Hot Ride

“God’s speedo.”

~Sol Butcher

8:40 am

Breakfast went well this morning. Ate my two bowls of Rice Krispies, then had an additional bowl of granola with Olympic mix, and a cup of tea.

Now I am feeling really good - pleasantly full, but not too full like I would have been, had I allowed myself to go back for that second bowl of granola, like Ed wanted me to.

So last night, I was waiting in my hospital bed for M to come visit, tapping away on my iMac. I sensed a movement and looked up, in time to see the most gorgeous guy I have ever seen waltz into the dorm room.

Holy shit. Hellooooooooo.

He was wearing a black leather motorcycle jacket, with white flashy things over each breast, and carrying a helmet. His blue eyes met mine from beneath his choppy fringe, and they crinkled with recognition as he smiled.

It was M!

Whoa, that’s my boyfriend!!!! I thought happily, then quickly reigned it in. Will be my boyfriend again, when I am better, I amended hastily.

Whatever. Fuck, he looked good!

“Hi,” he grinned awkwardly.

“Hi,” I grinned back, shyly.

I took his jacket and helmet and put them on my hospital bed.

“Do you wanna stay in here?” I asked, gesturing to my bed. “Or would you prefer to go and sit in the hall?”

M looked around the room. Every other anorexic was in her bed.

“Let’s go out there,” he suggested.

He held my hand as we walked down the corridor and sat in the CRAPTACULAR red chairs that are located on the East side of the elevators, floor 3, Unit 32. (Now you know where you don’t want to sit. I nearly cracked a fucking rib - though this may have something to do with the fact that I was crushing the armrests, trying to get closer to M).

We sat for a few minutes and chatted about his work, his wikked new haircut, and when Baby was coming back from Ontario.

We sat there silently for a few minutes, holding hands, and with my head rested on his shoulder.

“Do you still like me, Kage?” he asked softly, breaking the silence.

“Oh, fuck yes,” I said, and tried to get even closer to him (which was physically impossible).

He paused for a moment.

“Do you think you’ll ever like you?”

I caught my breath. Good question.

Well? I asked myself.

I thought about the past three weeks, from my drug binge to my half-assed suicide attempt, from detox to starvation to hospitalization, and then a week of working towards getting better. Until this past week, the only thing I could ever be sure would keep me going was my incessant rage. I couldn't imagine a life without all that hate fueling me; what else could I possibly live off of?

But things were different, now. I'd had a whole week where I fought against the rage, and tried to find something else, and I did - even if it's just fleeting glimpses of it right now, I know it's there. I've felt it. And I know that I can get it, if I really want it.

If there is only one thing that I have really been able to see this week, it’s that all this hatred I have been feeling, for all these years, that I took out on myself; it’s not actually meant for me, and it’s not actually mine. It’s Michael’s, it’s Ed's, it’s all the ways I harm myself, but it's not mine. I don't need it. What I do need is to give it all back, get it out of my head and my heart so I will have room in my soul for the hope, faith and courage it takes to get better.

I simply cannot have both. I never could.

Yes, I am hurt. Yes, I am angry. But more importantly, I am sick, and I have been for a long time.

And I don’t hate myself for that anymore.

“I think I will actually like me, one day,” I said to M, and we both smiled sadly. All the things I’ve done to harm myself were hanging unspoken in the air between us, challenging my words. “I mean, look at me. I’ve been eating for seven days, and I’m still alive, and I’m still here. I could have walked out the door at any time, but I haven’t. I think that means there’s still a chance between me and me.”

He nodded, and I dropped my head back onto his shoulder.

When I couldn’t take the chairs for a moment longer, we decided to go back to the hospital room, and watch another episode of Flight of the Conchords, cuddled in bed.

7:15 pm

Phew! Busy day today, this is the first chance I have had to sit down and write since this morning.

Morning Snack was a success, didn’t eat an Extra. Lunch was...um...I can’t actually remember now. That’s not right, what did I have?

Fuck, I can’t remember now. I don’t even remember if I had an extra. I don’t think I did, but...fuck. Oh, well. Afternoon Snack went well, no Extra.

Dinner did not go so great.

First of all, I was already really bloated when I went in for dinner, and was late cuz I’d had to see Dr. Ram-Bam-Thank-you-Ma'am (I'll tell you about that in a minute). Then we had Group right after, so I didn’t get to go to the bathroom before, or for an hour after. So I was even more painfully bloated following dinner.

Secondly, FuBu and I both like to have granola for our Extras, at pretty much every meal. She got to the granola first tonight, and finished the box, and that was it - there was no more.

Fuck! I thought. What will I eat? What am I going to do? Fuck fuck fuck!

Only now, with the luxury of hindsight, can I see that maybe Grace was right about me needing to eat different foods. I scoffed at the time, thinking, It’s not that I’m scared to eat other foods, I just don’t want to cuz I am comfortable with this and that. But maybe she was right, cuz I almost sent myself into apoplexy worrying about it.

FuBu must have heard the sharp note in my voice when I asked if there was any more granola, cuz she put the half full styrofoam cup down on the counter and said, “You take it.”

