You say it doesn’t sound like an actual disorder, my problem. Also, you don’t believe in labels or diagnoses, except as a capitalist strategy to get us to buy more drugs, more overpriced gym memberships, more lavender scented bath bombs, and anyway, you overeat all the time—it sounds pretty normal to you.

         You wait for an answer, but I can’t speak because there’s a lump in my throat the size of a small planet. This was supposed to be a confession. A heart-to-heart. Now my heart has been snatched from my hands, fashioned into something else, its ventricles twisted and tied off with their own arteries. It’s a giraffe, you say, shoving it back into my chest, congratulations! Did you think it was a bear? Did you think it was a lion?

         The espresso machine screeches so I can’t hear the next thing you say, and it’s probably for the best, because now I’m feeling contrary. Confrontational. I love labels. I seek them out, gather them like breadcrumbs—no, like ex-lovers and dead-end jobs—no, like treats at the company Christmas party. Ginger snaps hidden in a napkin and tucked into my purse for later. I’m an INFJ, O-negative, third-generation Lebanese, millennial, progressive, agnostic, middle-class, pansexual, cisgender woman with generalized anxiety, OCD tendencies, specific phobias, and the thing that has never been diagnosed because I’ve never told anyone about it, until now—binge eating disorder. I’ve looked up the diagnosis code and tried it on and found it fit snugly: eating until feeling uncomfortably full; eating large amounts of food when not physically hungry; eating much more rapidly than normal; eating alone due to embarrassment; feeling of disgust, depression, or guilt after overeating.

         You’re talking about our society’s obsession with diagnosing things. Relationships, diseases, inclinations, natural variations. While you’re speaking, I’ve already selected three diagnoses for you, held them on my tongue, let them melt away like 80% dark chocolate. My diagnoses make me feel safe. Contained. A weighted blanket in winter. The ocean is the ocean is the ocean, but without a map, without boundaries, how would we ever talk about anything? Arctic, you might say, and I imagine cold, choppy water, a slush of white cherry and blue raspberry, melting ice caps, lonely polar bears in search of hunting grounds. Atlantic, you might say, and now I’m thinking of craggy shorelines, tide pools, lobster fishermen, the pastel-colored rock candy that my sister and I ate in a Maine tourist shop that smelled like pine needles. Pacific, you add, and now it’s seagulls, foamy surf, beach bodies in colorful swimsuits dotting the white sand like sprinkles on ice cream. 

         Well, what do you mean when you say binge? you ask. Like, eating a pint of ice cream once in a while? You know everybody does that, right?

         And now my confession is no longer a confession, only a claim that needs to be backed up with evidence, possibly peer reviewed, and this isn’t something I’m interested in pursuing, because how would you look at me if I convinced you? If you understood that I have the appetite of a black hole, spaghettifying my anxieties into endless strands of hunger, flinging neutrino particles into space like sugary crumbs dropping onto a dessert plate? Despite my frantic metabolism, despite my blood pressure and BMI in the so-called healthy range, I know what my body is, I know what I’ve put it through—spackled arteries pumping a sludge of sweetened blood, cratered stomach still stubbornly digesting each new onslaught, balloon-animal heart slowly losing buoyancy, lungs a dying coral reef of skeletal bronchioles. Why would binging affect your lungs? you ask logically, and you have a point, which I tell you, because I have decided to agree with whatever you say—because the only other option is to provide the evidence, an itemized list of every smooth and creamy and sweet and spicy thing I consumed in the span of twenty minutes last night, entire frozen pizza, twenty-two ounce soda, party-size bag of chips, five ice cream sandwiches, cold and creamy, paper wrappers peeled off like clothes from a lover, and, as it turns out, this was never something I wanted to give you. You’re right, I say, it is emotional eating, it is normal, it is the pathological need to label everything, it is a giraffe after all, look at that long, reticulated neck.

         We finish our coffee and part ways, like two people in control of our hunger. On the walk home, I stop at the corner store and fill up a basket, adding cookies and chips and soda and ice cream until my arms strain to carry it all. I used to try to stave off the urge by eating something healthy—you want an entire tray of brownies? Try apples slices and yogurt! Try cheese and crackers and a peanut butter sandwich! In these attempts, I ate the apple slices and yogurt, the cheese and crackers and the peanut butter sandwich, and then the whole tray of brownies, too. My hunger is too smart for parlor tricks. There are days when it curls up, dormant. There are days when nothing escapes my event horizon. I have swallowed the lump that Saturn left in my throat, its icy rings scraping their way down. I have picked the rib bones of orcas from between my teeth. I am empty and empty and suddenly full, and then a little more empty. Or sometimes a little less.  

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