There is a disembodied voice emanating from Queen St.
“GIVE ME BACK MY BAG”
It’s a woman’s voice.
“GIVE ME BACK MY BAG, GIVE IT BACK TO ME. PLEASE! PLEASE,” she screams. Over and over again.
I have opened my window to be sure of what I am hearing.
I feel physical pain listening to her.
I feel sick.
It is a very sunny day.
I stand in the window and take in: The sun and The Screaming Woman.
I do not know if she exists. I cannot see her.
I trust in her reality.
My dog and I spent three hours walking around the city this morning. We sat on a small bench and watched trains for a total of twenty breaths and then cuddled a bit before walking home.
I just had a meeting where I found out that my job doesn’t matter which is terrific because I haven’t been doing it for a month.
I don’t know what reality is anymore.
For a month I have been very sad.
I have no reason to believe that Original Eddie will ever contact me again, he has failed to talk to me at all, I have messaged him with pathetic outcome over and over again, and so I have just been very sad.
I have eaten a lot. Without moving.
It’s actually quite disgusting. I feel disgusting. I feel like I have doubled in size.
I have stopped binge eating finally but for weeks I couldn’t seem to stop.
Binging is a habit I developed as a child, left alone for way too long all the time, I would steal food from the kitchen and eat a lot of it at once. I would distract myself from loneliness by filling myself up with food.
I want to vomit, having written that, I want to puke. It makes me so sad to admit that I was desperately grasping for love when I was young. And then to admit that I am still doing it just makes me want to instantaneously die.
I have changed my habits since childhood. I wouldn’t describe myself as a glutton or as “fat” now but every time I feel alone, I return. I eat so much with phenomenal addiction.
I am failing. I am alone. I have failed to exist because I do not produce existing material. I am immaterial. I am failing.
I feel like failing is a privilege.
I do it a lot.
Without consequence, most of the time, with just a general sense of shame and a few days or maybe weeks, sometimes months of pain but, really, the failure was kind of a joke. No one notices.
I sit at home eating, no one even notices. No one asks where I am. No one cares. I keep eating because I know no one cares.
There are no details to my life.
There is nothing, absolutely nothing that falls apart.
Only me.
I fall apart every time I fail.
Original Eddie isn’t here.
Once again, I have failed at this romance sex love people thing.
The one person I thought was here was never here and now he’s even further away because I have acknowledged his eternal absence.
For a month I binged.
But, it’s stopped.
How?
I think I have accessed a past life.
I watched some junk show on television this week as it followed a transgender teenager on her quest for weight loss. The weight loss is supposed to make it possible for doctors to operate on her genitalia, which is currently phallic.
For lack of success losing weight, the individual visits a Hypnotherapist. She is adamant that a Psychotherapist will not help her. She does not trust psychotherapy. She does not trust her own speech. But, hypnosis and the subconscious…? She trusts.
It makes sense. We can only speak about what we know and we do not know the bulk of our secrets, of our body’s secrets, of our depth. Conversation does not really give access to much reason but conversing with our subconscious, if it can be done…I am very intrigued.
She lies in this office as her hypnotherapist a fit, African-American with blonde dreads and freckles tells her, “We’re going to try Past Life Aggression today.”
This is the trusted process.
This is the entrance-way into true meaning.
Right now.
This is the secret of over-excess.
Whatever we learn right now will be the doorway into WHY why do I keep eating. Why, even after acknowledging where it comes from, why do I keep eating?
Lie down and, the therapist beckons, “let a white cloud carry you far, far away, into the past, into the past, into a different time.”
The TV is playing. I am doing what is told.
I have, against reason, closed my eyes in the hopes of being taken far, far away, into the past, into the past, into a different time.
She asks “Where are you?”
I see trees.
She asks “Who are you?”
I say, “Ron”.
What the fuck is happening.
She says “What are you doing?”
I think, I am hunting. I am looking for a woman and hunting and I cannot find her and it makes me angry.
What the FUCK is happening.
The teenager on television is talking about getting lost in some market, looking for her boyfriend, in her past life, she is a gay man and she has been cast out of her house and she is looking for her boyfriend. She is very hungry.
“What are you really hungry for?” asks the guide.
“Acceptance,” says the teenager.
The girl on screen cries as I open my eyes and wonder, for a while, if I am truly an idiot.
Did I tap into a past life?
I can’t stop thinking about Ron.
Ron, in the woods, searching, tired, angry, and aware, very well aware that he is not getting anywhere, that he will never find the person he is looking for, that he is failing.
I am hungry for a Him. But, I am failing.
I am lacking detail.
I am lacking action.
I am running around a forest searching for someone I cannot find and it makes me so angry that all I do is keep searching, exhausting myself, starving, probably, I bet Ron was starving, I would know, I am Ron. Probably Ronald. Probably a Ronald who hoped that someone would call him Ron but then, upon realizing he had no one in his life that would ever be close enough to him to give him a nickname, he began telling people his name was Ron.
I am Ron just like I am Rae.
What am I hungry for?
Someone who can’t be found.
I haven’t overindulged in food since watching this show.
I keep wanting to lie down and reconnect with Ron.
I want to close my eyes and be taken far far away, to a different time, to Ron’s time, to when I was Ron and I lost my soul mate in the woods.
“What sort of message do you have for Yourself now?” The hypnotherapist asks the teenager, “If you could give Yourself one piece of advice now, what would it be?”
I turned the TV off at that point. I couldn’t listen to some girl spew out self-advice about acceptance. I couldn’t listen if I hadn’t listened to Ron.
I still have not listened to Ron.
A horn is beeping outside and it will not stop, it has merged all its beeps into one long HHOOOOOOOOOOONNNNKKKKKK and it will not stop and my back is killing me, why is my back killing me, does Ron have the answers: I lie down. My dog paws at my face a whole bunch. I let it go. I count to three as many times as it takes before I see a white cloud high in the air and I let it carry me far far away…
I run with Ron.
The conversation begins, “Stop running.” He says.
“But I’m running with you,” I offer.
“Stop running. Do you know why I’m running?”
“You’re searching for the love of your life.”
“Dessie.”
“Ok. Yeah. Dessie. You’re looking for her.”
“I’m never going to find her.”
“Why not?”
“She isn’t here.”
“Then why are you looking?”
“I have nothing better to do. You have so many things to do. You should not be looking.”
“Ever? Never look, Ever?”
“If there is no one here, there is no one here. No one needs love. No one needs it. You can live your whole life and never be loved and still have lived a whole life.”
“But I want it.”
“Then love who and what you can. I don’t know anyone other than Dessie. This is it. This is all there is. And she’s fucking hiding and there is nothing I can do. I truly have no one. I have no one because there is no one here. You have so many people and you have so much to do. If I was you, I would be loving everyone I can, all the things, all the people, all the….whatever. I would NOT be in a forest. I would not be hunting. I would just take what’s being given and LOVE it, I would fucking love it.”
“Yeah.”
“Stop fucking smoking, stop eating, stop dying. Stop looking. Everything is right where you are.”
“Why am I so hungry?”
“Because you aren’t feeding yourself.”
And he ran away.
I woke up sobbing, staring at Mordy who was hovering over me.
As I opened my eyes, he clawed at my face. I stroked his face and stood up.
What now.
Rachel Ganz 