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time I finished that, I was home and felt pretty sick. But I’d go to the bathroom and wait a few minutes, and then I was ready to go again. Sometimes I would have a full dinner with Michael.
    Other times I’d go to the grocery store and get a pint of Häagen-Dazs and eat it in my office, telling Michael again that I was working. Sometimes I would forget to throw the trash away from my binge eating, and I would see that Michael had found it in my car and thrown it away himself.
    I was so ashamed, but I felt powerless to stop it. Michael would complain that my car smelled like ketchup. If we rode together on the weekends, he would sigh heavily and roll thewindows down, unable to take the smell. I said nothing. What could I say? Promise not to do it again? Even I, in my advanced stage of denial, knew those promises were empty.
    After a day of binge eating, I would have what I call a “binge hangover” the next morning. I would feel so gassy, so bloated. My stomach would ache, and I would have to go to the bathroom several times. I would have no energy, and worse, I had incredible guilt and remorse.
    I suppose that’s why I would hardly ever binge in the mornings; that was a time for regret and repurpose. I would set out each day to right the wrongs of the day before. If I was lucky, I could make it for a couple of days without bingeing again. At my worst my resolve was gone by lunchtime.
    There was such shame surrounding what I was doing to myself and to my body that I kept it hidden as much as I could. Still, someone who is addicted to food isn’t allowed the luxury of anonymity; we wear our failures on our bodies for the world to see. I used to be envious of people with drug or alcohol problems. At least they could hide their addictions, if even for a little while, from the rest of the population. A fat person might as well wear a sign with flashing neon lights: I CAN’T CONTROL MYSELF !
    Indeed eating in public is a no-win situation for the obese. If we eat a lot, people stare and confirm for themselves what they’d already been thinking. If we eat a little, people smirk, knowing full well there’s more to the story. Thus I did whatever I had to do to avoid eating in public. At work I would eat lunch in my car, away from prying eyes. At family gatherings I would put the bare minimum on my plate. I suppose this is the behavior that prompted my father-in-law to once ask meif I hid food. It was pretty early in our marriage, and I’m sure Michael’s parents were struggling for answers as they saw me spiral out of control. When I tearfully confessed to them that I was trying to get my weight under control, Mr. Joyner said he knew a man who would find candy wrappers stuffed into desk drawers at his home, knowing that they belonged to his wife. Was that what I was doing? I told him yes, although I really, at that point, didn’t hide food at home. Perhaps that’s where I got the idea to do so, because I did actually do that many years later. You would think the humiliation I endured as the result of my father-in-law’s questions would shame me into finally doing something about my eating. You would think.
    The bingeing and the hiding of food made me feel even lonelier. Being a fat woman is one of the loneliest things you can be. Family and friends want to help you, but they don’t know how, and they’re afraid to say the wrong thing, so they usually don’t say anything. I’ve found that when I have tried to bring it up, even with Michael, it makes others very uncomfortable, and I usually just drop the subject. Fat women don’t even acknowledge other fat women, because doing so means you are one of them, and most of us want to deny that as long as possible. You can’t even commiserate with those who understand best. So you keep everything inside, struggling and hurting all alone.
    It didn’t help that a great deal of my eating was in the car, either commuting to and from work or—worse—sneaking out of the house