PETTY THEFT

He stole it literally from under me. Or behind me, I suppose. My backpack. Broad daylight, public café.

I was lucky. For some reason, I’d pretty much emptied everything onto the table before he got it. My glasses and case, my laptop and cord, my phone and cord,…even a notebook with all sorts of notes about my writing projects. Unusual for me to unpack so much. He got away with the backpack itself—an oft-complimented Keith Haring blue and white Herschel—a couple of vegan magazines and some research notes that I have on my laptop as well. Lots of napkins, pens, pencils, a pencil sharpener,…contents he’ll dump in an alley.

Hey, maybe I’ll convert a carnivore. Maybe I’ll create a writer. (Many of my ideas have first been scrawled on napkins.) Or maybe I’ve just reinforced and emboldened a thief’s habits.

Sounds like a fish story, but it’s true. Right out from under him! I swear!

It shows how intense I get when I’m in a writing session, a surprise to even myself. Writing in a café, I look up regularly as patrons come and go. This morning was no exception. I don’t know for certain who stole it, but I think I do. Guy with a crutch. We made eye contact. He wandered behind me as I sat at the end of the café. I don’t think he bought anything. He asked to use the restroom. That’s presumably where he stuffed my empty backpack into his own. Nice! I saw him leave. I could still see him a half block away when I realized by pack was gone.

Maybe I could have chased him down, but what would have been the point? I’d accuse, he’d deny. The evidence was out of view. I couldn’t exactly grab his backpack, unzip it and yank out my own. What if I were wrong? There’d be witnesses, watching me try to take away a backpack from a guy with a crutch.

It’ll go for five or ten bucks on the street. I paid fifty. I can look at it as an excuse to go backpack shopping. A new style! (I’m currently reverting back to a perfectly good Herschel that’s accumulated a few stains along the bottom.) I’ll probably search obsessively and buy a brand new backpack, the same version I had before. I like what I like.

As with anyone, I feel violated. Someone pegged me as a target. He got into my space. He grabbed what was rightfully mine.

It could have been worse. It could have been worse. It could have been worse.

My laptop is my most prized possession, filled with writing. My phone is loaded with photos, contacts and notes. You’re supposed to backup these things, but I’m techno-clueless.

It happened on Hastings Street. It’s that street, a section of it a hub to the most destitute people in Canada. There’s some sort of support services building right across the street. I write in the same café five days a week. I watch the people crowd the building, waiting for it to open at 7:30 each morning. There’s always an urgency of activity over there…the start of “the wrong side of the tracks”. I’m not usually judgy; just openly curious. Today, feeling violated, I’m not my best.

The easy thought is, He needed it more. And maybe something like this was overdue. I’m stingy when someone presenting as homeless asks for change. I overthink things, desperate to find a better solution than people scraping together a handful of quarters. I moved to this area fully aware of the surrounding poverty, along with the prevalence of mental health issues, addiction problems and everything that goes with that. As my head continues to spin uselessly, failing to brainstorm something to create deeper change, the backpack represents an involuntary donation. Maybe the incident will prod me to get more involved and to become more active in my quest to be enlightened.

Three years here. My first theft. Remarkably, my bike remains in my parking stall and my car has yet to be broken into. I’ve experienced worse living in other parts of Vancouver. The backpack, for me, is mere crumbs.

I still feel violated.

It’s easy to overreact. I’ve had sweeping thoughts today. Don’t let people use the restroom if they’re not buying anything. Stop giving them water, free coffee and day-old pastries. But then logic takes over. I’ve seen many down-and-out folks come into the café. I’ve never been stolen from and I’ve never heard another customer yelling, “Stop! Thief!”

Shit happens. I’m physically fine. I still have all my writing…my passion, my hard work. He just has a backpack.

