Trigger warning: Discussion of food and disordered eating.

When was the last time that you ate something without thinking about it? And by that I mean, when was the last time you ate something without weighing the positive and negative consequences that that food stuff may have on your body? When was the last time you ate a chocolate chip cookie without playing mathematical gymnastics as you count the calories you’ve consumed for the day minus the calories you’ve expended?

For me, I can’t even remember.

I don’t know when it was that food became laden with guilt, shame, and turned into a complete mathematical nightmare. But I imagine it was probably around the same time that I hit puberty and realized that I was much bigger than most of my classmates. I don’t mean bigger in that I was chubbier or obese, but I was quite literally the tallest kid (male or female) in any class. My friends could still fit into children’s wear and I was shopping at women’s stores.

It was probably also around the time that I was swimming. I started competitive swimming around the same age and spent 8 to 10 hours a week in a pool. I also spent 8 to 10 hours a week with girls whose bodies had barely any body fat. The other girls walked around the pool deck on their toothpick legs, thighs never rubbing together in the humidity (they had what we now call the thigh gap), without a towel covering their non-existent cellulite.

Watching these lithe swimmers was the beginning of when I stopped thinking of food as nourishment. Food was not something to make my body stronger or make me swim better. And it definitely wasn’t something that I could enjoy without consequence.

My obsession with food became worse when I decided that I wanted to be a model. I had been watching Fashion Television with Jeanne Bekker since I was 6. I watched Naomi, Cindy, Christy, and Claudia prance down runways wearing clothes that I didn’t understand but loved. I made my Barbies imitate these glamazons and made my sister play Supermodel with me. My love for fashion and supermodels, coupled with the fact that when I hit puberty people kept telling me I should be a model (I guess because I am tall?) wanting to be a model seemed like a natural decision.

What I learned very quickly was that being tall wasn’t enough to be a model. Agencies were looking for a tall girl with a unique face who had very precise measurements; measurements I didn’t have. However, the agency woman who had sized me up (literally, she had taken a tape measure to me) assured me that if I stuck to a healthy regimen and worked out (they didn’t want unhealthy girls here, oh no!) that I could probably be a model.

That summer I spent carb-less, counting and weighing all of my food, and working out like a maniac. I ate my 1/2 cup of All Bran Buds with my low-fat yogurt cup and kept my hunger pangs at bay throughout the day with countless cups of coffee (it wasn’t like it was going to stunt my growth), diet coke, and if I was too dizzy juice. At dinner I ate very small portions of whatever my mom cooked, minus whatever carbohydrate she would put on the table. I returned to the agency in the fall with the exact measurements I was missing 2 months earlier.

At 5’10” I weighed 115 lbs. I was cold all of the time. I was ravenously hungry. But the agency said I could be a model, so it was totally worth it.

As you can imagine, this eating regimen couldn’t last forever. Despite fasting during the day, when I got home from school, I couldn’t stop myself from raiding the pantry. I would shove spoonfuls of peanut butter into my mouth while crunching down on chocolate chip cookies. I would eat ice cream directly from the tub while crumbs of chips were on the front of my shirt. I would eat until I felt sick. And it wasn’t just at my own house that this would happen. I used to babysit for a family across the street and as soon as the kids were in bed, I would snack on whatever they had in the house. To this day I think they had a nanny cam and stopped letting me babysit once they saw me shoving my face with all of their food.

I was binge eating, without the purging. As you can imagine, this eating pattern made me slowly start putting weight back on. I would measure myself and was seeing myself grow in the process. I hadn’t booked any real modelling work and told my mom, “I don’t want to be a model anymore. I’m too hungry.” And that was the end of my career.

Unfortunately, it was just the start of a pattern of disordered eating that follows me to this day. I am currently the heaviest I have ever been, mainly because of the anti-psychotic Seroquel. It causes cravings for carbohydrates. It overrides the brain’s “I’m full” sensor and wreaks havoc on my metabolism. It also makes it incredibly difficult to lose weight. Some days I am embarrassed by my current body while other times I just don’t give a fuck. Except no matter how I feel about my body, I still feel the same way about food; it’s the enemy.

Seriously this was the best salad ever.

As I get older, I’m slowly trying to approach food in a different way but my disordered eating is deeply embedded in who I am. I am trying to value food as either good or bad based only on its relation to my health. Eating a beautiful salad is preferable to a bacon cheeseburger with fries because the nutrients in the salad actually fulfill dietary needs. The cheeseburger fills a craving or laziness because I didn’t prepare my lunch. However, even as I eat a salad filled with healthy items like avocados, berries, quinoa, arugula, and feta cheese — I wonder, wouldn’t it be better if I just didn’t eat? I still value skipping a meal over nourishing my body. And that makes me incredibly sad.

It makes me even sadder because I know there are countless other women and men who think just like me. There are many other people who are so embarrassed by their bodies that they almost kill themselves trying to attain an unobtainable goal — like that pesky thigh gap. I am lucky that I do not have a full blown eating disorder because they take lives.

But, I would like to be able to eat a damn chocolate chip cookie without wondering how many calories are in it.

Dear Alcohol,

You and I have had some fun times. Wino Wednesday with my best friends, which almost never really fell on a Wednesday but seemed to funnier to name it. Numerous pints on patios with colleagues after work to blow off steam. I’ve enjoyed you at whiskey tastings and wine pairings; there was this particularly amazing one in San Francisco where someone had the amazing idea to pair you with chocolate. I have shared incredible bottles of amarone with my partner over fancy home cooked meals that were better than anything we could get in a restaurant.

