HOW DO YOU SAY

I don't get mad often. I mean, I'll make a show every once in a while, mock exasperation, but it's usually just that: entertainment for my friends.  I get it off my chest with a laugh and it's gone. However. There are some deeper currents.  I'm at the most solid place in my life that I've ever been--I have a fulfilling job, awesome friends and family who support me, a fun relationship, good health--which throws into focus the areas that continue to stagnate.  I can't fathom the toxic junk that I've been holding onto, and for how long. At this point, it's purely self-punishment.  I ruined some relationships--friendships, screw-arounds, people who expected more or less from me than I wanted to give them--before I learned how to give myself.  Or rather, that was my beginning.  I'm still beginning.  Because here's the kicker: I am currently in the midst of a seething rage at myself for allowing myself to be vulnerable.  Vulnerable in the

TW: eating disorders Food is the conscious center of my life. I spend more time thinking about food than anything or anyone else.  Food in relation to hunger, to comfort, to my body.  Maybe it's the same for everyone?  Or I am a ravenous lunatic?  But really.  I grew up with a Paris-trained chef for a mother who had the education and the privilege to put time and work and love into everything she makes.  And salt.  Lots of salt.  From an early age I trained as a runner, which allowed me (as a teenager) to consume whole boxes of pasta in one sitting and not look like an amorphous blob.  I took food for granted until college, where I promptly became very sad and very lonely and very anxious and discovered that food is a powerful drug. By the time I noticed that I'd ballooned out of control, it was too late. I panicked. Started counting calories, restricting and bingeing, restricting and bingeing.  I had a constant running total in my head, lists of foods consumed on every