A DAILY MEMORIAL

Sometimes it’s all I can do to breathe shallowly. This is one of those moments. My laptop is having some issues and, no, the breathing issue is not about that. Not directly. It’s been on its last legs for a year and a half now and, although I backup my work regularly, I know I should switch to the new one I finally bought last month. It would be worth it just for the fact I’d have an “e” key that actually works. (On this device, I have to copy an “e” from existing text and then press Control-V on those rare occasions that I use an “e” in my writing—gosh, only fourteen times in this sentence.) Last night, my laptop once again shut down unexpectedly so I took it as a sign that I was done with writing for the day. I braced this morning, powering it up again. Would it work? Would all my open documents pop back up? Would the sixteen open tabs on my internet browser still be there?

Yes, the laptop is functioning. None of my documents show up, but I’d saved all my work and I just have to open them up again. When Firefox asked if I wanted to restore my last session, I clicked the button to do so but, alas, it retrieved the open tabs I’d had from last October instead of from last night. That’s where the shallow breathing comes in. Not because I’ve lost some needed sites that had been open so long that they don’t show up on recent history search—I can search anew or just move on—but because one of the tabs staring at me anew is about an actor who, as I read it with my sleepy eyes at six o’clock this morning, “succumbed to AIDS.” Of course, I knew his fate. I’d stumbled upon the actor and researched him last September. Still, it’s a jolt each and every time I read about someone dying of AIDS, especially when the coffee hasn’t kicked in. All that gone-too-soon loss of life. I’ll never get past that. It would be easier if I did, but I don’t want to. Like veterans who served in war, I feel a duty to remember those who didn’t survive the AIDS crisis. Never forget. Even as I sense that so many have done just that. Even as I wonder if queer people who are younger than thirty have any sense of what those years were like.

Reminders of AIDS are all around me as I sit in my home workspace, a windowless room that I suppose was intended to be a dining room or maybe a walk-in closet. Just to the left of my laptop, at the edge of my desk are three playful block figures copyrighted by the Keith Haring Foundation. Think I bought them years ago in a shop in Portland. One of those charming spots filled with eclectic trinkets that will never cover the rent. Haring’s creations are always colorful and fun, the figures captured in motion. They make me smile. I think I bought these blocks to remind me to be playful with my writing (maybe not at this particular moment) and to celebrate simple things like an impromptu dance or a chance to pet and perhaps calm a barking dog.

But Haring’s art also represents my gay identity. I used to have a Keith Haring backpack, a look-at-me-I’m-a-proud-fag symbol. People would stop me in the streets of Amsterdam or at a hip cafe Seattle and comment on it. “Keith Haring, right?” Yes, yes. They’d smile and offer a knowing nod. Translation: You’re gay. It was my old-school version of Grindr. Gay man two metres away. (That’s what Grindr does, right? I’ve only seen it while peeking over a friend’s shoulder years ago as he looked at his phone while we were in a gay bar in West Hollywood. “Oh, my god, everyone in here is on Grindr!” he said with a sense of excitement I found odd. As with most technology, I didn’t get it. This was a gay bar...why did we need an app to tell us that the guys around us in too tight t-shirts or no shirts at all were queer?) Alas, my backpack had its glitches as a Grindr substitute. The people who stopped and commented were always artsy women. I suspect the gay men always crossed the street as I approached.

My beloved Keith Haring backpack is long gone. One morning, as I was writing in a regular cafe—sigh, I miss writing in cafes—my backpack disappeared from the foot of the chair where I was sitting. A homeless person who’d come in ostensibly to use the restroom brushed past me and took off with it. I suppose he needed it more than I. Maybe he even got lucky a time or two.

I’ve always loved that Haring’s art is so accessible. He knew this and used this to create iconic messaging during the AIDS crisis, making people look when they preferred to look away. Haring died of AIDS-related complications in 1990, thirty-one years ago this month, for him an entire lifetime ago since he was thirty-one at the time. Googling that fact right now feels like a sucker punch to the gut. I’m winded. Again, short breaths. That’s all I can manage.

