I spent much of my early adolescence worrying about bombs. The Cold War was at its height. Mushroom clouds and terror filled my dreams. No one knew when the bomb might fall. It could come at any moment -- in the middle of the night, perhaps, when everything was quiet, when I alone was awake and vigilant, the only one not fooled by the silence.
I knew plenty about silence already: the hush that fell over the dining table when my father had had too much to drink and was launching into a tirade or an off-color joke; the unspoken tension between my parents; the tacit family agreement that we keep up appearances, make everything look normal. Beyond the steady rounds of homework and school, piano lessons and visits with friends, family breakfasts in the morning, the clink of glasses in the evening, I knew that danger was nearby. I was on alert.
Food was already a comfort to me, a source of solace and strength. Or so I thought.
The year I entered 10th grade at a boarding school in Maryland was the year I learned to binge. It was 1966. I remember the secret thrill of a handful of coins, feeling them jingle in my pocket as I walked oh-so-casually to the vending machine, inserting dimes into the slot, pulling the lever, waiting for the satisfying thump of a candy bar falling into my hand. The thrill of tearing off the paper wrapper and taking the first bite, and the next, the next.
Somewhere between Boston and Baltimore, I had managed to lose my grip. I felt as if everything were slipping away from me, the world having tipped over on its side. I didn't know it then, but the Harvard administration had asked my father to take a leave of absence. He was on the brink of a nervous breakdown, sometimes irrational, often drunk.
My older sister called me long-distance at my boarding school. "I bet our parents will get divorced," she declared. I don't remember offering any objection, any reassurance. I knew she was right.
Eventually my mother flew down to Maryland to tell me that she and my father were indeed going their separate ways. The bomb fell, and my world was blown to bits.
When she left, I ate. By now I'd discovered that sugar could make me sleepy, take away any pain -- at least for a while. I took myself off to the candy machine, put my hand on the lever, pulled it again and again. The sweets dropped like tiny bombs into my hands, doing their own secret damage. I wept alone, in the company of peanut bars and chocolate chip cookies. In public, I kept on smiling, kept on studying, kept on making the honor roll.
The language that was spoken in my house when I was growing up was the language of achievement: excellence, accomplishment, performance. The most desirable goal in life was to be the best -- this was the message that my father drove home to us. Winning his approval was a game of trying to earn infinitely receding plums of praise. The prize always dangled tantalizingly out of reach. "Three A's and one A-minus," he would muse, studying my report card. "Those A's are fine, but an A-minus is a rather ambiguous grade. . . ." His voice would trail off, and he would skewer me with his blue eyes. If I did manage to bring in perfect marks, he would look them over carefully, then turn to me with a face full of innocent concern and ask, "Don't you think you're turning into something of a workhorse?" Infuriated, confused, I would turn away, wondering if I'd been tricked. At the last minute, he always changed the rules.
We children strove for excellence in our respective fields -- neurosurgery, comparative literature, ballet, geophysics. In an unspoken pact, the four of us avoided competing directly against each other. If there was room for only one person in the winner's circle, then at least we could try to make several circles.
And so we got to work, accumulating everything we could -- grades, prizes, fellowships, grants, publications, recitals. In a society that rewards personal accomplishment, we fit right in. If the highway to happiness in America is defined by the drive for individual achievement, we had the pedal pressed to the floor.
I never dared to stop and feel my sadness, fear and rage. I whirled instead in a feverish cycle of striving and accomplishment, craving and dissatisfaction. I grabbed for food and was perpetually hungry. I couldn't bear to feel the yearning for a love that seemed forever out of reach.
Behind the perfect facade, a self-destructive chaos was breaking loose within me. My father chose alcohol. My drug was food. Peanuts, pudding, brownies, chocolate, bread -- you name it, I took it. I swallowed it in secret, sometimes in a thrill of defiance, sometimes with the anguish of guilt, always, in the end, with despair.
January 10, 1982: I'm plugged up with food. My ashamed of what I've done to it so quickly, so ruthlessly.
I went to a wedding. The bride and I whispered furtively over the remains of the wedding cake, the grand chocolate cake made so lovingly by her sister. The two of us grazed quickly through the leftovers, rushing from plate to plate, hurriedly grabbing clumps of cake and stuffing them into our mouths, while the wedding guests headed out the door.
Even as I stuffed myself, I knew the cake would never fill me. Even if I loosened my belt and ate again until I bulged, still I'd be yearning for more.
January 24, 1982: A weekend of isolation and despair. What shall I do? Shall I go to bed? Or, before sleeping, shall I first go into the kitchen and put slices of bread in the toaster, cut some hunks of cheese and watch TV standing up, until finally I'm too bloated to eat any more, too groggy to watch any more TV?
I don't know what I want. I want to die. I want to be alive and happy. One or the other. But more than anything I want only this: to feel no more pain.
February 10, 1982: I've gained 11 pounds in four days, and I'm still eating. Last night it was a whole batch of pancakes. Suicide food. And then, three or four hours later, another batch. What do I want? I want to hide. I want to be invisible, to pull down the shades and disappear.
March 25, 1982: I bought a loaf of cheese bread, a small roll, two brownies and a loathsome banana cream pie. I peeled the whipped topping away with my fork and flipped it into the sink. Finally, late at night, I cooked and ate a whole box of wheat pilaf. The dimensions of my binges are
Last week I awoke with an orgasm for the first time in ages. In my current state of dissociation and emptiness, it was no more moving than a sneeze, a mechanical release of tension with no particular pleasure, liveliness, womanliness anti-erotic.
I need to find my way back to myself, to work mind, heart and body back together. Compulsive eating makes everything fly apart.
Margaret Bullitt-Jonas, '74, associate rector of All Saints Parish in Brookline, Mass., teaches courses on prayer at Episcopal Divinity School and is a newly appointed chaplain to the Episcopal Church's House of Bishops -- the first woman to receive that honor. Excerpts adapted from Holy Hunger: A Memoir of Desire, copyright 1998 by Margaret Bullitt-Jonas. Reprinted by arrangement with Alfred Knopf.
