The Unkindest Cut

Here's the truth: Haircuts are painful.

I don't enjoy staring at myself in the mirror, but for me what's tougher to handle is the expectation that seems to come with them. Where am I taking my just-stepped-out-of-a-salon self? Every single person who comes in contact with you at the salon will ask you some variation of that question.

And much as I'd like to take advantage of my beautifully blowdried hair, sometimes I don't have anywhere great to go. And other times I planned to but then plans change. And trying to swap appointments to suit, say, dates is impractical – partly because they're so rare, and partly because that level of fuss makes the letdown even worse. Never mind so I shaved my legs for this – I think: I won the appointment lottery (sometimes how it feels in NYC) for this?

The last time I got a haircut I ended up bingeing. I felt so desperate to do something with my shiny, swingy locks – and so lame not to have anything fabulous – that I went to a random party I'd been vaguely invited to full of people where I couldn't find anyone to speak with. (I suppose I might have tried harder to start a conversation – I think I was already set on bingeing at that point.) No one looked at me or acknowledged me, and I stuffed down cheese and sushi and then ate my way home.

Tonight I met a friend for a low-key evening. The people next to us in the restaurant were clearly on a date, and the friend always manages to meet men (and had, the week before, met one at that very restaurant). I didn't wish I'd stayed home, but there were definite flickers of what-should-I-go-gorge-myself-on-when-I-get-out-of-here?

Answer: Nothing.

Day 20.  

Of Chekhov and Cheese

Sonya and the doctor had a late night snack of cheese in the production of Uncle Vanya I saw tonight. I couldn't even really see the cheese but I couldn't stop thinking about it. I am the world's most suggestible human being.

The production was fantastic, but still my mind drifted during the show, as – embarrassingly – it often does at the theatre. Like poking a bruised area to see if it still hurts, I am constantly scanning to see if I'm hungry. (Tonight, I wasn't.) That's how it always was for me at the theater, as it was in most of my life: Feeling like I'm starving, so passing time until the next meal – or so stuffed and yet passing time until the next binge opportunity (or until I feel less full.)

I listened to Vanya bemoan that he was 47 and thought: Fuck, that's just 10 years away. And then I felt a crushing sadness for all the years and things and people I lost to bingeing. Was I able to concentrate in so much as a single class in college? My cousin is heading to my alma mater for law school, and as we talked about it last week I had memories of bingeing my way down to the Commons (in particular at one old bakery I don't think exists anymore) en route to the newspaper offices (where we'd order late-night pizza or calzones), gorging at the dining halls, and buying pints of Ben & Jerry's chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream at the Delhi deli, our nickname for the (wait for it) Indian-run deli on the corner.

I wrapped my arms around myself and experimentally squeezed my arm muscles with my hands – I took a class today that involved pushups, ok? Then it occurred to me that for what may be the very first time in my life, I am not waiting. Not waiting for the next opportunity to sneak off and binge, not waiting to be thinner, not (at least, not always) waiting for the next meal. It suddenly made life seem a lot simpler – no endless plotting required. It also made life seem wide open and full of possibility. Maybe someday I will have cheese in front of me and be able to linger in front of it without wondering how much more I can have – and maybe, just maybe, my life will be much bigger than all of that.

Day 19. 

Change of a Dress, the Sequel

Who can I petition to complain that more than two weeks of not bingeing does not erase completely the effects of nearly two weeks of bingeing?

Of course I know this, but today I got to confront proof of it in my bathroom mirror.

Tired of slobbing around in the same maxidress, I put on a dress I bought in about 45 seconds flat in a Next in Oxford on the first day of my trip to England. (My luggage had not arrived, and I was looking for something supercheap and could not – having already binged off and on for a little over three days – face trying anything on, or at least, anything that might suggest what size I really was.)

It's not the kind of dress I normally would buy – a scoop neck, cap sleeves, weird elastic waist (but not, in my humble opinion, of the frumptastic variety). I hated buying it; hated that the first thing I've bought in ages is not anything I really wanted; hated that I would own anything that would remind me, as if I needed any reminding, of bingeing. And most of all, I hated knowing when I bought it that I would not want to go shopping in London, something I usually love. I had not yet binged on the day that I bought the dress, at about 5 pm, but I later did.

When I put on the dress this afternoon, as I was getting ready to meet a friend for dinner, first I focused on my stomach.

In my crazy head, it is a scarily short leap from "ugh, look at my stomach" and "I don't think my waist is ever going to come back"  to "I'm going to be alone for the rest of my life" – the last one being a feeling my body converts directly to "I'm hungry; let's binge."

But I took a deep breath. A friend had texted me this morning that she binged last night and was feeling tortured. "So tired of starting over," she wrote. I know the feeling, and at the moment, I feel lucky that the mere idea of having to is acting as a pretty strong deterrent to destructive eating. 