To my right are four Post-its, their non-sticky parts rising up from my desk surface. A small blue one has the name of the actor/director who’d succumbed to AIDS. I wanted to write a blog post about him. I might not have noticed my scribbled note for another half year. For me, I see a Post-it for a day, maybe two, and then it loses its intended powers of reminding. Little thoughts, things that spark a creative idea in the moment, can quickly be forgotten. Not so, the big things. Like AIDS itself.

There are also a half dozen notes written on torn off pages from three different notepads—a note about querying, a writing to-do list from a month ago (the items still not done), an idea for a novel that I must have thought was brilliant when I jotted it down but now it seems like not much at all. I keep it in the open, hoping that, whatever sense of genius I had felt when I madly wrote it, circling words and adding explanatory arrows (which now explain nothing), will miraculously return on a later glance. Not today.

One of the other pages lists possible ideas I could write about for a regular essay column about relationships in an American newspaper. The first idea is about Stephen, my assigned buddy when I was a volunteer with AIDS Project Los Angeles (APLA). Had he not died of AIDS-related complications at twenty-nine in 1992, he’d be fifty-seven today. Sweet, sweet man with big, big dreams. Dreams unfulfilled. The second essay idea on the list is about my dear friend Richard whom I met as an APLA volunteer, who talked me out of wanting to commit suicide when my first love cheated on me with a friend of mine and these two dickheads decided they wanted to make a go of things. Richard often marveled at how he made it through the AIDS crisis as so many friends and lovers around him died. Sadly, Richard died five years ago of brain cancer, still much too young, but he knew the extra quarter century he got was a blessing.

On the side of my four-drawer filing cabinet—yes, I still have such an outdated storage device—is a much crumpled note tacked up with a magnet. It lists background facts and passions of my friend Farrell, my tennis and margarita pal from my days in Dallas. I remember the time I showed up on court after margaritas—happy hour with the nuns I worked with—and, after five minutes of hitting the ball, he just stood on the other side of the court and laughed. Apparently, margaritas are indeed an energy drink, but in all the wrong ways. I dutifully retrieved the two cans of balls I’d managed to send over the fence and we sat and talked on a bench until it got dark. Back then, I didn’t know Farrell was gay and he didn’t know I was. He came out in a letter after I’d moved to Malibu, sensing a coldness when he flew out for a visit and concluded that it had to be because I’d figured out he was gay. We are so sensitive and so capable of misreading signs when we’re closeted. That coldness was law school stress that I stupidly hadn’t shaken, a nice visit unduly compromised.

That crumpled up piece of paper is supposed to help me design an AIDS quilt panel in memory of Farrell, the sizing and required materials written on the back. He died in 1995. I found out when a card I’d written to him was returned unopened to my address in Vancouver, a red postal stamp reading: DECEASED. I hadn’t put things together until then and Farrell didn’t share with me. I knew he’d lost his accounting job in Dallas, which could only have been due to illness or discrimination. Farrell was the most dependable person I knew. He’d shared that he was volunteering with the Dallas AIDS Resource Center. That’s the last I heard from him. A very reserved, proud man, I fear Farrell died alone. He’d been adopted and all his relatives in New Orleans had predeceased him. I don’t really have the means of making a quilt. I don’t have the craft gene. I don’t even have the holding scissors safely gene. This project intimidates me. The desire is there along with the sense that, if I don’t remember and honor Farrell, no one will.

Yes, AIDS is still all around me. The reminders are small and quiet. Some days, I don’t even see them. On other days, like today, I’m hit first thing and I know its shadow will hang over me until bedtime.

Small breaths. I’m so lucky I can do just that.

A DRUG DEAL GOING DOWN

The following is a piece I wrote back in the fall. It may come across as a bit dark; I suspect that’s why I didn’t post it then. Still, today a major Canadian corporation, Bell Canada, is holding its annual Let’s Talk Day, intended to shed light on mental health issues. Thirty years ago, when I interned at a mental health non-profit agency not far from L.A.’s Skid Row, I could not understand why people would go off their meds. If they do some good, why stop? Now I get it. Stigma is still part of the struggle.

