Police Violence and Carbs

I think today's post will be an example of how life gets in the way of well-meaning projects.

I'm home, back in Columbus with my partner. Had a great birthday with ice cream cake at midnight (which is when I arrived home) and a birthday of a gym date, some tv watching, and general bumming around with my partner. Really, it was exactly what I wanted.

I thought I wouldn't have much to report on Project Twentyeight just yet since I've been sort of easing back into the nutrition plan (though I never left it entirely on my trip, I'm proud to say) and getting back into the gym after my break. But last night there was an incident in my neighborhood and I found that it's been affecting my body a bit this morning.

I was out walking the dogs in the little park across from my house, laughing at the pee-wee football practice and the 7-year-old cheerleaders in the basketball courts when I heard gunshots. I was right on the street at the time and thought at first it was a car backfiring but I realized all the kids were on the ground as I backed up into the grass and saw a body fall ten feet from me. I then saw a cop empty his gun into a victim. Scruffy, my 13 year old cairn terrier, riggled loose in fear from this collar and I found myself army crawling across the park to catch up with him. Police tape went up. The sidewalk in front of my house was closed. I couldn't get home. There was screaming. There were swat car (a neighbor counted 16 of them).

When it was safe to stand up, I waved to my partner, who was anxiously standing at the door (I could read her anxiety by the way her shoulder seized backwards, her legs hip length apart, her head darting back and forth across the park looking for us). When I knew she found me, I waited in the park to see if the dogs and I could get home. We waited for over an hour. I had no cell phone. No keys. Just a poop bag and two aging terriers. Word got out that I was a witness and news crews started coming up to interview me. I left.

I walked to the house of my nearest friends and waited on their doorstep for them to come home. I wasn't sure my dogs could make it back to the park or if we would even be allowed into the house. Luckily, they rescued me after a few minutes. When I saw them pull up I began crying. This, unfortunately, isn't the first shooting I've witnessed, but it is the first time I've been only a few feet from the body. We called Cat. We spent an hour getting in touch with the police station to get Cat escorted out of the house so we could pick her up. At 10 o'clock, body was still on the sidewalk. There was a rumor it was a 14 year old kid but as of yet, it's just speculation.

I took some of my anxiety medicine later that night and went to bed on an air mattress with my partner and my dogs, nauseated.

This morning, part of our house is still taped off but we could pull into the driveway and enter through the backdoor. I dropped Cat off at the bus stop because she has two days to find her apartment in Chicago. (More on this in later entries, I am sure. Our long-distance relationship is about to commence!)

I came home and all I wanted as a bagel with butter. So I had it. I wanted comfort food. I wanted another one. Luckily, there was only one in the fridge. I stopped short of binging. I realize, this is the only way I know how to react. I was a bulimic for twelve years, hospitalized for two after purging 6-8 times a day and suffering from a mallory weiss tear and other internal bleeding in my esophagus and stomach. I've been in recovery for 7 years. I've done a lot of work in therapy thinking about where, when, and how I binge and purge. And today reminds me of Becky Thompson's insights (my former MA advisor and author of "A Way Outa No Way" which she later expanded into a book, one of the few useful eating disorder books out there because because it doesn't focus on body image) that eating disorders are creative responses to trauma.

So now it is my task, alone for the next few days, to work out new creative responses. And perhaps find a new park to walk the dogs in.