pizza

My mum can't understand why I never want to come home to see her. It's hard to explain that I associate her house with eating and I can't be there without binging. So having been coerced over for dinner tonight, I was at panic stations. At pre-dinner grocery shopping I was so crippled by anxiety I had to huddle myself down on a pile of toilet paper in a promo display. The anticipation and the calorie counting and the bargaining, remembering my pledge that vomiting was not an option, a way out of it. Strategising. Knowing it was hopeless.

We made pizza for dinner and for a few brief moments during the preparation and the nibbling and the playing with ingredients it was almost fun. But then it came to the eating, with trembling hands and lurching stomach. Afterwards I sat on the kitchen floor with awkward tears and no explanations for them. If I sat there, if I just sat there long enough, I would digest enough of that pizza that I couldn't throw it up. I needed to pee, but if I went near the toilet I knew there would be no way to stop myself. So I sat and sat and sat, and when finally it became time to settle beside my mother on the couch I accepted her hot chocolate and her cuddles and everything slowly became OK.