I’ve been seeing psychiatrists for five years now and it still feels strange. Unpleasant even.

I had issues when I was going weekly. One doctor and I clashed. He was intent on proving I fit into a textbook model for depression and tried repeatedly to get me to confess that I was an angry person. He’d bait me with a thesaurus. After I’d share an anecdote, he’d say, “And how’d that make you feel...agitated? Huffy? Furious?” If I had any anger, it was session-specific. I eventually decided it was better to go back on a waiting list than to keep seeing him.

My next weekly guy wanted me to buy into mindfulness. I obligingly bought his chosen book on the subject and couldn’t help but scribble all my objections and skepticism in the margins. No doubt what he was scribbling on his legal pad: Resistant to therapy. After a few assigned readings and some futile attempts to incorporate mindfulness into our sessions, he lost the blinking contest. I would never become a disciple. Our sessions evolved into comfortable conversations. Too comfy, perhaps. I didn’t see myself growing. I was the same old mess. After seeing him for three and a half years, he retired last March.

The breakup seemed harder on him. He fretted over the transition for months. I regularly had to reassure him that I would be okay. I didn’t mention that I looked forward to the change. Maybe a new doctor would have a different perspective. Maybe he or she would offer new insights that might lead to improved ways of coping with my anxiety and depression. If nothing else, I knew my time would be freer. Apparently, psychiatrists who do psychotherapy are a dying—or retiring, at least—breed. No more weekly, fifty-minute sessions.

The pendulum has swung too far in the other direction. My new psychiatrist sees me once every two to three months for what comes off as a random chat, never exceeding ten minutes. I leave each time with the same thought: “What the hell was that for?”

I’m certain I’m not benefiting from these brief sit-downs. (Does the chair even get warm?) Still, I have to go. It’s all come down to drugs. He’s my dealer. Today’s appointment feels especially unsavory. Part of it is the setting. My psychiatrist has been assigned not based on my needs or any matching criteria; rather, he works out of the provincial health unit closest to me and he apparently had a space. While I live on the edge of the sketchiest part of Vancouver, his office is in the thick of it. To get to the building, I walk by addicts passed out or pawning their wares on Hastings Street and then take a zig and a zag until I’m alongside the tented homeless community that has taken over Oppenheimer Park for years. The glass door of the office I enter is decorated with the message, NO NARCOTICS ON SITE. I guess the hardware store was out of welcome mats. I arrive, carrying my laptop without my version of the Linus blanket, my Herschel backpack. (At the end of my first appointment, my psychiatrist eyed my backpack on the floor and warned me about a chronic bed bug problem in the building.)

Yeah, so the stage is always set for an unsavory kind of feeling. It gets worse as I dutifully answer his left-field questions—“What’s your writing process?”; “Did you like teaching?”—knowing that the Q and A leads to nothing. He’s going through the motions and, frankly, so am I. All I want is the slip of paper that comes whenever he suddenly decides time’s up. Gimme the prescription.

The sad reality is I can relate to the people I pass on my way over. I’ve learned the hard way, through trial and serious error, that I don’t function without my drugs. Rather, I dysfunction. Grandly. I spiral quickly downward, the bubble wrap coming off what had been neatly packed and stowed boxes of gloom, doom and utter despair. I frighten myself and doctors. I get locked up.