At the Greek restaurant I ordered something I'd never usually allow myself to order – something I wanted (the souvlaki platter), instead of my usual dish that I know both fills me up and doesn't make me want to binge. I spent part of the meal arguing with myself about leaving some over, because it was pork and oil and feta and a yogurty dressing and rice and more oil in the rice.

As I walked home I had a brief moment of panic. What if I'm hungry later, even after I ate all that? What if this stomach never goes away? What if I'm alone alone alone alone alone...

Deep breath.

Day eighteen. 

Not Flaking on the Flakes

"Want anything from London?" I e-mailed my New York Times editor, not really expecting her to take me up on the offer. As you'd expect, our correspondence tends to be businesslike, although – in a recent not-directly-article-related exchange we had, which also happens to be the only such exchange we've ever had -- she had revealed she had once lived in England and loved it.

"I'd love a Flake," she wrote. "And maybe when you come back we can get a coffee for the exchange since we've never actually met."

Invitation to come in and meet a New York Times editor? Yes, please.

That I might have to make an appearance at the New York Times – no less, the Styles section of the Times (home of the glossiest-looking freelancers) – as a writer to whom they pay actual money to write about fitness was in the back of my head almost every time I binged in London. Maybe it was even there every time; all the time.

At some point during the trip I began to wonder if I could even handle getting a couple of Flakes from one continent to another. Never mind if I ate them – what if they kicked off a binge I couldn't stop? (You know, because my history of stopping binges once they've started is so fantastic.) I debated getting someone to mail me a couple, but doubted they'd survive customs – or the NYC heat. If things got desperate, I had once spied some Flakes (familiar yellow wrapper and purple text, though the text happened to be in Urdu) at a newsagent on Greenwich Avenue and 10th Street. For me, it's a "clean" newsagent – meaning one where I have never allowed myself to buy binge food, because it is one I go to almost every day – which means I try not to contemplate the food offerings. So I hadn't looked to see if they'd had any Flakes recently.

As I feared I might, I debated eating the Flakes on the plane ride home, sometime probably around the time I debated buying in-flight duty free chocolate and eating it all. But I didn't. I got home on July 4 and put the Flakes in my refrigerator, where they've sat ever since.

I had a brief debate with myself about how much weight I could lose – should try to lose – before revealing I was back, and therefore possibly having to make an appearance. But for maybe the first time ever, I discarded the idea of doing anything drastic, even extra exercise. Your focus is just not to binge, I told myself.

After nearly two weeks of not bingeing, I felt sufficiently emboldened to say I was back and hadn't flaked on the Flakes (yes, that's what I wrote). She said she was swamped for the next couple of weeks, but did I want to come in on Monday the 30th? The restricter in me, the extreme dieter, immediately was delighted at the thought of extra days with which to torture myself with punishing eating plans and exercise regimens. Except, whoa, hang on, I don't do that anymore, I thought. I have tried for 37 years to control my weight that way and it's stopped working. My job is not to binge.

And while I confess that sometimes I hope and wish I lose weight just by not bingeing, mostly I really do want just want to, well, not binge. Since I got back from England, I have not done crazy workouts. Most are 45 minutes; some aren't even that long. I eat an extra snack – one at night – if I need it, something I never ever would have done before. Yes, I worry sometimes that "if I need it" will turn into something I expect every night, but then I return to the day I am in. Do I need it tonight? If I do, I have it.

On Friday my editor e-mailed asking if I would like to change our meeting to a time when we could also meet with her boss. It didn't seem like an invitation I could turn down.

Because of his vacation schedule and then hers, the meeting is now not until late August. For a brief moment, I was too busy being excited by the prospect of possibly being thinner by then even to care about the delay. Immediately that was replaced with: Your job is not to binge. Today. Just today. I may actually even believe that.

Day 17.

All Right in the End

The food called to me today. Not particularly loudly, but it was there, more audible than it has been in a couple of weeks.

The other day I looked wistfully at some black and white cookies when I was in the Guy & Gallard, availing myself of their wifi while drinking my diet Dr. Browns cream soda (best-ever diet soda in the world, though Barq's diet vanilla root beer, which I've found only on the soda machine of the future). But today there was some full-on longing: As I walked home from yoga, I wanted everything I smelled (pizza, linguine with clam sauce, Belgian waffles) or saw (cannoli, cake at Amy's Bread, even a stupid Larabar coconut cream pie bar.)

I know it's because I'm a bit low and feeling sorry for myself. This week I've made a couple of decisions I know are the right ones for me, but still I resent that I've had to make them. (Please note I am fully aware both are very first-world problems to have.)

