In Body I Trust Read online

  Luna Bean. Tuna. Tuna Bean. Big Tuna. Luna Berry. Looney Tunes. Lunatic. She had countless nicknames, but her formal name was Wheezy Luna Cita. Wheezy because she always had a slight wheeze in her tired breath. Cita, because Amelia loved everything about the Latin culture, and she was, in fact, her little moon.

  They made their way through the front gate, up the stairs, and back into their apartment. Amelia replaced her lukewarm, overly creamed coffee with room temperature water. Staying hydrated was essential. The body signals the feeling of hunger to the brain if it’s dehydrated. If she was hungry, she drank more water. On the flip side, drinking too much water made her bloated. While it was temporary, water weight was still an added number she couldn’t bring herself to see on the scale.

  It was already late afternoon and she still hadn’t eaten. Day three without food. A record since her last bout of food deprivation. The entire experience was a competition with herself. How long she could hold out without eating would then be rewarded with the skewed notion of having control over her body after years of it being lost to others.

  Amelia had eaten breakfast once since she’d moved in, lunch maybe three times. Her routine used to consist of making an omelet after her daily jog and shower. A period of time when she took care of herself. Her mother, Gwen, was a master in the kitchen. She taught Amelia what she claimed to be the right way to cook an omelet: eggs, whatever cheese was in the fridge, garlic, red onion, spinach, maybe some peppers, and of course butter. Never cooking spray, always butter. Amelia couldn’t remember when she took this out of her routine, but knew subconsciously it was her little monster at it again. “Little monster”—that’s what she called her eating disorder.

  Miranda reiterated the importance of giving her eating disorder a personified name, but Amelia was too afraid. It was easier to refer to it as some mythical creature.

  “It’s about turning something hypothetical into something tangible.” Miranda always spoke with her hands, but not in an aggressive way. Like she was being descriptive with her body.

  “Ya, but then I’d actually have to admit to myself that something is wrong with me.” Amelia held back the urge to cry. “That I’m sick.”

  Miranda rested her forearms on her thighs and clasped her hands together, leaning closer towards Amelia.

  “Isn’t that the point? Putting a face to your darkest demon to make it more real?”

  A humanization of her disorder. Just like turning her mystery neighbor into the real-life Emmett.

  Amelia opened the refrigerator and looked at the empty shelves and drawers filled with rotting vegetables. Another roadblock. There was nothing edible that didn’t require taking a dreaded trip to the grocery store.

  Three cans of albacore tuna and a fossilized stack of whole wheat wraps sat in the pantry. Most of the vegetables she’d bought almost two weeks ago had now grown a coating of mold. She’d forgotten to put the raw chicken in the freezer and it was way beyond saving at this point.

  She slammed the door of the cold, taunting vessel in frustration, but the anti-slam, child-safety of the new, fancy appliance left her unsatisfied. There was no way she could get herself to the grocery store now. Amelia gained the courage once every other week to get herself past the front doors of King Soopers. She’d speed down the aisles, pay at the register, and rush back home to put the food in its proper place. That didn’t necessarily mean she was going to eat any of it.

  Grocery shopping was a very intentional task. The thought alone was enough to cause a panic attack, so she’d robotically purchase items from her safe-food list, another of Miranda’s propositions.

  “They’re precautionary measures in case you’re having a tough day.” Miranda’s voice popped into Amelia’s subconscious, yet again. “Things like an emergency call list or writing down go-to restaurants for meals if you don’t have the energy to cook.” Amelia hadn’t cooked a proper meal in weeks. “If you were to make a safe-food list, what would you put on it?”

  Amelia pulled a magnetic notepad from the refrigerator. Across the top of her list she wrote “Safe Foods” in bubble letters, writing slowly and taking her time in order to procrastinate actually making the list.

  Taking inventory of her fear-foods, however, was an effortless task. Anything with gluten was forbidden, pasta and bread in particular. Fried was no longer in her vocabulary. Dairy products like milk and cheese gave her a near heart attack if they were in close proximity.

