In an effort not to panic about Covid-19 and social distancing, I panicked.
And while I didn’t overstock on toilet paper (although, as someone who admittedly goes through a lot of toilet paper, I was tempted), I made sure my fridge, freezer, and pantry were fully stocked just in case I wouldn’t be able to get back to the grocery store anytime soon. Which, in theory, doesn’t seem like a bad idea…
Unless you have a history with an eating disorder.
Even though I’m the type of person who would rather stay home in sweatpants than stress over getting my makeup just right and putting on tight jeans, I still like having the option of leaving my home and spending my time elsewhere if I want to. Sometimes I like working from bar tops while I people watch or in the airport lounge before a flight or even in the office just because I need human interaction with cool people. And sometimes, I just want to get out of the house and wander the aisles at the bookstore, or my favourite clothing store, or catch up with friends over a cocktail.
But there’s a difference between choosing to stay home and being forced into the confinements of your home.
Before, I was busy enough with work that I’d eat while also simultaneously responding to emails or only be able to step away from my computer long enough to put together a meal before feeling the pull back to my inbox. Before, there was motivation to get work done immediately so I didn’t have to work a second longer than my 8 hour commitment, and I could rush off to run errands or meet up with friends for drinks and possibly a better dinner than I could ever cook myself. Life wasn’t this repetitive routine of waking up and wondering if I should choose the couch, the kitchen counter, or even the bed as my workspace that day. There was a greater sense of purpose, a sense of urgency, distractions.
But now? There’s nothing but space for a eating disorder to flourish.
The worst and best place for an eating disorder is isolation.
It’s when I’m all alone that my eating disorder finds it’s strength, because there’s no judgement from anyone else to put a stop to it’s ravenous destruction in times of discomfort. No one’s going to see me shoveling an entire bag of chips, followed by half a bag of jelly beans and a bowl of ice cream into my mouth with an uncertain and slightly concerned “ummm… maybe that’s enough?” look. I only have to face my own shame when I immediately feel bloated and ill afterwards, which is easily fixed by sleeping it off and pretending that what just happened, didn’t. And when I get so desperate that I want to purge it from my system, no one has to witness it – and well, that means that it pretty much didn’t even happen.
All the times my eating disorder has peaked, it’s been when I was all alone with nowhere to turn for comfort, except my kitchen. I was living in cities where I had no close friends or family and the only thing that brought me a moment of familiar joy in moments of stress was eating the things I loved. Everything, from handfuls of sugared gummy candies, to handfuls of ripple chips, to multiple servings of my favourite meals – even though I was already close to full. And right now – even though I do live in a city with close friends, chosen family, and my partner – it’s not much different. We’re not allowed to be close to the people who bring real happiness to our hearts, and my partner’s been sent out of town for work most of the week. All the while, the world seems to be falling apart and we’re losing our sense of freedom and our jobs and we’re worried about what the future holds, and there’s really nowhere to go to release that stress, except to walk around the block for the umpteenth time while waiting two more weeks for an opening in my therapist’s schedule.
And so, I head to the kitchen.
Food has been a source of comfort for me since I was a kid.
Almost every day when my mom would arrive home from work, I’d run down the stairs to greet her knowing she’d likely have a ‘treat’ of some sort to offer me that she’d picked up on the way. When I visited homes of extended families, it meant that there’d be available junk food that we didn’t keep in our own home or eating out at restaurants we normally wouldn’t go to. My ‘Lola’ – my sweet Filipino grandmother – was famous for serving up rich, traditional soul food and the occasions where our massive extended family would gather around were something to look forward to. Plus, there were always guaranteed leftovers to take home and enjoy when the celebrations were over.
I associated eating with good experiences, mostly. And now when life feels hard, I default to food to bring back those distant moments of innocent happiness; to being a kid again who looked forward to another bowl of Froot Loops and only really worried about “what are we going to have for lunch / snack / dinner today?“.
I’m no longer a kid, but I still find solace in eating food that tastes good, when everything else doesn’t feel good. And nothing feels good right now, so I’m eating… more than usual.
And that’s just the beginning of my problems.
What’s a girl, who didn’t love her body for a majority of her life and did everything possible – from waist shrinking corsets to spending 8 hours a day just sucking in her stomach to crash diets to juice diets to working-out twice a day to restrictive diets to bingeing and purging for years – just to love herself even a little bit, supposed to do when life feels unusual and stressful and the rest of the world (and the voice inside her head) is still screaming “but you can’t let this take you down! you’ve got to survive, thrive, and come out untouched!”??
I don’t know the actual answer to that question, but I can tell you what I have done.
PANIC.
It wasn’t that long ago that I actually started to enjoy food again. It didn’t scare me as much; I didn’t worry excessively about what would happen if I ate a little more of something delicious because… well that’s what you should do when something is fucking delicious. I looked forward to going out for dinners, I even started teaching myself to cook new recipes. Actually, my favourite part about getting drunk was the fact that I would likely find a way to devour an excessive amount of salty carbohydrates (possibly covered or paired with cheese) in the process! I barely recognized myself, but I liked it. Life was so much easier not hating myself for indulging every once in awhile and eating food for goodness – and not just because it was good for me in terms of fueling my body and keeping me alive.