As I fold the paper I’ve come for, pocket it and leave the building, I feel dirty and ashamed. I fret as I have so many times before, wondering what the long-term harm may be from taking these pills. I flirt with a timeline for when I may once again go drug-free, cold turkey. I’ve been stable for almost four months now. My recently retired psychiatrist told me on several occasions that I’d be on meds for the rest of my life. (“Think of it like a diabetic who needs insulin,” I’ve been told by several well-intentioned professionals.) Still, I hold out hope that maybe I’ll learn some effective strategies to work through anxiety without needing to reach for an Ativan and I’ll be able to talk myself through heretofore crippling bouts of prolonged depression without Seroquel or Abilify or Mirtazapine. But I know I’m not going to learn any strategies from my bimonthly chitchats with my current psychiatrist. And the lift I get from a current pop song like this or that is fleeting. I don’t have answers now and I have plenty of bad memories from psych wards and meltdowns in doctors’ offices. Despite the bargaining, wishing and protesting, there is only one option: I have to stay on drugs.

By the time I walk back past the tent city, around the woman on the sidewalk nonchalantly shoving a needle into a vein in her arm and dodge several zombie impersonators walking wobbly lines, I know I can’t really relate to these neighbors. I catch a couple hugging and see groups huddled together. I hear laughter, some of it with another person by their side, some of it alone, and it’s our differences that are more pronounced. They are the ones who have all the connections they need.

I walk into my drugstore, have a seat in front of a familiar pharmacist and pull out my paper, my doctor’s note that hooks me up for the next ninety days. I try to smile and make eye contact but mostly I stare at my right knee, bobbing up and down, one hundred fifty times per minute. With only a glance at the piece of paper that I slide across the counter, he knows I’m not here on account of a persistent hemorrhoid issue, a case of the crabs or the latest flu strain. Those things shall pass. As many times as I’ve done this, my face still burns.

When I return in an hour to pick up the prescription, I’ll pay for a bag of chips and a box of Walkers shortbread as well, not on account of any expected surge of the munchies; to the contrary, those items will sit untouched in my cupboard for many months. I just need to normalize the experience, like how I load up a basket of groceries when the only pressing purchase is a twelve-roll package of toilet paper. Pharmacists and grocery clerks know too much. I’ll shove the pill bottle in my jacket and go bagless on the chips and cookies. The shame in walking home and coming off as a junk food junkie is nothing.

NOW PLAYING, CENTER STAGE: AN EATING DISORDER

May is Mental Health Awareness Month. For myself, the awareness is a daily experience. Even on a good day, a worry will pop up—often—that a new chance to unravel could be moments away. The slightest glitch can do it. I hate when I crumble. I fight to be resilient. Sometimes, all I can do is surrender and wait things out. Things do pass.

 

I’m deep into a stint where my eating disorder has taken charge. It’s not altogether unwelcome. I journaled what appears below near the point when it shifted into higher gear. I thought it might have passed by now but this is Day 51. I have reached out for support but there’s a wait list. The thoughts and behaviors go on. I’m okay-ish for now. 

 

I’ve decided to post this because maybe it will help a reader understand what a friend, relative or colleague experiences. Perhaps it helps enlighten someone about the fact older, not-so-thin men can have an eating disorder, too. Maybe someone will recognize their struggle and begin the process for seeking help as well. 

 

To an outsider, the solution is maddeningly simple: eat something. I know this. I can tell myself this. However, it’s like telling someone who is clinically depressed to just smile. Cue Bobby McFerrin: Don’t Worry, Be Happy. Mental health, however, doesn’t correspond with a meme or a Hallmark card. 

 

March 31, 2024

It's another Easter weekend and I'm struggling. Easter is the longest weekend on the Canadian calendar. Things shut down for Good Friday throughout the weekend and for Easter Monday. This was especially problematic a decade ago in 2014 when I found myself admitted to the psych ward at Saint Paul's Hospital on a Thursday afternoon which just so happened to be the day before Good Friday. Ever since, Easter makes me feel uncomfortable. That stint in the psych ward left me with heightened anxiety and PTSD since the only bed they could place me in for that long weekend was in the most severe psych ward. (It had never dawned on me that a hospital would have multiple psych wards.) I was scared, I feared for my safety, I desperately wanted out and, having no control being involuntarily committed, the entire experience spiked my eating disorder behaviors.