Tonight I opted not to take up an invitation to go on an ethnic food excursion I was told is usually a lot of writers boozing it up in a faraway corner of a distant borough that is nearly impossible to get home from on one's own (and this is coming from a travel writer and longtime New Yorker who has been going to these for years.) I would only know one person – and she would know everyone else well. Given the unpredictable food and copious alcohol – and let's note my tendency to binge with these two factors – and the possibility of being trapped (also a binge trigger) I opted out. At first glance, it seems a very isolating thing to do.* But if I am bingeing, I'm not really there, either. I'm in my head, plotting how much and can I get more and how-unfair that-none-of these-desserts-are-really-what-I-want-but-I'm-eating-them-all-anyway and actually, if I'm going to eat all this could I get home before the Magnolia Bakery closes and oh-f—k-I-can't-so-what-can-I-have-instead. Blah blah blah.

Nor could I face the possibility of waking up tomorrow post-binge and having to spend another weekend detoxing from it and feeling the level of shame I'd feel from a public binge. So I stayed home, went to yoga (that's this week's obligation to it checked off), and cleaned my bathroom. (I wasn't kidding yesterday when I said I led a quiet life.) I also nearly had a fit – and very briefly, I'm talking split-second, contemplated a binge -- when I realized the little container of sauce was missing from my dinner.

The other decision I made was not to go on a beach holiday in August to a Greek island with a good friend from London and a friend of hers from NYC – both people I'd gone to Belize with. I'd thought I would go to London or Provence before or after the trip, but the timing doesn't seem to work, and the idea of long-haul flights plus planes-trains-automobile to get to this island to get to a beach seemed a little crazy. Especially because it is a crazy-hot summer in New York – it's not like I am in need of heat, like I was during the winter (Belize).

And speaking of Belize, I have binged like mad on every single trip I have taken this year: that one, London, even the brief sojourn to Toronto. Worrying about whether I will binge and loathing myself every day for being able to stop and freaking out about whether any of my clothes will fit at the end of the holiday is not a vacation. Nor is it a vacation to return from one more stressed and exhausted than ever (because that's what endless bingeing does), and to first have to start recovering from that. It is not a vacation when all you want is to escape yourself, and feel more trapped than ever.

I have travelled before without bingeing, and I'm hopeful that at some point soon I will again. But right now, I don't think I can. And believe me, I hate that. I think it's unfair. But as my mother used to say when my sister or I would complain that the other had gotten something better: "Life's not always fair."

I'm also thinking about a line I particularly liked from The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel, which I saw with my aunt last night: "It will be all right in the end. And if it's not all right, it's not the end."

Day 16.

 *For the record, I made this decision before I heard about the shootings in Colorado. Tonight does seem like a night to be with friends, but would I feel better or worse with people I don't really know? I guess it doesn't matter.

"How dreary – to be – Somebody"

"I have a VERY important question 4 u..." read the text message from a very old friend I had seen for the first time in about six months last night, and who is not given to hyperbole.

I received the text about a half hour later than he'd sent it. "Been in a movie, sorry. What?!" I responded.

"I'll call u when I get home. I just had a horrible xperience that I know u can help me with."

"OK, really hope you're OK."

"I'm ok, it was just upsetting on a number of levels," he wrote.

I spent the whole 45 minutes until he called panicking. I wracked my brain for what awful thing I could have done, what horrible thing he could have learned about me from some random person in New York. I couldn't think of anything bad I had said about him full stop, never mind to anyone we know in common.

When his name finally flashed up on my phone I answered nervously, waiting for the anger in his voice. There was none. The issue was serious – in an existential crisis type way, not a life-threatening one -- but it wasn't about me. He just wanted my help.

The wave of relief was so huge I had to focus particularly hard not to be so swept up in it that I couldn't help him. (I do blame at least a tiny piece of all on a kind of BN2 post-traumatic stress disorder, because I always did something wrong in his eyes, and 99 percent of the time I was unaware of it until he unleashed his fury.)

Part of the binge eating cycle is the endless drama. Everything is either too much to deal with (too full, too fat, too tired, too something) or not worth dealing with until it becomes impossible to ignore. Forget the elephant in the room – I can avert my eyes, or creep around-- the elephant has to be standing on my toes.

I don't want to say I crave drama, but it certainly seems to be a familiar way of life if you don't deal with anything until it's a crisis. Or if you sometimes say things you know you shouldn't – OK, OK, gossip or lie  – because you can't think of any other way to connect, or because you're afraid of being honest about how you really feel, or if you're so drugged out on sugar that you're not really thinking properly. I'm not proud of it, but I've done all of these.

I lead a pretty quiet life these days compared to the one I used to have. It's even quieter when you remove – as I have been trying to –all the noise in my head that comes from simply telling the truth about what I need and want.

The other day I felt a little sorry for myself, thinking just how quiet my life has been for the past couple of weeks. But today's episode was a useful reminder of how little I miss the anxiety and even terror of being found out. Dare I even admit that the idea crept into my head that sometimes it feels good to be me. Just me.

Day 15. 

Day 14

Long, hot day. And now it's 1.15 am, and I'm going to get to bed before I end up doing anything that would make me have to start the day count over!