the total sum of accumulation. Bite. Bite. One more. No one bite enough to feel guilt over.
For 25 years, I have felt most loved when I am most hungry. The flat stomach proof I deserve one more gulp, one more chunk, one more kiss. My mother taught me the satisfaction of deprivation and the corresponding joy of more. She taught me longing—to look at the soft, pink middle of a filet and lust after it. We always want the forbidden.
She taught me through her deprivation, the power and seduction of desire, of abundance, gluttony, excess. More. More. More. How could I achieve the feeling of fullness I longed for without the corresponding feelings of guilt and shame and failure? How could I satiate my desire and still stand next to her in a family photo?
My first answer to these questions was a simple fix: shove a finger down my throat.
The day after Halloween, at 11 years old, I stuffed my stash of candy in my swim bag and headed to the pool. Before practice, I jammed the Milky Ways and Butterfingers into my mouth. Skittles, Starburst, Tootsie Rolls, Snickers, Kit Kats; I threw the wrappers into the metal receptacle to rot with the used pads and ate without breathing. Reese’s, 100 Grands, M&Ms, Mr. Goodbars. I was a natural. The switch in my brain click-click-clicked off, and I was away. Sugar took me, I opened my legs to it, let myself go.
I was a natural at the next part, too—jab, jab, jab and up and out it all came. And just like that: freedom. Full, and then empty. The empty so much more satisfying laid next to the previous fullness. I had both, finally. I held contradiction in my hands and knew it. I was more than one thing—full and empty. These fingers, this throat, that belly—power. Never again did I need to feel the guilt of gravy and dumplings and bread pudding.
The next answer that came was only slightly more complicated, but ultimately more satisfying. Drugs.
I am not unique in my twin longings. Addiction and bulimia are sisters. There are many double-blind, peer-reviewed, scientific studies that put numbers to this phenomenon. But I am all the study of a body I need to know that a finger down my throat and a needle in the crook of my elbow are a singular stroke, the same violence.