I was hungry. It was dark. The only food I had in the house was a tub of PB2, a low calorie peanut butter powder you mix with water. Tonight, the powder would not satiate me. I walked downstairs to an empty kitchen, my five roommates asleep in their beds. It had been one of their birthdays recently. I opened the freezer. A cake. I did not get a fork. I reached inside and sank my fingers into the cold icing.
On the phone flirting with my almost-lover, I am cool, easygoing. Patient. Responsible and open to all outcomes. When we hang up, I close my eyes and replay my favorite parts of the conversation a dozen times, two dozen. Someone told me addiction is when pleasure narrows to a tiny tunnel. I squeeze down to the size of the exact moment their desire for me becomes clear. My mouth waters at the evidence of it, still novel and uncertain. My teeth grow large and sharp, piercing the inside of my bottom lip until the tang of blood floods my receptors. Then I remember myself, and I become appropriate. I go do the dishes, and the rest of life. Later, I crawl back to it. I extend and embellish. Director’s cut. I imagine it this way and that til I’m bloated and spent.
During our last year of college, my group of girl friends and I go out to a bar we like. We order a slice of chocolate cake to share. We take turns, putting our fork down as if we’re done, then gingerly picking it back up after a meaningful amount of time. Some members of the group are satisfied with just one bite. It divides us. One-bite people and the rest. It was the first time I realized I have a compulsion to enjoy something until I’m sick.
A cold January. New Year’s had passed, and I was very ill. We volleyed texts back and forth, antsy after a week of not seeing each other. I was desperate for him to come over. I checked my temperature again and again until I could say I wasn’t feverish. I lied, a little, about feeling better. I am no better than a dog. When something is almost at my mouth, I will beg, even if it’s not what I want.
One night, there was no cake in the freezer. There was a loaf of bread and a jar of jam, and I ate both in their entirety. I tried to make myself vomit but couldn’t, so I wrote in my phone, Don’t ever do this again, and I woke up at sunrise and did HIIT at the outdoor track.
It’s a painful way to live, and a symptom of a deep sickness. The discomfort of want. Some of us can’t stand it, so we will kill the thing dead.
It’s not always for pleasure. Sometimes it’s pain, or to be right (which is pain). Unfulfilled desire and loss of control cause similar psychoses, which is why I read my boyfriend’s journal one early morning in May. Some of you will condemn this right away. How to make you understand—I was going crazy not knowing. Would it help to tell you I found what I was looking for? I don’t know if it made me feel better, but it was electric. A real hero’s dose. The world melted, flipped me upside down. I stared in the mirror and promised to change my life. And it hurt. Not like a cut which is sharp and final, but like a bruise that asked to be pressed on further, which is why I read the journal several more times in the next months. This was something hard to kill.
One of my friends revels in tension. He tends to it, keeps the string taut and vibrating as long as he can. I try to be like him, but an animal takes over and I need to snap the string in half. After, I come out of my haze, blinking, like a PacMan ghost turned sentient. People who have binged know it’s not hunger, but panic.
Panic over what? A desire so big, so powerful, it casts a frightening shadow. The wave comes over the house. Where to run? Some do. To caves and monasteries. Strap themselves to the mast of restriction. I don’t know. I think I may have to become as big as the wave someday.
Another cold day. We sat on the couch and admitted it was ending. Not so much an admission as a sigh after a long held breath. Yes, there was heartache, but there was also calm. And when the urge came to prick open wounds, to dig, to feast on hurt, I withstood it. I didn’t bring up the journal, the love letter I had found to someone who was not me. I didn’t ask when you’d fall in love next. How long it would take. I didn’t splinter the floorboards prying up the uncertainty of our past. I thought, I love you. I thought, I have to achieve a miracle. I have to become good, truly, so I can help you. Whether I had you or not didn’t matter. That noise of hunger dulled in the background. I understood it, and in understanding, cared for it.
There’s all kinds of answers and advice. The one-bite people can tell you how to try to be like them. I know that love makes you big, like the pill in Alice in Wonderland. Love clears my mind. Why are you on your knees, it asks me. You can stay there, but you have to make it a prayer. I replay the fantasy and seek out my real wish. The wave is terrifying, and so am I. I am alive, and my joy is as vast as the sky.
