I Will Let You Down

Today I ate 660 calories.

A ballpark estimate, I am sure. I always overestimate. I always count the calories for the homemade cheese and tomato and lettuce quesadillas at the dining hall as Taco Bell steak ones, I always count the dollop of sour cream I half-dipped the slices in as two tablespoons of Daisy. I always round up to the nearest ten. Even when I binge, I will go through the wrappers and round up the numbers. Which is why I knew that I stayed up on Tuesday night purging 2,500 calories of college mess delicacies, that when I woke up too late for class the next morning I went on to eat 4,000 calories of chocolates and Twizzlers and Klondike bars and muffins, that it all was painfully pulled from my intestines until I was three pounds lighter and I could barely sleep from the hurt and I had to leave my writing course to puke with 27 little orange Ducolax pills.

But things were getting better. Three pounds lighter made the pain and the cramps feel good. By chance I met with an onsite clinician who specialized in eating disorders and told me I can call her anytime, who recommended me BRAT diet foods that were within my calorie constraints, who felt my swollen glands and was shocked I had never seen an ED clinician before, who told me terror stories of the heart attacks I could face. My professor was not nearly as angry with me for missing the class as I thought she would be, though I lied (only a little, I was sick, because I am always sick). A professor agreed to review my fiction manuscripts for the creative writing program. I spoke to the counselor, and I maybe even felt a bit better.

My heart churns out an unsteady rhythm, and the cramps still rupture any silence or calm.

So I felt a bit stronger, like I had a better chance at normal. And after an iced coffee and a cigarette I had a 70 calorie, no sugar added, strawberry smoothie (I counted it as 125, you never know). And I went to draw with a girl in a studio. And I still felt hungry, and I went to the dining hall.

And it terrified me. I felt like I could have a plum, or I would have to eat everything. Every single thing. Restriction and Binge warred in my brain, full out battles with cannons and thunder. And I tried so hard, and I ignored them both as best I could, and I got a quesadilla and some green tea and a plum and said that is what I'm having and that is it. And I smoked outside and loitered and had fun, and I was myself with the kids outside (however obnoxious that might be), and I went back inside and I ate my plum and I ate my quesadilla and I dipped it in sour cream and I kept it down.

I kept it down.

I was so proud. It wasn't "normal," it wasn't 1,500 calories a day, it wasn't regular. But it was neither a binge nor restriction, I stopped the cycle, for one meal I beat the voices in my head. I called my mother and she sounded so happy, and so proud, and I was so happy and so proud.

And then I stepped on the scale, and I knew it was food weight, and I knew I had neither pissed nor defecated, and I knew and I knew but still...

I gained two pounds from this morning. Two, whole, big, scary pounds.

And all the pride vanished, and all the good feelings went away, and everything was terrible at once. If this was normal, I could never be normal again. Restriction said to me "Never Again." And Bulimia told me "Maybe there is still time to puke it up."