Blackout_ Remembering the Things I Drank to Forget
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STARVED<br />
One of <strong>the</strong> curious aspects of middle school is how extraordinary <strong>the</strong> pain feels, even when <strong>the</strong><br />
affliction is quite mundane. The wrong pair of jeans, your unpronounceable last name, a paper wad<br />
thrown by a popular boy that hit your back during an assembly. Has anyone ever suffered like this?<br />
My mo<strong>the</strong>r used <strong>to</strong> tell me all kids were struggling. Even <strong>the</strong> bullies. “It’s such a <strong>to</strong>ugh time for<br />
everyone,” she would say, and get a tsk-tsk look, like she was talking about Ethiopia. A nice<br />
perspective, I suppose. But I was pretty sure my unhappiness was worse than everyone else’s.<br />
In sixth grade, I walked home alone every day. In <strong>the</strong> quiet hours before my bro<strong>the</strong>r returned from<br />
football and my parents returned from work, I rooted around our cabinets for new kinds of comfort.<br />
Graham crackers. Chunks of cheddar cheese melted in <strong>the</strong> microwave for exactly seven seconds, <strong>the</strong><br />
moment <strong>the</strong> sides began <strong>to</strong> slump. Sips of occasional beer weren’t enough anymore. I needed <strong>the</strong><br />
numbing agents of sugar and salt.<br />
Becoming a binge eater in a house like mine wasn’t easy. You had <strong>to</strong> get creative. My mo<strong>the</strong>r<br />
bought natural, oily peanut butter, but if you swirled a spoonful with molasses, you had something<br />
approaching a Reese’s. Four tubes of cake icing sat on <strong>the</strong> fourth shelf of <strong>the</strong> pantry, and I squirted a<br />
dollop in my mouth each day.<br />
But my new comfort also brought a new pain. “You’re getting fat,” my bro<strong>the</strong>r <strong>to</strong>ld me one day, as<br />
I watched Oprah on <strong>the</strong> couch. He and I didn’t speak much anymore. He stuck <strong>to</strong> his room and his<br />
Judas Priest. But he had an older sibling’s homing device for sore spots. “Fat” was <strong>the</strong> meanest word<br />
you could call a girl. The absolute worst thing in <strong>the</strong> world.<br />
My first diet started in seventh grade. My cafeteria lunch shrank <strong>to</strong> iceberg lettuce dribbled with<br />
low-cal ranch dressing. I loaded up on Diet Cokes. Three, four a day. After school, I grape-vined <strong>to</strong><br />
Kathy Smith’s aerobic workout. I confined myself <strong>to</strong> frozen Lean Cuisine dinners. Cheese pizza.<br />
Cheese cannelloni. Cheese lasagna. (The same three ingredients, rolled up in different shapes.) The<br />
diet craze of <strong>the</strong> 1980s was a nationwide <strong>to</strong>rnado that left leg warmers and V-hip leotards in its wake.<br />
Even my food co-op mo<strong>the</strong>r bought a book listing calorie counts, and I memorized those entries like<br />
Bible passages. I couldn’t tell you much about John 3:16, but I knew Blueberry Muffin: 426.<br />
The misery of calorie restriction is well documented, but what people rarely mention is that it’s<br />
also a bit fun. How much hunger can I <strong>to</strong>lerate? How much joy can I withhold? What a perverse<br />
pleasure, <strong>to</strong> be in charge of your own pain.<br />
My extreme dieting became a power struggle with my mo<strong>the</strong>r, just like <strong>the</strong> extreme amount of Wet<br />
N Wild makeup I wore or <strong>the</strong> extreme number of sitcoms I watched every afternoon. I was <strong>the</strong> dish<br />
thrower in our house now. The good part about weight obsession, though, is how it bonded me with<br />
o<strong>the</strong>r girls. Quite a few of us were sweating in unitards by <strong>the</strong>n. Two of my friends <strong>to</strong>ld me about<br />
lying in bed one afternoon in <strong>the</strong>ir bathing suits, circling trouble spots on each o<strong>the</strong>r’s body with a<br />
permanent marker. And when I heard that s<strong>to</strong>ry, I thought: That is love.