It's Like I Can't Think Without You Interrupting Me

It's the middle of a heat wave. I'm hot, so I can only imagine what others must feel. (I never get hot.) I do have air conditioning in my apartment, but I think my A/C unit is in desperate need of a freon charge; it's not doing much, if anything, to quell the effects of the scorching heat. My apartment unit is significantly hotter than the hallway or any other building I've been in. I've taken to going on long drives, air and radio blasting, to nowhere in particular just to get some relief, particularly in the late afternoon when the sun is at its most sweltering angle against my windows. Every time I pull back up to my building, I halfway expect to see my second-floor flat having melted away.

Even so, I almost enjoy this entire experience: being in a city heat wave and not having a competent air conditioner. Because it's a normal college experience. It's the kind of thing that anyone, panicked or not, eating-disordered or healthy, might go through. And it calms me to think that for once, I'm being plagued by something that would bother anyone.

Another "normal" thing I did this weekend that I really enjoyed (though perhaps the enjoyment of it wasn't so normal): spent the majority of it cramming for a physiology exam. I sat in my room, in one of the campus libraries, in the laundromat, and studied, studied, studied. It was glorious. I synthesized all my notes, drew diagrams, read and reviewed, organized, and really felt all productive and shit. It gave me something to do all weekend, rather than actively sit and brood about my fat ass (don't get me wrong, I did that too -- but it was an unrelenting underscore, not an unrelenting central monologue) all weekend long.

I've been talking to my therapist about the food panic attacks. How the second I even begin to think about eating normally or ordering that frozen yogurt, my throat closes up, my hands and legs begin to shake, my heart pounds, and I get a tight pressure high in my stomach/low in my sternum. Since I've got the lorazepam on hand, and it's near bedtime anyway, I'll see if I can't walk you through the psychosis of it all:

No no no fuck no I'm gonna binge I'm gonna start eating and never stop and I'll gain so much weight I'll be so fat NO what is normal eating? How will I know what normal eating is? Normal eating doesn't exist for me it's either anorexia or be fat and I can't be fat I just can't be fat, eating food outside of the regimented calories and quotas and grocery lists my eating disorder has set out for me is so chaotic and bad and wrong. It feels so wrong. It feels like I've done something wrong, shameful, I shouldn't be eating this much food this is not normal and I'm going to gain so much weight and it's never going to stop. FUCK I want COMFORT I want GRAPES and LETTUCE and I want rituals and regimentation and numbers and measuring cups and counting and breathing and I can breathe... now... thinking about that... thinking about being empty again, the numbers on the scale going down, bringing me back to a place of normalcy -- what I consider normalcy, what everyone else knows is emaciation -- but I don't care, because that's what feels normal and right inside my body, inside my brain... yay for not eating. This feels so much better.

"You're abusing yourself," my therapist said.

"No," I said. "The real abuse is the alternative. If I really wanted to see myself suffer, if I really wanted to inflict pain and terror, I would eat a normal day's worth of food. Starving is comfort. Starving is soothing." It's not that I didn't get what she was saying, but it was important she know that I wasn't trying to hurt myself here, not really. I wasn't aiming to suffer or die. I was aiming to find a solution.

"Will you do a medication eval?" she asked me, after I'd described the panic attacks.

"Sure," I said. Really, at this point, what do I have to lose? I stand by what I said earlier; that if there was a pill to cure anorexia, fuck, I would so take it. And I'd fucking go and order a fucking medium frozen yogurt, maybe even a large if I was really hungry, and you know what? I'd put fucking mini chocolate chips on it.

Okay, now I have to stop. Getting symptomatic again. Deep breaths, AJ. I'm not there, I haven't done that, it was all conjecture... I'm okay. Just calm down.

I want B. FUCK. We talked the other day. Not about anything important. He'd just gotten his hair cut and he sent me a picture. I love his hair short, because then I can see his absolutely beautiful face. He has the most piercing steel blue-grey eyes and these amazing black ringlets that sometimes (like recently) he lets get a bit too long and then you can't tell how gorgeous he is; you can only tell that he has gorgeous hair. And really, pretty much anyone can have gorgeous hair. B. actually is so divinely gorgeous.

Anyway, today wasn't that bad of a day. I was pretty tired in the morning but I got over it, I had a really good run of my scene in acting class, I spent the evening with a room full of poli-sci dorks watching the gubernatorial debate on TV, and by the time I got home the sun had set and it was considerably cooler. Also, I just got news that my movement class is cancelled tomorrow morning, so I get to sleep in. Don't know if my body will let me or not, but it's calming to know that I at least have the option. Huzzah and all that.