“No, I’m sorry,” I said, frustrated. “You eat it.”

“No,” she said, and grabbed a granola bar out of the cupboard. She swung it up in the air then banged it loudly on the counter, again and again, cracking it hard. I wondered briefly if she was pretending it was me.

Granola bar duly beaten back to just granola, FuBu dumped it into a cup and poured soy milk over it.

Good idea! thought I, and I reached in the cupboard and grabbed a granola bar, too. The styrofoam cup she had left for me was not even half full, so I added the granola bar, plus several scoops of Olympic mix, then sat down with my feast and a cup of tea.

It wasn’t quite the same as having granola, but it was still really good. But when I was done, I didn’t feel full yet - prolly cuz my tea was sitting on the table, untouched. I’m sure if I had just stopped there and started on my tea, I would have been fine. But because it was Dinner, and I had to wait for three and a half hours to eat again, I wanted to make sure I was good and full.

So I poured some more soy milk into my styrofoam cup, and threw in one Oreo (the last one, or I would have had more) and two digestive cookies.

I got to finish my tea during check in, and by the time we went for a walk around the hospital downstairs, I was so bloated that I was doubled over in pain.

You shouldn’t have eaten the cookies, Fatty! sang Ed.

It was just a couple of fucking cookies, I thought, then gasped as the pressure in my bowels seemed to expand even more.

Look at how fat you are. Look what you’ve done, he said with disgust. You can't even suck in your belly.

I’m not fat, I am bloated, I fought back weakly.

Just purge, Ed suggested. You can't be expected to keep that food in your body when you are in so much pain, can you? It's okay this time, you're doing it for medical reasons.

It really did hurt. Maybe I should just get it out - especially since my body kept pushing my dinner back up my windpipe anyway, trying to jettison some of the cargo and make a bit of room for all the food that it just did not have the capacity to hold yet.

God, I want to purge so badly, and just make the pain go away, I thought. But I had to keep walking miserably behind the other girls, as we wandered the hospital on our walk.

When we got back to Unit 32, I lay on my bed and held my painfully swollen belly in my hands.

Purge! Ed screamed. It hurts so bad, I can’t fucking handle this shit!

Nooooo, I groaned, rocking gently back and forth on my hospital bed. Wanna...stick it...owwwwwww. T. Out. Wanna stick it out.

God, it hurt so badly, and the sheer panic that accompanied it was overwhelming. I wanna go home! Ed raged incessantly in my head. I would never make you suffer like this. It would have been out an hour ago!

Owwwwwwwww...shut Up...Dick Nuts...

I did it, though! I stuck it out!

Eventually it got a little bit easier, a little bit less painful, as the food settled and stopped coming back up my throat, and the bloating slowly but surely eased. And while I am still quite bloated, I am also really fucking proud of myself for sticking to my resolve. Score one for me!

That was definitely the closest I have come to purging since I have been here, though.

Touche, Ed, you little whore. You are a formidable opponent. But your luck just ran home. It's time to greet your maker. (Big tough words courtesy of Sol Butcher, in Huntin' the Legend).

In other news, we had a really good Group this afternoon, before Mindful Movement. It was just about checking in, but we all talked so much that we used up the whole hour doing check in.

A couple of interesting things happened. First, Day Program brought up something that I said last week, that she said has been comforting her.

I was surprised. “What I say?” I asked.

“You know, when you said that you were going to take four months off from having an eating disorder, and try to get better. And if in four months you haven’t changed, you can go back to starving yourself to death.”

Eeek. It sounded normal when I said it. But when Day Program said it, I couldn’t help but wonder, Was that healthy? Or maybe no?

The other interesting thing is that there was a bit of pressure put upon Auschwitz-the-Lifer this afternoon. All week we have watched as Auschwitz smiled and talked about love and happiness and finding her authentic self, then disobeyed all the rules - water-loading, exercising, being late for meals, being in the bathroom alone.

It started when FuBu called her out for exercising, and she just laughed it off. “Yeah, but to me, that’s not even exercising,” she smiled brightly. “That’s just nervous energy.”

Try manic, sweetheart, I thought.

Day Program called her out on it.

“I don’t believe that’s true,” she said softly. “I think you know that you’re exercising.”

Auschwitz-the-Lifer just continued to smile brightly, and I wondered, Maybe she just doesn’t have the energy to do anything else, like think.

I decided to ask the question that I already knew the answer to; what made me absolutely certain that, even if Auschwitz-the-Lifer somehow managed to live through this hospitalization, she would never, ever be free of this disease. Auschwitz-the-Lifer was Here For Life.

“Do you think you belong here?” I asked her, as gently as I could. “With us? In this hospital?”

I watched as she processed the question, all 47 pounds of her invested in finding the right reply. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw the nurse nodding at me.

Hey! I asked the skeleton the right question! I thought.

Maybe I’ll get VIP at her funeral.

Eventually, her skull turned to look at me, and it smiled brightly.

“No,” she said, with a small shrug of her bones. “I’m fine. I really don’t know why I’m here.”

Hmmmmm. Yeah. That’s what I thought.