  Burgers were off the table. Periodically she’d treat herself to one, but only after a hike at least six miles long and with over a 1,000-foot gain in elevation. When someone acknowledged how frail she’d become, they’d insist she eat a burger, which made her resent the beefy patties even more.

  The smell of pizza put her into a depression. Mostly because she loved it so much, but the delicious pie reiterated she’d be dining alone. Amelia thought of pizza as a communal experience. Eating in general felt like it was meant to be a group activity. Sitting around a table and sharing a meal with someone else was a life Amelia didn’t have. Not for a long time.

  What she could eat on occasion were her own skewed versions of tapas, which were essentially variations of snacks she convinced herself were a full meal. She jotted down blueberries, rice cakes, and mixed nuts onto her safe-foods list, immediately adding the words NO SALT in parentheses next to the nuts. Salt made her bloated, throwing her down a cascading spiral.

  The hunger pangs were getting worse. Water no longer satiated the monster, so she tended to the other one that lived inside her: the nicotine monster. She walked back over to the refrigerator and found a few stalks of celery that hadn’t yet gone bad. She took a bite, letting the soggy celery linger in her mouth for a few seconds, then spit it out into a paper towel.

  That’ll suffice for now.

  Her eating disorder didn’t always look like this. There were times she found comfort in food, eating until it physically caused her pain, particularly anything with chocolate. Ice cream covered in caramel. Chocolate chip cookies. Brownies. Fill in the blank with any food made with massive amounts of processed sugar and ingredients ending in -ose.

  The bingeing would usually start when the loneliness made an appearance. Sip after sip, bite after bite, she’d fill the void with decadent foods until she could no longer feel the emptiness, only stomach cramps.

  It was well past noon, her usual time of declining productivity and any remote sense of normalcy.

  Tomorrow will be different.

  She couldn’t wait for that moment. The one where her consciousness would become aware and her eyes would slowly open with the sun. An opportunity. A glimpse of a potential that hadn’t been tainted. But like a speeding truck going down a one-way street in the wrong direction, the crash would be inevitable.

  Now she was at that turning point. The harrowing moment when hours turned to minutes and minutes turned to seconds. Everything slowed down, reminding her of the isolation. A familiar kind of pain where, even with ten or twenty hands reaching out, she still fell back into its arms. Besides, there was no chance to hurt even more when she was always hurting anyway. It was just a hurt she’d gotten used to.

  A bowl will do the trick.

  Smoking weed alleviated the shame and guilt associated with eating, removing all of her inhibitions. It also made her lazy, unmotivated, and triggered the bingeing.

  Shit, that’s right. There’s no food.

  With no munchies in the house, Amelia put the weed back into the drawer of her nightstand and went out to the balcony for a cigarette. It was usually best to binge at night just before bed anyways. No time left in the day to dwell on her actions. Not until the morning when she’d have to deal with the repercussions of the world’s worst stomachache. Her logic was to make sure she didn’t eat for the entire day after a night of binging, rationalizing it as compensation.

  She tried explaining this to Gwen once.

  “No one seems to understand how I could possibly have a disorder where I’m
obsessed with restricting food, but also force it down my throat,” Amelia said to her mom over the phone.

  “So then help me understand,” Gwen responded, for the first time allowing Amelia the space to talk. It wasn’t her mom’s fault. She was Sicilian, and a talker.

  “It’s not about the food, or my weight, or how I look. It’s about control.”

  Life seemed to be removed from all sense of the word. Her little monster always managed to put food at the forefront of her mind, clouding her judgement and dictating her actions.

  Amelia smoked a cigarette on the balcony, facing Emmett’s apartment per usual. Even with a name and identity, she still wanted to believe that he was in some way her protector, her patron saint of lonely souls. She came back inside and locked the door. She put her right foot in front of her left, balancing on the tips of her toes to peek through the window to see if Emmett was there, but he was nowhere in sight.

