Unphased: Another Eating Disorder Memoir

Intro | 2016

Like the endless stream of mornings behind me, I wake to an alarm: five-thirty, just early enough to watch the sky turn cyan, then white, then horrific August yellow. Saturday. I understand this isn't normal. In fact, consciousness has claimed me before the smooth, sultry chime of my smart-phone, as it has almost daily for the past four years. My body has long forgotten the refreshing feeling of eight hours' rest.

Five. Five is more typical. Five hours, interrupted by thirty-minute bouts of waking, panicked, gasping for air, as is what is happening, right now, at five-thirty on a Saturday morning.

Years of therapy allow me to launch into panic attack protocol without a second thought. In the nose, I coach myself, out the mouth. My head aches, but my inner voice is as peaceful as a yogi. In the nose, out the mouth.

Yet my lungs won't cooperate. They fill half-way, puffing my chest Superman-big, then spill everything out at once. New oxygen awakens the muscles in my arms, my back, and my shoulders, but fails to reach the most important part - my brain.

And my heart notices. It races, so fast, so fast, so strong, so fast, my God, so fast, my God.

It isn't long before the horror sets in: What if this is it? What if I am actually dying? What if this isn't panic? What if this is it?

Better prepare for the worst. I yank my phone from its charger and slide out of bed, tiptoeing with my back arched, on trembling legs, to my closet.

I retrieve a set of bright-orange cotton pajama bottoms, discarded early last evening to escape the summer heat. A shirt? No, and who cares. I've been looked at in worse ways wearing much more than the sports bra that stretches tautly over my too-large breasts.

My head pounds, my God. Breathing might work, no, breathing please work. In the nose, out the mouth. In the nose, out the mouth.

I press two fingers to the right side of my neck. My heart keeps thudding, hammering blood into my arteries.

In the nose, out the mouth.

My heart finally fades into a soft, yet rapid thump. I change my mantra. All is well, I tell myself, you're okay. You're okay. Ça va, ça va. The French detaches me from my current state. I am me and "you," je and toi, whoever "they" and lui are.

I crumple to the ground, pressing my spine to the cold, insulated wall and hugging my knees to my chest. I grind my knobby vertebrae into the damp, cold, windowless plaster until I feel pain, quietly impressed by the bones that have managed to escape this woeful flesh suit. Perhaps there's still hope. Perhaps I'm not as pathetic as I thought.

Using the doorframe for support, I try to curl out of my pill-bug hole.

THUD. My heart protests, that's too much too soon.

I guess I am as pathetic as I thought, but I cannot sit here forever. I reach up to the little shelf I have stocked for these scenarios, and produce a bottle of glucose tablets.

18 artificial-raspberry-flavored Calories slide into my stomach.

Time for a shower.