I Used To Be

Chapter 9 Part 13

I spent the rest of the day in the ways that I generally spent all my free time now: on PAM and YouTube, and planning meals and foods for the week. Even though I didn't know what part I was getting yet in Nutcracker, I decided that I needed to implement a more disciplined diet than this haphazard "as little as possible, sometimes binge my brains out" bullshit I had been doing for the past few months. So I decided this would be my "Nutcracker diet": oatmeal (100), a Slim fast bar (100), a yogurt (80), 2 rice cakes (70), and broccoli (60) every day (total = 410). I might have to throw in a chicken breast every once in a while to make Mom happy, but probably not too often; no one in my family even seemed to notice that I had lost weight, which was pretty hilarious considering at this point I had lost 24 pounds, which is like, significant. Even though I was nowhere near thin, I at least recognized that I was much smaller than I used to be.

I decided to start a thread on PAM entitled "foods you used to eat," because that was on my mind. I used to eat all kinds of foods that I didn't consider "binge foods" but that certainly weren't "safe foods" either, like: bagels, cereal, granola bars, protein bars, any sort of ethnic take-out, basically any restaurant meals at all, bread in any form, and even most fruits at this point. It made me kind of sad for myself for some reason. Somewhere in the back of my mind I suppose I thought that someday I might eat those foods again, but then I would remember how fat I was back then, and I would just get depressed. I would never be able to safely be able to eat any of that ever again. The best I could hope for was to get better at purging bread, and then maybe I could have a fucking bagel or something again.

I didn't quite make my full 410 calories for Sunday because it was noon before I was ready to eat, and that seemed like past breakfast time, so I killed the oatmeal and went straight for the Slim Fast bar. I had started keeping certain safe foods in my room because I didn't want anyone else eating them, but also because I liked knowing that I had food in my room that I wasn't eating. Like maybe someday I would have enough willpower to stop bingeing and purging entirely. It made me feel strong and inspired, and like I was better than I actually was.

I did force myself to drink a ton of water on Sunday, even though water made me feel fat and disgusting and I hated it, but I knew that it was my only hope for making it through school and ballet the next day. Even so, when I saw Cash on Monday, he said, "Hey! Are you okay? You look kind of pale. I hope you're not getting sick."

"I'm okay," I said, noting that maybe I should claim to be sick; would that make him keep his distance? Then I reminded myself that I didn't want that. Or I shouldn't want that. Even if I actually did.

"Are you coming to lunch? Or doing the nerd thing with Emily," he said with a smile, letting me know that he got it. Kind of. Fuck, I forgot that lunch was going to be a thing now. But fortunately, he opened the door to let me keep my safe lunch routine with Emily. Which was exactly what I planned on doing.

"Yeah, I kind of need to stay on top of my homework. I'm gonna have even less time in the evenings once Nutcracker rehearsals start."

"Well, maybe if you get your homework done at lunch, then you'll have more time to do stuff on the weekends," he said with another grin. Um, yeah. Sorry dude, you're competing with cupcakes and barf on the weekends and really, it's not all that much of a contest.

"Exactly," I responded instead with my best non-fake fake smile.