Starbucks is Known for Coffee, Not Fruit Cups or An Unlikely Flashback

Okay—here goes. Yes this is the evening where I almost bum rushed Joss Wheldon (the creator of such great shows such as “Buffy”, “Angel”, and the late great “Firefly”) in my haste to exit the theatre before his question/answer session. This probably earned me a spot in some creepy fan’s website as the guy who almost ran down the greatest writer ever. That all said—the following is the full story minus the celeb factor.

It started off in the most random of emails—Ava, out of the blue, wrote me to ask if I wanted to see a sneak preview of “Serenity” with her, Henry (name change people—can you figure out where it comes from?) and Penn up in Riverside. I was surprised by the offer, mostly because I hadn’t really been able to hangout much with Henry and Ava much as of late, due to a combination of car issues, single/couple tension and other small social issues. I do adore them both and was excited about hanging out with them—Penn not so much. Good guy but we have little to talk about.

We headed out early in the evening to Riverside, a fun ride due to traffic and various yawns from Henry, Penn and yours truly but as we got closer we grew more excited. There were the freaky fans lined up with costumes and party hats (It was Joss birthday.) and bad trivia games. Ava and I found this all quite amusing while the boys grabbed sandwiches for the three of them. I decided to go and see if Starbucks had any cheese and fruit plates—my favorite new junk food.

Alas this Starbucks didn’t carry them so I ended up grabbing a coffee, some chocolate covered graham crackers and a small fruit cup; a mix of berries, pineapple and cherries. I wolfed the food down in line as we watched the fans sing happy birthday with me feeling good about my smart dinner choice. I really didn’t think much of it.

I really should have. About half way through the film—which was good but really great if you’re a fan—I started to feel nauseous. Not kind of, not sort of, but full on sick to the bottom of my stomach. I debated leaving the film but really wanted to see how it finished so I forced myself to wait by telling my stomach “no”. The only long-term benefit from my teenage bulimia is the ability to get (or not get) sick unless I decide to; a control of gag reflexes usually seen in porn stars.

As the credits rolled I was up and out of my seat—doing everything short of running out of the theatre—leading to the near body checking of Joss. As I made my way to the bathroom my old routine clicked into place; hat off, shirt pulled off in a swift tug, hanging both on stall hook before the perfectly angled throw-up position guarantied to not get any vomit on me. Two short beats later I was done, rinsing my mouth out with water, gum to cover the smell and the outfit perfectly replaced. I was outside the theatre before anyone had the chance to leave.

Later that night—after a surprising debate about the film—I found myself at home brushing my teeth, rubbing my sore belly and thinking about the ease with which I handled things at the theatre. It’s been a while since I’d thought about ‘those days’; it amazed me the strength of what I remember and how little I forgot. The random places I threw up—in bathrooms pretty much everywhere—the times I picked—in between classes, on dates, at parties—and how even when I was caught I continued—despite my parents, bosses, even boyfriends.

So many people think that eating disorders are about loss of control—the inability to stop oneself from unhealthy behavior. I never saw my bulimia that way at all but instead as an obsession with control. The uncontrollable apart was my eating itself but the purging process was very nuanced with steps and patterns, a dance of sorts with mental relief at the end of the process. If it sounds like an overly romantic viewpoint, to a degree it is.

The swell of relief afterwards was like drug rush with adrenaline soaring through me, replaced with a sort of cleansed feeling. But, like a drug, this feeling turned into a needed craving; to the point that if I binged without purging I couldn’t sleep, concentrate or function. The most vivid of these memories was during my freshmen year of college when a friend suspected what I was doing so I tried to stop just long enough to throw her off and couldn’t sleep for a full two days regardless of how little I ate. I was never more scared in my whole life.

This was when I realized I had to stop completely, to retrain my body to stop seeing food as all or nothing and just as a necessary evil. I began to make the long journey to be okay with the fact that I will never be skinny, thin or at a ‘hot’ weight. I will always be chubby to a degree, cute with a larger build and not a room-stopping hottie. Which is okay most of the time.

I guess I was shocked at how easy it is for me to jump back to “the process”, the ease of which I can go into autopilot when it comes to throwing up and, more importantly, hiding it. I somehow assumed that as time went by I would be less able to do these things. But it is still a part of me, who I am, who I was and who I will continue to be. It’s just there, a place within myself that I don’t go but still lives. I guess I was just surprised.