Shame on Me Redux

Well, first let’s get down to shiny brass tacks: I am out of control around food. I just can’t seem to stop turning to it to ease my sense of general sense of discomfort. It’s like I have an itch under my skin, starting around 5:00 pm each day for the last week, and the only way to scratch it is with food. Large quantities of food.

I haven’t binged like this in a long time.

But if I were honest and prone to peeling away self-subterfuge I would probably say that’s not true, I might even recognize a pattern. I might shake my head and admit that the bingeing is increasing, slowly over a period of months, increasing in frequency and quantity, and as long as the progression is slow, I guess I feel comfortable sighing and saying in a voice of bewilderment, “I haven’t binged like this in a long time.”

But this week, this week takes the cake. A big cake, with icing and layers and pretty piping on the sides. This week I started bingeing to the point where I wake up stuffed from the night before, hung over from the vast quantities devoured.

Yesterday I went to work and I had stomach cramps from all the food I’d eaten the night before. It’s been a long time since I binged to the point of gastro-intestinal upset. This is bad. This is getting back to old, dangerous habits.

There was a time when I would intentionally-by-accident check out and eat a pint of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia ice cream. Within two hours of a double date with Ben and Jerry, I was usually flushed and bent double, cursing myself for eating dairy when I know I have lactose intolerance. Severe lactose intolerance. Sometimes I would spend hours in the bathroom, shitting my brains out, in horrible pain, only to crawl into bed at two am so weak that my muscles shook.

But it’s been well over a year since I did anything that drastic. That self-destructive. But this week has seen me creeping towards binges of that magnitude. On Sunday night I ate a third of a cherry pie (what’s with me and cherries?), half of a container of 7 layer dip and half a bag of Tostitos to accompany said dip, and, an oyster sandwich (don’t ask). On Monday night I ate the rest of the chips and dip and another third of the pie- after I’d already eaten my dinner. And right now I want desperately to wander into the kitchen, throw the lid off of the cherry pie and eat the rest. That binge-y little kid inside me is whispering, “You have a fresh pot of coffee, what goes better with coffee than pie!” And I am seriously considering it….

But first, first, I should tell you a few things about me. About why this is so hard, about why I am willing to blow 30+ lbs lost for cherry pie and fresh coffee, but mostly for cherry pie.

I lost that 30 + lbs last August/September. Since then I have been trying in typical OCPD fashion to re-create every detail of those two months, with the (crazy) hope that if I do everything exactly as I did it then, I will restart my weight loss. But from October onwards, no matter how much I tried, how much I fiddled with my food, it didn’t work. I just stayed at my plateau. And when I tried to increase my exercise I ended up eating more because I was hungry like a mother fucker.

And now it’s July 24th. So close to August. I am secretly convinced that if I can recreate every detail from last August and September I will finally unlock the magical secret known as weight loss again and lose another 30+ lbs. Because, and this is key, it happened last August/September and those were the only two elements I have not been able to incorporate in my twelve month expedition of re-creation. (That and having two good friends at work who provided me with wonderful support, but they’ve moved on and even my OCPD brain has accepted they are not reproducible elements).

The pressure!

I can’t do it. I have tried. Every couple of weeks I step on the scale and it’s 266 at the low end, 268 at the high. (Though right now it’s hovering at 271). And then I stamp my foot and goddamnit I’m gonna do something about this. So I get a book from the library, You on a Diet, Fitness for Women. Or I revisit the South Beach Diet. Start the food diary again. Or I buy a fucking bike. Or I re-dedicate myself to the gym and eating at 10 am to keep my blood sugar low. And I try. I really fucking try to do everything right. On schedule, on time, just like last year. And no matter what I do, it gets fucked up. Because quite frankly, it is boring to eat bland salad in the winter what with the cardboard tomatoes and the flavourless cucumbers. And the cooking and the chopping and dicing and the clean up and the Tupperware back and forth to work and all the thinking and planning and doing that it takes…. It makes me exhausted and so I come home and I just say yes, yes, yes when Kevin asks if I’d rather just order pizza than make chicken breast. Again. And so I stay at 266-268, size 22.

And now August looms and the pressure is incredible. Irresistible. If only I could love cottage cheese again. And enjoy those stupid cheese sticks and stick to portion sizes and order salad, not fries. If I could do all of that and more, I could lose 30 + lbs this August/September.

But it’s not just that.

There is always something else. And this week has been tougher than most. And here’s why.