  A heavy blanket of defeat enveloped her. There it was, the sadness coming at her like a thick fog. Time and time again she returned to the same sheets that barricaded her from the rest of the world, blocking out the daylight to hide from reality. Sleep was her only companion. The longer she was awake, the longer she’d be reminded of her isolated existence. The more she was asleep, the less the world existed. The less she’d have to acknowledge. The heaviness caused her knees to buckle beneath her as she fell to the ground.

  Please stop. Please. Just stop. Not now. Give me just one day. I promise I’ll make this one different.

  Amelia tried to persuade the darkness of her depression to recede. It was a barter system she only ever attempted when it was too late. She didn’t know how long a depressive episode would last—sometimes only a few hours, sometimes for several days—but in that initial moment she always knew that the monster had won and there was nothing she could do about it.

  She crawled on all fours into her bedroom, closed the blinds, and buried herself from head to toe under the covers of her freshly made bed. Not to sleep, because she knew there would be no such thing, but to let the rest of the day pass her by. She just laid there in a comatose fashion, shedding a tear every few hours. The sun would rise eventually, but then again, she never knew how long the dark would take over.

  Chapter 3

  Nausea crawled from her stomach into her throat, waking her from another restless night of broken sleep. It was an exhaustion that made her feel like Freddy Krueger would be coming down the hall into her bedroom at any moment, ready to whisk her away into the darkness along with him.

  Days would go by without sleeping more than just a few hours. Hallucinations of shadows turning into monsters, but she was never afraid of them. She constantly lived with monsters far more terrifying than something under her bed or hiding in the back of her closet. Nothing was scary when she knew it was coming.

  An intense, sharp pain pierced her lower back.

  “Ahh,” she cringed, sucking air through her clenched teeth.

  Hunger was striking once again. Barely able to move, she flopped on her side to find comfort in Luna.

  Amelia knew what her body needed, but her little monster had other plans. She couldn’t trust what she felt in her heart or the never-ending dialogue in her head, but her body never lied.

  When she was nervous, blood would rush to her face causing her cheeks to flush. Her ears would tingle and her hands would shake with tremors. When she was in danger, her heart would speed up and her palms would become clammy, indicating her fight or flight responses. When she was hungry, abrupt pains would radiate throughout her stomach and her back followed by a surge of shame. She’d hit herself in the face with disgust. Her body never lied.

  That didn’t mean she always listened.

  An uncontrollable twitch emerged in her left thigh. She often felt a similar twitch near the stye beneath her right eyelid. But over the last few days, she’d experienced similar twitches all over her body, along with excruciating and unwelcome foot cramps. Dehydrated, stressed, and going on four days without food. A recipe for muscle spasms.

  Next the vertigo kicked in. It didn’t matter if she was horizontal. Her body didn’t care that the room spun beneath her every time she closed her eyes. As if she were one with the earth, so in touch she could feel it turning on its axis. It was a feeling she wanted no part of. It was time to get up.

  She blindly reached for her phone to check the time: 5:28 a.m.

  Could be worse.

  An opportune time to write. Creativity sparked at weird hours. She kept a journal on her bedside table just in case a notable thought made an impromptu appearance—and of course to record her daily victories. Amelia wasn’t going to fall back asleep. Instead of lying there, she got up to write about her exhaustion and irritability.

  She fought through her fatigue to rise from her pillowy prison. Rinse, wash, repeat. Her morning routine. Luna Bean was too tired to move, snuggled up under the comforter with eyes begging for her mother to come back to bed. Amelia carefully walked herself along the wall of the hallway, leaning in close in case she fell from the vertigo. She went into the kitchen and made herself a cup of coffee in preparation for her morning balcony visit. She grabbed her smokes and sat outside to watch the sunrise.

  Metal bars with fleur-de-lis pointing to the sky lined her three-story high, outdoor sanctuary. The Capitol Building hovered above a five-story building with floor to ceiling windows. Amelia’s balcony faced northwest, so she only ever saw the sunset. Sunrise was a special treat. At just the right time, she could see the reflection of the Colorado sunrise reflecting shades of pink and orange against the building’s windows. Today was starting out with a small victory.

