“Cause getting your dreams
It’s strange, but it seems
A little — well — complicated
There’s a kind of a sort of…cost
There’s a couple of things get…lost
There are bridges you cross
You didn’t know you crossed
Until you’ve crossed.”
–Thank Goodness

My parents are worried about me.

I think they should be.
I’m worried about me too.

The jeans I bought that were a perfect snug fit just over 2 weeks ago, can now be taken off without unbuttoning them.
A dress I had taken in before I left, now looks exactly the way it did before any alterations were made.
I’m tired.
Sometimes I find myself feeling a bit dizzy.

The fact of the matter is: I’m not eating enough food and it’s not okay.

I’m not intentionally starving myself, trying to meet some “goal weight” ideal. I am just so stressed out about what is going on.

Where am I going to live once this current situation is over?
What can I afford?
When will I get a job with a sustainable amount of income so that I can know what I can afford?
It’s so expensive here and I only have so much left.

I feel like I’ve been bathing in a sea of uncertainty since the day I got here and that sea sloshes around my stomach as waves of cortisol that do to my appetite what Game of Thrones does to likable characters.  One of my friends just got her MA in Clinical Psychology and has undergone intensive bouts of treatment for her own eating disorder and she’s expressed some concern as well that I am in, what looks to be, a pattern of disordered eating that could easily slip into an ED. I certainly fit quite a few of the personality trait markers. Thankfully, I am super self aware and trying to get in front of it before things go to a Lifetime movie place.

But it is difficult. This is the unhealthiest I have ever been (in memory) and even though I know that and know how important it is to be good to my one and only body, I still can’t make myself hungry. It still is a struggle to eat more than 2 meals a day. And I’m sure the fact that food costs money–a lot of money here (hello $3 for 3 bananas!)–and money is one of the things I am stressing about isn’t helping.
On a superficial note, I look great, which I think makes me downplay how bad this behavior truly is.

I keep thinking that once things settle, once I have a place and a steady job, I will feel like I’m not holding my breath as I have been for the past 2 1/2 months, then everything will return to normal and this will be the part of the story that I gloss over in the retelling, like my first my first few weeks in Van when I was sad, homesick and friendless, having to talk myself out of going home.

But since I don’t know when that is going to be, I am making sure to talk about it and keep myself accountable.

“Leaving is not enough. You must stay gone. Train your heart like a dog. Change the locks even on the house he’s never visited. You lucky, lucky girl. You have an apartment just your size. A bathtub full of tea. A heart the size of Arizona, but not nearly so arid. Don’t wish away your cracked past, your crooked toes, your problems are papier mache puppets you made or bought because the vendor at the market was so compelling you just had to have them. You had to have him. And you did. And now you pull down the bridge between your houses, you make him call before he visits, you take a lover for granted, you take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are magic. Make the first bottle you consume in this place a relic. Place it on whatever altar you fashion with a knife and five cranberries. Don’t lose too much weight. Stupid girls are always trying to disappear as revenge. And you are not stupid. You loved a man with more hands than a parade of beggars, and here you stand. Heart like a four-poster bed. Heart like a canvas. Heart leaking something so strong they can smell it in the street.”
-Frida Kahlo (emphasis added)

I am not a stupid girl.
I am in the kitchen and I am watching my pot.