distress
There is nothing, in my own personal inventory of experience, quite as physiologically distressing as cold and hunger. And I'm speaking from a very limited experience of either. Think of people who are *really* cold and *really* hungry. Who never get warm. Who eat so little their bellies distend.
When you're cold and hungry you can't think straight and you feel depressed.
When I was in high school I had a terrible relationship with food. It was during a particularly fucked up period of life. Mom and my stepdad had divorced. Mom went back to school, worked full time, was never home and eventually started sleeping at her boyfriend's. My brother and I just sort of existed. Mom came around once a day for a few minutes. She picked up and dropped off clothes and make up for herself. She brought groceries. Mostly frozen meals you heat in the microwave. So different from what we'd eaten before -- mom's such a good cook, I never knew that instant potatoes or boxed macaroni existed until I was an adult. But the frozen meals...
So I basically stopped eating. I'm not sure why, exactly, I stopped. I liked to lay in bed (I slept either in my room with my door locked, a loaded rifle by my bed, because I was deeply paranoid what with mom not being home especially at night, or I slept on the couch in the living room because I was too squirrelly to be up in my room) -- I would lay there unable to sleep for a variety of reasons and I liked looking back and thinking "today I ate a handful of potato chips. Yesterday I ate a banana and a bowl of cereal. The day before... a hamburger?" I liked that I ate in four days what I might've eaten in one day, if I was in a better space.
It wasn't about weight. I didn't have much of a concept of my own size or the desire to change my body. I liked thinking "I'm not taking care of myself and there's no one around to notice." I liked to wonder how long it would take anyone to realize I wasn't eating. I liked to imagine how people in my life would feel if they knew how poorly I was taking care of myself. It was all part of this self-pitying mind-fuck I enjoyed indulging in. I was really depressed. I was a prime candidate for that obnoxious teenage girl modality: cutting on myself, suicidal ideation made public in bad poetry and cries for help, drug and alcohol abuse.
Fortunately I didn't fall down that well. Instead, I just stopped eating for awhile. Then I started again. Slowly. Mom eventually broke up with that boyfriend. She finished school, got a different job. We moved to a better apartment. Things improved incrementally until I finally went off to college and things have basically gotten more and more better ever since.
When you're cold and hungry you can't think straight and you feel depressed.
When I was in high school I had a terrible relationship with food. It was during a particularly fucked up period of life. Mom and my stepdad had divorced. Mom went back to school, worked full time, was never home and eventually started sleeping at her boyfriend's. My brother and I just sort of existed. Mom came around once a day for a few minutes. She picked up and dropped off clothes and make up for herself. She brought groceries. Mostly frozen meals you heat in the microwave. So different from what we'd eaten before -- mom's such a good cook, I never knew that instant potatoes or boxed macaroni existed until I was an adult. But the frozen meals...
So I basically stopped eating. I'm not sure why, exactly, I stopped. I liked to lay in bed (I slept either in my room with my door locked, a loaded rifle by my bed, because I was deeply paranoid what with mom not being home especially at night, or I slept on the couch in the living room because I was too squirrelly to be up in my room) -- I would lay there unable to sleep for a variety of reasons and I liked looking back and thinking "today I ate a handful of potato chips. Yesterday I ate a banana and a bowl of cereal. The day before... a hamburger?" I liked that I ate in four days what I might've eaten in one day, if I was in a better space.
It wasn't about weight. I didn't have much of a concept of my own size or the desire to change my body. I liked thinking "I'm not taking care of myself and there's no one around to notice." I liked to wonder how long it would take anyone to realize I wasn't eating. I liked to imagine how people in my life would feel if they knew how poorly I was taking care of myself. It was all part of this self-pitying mind-fuck I enjoyed indulging in. I was really depressed. I was a prime candidate for that obnoxious teenage girl modality: cutting on myself, suicidal ideation made public in bad poetry and cries for help, drug and alcohol abuse.
Fortunately I didn't fall down that well. Instead, I just stopped eating for awhile. Then I started again. Slowly. Mom eventually broke up with that boyfriend. She finished school, got a different job. We moved to a better apartment. Things improved incrementally until I finally went off to college and things have basically gotten more and more better ever since.
posted by reasonably prudent poet at 10:50 AM
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