 

It's not because it is once again Easter nor is it because this is the decade anniversary, but I am once again in the midst of a spiked eating disorder situation. This is day 7. I didn't plan this, but something about last Monday had me so busy that I missed lunch. I don't eat breakfast. Lunch is when my body finally receives a little fuel—cottage cheese or yogurt; rice cakes. Everything is limited and controlled. But having missed the lunch mark, it became a warped game. It was already 2:00 in the afternoon. I could clearly go without eating lunch. I could wait until 5:00. Dinner. A single meal. 5:00 came and went. I knew if I delayed dinner, I wouldn't have an evening snack as well. There would be a significant drop in my caloric intake for the day. This was victory. I was winning my game.

 

With the win on Monday, I decided to make it a streak. Let's go for Tuesday. Mission accomplished. Same for Wednesday, even though I swam 5 kilometers that morning, my maximum distance in the pool which I hadn't done in over a year. Usually, I am famished after a swim workout. My body craves carbs to restore whatever I swam off. But, no. One meal once again. Thursday, Friday, same.

 

This was easy. If I smiled, the smugness would show. I am in control. Not of life. That's a mess. I am still shocked and saddened by being dumped six weeks ago after a two-year relationship I thought would last. I feel especially alone here in Vancouver. My best friend moved to Montreal four months ago. 

 

I can no longer relate to my closest friend who still lives here. Every time I see him, the experience rings false. He launches into a monologue about a new hobby, a long-winded recitation I sense he has repeated many, many times to other people. It used to be about mushroom videos on YouTube. Zero interest from me. More recently, it became about fermenting onions and other vegetables. Zero interest from me. During our latest catch-up, he arrived uncharacteristically late, hauling a five-pound bag of sugar. His grand new hobby: making vinegar from scratch. Dear God, help me.

 

So, yeah, he is not someone I can lean on. Other friends seem to have disappeared. They have families, one is still dealing with the death of her spouse; another is so passive he never ever is the one to reach out to do something. I am as alone in this city and in this life as I have ever been.

 

I do not know how to change this. I am stuck. I can do nothing to get my relationship back. I don't have any idea how, at 59 years old, I can go out and make new friends. Good friends. People I could lean on. 

 

My immediate family is not helpful. “Get a dog.” That’s their solution to getting over a bad breakup, not that they have any sense of how bad it’s been. There is no depth of conversation about the loss I have experienced. It’s par. They just don't go deep. It does not seem to be within them. They have all been in longstanding relationships, decades and decades of anniversaries celebrated. They understand very little about me being gay—that would require conversations and questions. They understand less about my habitual boomeranging to singlehood.

 

He loves me. He loves me not. 

 

Some poor little flower got all its petals plucked. The City of Vancouver should take out a restraining order, keeping me a hundred meters away from all garden spaces.

 

So yes, hello anorexia nervosa. It has always been there with me. This is one of those times, however, when it is taking centre stage. It has the power. I have given it that power. 

 

Yesterday morning, I was in a different part of the city to get my haircut. I brought my backpack, slipping in my laptop and two canvas bags. A health food grocery store I love is a block away from the salon and I figured I would pick up some of my favorite products while in the area.

 

I entered the grocery store and was immediately confused. I'm not eating much at the moment. Should I even grab a hand basket? I hesitated, then took one. Maybe just holding the basket would encourage me to buy more items. 

 

As I walked down the first aisle, one of the dangling tags indicated a box of wafer crackers was on sale. I buy these crackers on occasion. I stopped and stared at them. It became a dilemma. Do I want these crackers? When would I eat them? My sense was I didn't want them. I certainly didn't need them. I put the box in the basket nonetheless. Let this be the start to my grocery haul. I picked up nothing else from that aisle nor the next. 

