It’s not often I flay myself for folks to read, though I’m not exactly known for aiming kindness my own way.  Anyway.  My lovely husband and I are attending FogCon at the moment, which is a charming little literary sf/f convention.  Highly recommended, well organized.

So, the tale.  We decided tonight to get room service for dinner.  Now, we had lunch at …11:30ish?  It’s 7 now.  And I was hungry!  So we ordered a glomp of food, a true glomp.  Or what I saw as a glomp because I’m completely disordered about food and appropriateness.  So when the nice young waiter brought our food and it was on a special table due to so many plates, I immediately slipped into a sort of humiliation fugue state.  With every perfectly reasonable dish he uncovered, I grew more and more wretched.

Finally, at the end of the recitation, I heard myself telling this bullshit story about how we hadn’t eaten all day, and wow, and it was going to feel good to finally have food, and …I just lied.  I straight up lied to a young man I’ll never see again because I was so horrified with the amount of food we ordered.  (for the record, we each had chicken tenders and fries, and an appetizer, and split a dessert.  not that it matters)  He walked out after mumbling some reassurance that really meant “I-don’t-care-lady.”  My husband looked at me and said, “Oh honey,” and I burst into tears.

There are days I wish I could cut off my stomach with a knife.  There are days when I wish I really could live on air and water, rather than ever put any food into my mouth ever again.  There are days when I want so badly to not be in the body I’m in that I can barely stand it.

I mean…I’m doing good things for myself.  I think I’ve lost a little weight lately, I’ve been working out, I’ve been eating better.  But seriously, one imagined case of side-eye from a hotel waiter, and I was nearly hysterical.  I put myself in jails, and food is just one more set of bars.