Control
musings from writing for no reason
Going downstairs to tell mum & dad I was leaving to Colorado felt both like unloading a rock laden rucksack & setting my life ablaze. ‘’But don’t worry –,’’ I stammered, ‘’I don’t need to take a towel.’’
Towels were the thing, that every time I went on a school trip, I would ask my teacher about again. Some may read that as a body issue – a fear of being left stranded, naked & towel- less. But it was not. It was the thought of someone thinking I had not read the packing list. When the fact that I could tell you the list – verbatim and in order – says more about me or who I was going to become than the towel itself.
Every school trip and it’s lead up felt like an elongated drawn-out sugar high.
The before – planning, googling, obsessive excitement. Checking of the weather, memorising how long each leg of the journey would take. Like a child running around a fun fair surveying the food stalls… Candy floss? Ice cream? Churros? Slushies?
The high (and the fall) was never the trip itself but the talk. The last-minute miniatures. Each an inhale of the sugary, sweet substance. The euphoric moment when you find out your friend is going to and the dopamine hit when you attend the information sessions.
Inevitably then comes the crash. The crash always started the same, a casual non-sequitur slotted into a conversation with mum: ‘’What if I don’t want to go on the trip?’ - I wonder if by the 3rd time she could predict it was coming, down to the moment, just from my footsteps coming down the stairs. Surely by the 10th she knew.
I remember the first crash; I was 8 and going to Sayers Croft – think bushcraft meets cabins meets camp songs and high ropes courses. The hysteria and clinging to the railings were no different when I was 8 to when I was 16. Tears streamed down my red-hot face whilst I ticked off the list with the brand-new pen bought solely for this purpose and the secondary highlighter swoop (colour coded based on the items use) shaky in my jolting hand.
As I got older, doors got slammed and yet – once inside my room I would reply to the texts from friends asking what I was wearing to the last night disco, and ring them up to talk choices.
I would eat breakfast in the days leading up to the trip with shrieks of, ‘’Why are you making me do this?’’, ‘’This is SO unfair!’’, ‘’Do you hate me?’’ Then off I would go to school where, for the first time, I donned my mask. ‘Of course I can’t wait. Yeah, I voted to be in a room with you. So if we are coach partners to the airport what about once we land in – South Africa, Spain, New York, China’ – yes I am aware of my privilege.
What was different this time (besides not needing a towel – which I had always before needed to pack) was that this was a far cry from a school trip.
The packing lists, the mask, the towel, the sugar high were never about the items.
But the control.
The being seen as prepared.
Despite the unravelling underneath. The eating disorder that had lain dormant until recently.