Despite all of these great times, there have been countless others where you have caused me, and those I love, shame and embarrassment.

Me & my friend E. during Halloween at Bishop’s University — beers in hand. I was 17 in this photo.

Let’s rewind to first-year university where I ended up in the university “drunk tank” too many times that I started giving fake names to avoid mandatory alcohol abuse meetings. There was that sleepover in grade 11 when I passed out after consuming countless jello shots and Peach Schnapps (the drink of choice for any well respected high school girl) after a particularly cruel boyfriend broke up with my via e-mail. I collapsed mid speech about how all men were bastards and “we were all fucking fabulous!”

Or what about that time the same wino Wednesday ladies and I got so bombed during a birthday dinner that a taxi wouldn’t take us home. We had to wander until we (me) sobered up. Oh and what about that work party that colleagues had to call my parents to come and get me because I was puking in the bathroom? Or, even more embarrassing, almost five years ago when my grandfather suddenly passed away and I got blackout drunk after his funeral in front of family and friends. My husband and parents had to put me to bed.

Now a lot of this behaviour most people would chalk up to youth and sheer stupidity, and I would agree. A lot of these stories happened when I was between 16 and 21. This was before I learned about tolerance and when to trade you for water. But there are still these moments (more than I wish to admit), even at 29, where I get so drunk I’m puking in a bathroom or waking up with a wicked hangover trying to piece together what happened the night before.

I have been so open and honest in this blog — more honest than in “real” life — that I sometimes find it frightening how much the public knows about me and my struggles. But this is one thing that I haven’t addressed. It’s a secret that I’m even afraid to admit myself. It is the last card that I hold to my chest.

I self medicate with you, alcohol. And I particularly abuse you when my mental illness is triggered. This means that I am either floundering in depression or enjoying the high tide of hypomania.

A family photo from my convocation. That’s me in the middle row on the far right and my grandfather is on the left of my sister who is in the middle.

Let’s use my grandfather’s death as an example. I loved that man more than anything. He was taken from me in a flash, a month before I got married. I have so many incredible memories of me and him from when I was a child and just seeing a picture of him now still brings me to tears. Hearing a Johnny Cash song brings a swell of emotions so strong that I often have to stop and remind myself to breathe. I found a book of poetry by Robert Service and had to buy it just because it reminded me of him. I have become Scrooge at Christmas because, to me, he was the embodiment of all the Christmas-spirit. He used to have Christmas Tree parties where everyone bundled up and cut down fresh trees and then the house would be filled with 20 to 30 people as they celebrated the holiday season. He would always be there on my own birthday (December 18). His birthday was December 31st and he always said he was born to party.

This New Year’s Eve I drank gin martinis just trying to get through it, and ended up where I usually do with you when I’m that upset, puking in some bushes.

Many of these moments where I’m drunk, stumbling, and puking correlate to a moment where I was feeling like utter shit. Despite the infinite number of therapists I have seen over the years, I struggle to vocalize and identify negative feelings and dealing with them. It’s just easier to drink until I’m numb.

Do I think I’m an alcoholic? Absolutely not. I don’t drink to function. I don’t drink every day or even every week. I can easily go months without touching a glass. However, what bothers me is that when I do choose to drink it’s always over the top. It can never be a glass of wine, it has to be several. It’s never one pint, it’s five. I have no sense of moderation. This is part of my personality and my bipolar disorder. I have an extreme personality and I either go in 110% or I don’t do it at all.

With my recent bipolar instability I have realized that consuming you, alcohol, just isn’t an option. Every time I touch a glass of something, I risk becoming drunk. Besides, I know you fuck up my mood. Plus, with the amount of medication that I take, I know you’re not great for my liver. And, any bipolar expert will tell you that you’re a big no-no. I mean, it says it right on the bottles of pills I take, but for the past 10 years I have ignored the warnings in an attempt to fit in, in an attempt to numb the way I feel.

So alcohol, you and I are taking a break. I don’t want to say it’s a break up because I don’t want to put that pressure on myself. But those pints on patios will be few and far between, I’m glad I live far away from my two best friends because Wino Wednesdays are no longer a thing, and those beautiful bottles of wine will almost never happen.

I might see you again in the future, but right now you need to go.

Here’s what I’ve decided: People generally get depression. By that I mean, they understand what it’s like to feel sad and self-loathing. They get the feeling of being helpless. They may not understand the complexities and nuances or how hard it is to do simple tasks like brush your teeth. But they get the general sentiment about what it feels like to be depressed.

People also generally get anxiety. We all experience anxiety to a certain extent. It’s like that moment before a test or the big game. Perhaps you’re waiting for news and you can’t sit still. Although anxiety is 100 times more complex than that the literal how it feels people are able to get.

What people don’t get are the other aspects of mental illnesses. They don’t know what it’s like to have hallucinations — auditory or visual — they don’t know what it’s like to be manic. These are experiences beyond the human spectrum of understanding; unless you live with someone who is Schizophrenic or Bipolar or you have Schizophrenia or Bipolar.

I could explain all day what it feels like to be hypomanic — it feels like I’m constantly late for something. It feels like I’ve forgotten something important. My skin is crawling and I want to rip it off. It feels like there are ants in my brain. I’m twitchy like a tweaker in need of a hit. I’m paranoid as fuck. I ramble about things that I think sound profound, but really sound illogical and dumb. My voice is too loud, words tumbling out too fast. But at the same time, I am hyper focused and aware. You need that project done — it’s getting done, like TODAY!

But this, all this energy. It could be gone tomorrow. And I’ll be a pile of depression — that thing you can all understand.