Memories fade so quickly, even those of the months I might well think of as the most significant of my life: the months in which I began to change how I ate and thereby who I was. But some episodes are still as vivid as yesterday. One such episode began four days after my first day with extra food. I was speaking at a literature and linguistics conference in Sheffield, in the north of England, and I was to stay there for three nights, Wednesday to Saturday. Reading over my diary of those days now, with a cup of tea on a sunny Sunday morning while my boyfriend still sleeps, I'm intoxicated by the sense of change I felt then, fearful but exhilarated. And I'm also amazed, as always when I look back like this, at how different everything was then: the solitude, the late late nights - and, above all, the obsession with food and the ripples it spread out over the rest of life.
The trip began, as most changes to routine did, with exhaustion. I hadn't managed to get to bed till half past five the night before, and then left too little time for all the last bits of packing in the morning, and for the first time had to eat (my breakfast pain au chocolat) in a hurry, before going out and continuing with life - rushing to the station, reaching the platform sweaty and shaking with exhaustion. On the train, I was slightly overwhelmed by the incessant noise of food wrappers crackling and smells of buffet-car coffee, ‘but I feel so differently about them now', I wrote that evening: ‘not like before, longing for whatever they're having, even while despising them and marvelling at them - just resenting the bombardment on ears and nose, mainly.' I had to keep my coat wrapped round me against the air-conditioning, but by the time I'd reached Sheffield, caught a local bus, and walked the last little way to the conference centre, I was drenched in sweat from my ridiculous burdens (‘ridiculous' was my word then; weirdly, I feel less judgemental of my ill self now than I did when she was me). I had with me my huge rucksack laden with all the food I'd need for the three days, and a hot water bottle to replace the electric blanket I never slept without, and all the other accoutrements of anorexia: kitchen scales, ‘foody' magazines to read whilst eating, my special knife, fork, and teaspoon. Then I had to persuade and cajole and get angry and wait at reception and go back again in order that the empty kitchen at the end of my corridor be equipped with even a single saucepan and plate, so that I could make my own food at night there. I was glad I'd brought cutlery with me.
I'd been to a poetry reception with the rest of the delegates in the evening, but asked directions so that I could walk back alone, while they all sifted themselves easily into groups and went out to find restaurants. I cooked my vegetables in the empty kitchen, and did the rest of the preparation crouching on the thin carpet of my room. In my diary described the scene and my feelings thus: ‘As I crouched on the floor with a newspaper spread out as my kitchen work surface at around 11.30, I wondered how anyone could want to do anything else. No one else could comprehend how I could want to do this, though, I suppose. And I do still want to. And can't believe my weight will ever (reach a stage when it must) cause me to think differently'.
The doctor at the eating-disorders clinic had made much of the magic of weight regained: how at a certain point (around a BMI of 19, she said was usual) one's thinking suddenly softened and allowed one properly to contemplate change. But for now there remained that gaping gulf between what I did and wanted on one side, and on the other what I knew other people did, and, I supposed, did because they wanted to. I was daunted by the impossibility of changing one's desires. And the thought still remained, insidious, that perhaps I'd just stumbled across something that ‘ordinary' people would jump at if only they could see it: that they didn't really ‘want' what they did - eating their three square meals a day, going to restaurants with colleagues - but were conditioned into believing it was the only way of doing things.
I can never quite understand, now, how it always took me so long to prepare my feasts and get round to eating them: it was two in the morning before I was in the usual (obsessively recorded) raptures about ‘that bread, fat, garlic, salt' and how ‘absolutely divine they were': ‘squidgy salty fatty doughy pungent...'. Then one of the Krispy Kreme doughnuts from my best friend E. And how could any of the other people, out in hot noisy restaurants, possibly have the pleasure which that creamy sweet stuff gave, eaten in bed in the near-dark with the overhead light off so I wouldn't have to get up again afterwards, and only the yellowish glow of street lights filtering through the curtains? The duvet cover was sticky with doughnut filling when I lay down, resolving not to have any breakfast in order that there might be a chance of eating some lunch with other people, and wondering what my weight would be when I got back home on Sunday.
The next day was weird enough, though the day that followed was to be more momentous still. What follows is the beginning of my diary entry for the Thursday: ‘Oh God, what a strange and difficult and exhausting day it's been. I've eaten so much, and such weird things, and with other people I don't even know - a whole brown petit pain and some couscous and nice salad at lunchtime, with a cappuccino, sitting between two interesting but obese people.' Then I'd had wine at a book launch, a private tea-time snack of flatbread with mozzarella, smoked salmon, and prawn cocktail (tiny amounts of things left over from my cruise on the boat with my mother the week before; things I'd bought for her and couldn't see go to waste). And when I was cooking again, in the harsh fluorescent light of the always deserted kitchen, I'd rifled through the dustbin, as I often did to check for foodstuffs, and ate the ham from a hardly touched sandwich, shocked at the waste - ‘and another even worse, rescued almost whole'.
I couldn't begin to understand how people could think and care so little about food that they could simply throw it away. They must have decided they were full halfway through eating, or not even thought, just been in a hurry - they must not have cared about the expense (I marvelled, in any case, at how much those readymade sandwiches cost). None of those things was conceivable to me. I had a haul of pastries from the conference coffee break, too, ‘and irresistible caramel shortbreads from tea time - don't know whether people noticed me gathering up masses, hiding them away in my bag - along with another roll from lunch, which I'll have shortly, and an apple...' And I'd carefully stashed away the sachets of coffee, tea, and hot chocolate and the bar of chocolate left by the kettle in my room. The idea of food being wasted was as intolerable to me as the thrill of free food was irresistible.
I felt alien to everyone else there. Partly intellectually - I'd hoped this conference would be more congruent with how I saw the future of literary studies, and was ‘heartbreakingly disappointed' that it wasn't, really - and yet suspected that it was I who was at fault. I'd thought I felt at home in academia, but perhaps it was just Oxford and my well-insulated, perfectly honed lifestyle there where I felt comfortable. But mostly I felt alien because of the food and all that it dictated. I made myself go out for walks when my legs were already aching, I retreated to my room for naps because I'd slept too little, I didn't even consider going out for dinner in the evening, when the most fun and wine-fuelled discussion would be happening. Nonetheless, I knew I was making progress: I felt how weird it was to come back from a walk and eat, before even making a cup of tea, ‘and how weird, too, that it seemed already quite ordinary, when less than a week ago I couldn't have believed it possible without mental agony of the first degree - or without a whole cognitive revolution. I suppose in a way the latter must have happened. However hedged about with conditionality that last inference was - it must be true. It's just frightening to admit it, naturally. But glad I managed lunch.'