And then, the pandemic exploded. All of the sudden, the gyms are closed and I can no longer take 2 hours of my morning to myself to drown all my stresses (food related or not) in sweat and the good feels that come with tough challenges and body movements. On top of that, I really have nowhere to go and I’m moving less. I sleep in. I stay up longer and sit on the couch and binge-watch TV shows or binge-read books. I take naps, even though I slept in.
I’m burning less energy, and yet – I’m putting more calories into my mouth out of boredom, because of stress, for no other reason than it tastes good and it brings me joy in a time when anything remotely exciting feels out of reach.
And that frightens me.
Because, while I’m not the greatest at math, I do know that if you put more calories into your mouth than you’re burning off throughout the day, those calories stick to your body and are interpreted by a few extra pounds on the scale and a tighter fit inside the clasps of your bra, your jeans, your favourite t-shirts. When I indulge in more sugar, more fat, more simple carbohydrates – my face, my stomach, my thighs, my butt – they all expand. And despite them only expanding ever so slightly in a small amount of time, that little monster inside my brain digs out it’s little magnifying glass and convinces me that all those body parts have expanded in monumental amounts from the extra bits of goodness I’ve shoved into my mouth.
“Jen. How did you let this happen?!” – the monster inside my head, and then me to myself after staring and dissecting myself in the mirror.
Food has become scary again. Despite it being a necessary ingredient to my survival, food is my enemy. I am afraid to eat it, to satiate my hunger and give my body energy to function. I am afraid to enjoy it, to allow myself to find delight and comfort within it.
I need to eat, but I don’t want to out of fear. And my home is overloaded with food because of a pandemic, and I cannot escape it. The two experiences cause me stress, and food is one of the ways I cope with my stress.
Do you follow the unbearable cycle?
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I wish this story had some uplifting, happy ending that would maybe inspire you. It’s still in progress, and I don’t yet have the ability to predict the future. Who knows, it might not end well!
What I can tell you is that not every day is a nightmare of me staring at myself in the mirror with sad eyes. Also, I don’t fight myself every day on eating chips for a meal or having ice cream for dessert. But there a lot more days than there used to be of worrying about those kinds of things, and it’s incredibly annoying. It makes me sad, angry, frustrated, overwhelmed – especially with everything else going on.
To relapse after finding safety and freedom, to fall prey to demons that dwell from the darkest corners of my soul in a time of vulnerability and anxiety, to feel like I’m being pulled backwards when I’ve worked so hard to move myself away from the worst moments of my eating disorder is depressing. It sucks and even trying to just find a way to stay on top of it still preemptively exhausting.
The only really slightly solid piece of comfort I find in it all (aside from the taste of my favourite foods) – is that I am not the only one. We’re all feeling burdened in this unexpected turn of events where we’ve lost the ability to throw ourselves into the multiple experiences that can distract us from our deepest fears. For some, those fears include gaining weight or losing muscle. For others, it’s having to indefinitely give up the career they’re so passionate it about or relinquish their position, and possibly their role as a bread-winning caregiver for themselves, their household, their entire extended family even. Parents aren’t just parents anymore; they’re daycare, elementary, and high school teachers too – while possibly still trying to get their own actual work done as well.
So many of us were on our ways to living our best, fulfilled lives – and now, we’re stuck just trying to keep our heads above water and soften the rumblings of the fears we’d been suffocating for so long, as they find their way to the surface where we’re trying to stay afloat. And maybe one of the worst parts: we don’t have an end date. We’re already growing tired, and there’s no light at the end of the tunnel.
So… what the fuck do we do now?
Some days are better than others. On the good days, I float on without a thought of pulling open the snack drawer. Or, I open it without guilt to satisfy whatever the craving of that moment is. Sometimes those manageable days are followed by harder ones, where I hesitate to reach into the cookie jar one. more. time (again) to find the slightest bit of joy amidst my suffering. That’s the way… well, that’s the way the cookie crumbles, so they say. Good days, bad days — they all happen completely out of our control. And on some of those days, both good or bad, all I want is a damn chocolate chip cookie. *because, hello. there’s really no substitute for the sweet, familiar childhood flavour of a chocolate chip cookie!
In times like this, it’s one day at a time, one foot in front of the other – even if they’re just baby steps.
The process of navigating life through a pandemic is hard enough without extra shame or self-punishment, so I’m trying really fucking hard not to incorporate those into the mix and practice being real with myself.
It’s okay for me to eat. Actually, I have to eat to survive, especially now as I navigate unprecedented times without my familiar distractions, while my worst demons are creeping out from the shadows. Life’s changed, which can only mean other changes are bound to happen – and maybe that means I eat a little more, move a little less, and my body changes.
But the one thing those changes don’t affect are who I am or my value.
Food is not the enemy. My body is not my enemy.
I am my own worst enemy.
We are our own worst enemies.
This world is not trying to ruin you or me; it’s those villains somewhere in our brains telling us that we’re just not enough as we simply try to find our way through an immediately new, completely unexpected ‘normal’. As everything changes and feels way out of our control, the first instinct is to panic and send ourselves into a spiral of absolute self-destruction.
This is me telling myself (and you): Don’t do that. It’s not a good idea.
But, even I know that that’s way easier said, than done.
