Hungry

I keep saying to myself - I know what I'm doing, I know what I'm doing ...

Panic rises up, bubbling in my throat; tears come from nowhere, scary thoughts unbidden.

Skip part of a meal, throw away some of my breakfast (make sure my husband doesn't see), do away with cheese (the lie - I'm congested. The truth - the calories and fat frighten me), count calories in my head (wow, today was under one thousand - I'm doing it again; I'm succeeding!)

Succeeding at what? Being sucked back into anorexia? Being able to ignore hunger pains? Watching the scale drop in small increments, a tiny burst of joy in my heart (it's going DOWN again; that's the direction I want, isn't it?)

What I'm really trying to control is my panic over graduate school - that I'm not smart enough, not good enough, not a hard enough worker to make it. See, if I fail, I can blame it on anorexia (I failed because I was sick, not because I am stupid). Plus, we now are trying to have a child, and I'm afraid I will fail at that, too.

I see my dreams spiraling downward into a pit, taking me along with them. What is the point of dreams if they can't come true?

Coffee and a cereal bar for lunch today, and I'll be sure to tell my husband I had a big dinner on my way from home (Oh, I am so full; I'm not hungry at all.)

I look at all the options of my life, and I am reminded of a passage in Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar. She is staring at a fig tree; each fig represents an option in her life. One fig is motherhood, another is being a wife, a third is the big dream - writer; and so on. She is staring at the figs, so hungry for one of them, so hungry for all of them. But she can't choose, and by not making any choice, she goes hungry.

I am staring at a million figs and I can't pick one of them out of fear. Fear of calories, fear of fat, fear of pounds, fear of failure - fear of succeeding?

Why can't I fail or succeed, and not beat myself up? Why do I have to be anything? Why do I feel I don't deserve one fig, let alone two or three or four?

In the meantime, I am so hungry.