There is a new guy at work (he got the job I competed for but I don’t hold a grudge). He’s okay, a bit of a Cliff (I’ll explain one day, I’m sure), but okay. We work in public relations so he’s a writer, like I’m a writer. And so he googled me using my real name to see some of my articles.

I haven’t googled myself in a while because I haven’t published anything in a long while. And so I didn’t know that the first thing to pop up isn’t an article written by me, it’s an article about me.

So on his third day, new guy pops into my cubicle and says, “I need to talk to you.”

I’m all, “Okay, shoot!”

He sits down in the chair for guests (I mention this only because it’s a major status symbol where I work to have a cubicle big enough to have guests, and a chair designated for those guests is an even bigger status symbol. And, because I am uncomfortable talking about what happens next and I’m stalling…) New guy leans in and whispers, “I googled you to find some articles you'd written.”

Right away I put on my happy, breezy face and wonder what monstrosity of mine he could be referring to. All of the articles on the net by me, (last time I’d checked) had been amongst my earliest. “Oh God,” I said, “I can only imagine what kind of crap is up there. It’s always the shittiest stuff I wrote that lingers the longest.”

New guy says, “Well I just want you to know, I may say some things sometimes and I’m just kidding around. I would never mean anything by it. I’m not a violent person. But I could take something too far, in a joke. Without knowing… If I ever say anything that offends you, let me know. I don't want you to feel scared at all.” He looks serious and sad. He’s trying to convey that he’s a caring person. And my stomach drops.

What the fuck did he read about me? What’s on there?

I wave my hand dismissively, “I don’t know which article you mean…. But I worked with eating disorders for years and in that world, in the non-profit world, your life is an open book. Nothing to be ashamed of. So….” I smile. But inside, inside I am fretting, I am anxious. I am very upset. What article is he talking about and why did he feel the need to come and tell me he read something private, personal about me, and wants to reassure me? I add, “You get used to sharing pieces of your own life in that world because it makes it easier for students, clients—the people you’re working to help-- to relate to you. So they know that you know. So I’m used to it.”

Except, I’m not used to it at my corporate job. And I was creeped out.

New guy left my cube and I resisted the urge to google myself for about 20 seconds. When I did, I found the article he was talking about. It was the first to appear.

It was about a fundraising event I put together a couple of years ago for a women’s assault centre. In the article I talk about the sexual and physical abuse I lived through as a kid (which motivated me to get involved in women’s health issues) and incidentally the article also touched on my relationship with my mother (who did nothing when I told her about the abuse).

It was written a couple of years ago. So I didn’t remember much. I talked a lot back then. To a lot of people. I was in the healing phase where you tell your story, almost compulsively, you put it out there so you don’t have to own it so much anymore, so it’s not a secret, your dark secret.

I tried to read the article, but I felt queasy. I didn’t make it very far. In the second paragraph there’s a quote from me. “They basically used me as a human punching bag.” And I had to stop. I didn’t want to read and remember the rest of the article. The article he read. As he sat across from me. I didn’t want to read the rest of the article he was so horrified by/disgusted about/uncomfortable with that he felt the need to come into my cubicle and tell me he wasn’t a threat to my safety or wellbeing. I didn’t want to know what he knew. I had put that article, that time, behind me. Especially in this new, corporate world where efficiency and professionalism (or the appearance of it at least) are treasured above all else. Everything else. Where you have no past, not even a present, beyond the work you put out. You are a machine, not a person. Certainly not a person who was molested as a little girl, not once, but twice and who’s mother was so cowed by life, by the sheer weight of being a mother, that she did nothing, could do nothing to help you and sometimes even socialized with one of your abusers, her brother. I felt so tawdry and exposed. And so I have been eating, eating and eating all this week. Like I’m trying to rebuild a layer of the wall I had dismantled last August/September. To build up my reserves and shore up the fortification of me. To blot out that moment when I googled myself and saw what he saw and realized that the new guy knew my deepest, most personal details. And I had put it out there. And it wasn’t fair. I put it out there when I needed it out there, a long time ago, for people who would understand. And it’s still floating in the ether. Worse, it’s still floating around in my veins. Always there, inducing shame- injecting shame into everything. Even though I had years of counselling. Years of journaling. Years of talking about it, working with other women who have lived through it, raising funds so other women could access the help I got- I spent years in it- the shame is still here, like a scarlett letter. My shameful secret. And that shame eats away at me in a million different ways, at a million different times, but the source of the shame is always the same.

Me. The shame is on me.