learning how to write again

CONTENT WARNING: The following includes descriptions of disordered eating. 

I gazed at the computer, the daunting space glaring back. Start, I told myself. Just type something. Anything. 

There was no agenda, no right or wrong, no boundaries. But the words wouldn’t come. They hadn’t come since I graduated from college five years earlier, so what would suddenly change that? The longer I sat, the more my fingers shook without moving. My whole face seared hotter, and the screen spun as my eyes peered deeper into its blank vortex. 

You can’t do it, a new voice blasted. You can’t even work up the courage to put something on the page. Pathetic. 

Maybe this voice was right. Maybe I was pathetic, and no longer cut out to write. Maybe maintaining  silence was for the best. The last time I tried writing, two weeks after the accident in late 2019, I was still  raw and bruised, physically and psychologically. I opened a plain notebook, and bawled. There was so much buried beneath steel, dying to pierce through and fill those pages. And yet…

I refused to acknowledge their existence. In 2020, recovering and riding out the pandemic at my parents’ home, with nowhere to go and nothing to look forward to, I poured myself into 13-hour days stacked with Zoom calls, spreadsheets and dashboards for my job in big tech. The moment the clock ticked 5pm, my mom uncorked a bottle of McCrostie, egging me to get off the screen. I needed a treat, she told me, some source of joy as a 23-year-old with four missing teeth and a broken nose and jaw. If we couldn’t see friends, or have a sense of normalcy, at least we could melt into fat glasses of chardonnay over gin rummy hands and dinner prep.

At first, my mom was the one watching the clock, counting down until we could rid ourselves of the same mundane day. Sometimes she caved and opened  the bottle a half hour early, claiming we’d been so good and waited long enough. But by June, I was the one with an empty glass after a half hour. I was the one heading back to the fridge before we’d even finished making dinner, normalizing my speed by asking my mom if she was ready for another glass. Some nights, I’d leave my plate untouched. Others, I’d wipe it clean, and excuse myself to my bathroom upstairs. When I reemerged, my glass would be waiting, refilled, ready to accompany me for whatever late-night show rerun we could find.

Those glasses were good to me. They listened, quieting and numbing the work and surgeries. They also subdued my secret life, the years I had and continued to wreak havoc on my body, the yoyoing, dizzying, exhilarating ritual. Eating and eating and eating, locking myself away and dumping it all out until I was free. A reset, a clean slate. Whatever it took, as quickly as possible, until it was all gone, no traces left behind. I couldn’t be seen until  I was finally back at zero, my eyes red, cheeks puffy. If anyone suspected, they never said. At least not to me. 

Wine may have been my mom’s escape, but this was my utopia. I centered my world around this routine, these rituals,  sometimes as often as four times a day. I learned to survive, to anchor my life to protect and preserve this relationship, even when I no longer knew what true hunger, satiety, or even energy felt like….

Back in my apartment, the screen still stared back blankly. We were, for the most part, out of the pandemic. I worked for a different company now, and I was no longer in that house, or even that state. I had a full mouth of teeth, some of which weren’t even real. I knew moving and starting this new job wouldn’t change my habits or urges. I wasn’t expecting to become a different, healed person overnight, just by uprooting everything.

Over the course of a year, I slowly scaled back my ritual from four times a day, to twice a month. I still attempted to reset, but now only through exercise. In hindsight, I see progress and reason to celebrate that.  

There were still days like today, where I fell and slipped from grace. After working another long week, I intentionally made no plans that weekend to recover and adjust. When I wasn’t working, I was cleaning the apartment or looking for new furniture to follow up my move just a few months prior. I told myself I’d do nothing that weekend, truly taking much-needed time for me. That Saturday morning, fresh off yet another sleepless night powered by white wine and no dinner, I jolted out of bed, sprinted to my kitchen, and grabbed the bags of potato chips and popcorn. Bags one arm and a plate of chocolate cake in the other, I headed to the couch. I ate and ate and ate until it hurt to move, and then to breathe. I wasn’t conscious when it happened; it was as if I were possessed, floating somewhere else while my body shoveled the food down my throat. 

I was blissful, content. Then numb, my brain fogging out the wine and lack of sleep with sugar, salt and fat. My mouth went dry, begging for hydration as my stomach churned.

You’ve really done it this time. How long do you think it’ll take to fix this mess? I guess we know how you’re spending your weekend. How could you let an hour’s pleasure ruin your entire weekend? I was now destined to devote the next three days to repenting. I’d reenter the world Monday, shiny and new, without a trace of the fest.

What had I done? Why had I tortured myself yet again? Why had I exchanged my entire weekend for an hour’s pleasure? I was too sick to start the repentance phase, to hop on the bike for three hours and sweat out my sins.

Something snapped within me. Changing jobs and locations wouldn’t transform me. But I refused to sit around and let this go on any longer. I didn’t come all this way to let this beautiful world, all the opportunities New York had to offer, pass me by. I’d already done that in San Francisco, and couldn’t keep eating to replace living. I want to live a life beyond this, beyond the confines of secrecy, of hiding until I was “ready” or “deserved” to be seen, a date that never, ever came.

I needed some way to get these feelings out. But it was too early in the day, and I was too ashamed to confide in my mom or friends. Dazed with droopy eyes, I opened my laptop, created a new doc, and waited to see if something would come…

But what was there even to say? All I had was my stupid job, I thought. I got up, and lit all the candles in my living room. I could start painting my doors, redoing the tiles in the bathroom, clean my room… 

As I lit the candles, I realized it wasn’t incompetence holding me back. It was fear. Fear of what it would mean to see myself on the page. I’d gotten so used to suppressing my feelings, locking them away unless they amounted to positivity. But no one had to see these words. No one was watching. This could just be for me.

Candles now flickering, I sat back down, and reopened my laptop. I set a goal to write just one paragraph. I closed my eyes and breathed in deep and heavy, as if I were preparing to jump out of a plane. Finally, my fingers stopped shaking, and moved. They started slowly, muscles out of practice. I wrote about the fear that had been building within me to go on a ski trip with my singing group, the loss of control I’d feel being so far away from home, unable to control what I ate or flee if needed. It was also the coldest weekend of the entire year, with wind chills plummeting the temperature to -44℉. I wrote about a previous ski trip I’d taken with my brother and his friends. That was so disastrous I vowed to never go on a group vacation again. I wrote out my binge from that morning, expressing my disgust and guilt over the abuse I’d inflicted, and angst at punishment now awaiting. I wrote about the wine, about waking up in the middle of the night, and not falling back asleep until 5am….

I glanced at the clock. A full hour had breezed by. One blank page had become five full ones. I gasped for air, as if I’d been dragged underwater the entire time, suddenly regaining access to oxygen. I now recognized how high my shoulders had been raised before I wrote. They were now lowered and released.

I scrolled up and down the pages, incredulous at what had unfolded. Who knew whether they were actual quality? Who cared? I didn’t know where this would go, or if I’d sustain it. All I knew was I’d never forget this rush, the light and clarity seeping through my entire body. It was as if every muscle had been restricted, tightened since I’d moved to New York, and probably long before that. Now, they were free. Though limp and sore, they were free.

I closed my laptop, walked to the fridge, took out the half-empty bottles of wine I’d bought the night before, and poured them down the drain.