<Binge Eating>
Not long ago, for the first time, my health checkup results came back with a warning about my cholesterol levels. I could hardly say I was surprised. My eating habits had already been falling apart for quite some time, and they had gradually gotten worse to the point where I had started thinking that sooner or later, something was bound to go wrong with my body.
It started in Macau. Whenever I was stressed, I would lose control and eat. Three years later, it had become a habit. At the end of the day, when I came home, I would naturally escape into food.
On those nights, I would keep eating: three or four bags of snacks, beer, fried chicken, gummies, one thing after another. I knew perfectly well that I was not hungry, but if I did not eat, I found it difficult to calm down. I think I even felt anxious.
Then, once I had finished almost everything in front of me, I would suddenly feel calm. And then bitter.
At night, I would fall asleep holding my aching stomach. The next morning, I would look at my swollen face and think, I really need to stop now. But when night came and I actually tried not to eat, the emotion that surfaced was not guilt or sadness.
It was resentment. And anger.
Why?
It felt as though I had spent the entire day without doing a single thing I truly liked. As though I had not been recognized by anyone and had only spent the day adjusting myself to other people. I had been tense all day, trying hard to do everything well.
And then, if I was told that even now, in this one moment, I still could not completely let go, that I still had to restrain myself, something inside me rebelled.
Of course I want to stop binge eating. But I cannot simply hate the part of myself that does it, because that habit has helped me too.
Looking back, there were times when life would have been much harder to endure without it. When emptiness or disappointment became too difficult to bear, binge eating helped me get through those feelings for the moment and somehow continue with my life.
So sometimes, after eating until my stomach is completely swollen and sticking out like a tadpole, I try not to criticize myself too much.
You were trying your best too.
I sometimes tell myself, “This belly came from how hard I was trying.”
This year, in an attempt to rebuild the life I had neglected, I set myself the goal of improving the basics of everyday life: food, clothing, and shelter.
I have always had a tendency to turn inward, constantly pushing myself to become more mature, more developed, more thoughtful. In doing so, I may have neglected some of the most basic parts of life.
This time, I decided not to be too ambitious. I would simply focus on the basics and trust that everything else might begin to fall into place naturally.
In the past, I cared more about writing and studying. Now, eating properly and sleeping well feel more important.
These days, if I write even one piece, I think of it not merely as doing well, but almost as doing too much.
After spending a year trying to focus on the basics, I realized that perfectly improving the basic conditions of everyday life may itself be one of the biggest ambitions in the world.
So I started paying attention to small things.
When it comes to food, that means things like cutting down on coffee, packing my own meals, and buying a proper dining table. I am also about to start exercising, and I hope that moving my body more will make me more conscious of how I eat and give me a stronger desire to eat in a healthier way.
I want to look with tenderness at the version of myself who knew almost no way to soothe herself except through food.
I think I need to give myself more experiences and slowly discover more things that I genuinely enjoy.
And someday, I want my work, and the hours I spend working, to become time that I actually like living through.
I want to prepare for that kind of life, little by little.