've been in several years. Let's just say I was grateful that I work for myself, and didn't have to attempt to put my jeans on last Monday morning. I can say fairly confidently that they would not have fit, because today – after six days without a binge – they are uncomfortably tight.

But they are not going to get any tighter, because, you know, I am still in the game.

***

I went to Toronto to see Friend Bearing Chocolate – and to meet the Spanish-Mexican fellow Toronto expat she's been dating for a year, and that she will almost certainly marry. I was delighted for her; I was. But he publicly calls her – my reserved, Scottish friend – "Kissy," and the two of them make my friends in France look like the ice prince and princess. Let me remind you that the friends in France pass time waiting for the light to change by kissing (and often punctuate sentences that way.)

He (the soon-to-be-fiance) talks to her in a baby voice, and sings "Please Don't Go" when she heads out. Being in the same room with the two of them is to feel like you are sitting on the edge of their bed, watching.

I did not enjoy it.

On Saturday night, we went to party thrown by a 40-year-old single woman. Which I predicted would have loads of couples, a handful of random single woman the birthday girl had met at some time-filling activity or another (book club, wine club, etc), and zero single men. And I was exactly right, down to the random single women who were about 93 percent normal and only friends because they were all about the same age and single.

It was fascinating, actually, and I was so amused with watching the interactions and trying to be a good guest by running around meeting people (and also being amused having to make the distinction that I'd lived in London, England, not London,Ontario) that I was surprised at the very end of the night when this guy walked up to me.

He was 49 years old, thrice divorced, and the father of 3. Also the head janitor at a school an hour outside Toronto. He said: "Hey, I'm single" -- those exact words -- in about the first 45 seconds. All I could muster in response was: "How's that going for you?"

Oh dear.

***

I should say it's taken me this long to write a post not so much because I am as bored as you must be with the binge, lather, rinse, repeat cycle, but because I have been working a lot. Most of it is really good -- publications I love and am proud to appear in. Some days I am so busy and, yes, happy -- and grateful that I can make a living doing what I love -- that I race around feeling like a New Yorker. Whatever that is, anyway. Which makes the bingeing all the more puzzling.

And then there are other days -- like Wednesday, when I went to a reading for an oral history of London. It made me so nostalgic for London I actually could hardly bear it. The other day I walked down Bleecker Street and there was a woman carrying a bag from the Gill Wing shop, on Upper Street, which I used to pass every day. I had to pause for a moment to think where I was. There are days when I catch sight of the
Empire State building all lit up and think: "How is it that I live here? How the heck did this happen?" (Except obviously I don't say "heck.")

I did not, for the record, binge on Wednesday. Nor did I consider it. Was that because I was working on day three without bingeing and was just desperate enough not to? I don't know. I really don't. Sometimes I know that no amount of food will fill certain holes. But other times, I know and yet truly do not care.