“Sure you don’t want me to come with you? It’s a long flight. At least let me take you to the airport. Traffic’s a nightmare at this time of day.” Ben, my boyfriend, helps me carry my suitcase down the front steps of our house in Palos Verdes. When I left South Carolina, I was heading for Canada. I made it to California and I stopped running, though. Seemed far enough, given that my father staunchly refused to leave the state, and the sunshine made me happy. I let Ben put my bags into the trunk of my car, knowing that he doesn’t really want to come to the airport with me, let alone Port Royal. In fact, I’m sure the prospect of it is making him itch on the inside.
“I’m fine, seriously. LAX is thirty minutes away. You should stay here. You have work to do, and besides…I don’t know. I need to do this on my own. Does that make sense?” It doesn’t even really make sense to me—I should be grasping hold of any support being offered to me right now, but I’m not. A deep sense of shame floods me whenever I think about home. I don’t want to take Ben there. I never want him to step foot inside the house where I grew up otherwise he’ll remember it and carry it with him. I’ll know when he’s looking at me that he’s seeing that place and everything I told him that happened there, and I won’t be able to bear it.
Ben nods, frowning. “Okay. If you need me, you can call me anytime. You know that, right? I’ll jump on the first plane out of here.”
“I do. Thank you.” I kiss him on the cheek, and he hugs me, patting me lightly on the back. It’s hardly the most romantic of goodbyes.
“Four days. That’s really not so long. I’ll see you soon, Cora.” He stands in the driveway and sees me off, waving. I drive straight down PCH until I hit Hermosa Beach, and then I pull down a side street, open up the car door, shove my fingers down my throat and I make myself throw up.
I feel much, much lighter after that. It’s not until I’m on the plane and my heart is slamming against the inside of my chest like a fist against a brick wall that I realize how stupid it was of me to do that. I haven’t made myself throw up in over seven years.
Seven years.
Bulimia was never about self-image for me. It was about anxiety and control. It took years for me to overcome it. What I just did was stepping into incredibly dangerous territory. The most worrying thing is that I didn’t even think about it. I’m twenty-nine years old now. I have a good job. A beautiful home. A steady boyfriend. I shouldn’t have to be worrying about things like eating disorders, and yet here I am, sitting on a plane, freezing my ass off, wondering whether I’m going to continue to make myself throw up when I’m back in Port Royal.
Smokers revert back to a pack a day when they crack. Alcoholics drink the well dry. Maybe I’m going to make myself so ill that I land myself back in hospital again. I don’t feel anything when I think about that. I just feel…flat. I only experience a spike of true emotion when I think about driving my rental car down that street in that small town, and seeing those familiar houses with their colonial pillars and their wide sweeping lawns, and their marshy boat launches out the back. That’s when I feel like I’ve completely lost control of my body.
“Ma’am? Ma’am, are you okay? Your breathing sounds fast all of a sudden.” The large woman in the seat next to me has kind eyes. They’re full of concern as she stares at me through her circa nineteen-eighty huge horn-rimmed glasses. “I wouldn’t normally say anything, sweetie, but you’ve been fidgeting since we took off. You just don’t seem like you’re havin’ a good time at all. Are you afraid of flying? That what it is?”
I just stare back at her dumbly for a moment before her words filter through to my brain. “Yes. Yeah, I hate flying. I get really anxious.”
The woman nods. She leans in close, beckoning me to do the same. “You want some Klonopin, sweetheart? I always get some for when I’m flying. I have a stash in my purse.”
I’m about to say no, fully intend on doing so, but then I find I’m nodding, holding out my hand, and the woman with the horn-rimmed glasses in the seat next to me is tipping small white pills into my palm. I don’t even know how it happens. “There we go, sweetie. There’s six. You can keep ‘em for next time. Don’t go crazy now, though. Don’t go takin’ ‘em all at once. I don’t want to be responsible for you dyin’ in your sleep now.”
“Oh, I’ll be careful. I promise.” If I were going to kill myself, I’d do it the same way my mother did. I’d drive my car off a bridge and have done with it. There would be some kind of symmetry in that, I think. I can’t tell her that, though. I learned a while back that you can’t just say whatever the hell you’re thinking or people will assume you’re mentally disturbed.
The woman—her name is Margo—gives me her tiny plane sized bottle of water to drink down my nefariously gained medication, and then she talks to me for thirty minutes about her cats. No children to speak of, Margo has replaced her non-existent progeny with some fur babies that she seems remarkably proud of. I tell her that I’m allergic, and she makes this terrible moaning sound, as though she’s putting herself in my shoes, imagining being without her precious kitties, never able to pet them again, betrayed by her own body.