Psychologists call it "free-floating" anxiety. What contradictory words. Anxiety doesn't free-float. It stalks. It attacks. It lands on you with a thud. - Martha Manning, in Undercurrents: A Life Beneath the Surface, an amazing book about her struggle through depression that I find myself in every time I re-read it.
One of the places my anxiety is constantly getting the best of me, much to my chagrin, is in food. I am hardly the first woman to write on the Internet about her issues with food. Food issues, disordered eating, and eating disorders are disturbingly common, particularly among women and girls (though men and boys are not at all exempt). And while I certainly have all the "usual" issues around food and weight (I shouldn't eat X because I'll get heavier, I should exercise more to lose a pants size, if I lose more weight/keep this weight off X will love me more, etc), I've also got this whole generalized anxiety and panic disorder that latches onto the existing insecurities and supports them with fear and panic in highly disruptive ways.
Weekday lunches are my biggest problem. I don't normally have trouble eating at home or when I go out with T or with people I know well (and it is usually easy enough to avoid eating out with T's friends/coworkers that I don't know well), but for some reason eating at work in the middle of the day horrifies me. I frequently go from a banana for breakfast at 6:30am (eaten on the way to the train) until dinner at home at 7pm without consuming anything more than water. The days I don't pack lunches are the worst; it is almost certain I won't eat anything for lunch. I work in a large office building in the middle of downtown Chicago; I'm certainly not lacking in food options. But I start to worry around ten or eleven about where I'm going to go to get food. I worry about lines, and crowds, and having to be around noise and people. I have mini panic attacks when I think about going to a new place because I don't know the menu, I don't know the flow of the line, I don't know exactly where to stand, and I have to decide what I want while people look at me and I just can't do that; it's too much. No way.
Days I pack lunch or days I'm planning on eating from my always fully stocked food drawer aren't much better. I probably eat lunch about 50% of the time I've packed food to bring with me. If there is too much food then it is overwhelming. An entire sandwich can seem like an impossible amount of food to eat. Every bite is torture and takes me forever to get up the nerve to take another bite, chew, and swallow, and not throw up. Last fall I bought a bento box type of lunch box so I could deal with one small portion of lunch at a time, hoping that would be less overwhelming. It is, sometimes, but most often it takes just as long to eat that way as it does when I confront the whole of my lunch at once.
The longer the panic and fear pushes back my lunch, the weaker I feel, the more I shake from lack of calories and energy, the more tired I feel, and the worse the panic gets. It's a circle I don't know how to stop. Coworkers tease me that it often takes me hours to finish my lunch. They point out how healthy it is to eat small amounts all day instead of the "regular" three meals. They compliment me on how I eat or my recent weight loss and I want to hide in a corner and cry. "I'm not doing it on purpose! I can't help it! I don't know why I'm afraid of food! I wish I could make it stop, but it just isn't that easy!" It doesn't matter what food I pack, when I try to eat it, or if I'm alone or around people. It's frustrating and no matter how often my therapist and I go over it, we haven't managed to change a damn thing. It doesn't seem connected to my self-esteem or body image. It's just there, and it won't go away. I hate that I feel like I can't control this, stop it, make it better. It seems so simple. But it isn't, and I don't know why.
