Me and My Eating Disorder and My Eating Disorder Woman and My Gay Therapist and a Gay Doctor I Went to One Time

It is 3:50pm and that feels really unsettling. I just had my writing class and then met with my eating disorder woman and now I feel like a bad writer and a bad eating disorder patient. I was a guest on someone’s podcast last week and at the end the host reminded his producer to include like 9 different trigger warnings at the beginning of the episode.

Before 3:12pm eastern standard time I identified as actually such a good writer, and I had identified that way for 12-16 hours. Then I told my ED woman Blake (hot name for any gender) that I had written something for my class about my eating disorder and she said she would be interested in reading it and I was like: that’s an amazing idea so she can know what a good writer I am, which may affect how she goes about my treatment. So I emailed it to her and in-so-doing read the first few lines THROUGH HER EYES, and realized actually the whole thing was stupid and boring. Sometimes you need to read your work through the eyes of a 26 year old eating-disorder-recovery-focused dietician to really be able to assess its merit objectively.

Anyways I guess I will write about meeting with my eating disorder woman (don’t know what else to call her!), since that’s what I did today. Firstly I am glad that I can finally afford eating disorder treatment because I always have wanted it ever since I wanted to not have an eating disorder any more (approx 8000 years ago).  It costs so much money it seems almost impossible to afford it and every week I can’t believe I’m letting another few hundred dollars slip out of my account for something as embarrassing as my health. If you have an eating disorder and you don’t have money to get help, I feel you and I *see* you, and that’s meaningful because I never tell people I “see them” because I don’t even fully know what it means and I actually don’t believe anyone does.

I worry constantly that my years of being bulimic have ruined my health forever. For instance I am always tired no matter what and I have nearly no teeth. There is a gay dentist in my DM’s who tells me to come to his work every time I mention my lack of molars on my podcast. To that dentist I say: I see you. 

I went to a doctor once two years ago and was like “can you tell me if there’s anything wrong with me?” Because I was desperate to know if I had low testosterone or a fucked up thyroid or something from having an eating disorder for so long. I wanted to have low testosterone because if I did that would literally explain so much and maybe I could purchase some at my local pharmacy called CVS. If CVS sold me testosterone, I mean, the implications could be life-changing. Don’t you think? It would change the community forever.

When I asked the doctor (who was muscular, gay, and gorgeous — only in New York!) if there was something wrong with me, he didn’t really know what I meant. So I clarified “can you like take blood or something?” And he was like “why?” And I was like “I don’t know, to…test it?” And he was like “test it for what?” And I sighed and said “actually never mind. I’ve had jock itch for 4 years can we talk about that?” And he wrote me a prescription for the over the counter jock itch ointment Lotrimin, which doesn’t work and you don’t need a prescription for.

That doctor told me he went to the Duplex all the time to do karaoke. Whenever I go to a doctor for some reason it doesn’t feel like they are a real doctor. Where are the real ones?? One’s that DON’T go to the duplex and do karaoke all the time. Similarly, my psychiatrist is alway always ALWAYS wearing a wrap dress. Something just seems off about that! 

Anyways I always promised myself that when I could afford it I would get a literal professional to help me with my ED and I am glad I have finally gotten to that point but I have to admit it is exhausting both financially and emotionally. I think you shouldn’t have to pay a lot of money to not have an eating disorder, but I don’t make the rules. 

Talking about it makes me feel physically uncomfortable, like my thoughts are going too fast and they are in my chest (as opposed to my brain, where most of the medical community believes thoughts are located). I’m not even sure what I’m supposed to talk to her about. Sometimes when there is a lull in conversation I get the urge to say the most disordered thing I could think of just so we can have something to talk about. 

I used to feel like I was the only person on the entire planet who was bulimic and now it feels like everyone I meet is or was. I like that and hate it. I used to feel like a freak and now I feel profoundly uninteresting. 

My eating disorder woman and my therapist are both younger than me and in that way we are an extremely MODERN family. We are an unconventional queer throuple that many feel goes against nature and even God. After all it’s Adam and EVE, not Adam and HIS TWO THERAPISTS WHO ARE BOTH YOUNGER THAN HIM. 

One time I explained to one of them what it was like when Ashlee Simpson “Autobiography” came out because I felt it was before their time, even though they said it wasn’t and asked me not to. Sometimes I think of myself as a fun gay uncle (read: an aunt) to my therapist and eating disorder woman. 

Half of my eating disorder sessions are Blake convincing me to stop convincing myself that I wasn’t sick enough to deserve help. I feel uncomfortable guilt around it. Like, here you are Patrick, 32 and gay as the day is long, talking to a gorgeous young woman with a middle part about your body. I feel like since I never almost died from it, I’m being gratuitous and indulgent and horny for self-victimization by talking about it to someone—A twenty-something, no less. She needs to be on tindr, at THE CLUBS (when it’s safe to do so), on bachelorette weekends, not sitting at a computer zooming me about puke and my relationship to my hips.

My regular therapist is addicted to saying bulimia is viewed in most psychological circles as anger turned inward and it always makes me think of this scene in The Sopranos where Dr. Melfi is at a dinner party with a bunch of other psychiatrists and they are all chatting about, like, psychiatric topics as their dinner conversation, and there isn’t really any point of the scene except to comment on the fact that PSYCHIATRISTS ARE JUST LIKE US in that they eat dinner with friends too. I wonder if my gay therapist has gay therapist friends and they all get a house on Fire Island every summer and float on those giant swan pool floats talking about how bulimia is anger turned inwards. The Sopranos would have me believe he does.

I think it shows incredible restraint that I have mentioned Fire Island but will not bring up the fact that all my gay friends have gone to Fire Island together and not invited me every year since 2014. I’m not even going to mention that. Because I’ve evolved.

I told my therapist that I cancelled on my eating disorder woman last week, and this week I told my eating disorder woman that I’m going to cancel on my therapist this Friday. I want them to know that I cancel on other people too so they don’t take it personally. 

I can’t tell if anything is helping and I can’t tell if I am mentally any healthier than I was a year ago. Sometimes I count all the monthly payments I’ve made and wonder if I am that dollar amount less ill. I think I am a little bit better. The only real metric is how exhausting and toxic I feel I am being to my friends, and I literally haven’t seen any of them in 14 months so it is truly anyone’s guess.

Ugh it’s 4:26pm now. When it rains it pours!!!!!

CLOSING THOUGHT: 

It lives in my mind rent free that Gwyneth Paltrow guest-starred on Glee once and sang “Fuck you” by CeeLo Green (radio edit).