B.E.D. Vyvanse Chronicles: If you’re not binge eating, what do you do with your day?

Emptying the dishwasher, I noticed.

The silverware tray is a bit scuffed up. Remove the forks and give that a wipe. Remove the knives. Give that a harder swipe. Remove all the silverware, turn on the hot water, give the whole thing a good scrub, dry it, put the silverware back in, this time actually sorting the small forks from the large forks.

How the hell do you live like this?

It slapped me upside my mental when I discovered that the energy I used to hoard for a really great binge eating episode is gone. Replaced with the desire to do… things.

Ramp it up about 12 levels.

There’s this COVID-19 thing happening…

… which means I have even more time to fill. I vascilate through despair, inspiration, selfishness, noble impulses, the need for busy-ness, and the futility of insecurity and fear.

I must work in the arts.

There was this golden time not long ago with I’d fill my day with food blindness. I’d do anything to stop myself from thinking and feeling. Now that my urges to binge eat are lessened how the hell am I going to accomplish this? I need to stop thinking and feeling even more urgently but how?

I haven’t written in a long time. Relatively long, considering I was writing almost every day for several weeks. Then, nothing. I, like the rest of the world, shifted my attention to the coming pandemic. My personal and public wrestling match with binge eating disorder morphed in my mind into self-indulgence with no appropriate place in the world when compared to the mass fear and uncertainty we’re all facing in various ways.

But, it’s not. It’s more relevant than ever.

This is exactly the kind of life situation that drives my mania to new highs and lows.

Until today, I had a precious balance starting to work. I had a contract job that I could do from home so we were still going to be bringing in some income. Today, that went away. The loss of the money is … I can’t describe the feeling without breaking down. Even more important though is the loss of structure. I needed that structure more than anything.

I needed to know that I could block times on my calendar to do that work. It was engaging. It was important. It was mentally stimulating and secure. I’d worked on that contract for 4 years and I needed it for much more than the money. Oh yes, I do work the rest of my time in the arts so I also needed the money very, very much.

This contract was essential to my self-esteem. My self-worth. I felt good that I could help us make up a small portion of the income we’ve lost from our arts-related work cancellations. Now, I can’t. It’s not my fault. I didn’t do anything wrong. Heck, there’s even a chance the project will be there after the risk of infection smooths out to the point where we are all allowed to go back into the office. But, in the meantime.

So, I should be eating. I want to be eating. But, I don’t want to eat.

Instead, I want to substitute the loss with grand gestures that are ultimately empty. I’d like to figure out how to do something good with this enforced solitude. Instead, I find myself wanting to escape into the social media mania that’s sweeping the world of me and my friends. The live streaming connections that are our collective ‘fuck you’ to the world that has removed us from our audiences and our peers.

This is not a criticism. Those live streams are vital. But, here’s my truth. They pale in comparison to the ability to touch another human being. To exchange skin cells and breathe in and to move into a person’s personal space for the length of a hug. To feel the endorphins release from physical contact. The endorphins that help me not want to eat.

We all need this, even introverts who need it only a little.

Instead, I feel compelled to seek numbness and now it eludes me. This is hell. I can’t eat to escape and I have no experience with anything but eating. Fucking meds.

So. I am forced to figure out something else. I don’t know if I can. Maybe tomorrow I will.

 

I’m Susan Scot Fry, the author of “A Year of Significance”. In 2020, I take on the greatest nemesis of my life: Binge Eating Disorder. With a side of aplomb sauce. Honest, occasionally humorous and sometimes I swear.