 

I glanced in frozen foods windows. Ice cream registered in my brain. Usually, a pint or three of Häagen-Dazs or Ben & Jerry’s become an irresistible temptation. Sometimes, I load up so many, I feel obliged to lie to the checkout clerk. “Having a little ice cream social.” 

 

I had no desire for ice cream. I had no desire for anything. As I reached the last aisle, I stopped again. I stared down a container of non-fat cottage cheese. This is the only store I know in Vancouver that still carries it. I do not like the taste of 1% or 2% fat cottage cheese. It tastes heavy, it tastes gross. This was my chance to get the cottage cheese I like. I checked the expiration date: April 27. It was good for a whole month. Still, I questioned whether I would be able to eat it before then. I put the container in my basket, a companion for the crackers.

 

I perused the fresh vegetables and fruit. Nothing appealed to me. I had gone through the entire store and picked up two items. I had my two canvas bags in my backpack. I suppose that meant one item in each bag. A very balanced walk home. I headed toward the checkout. I glanced down at the two items in my basket. No, I did not want them. I did not need them.

 

I went back to the dairy aisle to return the cottage cheese, then went to the other end of the store to place the box of crackers on the shelf where I had gotten it. I put the basket back in the stack of empty ones by the entrance and left.

 

Grocery stores have given me many problems over the years. I often become anxious in them for reasons I don't fully understand. But this was the first time I walked all the way through a grocery store having planned to buy food and then consciously decided to not buy anything. On the sidewalk, I felt stunned. I knew this was a problem. But nothing was going to change my decision. I walked a couple blocks farther from home, stepped in a favourite café, ordered an oat latte and had a writing session. Keeping with my new routine, coffee with oat milk is all I consume until my evening meal. 

 

Walking home, I passed that grocery store again along with two others where I frequently shop. Generally, I like going into grocery stores farther from home to pick up items on sale, to save a few bucks. I get this from my father. He is a man who glories in a bargain. He stocks up anytime any item he might possibly want to consume in the years ahead is on sale. This is a coup to him.

 

No. Grocery. Shopping. 

 

I realized I had a lot of food at home and I didn't know how I was ever going to eat it all. I passed bakeries, a donut shop, two of my ex’s favorite eating spots, a vegan restaurant I love. When would I ever go into any of these places again? In only one week, food had become the object of my rejection.

 

Still many blocks from home, I felt weak. I felt panicky. I didn't know if I could make it back to my place. I was vaguely aware of an emergency vehicle passing by me in the street. Not a police car; maybe an ambulance, maybe one of those smaller red trucks the fire department uses. It dawned on me after the fact that maybe I should have flagged it down. Maybe I really needed a ride back home. Maybe it was even an emergency. 

 

You can't tell if someone has an ED
just by looking at them or checking
their weight.

Although scared, I knew this would not be enough to change the level of restriction I am on. As I walked, I leaned into one of my regular distractions. I stopped and took a selfie against a background that matched my shirt. Usually, I do this for amusement. In the moment, however, it gave me a chance to pause and also a break from thinking about the struggle the walk was becoming. 

 

I walked down an alley I knew had a great deal of graffiti. I looked for more backgrounds to take more selfies. Then I continued the walk. With only a few blocks left, I was very weak, but I could make it. 

 

Despite this experience, I knew that after sitting on the sofa for a little while, I still had a three-hour workout to do involving ab crunches, time on the exercise bike and using weights to focus on working out my chest. This would not be compromised. In fact, I shortened my rest on the sofa, got up and got started with the workout. I didn't want a delay to make me complacent, to make me back out of the exercise I required of myself. 

 

All this is fucked up. I know it. 

 

I can't stop it.

**

IF YOU NEED HELP...See your doctor. Tell the doctor EVERYTHING. (People with eating disorders tend to minimize things or be secretive.) If the doctor dismisses your concerns (as first happened to me), get a second opinion. Don't settle for or freak out over whatever Google says. Seek actual supports in your community. 

If it feels like an emergency, go to Emergency at your nearest hospital.