  The incessant twitch distracted her, pulling her away from the moment. She rubbed her thigh with both of her thumbs as hard as she could, unsure if that would be enough to stop it. She planned to hydrate herself just as she did every day, but, as always, dreaded knowing that food was the only solution to her inner tremor. It didn’t matter. She’d rather deal with the annoyance of bodily twitches than the humiliation of beating herself after eating, a few open hand slaps to the face as punishment for how grotesque she felt.

  The view of the sunrise in the reflection wasn’t as long-lasting as she thought it would be. Besides, her mind had drifted somewhere else. She picked up her smokes and headed back inside.

  The last day of my twenties. What a bullshit year.

  Tomorrow was Amelia’s thirtieth birthday, a period of twenty-four hours she wanted to gloss right over and pretend didn’t exist. With no one to spend it with or reasons to believe her life was worth celebrating, it was better to act as if tomorrow would be just another Wednesday.

  She grabbed her laptop and placed herself on the sectional couch facing the fireplace. Four delicate paws slowly tapped across the hardwood floors. Luna walked over and laid her head on Amelia’s lap. She stared at her mother with pathetically sweet puppy eyes, clearly waiting for Amelia to give her the signal to join her.

  “Up, up!” She offered Luna a tiny space on the couch to place her warm, soft body. She jumped up and Swiss Rolled next to Amelia’s thigh. Opening her laptop, Amelia started a new GoogleDoc. She placed her tired eyes on the screen and grazed her fingers across the keyboard. A blank slate for a blank mind.

  She needed more coffee. The whiskey to her alcoholic nature, an anorexic’s vice. She looked towards the kitchen. It was much too far for her to walk, especially with the vertigo refusing to subside. Plus, Luna looked so cozy; she didn’t want to disturb her. Amelia liked feeling Luna’s legs push against her. An adorable, softened yelp came from Luna’s snout. She must have been dreaming of something nice, like running in a field or chasing a bird. Dreams as Amelia knew them were more like nightmares. Coffee wasn’t worth disturbing Luna’s dream state.

  On the rare nights she could actually sleep, Amelia would be startled awake at an obscene hour bathed in a cold sweat, panicked by a dream where Dom always managed to show up. Occasionally there were dra
matic fights that had him apologizing, begging her to take him back. In some dreams, he was a complete stranger; someone passing by on the street. Over time, the night terrors became less frightening and intense. She’d gotten used to them because again, nothing was scary when she saw it coming.

  She stared back at the empty screen.

  Four days without eating and two without writing. Maybe there is a correlation here, Amelia. Either way, you suck.

  She couldn’t get herself to expel a single thought, not with the twin distractions of annoying twitches and an aching stomach calling on her to eat.

  Amelia glanced over at the guitar leaning up against the wall. Dominic had bought it for her back when they lived together in their first apartment outside of Aurora. Amelia woke up the morning after one of their fights and saw a Luna Electric Acoustic Guitar propped up against the kitchen table. It had a gorgeous spalted spruce veneer with moon phases as fretboard markers. There was a big red bow with a letter taped to the neck of the guitar.

  I didn’t do this to buy your love. I bought this for you because you deserve it. I want you to play music and, every single time you pick it up, to remind yourself how amazing of a person you are.

  She’d played it a few times since she got it, singing songs she wrote about her sadness. She’d sit on her balcony and softly sing to herself. It was hard to play more than one song before her fingertips started to burn. It needed new strings which she bought, but now it was just one more thing to procrastinate. Procrastination, another byproduct of depression. The empty desire to do nothing while she buried herself with belittling thoughts.

  Amelia’s stomach flipped upside down as she tried to hold back what was either a burp or a need to dry-heave from an empty stomach. She held her abdomen and rolled in closer to Luna, grabbing her shins in the fetal position.