Good Running: The Story of an Eating Disorder

At 10:22 pm I will be jogging through the Riverside Cemetery in Newmarket, New Hampshire. It will be 10:22 pm and I will be optimizing my time by using this time to think about what I will do tomorrow as to optimize that time. I will decide to wake up at about 4 am. I will wake up at about 4 am, and that will not be a problem because I will be starving. I will have dreamt of nothing but peanut butter and pork roast. So I will wake up at about 4 am.

And I will eat a cup of plain nonfat Greek yogurt.

I will watch the sunrise from the patio of my aunt’s end-unit condo on the bank of the Lamprey River. I will pour myself a cup of coffee and then another. I will study Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. I will study although I am no longer a student — studying for the sake of studying — for the sake of finding and solving some unknown equation, some single unifying theory, that must sit between the lines of the ancient Greek text and under my own body.

“Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is though to aim at some good…”

I will study until about 8 am, when the UV index will reach 6 or 7. This will mean the sun will be high enough for me go running again. This time, though, there will be tanning oil on my arms and on my legs. There will be tanning oil on my back and on my shoulders — my chest, cheeks, and palms. I will always be a Jersey girl at heart, and Jersey girls are not unlike plants: they need the sun to thrive. I will wish my blood were chlorophyll. I will wish that the dihydroxyacetone in the oil would absorb the nutrients that I myself do not. I will think I ought to have been born a plant — a California oak perhaps. I will think California oaks are good and easy whereas stomachs are complex, hard — something beyond chemical.

I will think and I will run and as I run, I will calculate: 95 calories for the apple plus 90 for the half an ounce of almonds last night plus 110 for the cup of nonfat Greek yogurt this morning plus 15-ish for the sugar in my coffee. I will burn about 375 calories if I can complete 4.5 miles within the hour giving me 65 calories of legroom for the afternoon.

That will mean I can add cream to my coffee later.

So I will run the 4.5 miles and then I will shower for 23 minutes until the hot water in my aunt’s condo runs out. Then, I will walk the 1.8 miles into town to go to work at Pão, a small Brazilian restaurant and bakery, which hired me because I have experience sautéing chorizo, but I do not have any experience sautéing chorizo. I will have lied. They will not know that, though. Nobody in this small town — population 8,936 — will know that. Nobody in town, besides my aunt, will know me. So, despite my inexperience, I will work. I will study the cuts that form on my soap-dried hands like they’re footnotes to Marx. They, the other servers, will ask if I am a runner. I will tell them yes. They will tell me I have a runner’s body.

I will prod with my spatula that gross log of chorizo, choking at the milky fat squirming down the pan. I will do that from 11 am to 3 pm. Then, I will skip my discounted lunch — I’m a vegan, I will tell them. I will go down the street to Crackskull’s, the local used bookstore and coffee shop on Main, which already calls me a regular. I will have lived here two weeks.

I will sit in their café and try out a few more equations, read between a few more lines of Nichomachean Ethics. I will write a few more pages on Aristotle’s notion of some good. I will by association recall Charlotte’s webbed remark some pig. I will imagine the spiders I spot up in the rafters, up in their webs dotted with fat flies, conferring about what to weave for me. I will imagine them day in and day out spinning the stories of the townies who sit beneath them until they develop distortions — until their eight limbs show the wear of labor, like the overgrown thumbs, swollen feet, and pendulous lips of the deformed spinners in the Brothers Grimm tale — spinning their whole lives away until their bodies were no more than how they spent the hours of their days. Pushing the tip of my pen into my thumb, I will wonder if I pressed for long enough, hard enough, will the pad of my finger harden as well?

Taking a breath from Aristotle, I will find on the shelves of Crackskull’s a chewed up copy of Schopenhauer’s The Intrinsic Value of Nature. I will discover within it the concept of wille zum leben — the will to live — and I will doodle wille zum leben in the margins of my notebook as though it were a crush’s name. I will finish up my fourth cup of coffee in thirty minutes. That will be okay, I will say, because I will switch to decaf after 5 pm and the refills are free. They will always be free. I will switch to decaf after 5 pm, I tell myself. I will.

But I won’t and my thoughts will begin to spin, like tipsy spiders, incoherent — knotting strange threads together that I won’t be able to undo. I will need something to wrestle down the caffeinated anxiety, zipping into tangles in the space between my mind and my eyes. Pressing the tip of my pen into my thumb, I will need something to make my thoughts undo and then link through to the conclusion of some unifying theory — if I could just ruminate long enough. If I could only — but only if —

I will propose that if — if my leaps of logic continue to lose their lucidity — if my wille zum leben gets the best of me, if — I will allow myself to purchase a single overpriced biscotti. Just one overpriced biscotti. But only if — if I would just make it until 6 pm —

At 6 pm my aunt will pick me up from Crackskull’s and take me to vinyasa yoga (vinyasa meaning flow, from pose to pose: breathing, always breathing). My aunt will pick me up after she gets off work at the university’s library. We will go to yoga together. She will make small talk with the teacher while I test to see if my thighs touch when I stretch into downward facing dog. I will compare the circumference of my calves to the girl next to me. Halfway through class I will have to lay down in child’s pose. I will want to vomit, but I won’t. Afterward, we will drive home. My aunt will suggest that we learn a new recipe together. I will fidget in my seat and tell her that sounds like a good idea. She will suggest I make friends my own age.

