Ill Vs WILL

There are days when I wonder if I am really ill. Maybe I’m just being stubborn by refusing to eat, maybe I am just a big attention-seeker, maybe I always wanted to be a kept woman and I am using starvation to wind up back on sick leave. If that is true,  it should be easy to stop. I just need to put my big girl pants on and grow up.  I have a problem, yes…but ill? No. It is all a question of will.

And then there are moments where I know there is something very wrong within me.  And it hits me hard.

Recently, we were invited for dinner by someone Charles works with. Plan was to go over with our girls, have our collective brood play together and enjoy a lovely homecooked meal. What could be nicer, right? Nice people, children taking care of themselves, adult conversation, nothing to cook and no dishes to clean.

As the evening approached though, I started to get nervous. What if they make something I don’t like. Let’s face it, with my long list of inedible items, there was a high probability this would happen. What about the pressure to be polite and eat my full plate?

Sensitive to my plight, Charles had already inquired on the evening’s planned menu: pasta with Cajun chicken. I instantly felt myself relax a bit. Ok, I thought, the type of food is out of the way, you can always warn them when you get there that you are not feeling well and a tiny portion will do for you.

All was going well until drinks were served.  Our hostess, proud to have us over, made her famous bourbon lemonade in Mason Jar glasses. Lemonade???? With alcohol??? My mental calculator instantly came to life. 130 calories for can of fizzy lemon… shit, I don’t drink bourbon so have no idea about calories…and look at the size of this glass…agh….

So as I nursed my drink, we made conversation. I felt ok. A bit out of my comfort zone but ok. Until I heard the wife ask her husband for 2 containers of cream.

Ummmm. Cream….Now the warning bells were ringing and anxiety and dread were building. I told myself to breathe…we could solve this…Surely we could say I was allergic to dairy…lactose intolerant?But shit, what if Charles already said I had no allergies. And I can’t really ask him in front of them.

Maybe it is for a cream soup…and I can skip the appetizer. Or, if it is a sauce, I can just ask for no sauce. All this is going on in my head as I have a smile plastered on my face and am singing and dancing with their eldest daughter. As dinner is being served, the children are watching a movie. How I wish I could just say, “you know what, I’m good, I’ll just watch the movie, skip the dinner. You guys enjoy though.”

But I know my manners and cannot embarrass myself like that, or Charles.

So I sit down…Not too much wine for me please…(calories). Oh beet salad…I can do this. Wait, there is cheese grated on it, anxiety rises, breathe…ok, ok, just scrape it off. Phew. Time for the main event. I think I’ll be ok. Chicken, no sauce, pasta. I see her sprinkle some cheese on the pasta but I think I can handle that.

And then the plate is coming toward me, and lands at my place setting. For everyone else, it looks beautiful. But I want to cry. The chicken has been cooked in the cream sauce. So while the sauce is on the side, as Charles discretely requested for me, I have no choice but to eat it. At this point, I panic internally. I feel trapped. I cannot eat this…options from running out of the house (I could sit sipping a diet coke at the Harveys across the street), to pretending to faint cross my mind. But I can’t do that.

So I have a few bites of chicken, trying to wipe the sauce off on my plate. I have some salad even though there is feta in it and I know that no matter how much I try to eat around it, some tiny bits will wind up in my mouth. And I ask for more wine, just to be able to dull the storm going on within me.

At this point, while physically there, I am gone. I zone out. I look around the table at everyone eating, talking, laughing, enjoying the host couple’s favorite meal and I want to scream: “what is wrong with you!!!??? How can you sit there, laughing while my skin is crawling. How can you not care about the turmoil I am feeling right now.”

But how can they know? How can they understand that I am not just picky or weird about food. Unless you are anorexic you cannot understand because anxiety, fear and desperation are not typical reactions to food. But they are for me. And then it hits me. I am ill. This meal is actually causing real distress. And I know that this goes well beyond me simply growing up and snapping out of it.

I know it as I think about the meal the entire car ride home. I know it as I close my eyes and all I see is that chicken. I know it as I beg Charles to let me starve the next day and I know it as I take a sleeping pill just so I can get through the night.

The only question that comes to mind is: now what?