We will get home at about 8 pm, and I will tell my aunt I am exhausted. She will say my diet might be to blame. She will say my diet — it is a little odd, after all. I will add more protein tomorrow, I will say. I will say I will add more protein tomorrow, but I won’t.

I will go to bed. I will make it to my bed and I will not think about the banana — 110 calories — my aunt left on the counter for her lunch the next day. I will not sneak back down the stairs to where that banana waits for her and only her. I will not sneak back down the stairs because that one banana might lead to two bananas — 220 calories, 45 minutes of running at 5 miles per hour. I will not sneak back down the stairs and eat two bananas or drink a whole glass of chocolate milk — 158 calories — because that might lead to a half-gallon of chocolate milk — 1,672 calories. Besides, I will have lied and told my aunt I am lactose intolerant. I will have lied to my aunt who has taken me in blind, asking only that I chip in for utilities. I will only owe her $75 or so a month if I continue to go through hot water like I do.

My aunt will think I am nothing more than a promising academic — she will not know. She will not know that I could not stay in New Jersey because New Jersey means an inpatient treatment program. It means my sister following me to the gym and confronting me on the treadmill. New Jersey will mean yet another intervention and anywhere else will mean rent.

My aunt will not know that I am some pig and a liar. My aunt will not notice the missing bananas. She will not notice the missing milk the way she doesn’t notice the scale in the upstairs bathroom has been moved or the deepening circles under my eyes or the bulge at the bottom of my belly or the dry skin that hangs where my ass used to be.

I will remind myself: she noticed you moved her toothbrush.

I will think about this all while I jog through a graveyard in the middle of New Hampshire, breathing in variations of three-quarter time — in two three, hold two three four five six, out two three, in two three, hold two three four five six, out two three — I will think about this as I run through a graveyard in the middle of New Hampshire at what is now nearly midnight — must be midnight — and as I run through the graveyard, I will hold my flashlight out in front of me because I am only marginally bipolar, not stupid, and I did think this through enough to bring a flashlight. I will shine the light on the path I’m on, the path that I must, must follow, and my steps will echo off the headstones, rising ahead of me — falling behind me — headstone after headstone.

“Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and pursuit, is though to aim at some good…”

By the time I get home, my aunt will be in her room watching The Daily Show, and I will collapse onto the air mattress in her guest bedroom next to my piled high philosophy books. The ends of my nerves will be vibrating with the nauseous tick of a wound-too-tight clock. My nerves will be running. They will be running too hot because, before I made it up, up the stairs, I will break — I will break. I will have finished off a quart of cold gazpacho and a sleeve of dry Ritz crackers. I will break, feasted on what was not mine and did not deserve. I will collapse onto my air mattress bed. I will try to calm my nerves. My nerves will feel fat. My nerves will be grotesque — engorged. They will. The nerves will stick up out of my skin and will prick against my muscles like tiny little spider legs weaving the words “some pig” on the walls of my insides. I will want to vomit, but I won’t. I will. I will want to smoke, but I won’t. I will want to drink, but I won’t. My aunt will never allow alcohol in the house, which will be fine because alcohol is high in calories and the last time I drank I finished off a whole bottle of blueberry wine in one short sitting. Instead I will count my quick, quick waltzing breaths. In two three, hold two three four five six, out two three. I will feel the most repulsive part of me crawl around inside my gut. I will feel with my hands the mound of spun together Biscotti-Gazpacho-Ritz-Cracker gunk as it forces its way through my digestive tract. I will see the mound snake between my sharp hipbones poking out from my loose gym shorts. I will fall asleep watching the outline of my lopsided ribcage rise and fall, fearing I will never wake up.

“…possession of virtue seems actually compatible with being asleep, or with lifelong inactivity… but a man who was living so no one would call happy, unless he were maintaining a thesis at all costs.”

The next morning when I do wake up — I will wake up and do wake up — I will go to the scale, a categorical sinner. I will weigh my body before a spring-loaded, Target-purchased God, and despite everything (the running, the starving, the withholding, the calculating, the isolation, the compulsion, the upheaval of my life for the sake of a number and nothing more concrete than that) the scale will tell me that despite it all I will have gained two pounds since yesterday.

I will have gained two pounds.

I will step off the scale.

I will put my back against the cool tiles of my aunt’s small bathroom.

I will slide down to the floor. A heated current will be compounding.

I will drum my fingers against my sides to minimize the growing will towards — push with the heel of my palms at my waist in effort to ease the emerging, inconsolable — there will be no way out — there will be no more weight left to lose, the bottom of the bottle. No more wine.

“Must no one at all, then be called happy while he lives; must we as Solon says, see the end? … is it also the case that a man is happy when he is dead?”

My nails, the grunge of tanning oil thick beneath them, will claw at my suffocating sweat-stained salmon sports bra. Each of my ribs will feel like a radiator, my forehead will feel like a fever — I’m sick, I will think, food made me sick — I will pull at the chrome toilet paper mount on the wall. I will want to rip it off, pummel it into the cheap oak cabinets beneath the sink, but I won’t —

I will think of the empty gazpacho carton on the counter in the kitchen and I will calculate what is left in my bank account — if I could just get out, away from, head above water — I will think, if I left now with the little over $1,400 to my name and I only pay for gas — about $3.66 per gallon — and coffee — about $2.50 per cup — and I get a membership at Planet Fitness with access to their locations across the country so I can shower along the way — $19.99 per month — I will wonder if I could make it to California, 3,087 miles away.

I will think of the Californian sun. I will think of California oaks and mountain lilacs — I’ve never been — and the sea breeze bursting through the cracks of my car’s windows — if I put my seats down I can fit a twin mattress in the back.

I will wonder if I sleep in my car — 28 miles per gallon — along the way and talk only to the waitresses who will pour my coffee — they will beg, so thin, eat something — will that relieve me of what I can’t starve out of me — this will towards — will that make me finally good?

I will reason: $400 for gas. If it takes me a week, I will spend at least $50 in coffee along the way — just so I will have earned a place to sit and read and think and piss. I will spend $19.99 at the Planet Fitness up in Dover on my way out — the calculating will have opened up my throat, halting the choking — I will still have a few hundred dollars of legroom — bronzed legs for days and no one to stop me — my blistered feet will shake against the bottom of my aunt’s toilet.

I will get a PO box and will not park in the same spot for more than a night. My family will call me. I will not answer — they will never have the gall to kick me off the family plan because they are — good.

I will still be there, though. Even in California. Even spliced from the world through the strange high of starvation, I will be there and I will never be good. I will never be good enough.

“Is nothing other than the idea of good good in itself?”

I will review what I know of goodness: a glass of wine, I will think, is good. I will drink it and feel its goodness; its goodness will be evident in my attraction towards it. It will make me feel good. I will feel its goodness and I will want more for, to quote Aristotle, “of goods the greater is always more desirable.” A bottle or two later, I will be lying on the floor of my father’s bathroom, and my 12-year old sister will be holding my head, telling me that it’s going to be okay.

That will not be good.

So I won’t drink — but if it is not drinking, it’s running. I will feel the goodness of running, and I will want more and more of it until I’ve burned untold calories on the treadmill at the gym. If it isn’t running, it will be starving. I will feel the goodness of a fasting mind, that nearly religious high, and will want it constantly. And if it isn’t starving, it will be binging. I will feel the goodness of sugar giving me a rush that might leave me comatose. And if it isn’t binging, it will be smoking — passing the bowl, around and around and around, inhaling long after the others have stopped. And if isn’t smoking, it will be Orlando Bloom — when I was 13, I had six Orlando Bloom posters in my bedroom and a cardboard cutout of Legolas, the elf he played in Lord of the Rings — I knew how Orlando Bloom lost his virginity and the chronological order of the movies he’s appeared in since 1998.

Some good that was — I will confess. I will not ever know the meaning of some good.

“If, then, there is some end of the things we do, which we desire for its own sake (everything else being desired for the sake of this), and if we do not choose everything for the sake of something else (for at that rate the process would go on to infinity, so that our desire would be empty and vain), clearly this must be the good and the chief good. Will not the knowledge of it, then, have a great influence on life? Shall we not, like archers who have a mark to aim at, be more likely to hit upon what is right?”

It will not matter whom I’m with or what I am doing. It will not matter what state I’m in. It will not matter. I will find that which seems good and I will follow and chase it with all of my wille zum leben — my wille zum leben not being good enough. I will chase it and then run and run as it chases me, and we will keep running — and running and running — and running was supposed to be the least of all evils, but even the least was too much —

So now, I will walk.

I will get up from the bathroom floor and I will walk. I will walk away from the chrome mount and oak cabinets. I will walk into the hallway. I will walk to my air mattress bed. It will be the longest walk. I will crawl under the blankets my aunt has provided for me. I will call my mom. She will answer after three rings. I will tell her — knowing I’ve finally run out of places to run — I will tell her — the words will take a moment to come out because I know once they are out it will all be over — I will tell her — knowing once I say it I’ll both regain my freedom and be enslaved again — I will tell her —

“Mom, I think I need to go to rehab.”

She will call in sick to work that day. She will drive six hours to come to get me. She will hold me in her arms while we look for centers I like on my laptop. Once admitted, I will continue to read Aristotle. I will read Plato. I will read Schopenhauer. I will read Kierkegaard. My aunt will have known all along — she noticed the scale — she will ship me the philosophy books I ordered from her condo.

That will be good. They will be good.

I will, one day, will be good.