I haven't written on this blog in two and a half months. I told myself that it was because writing the blog was fulfilling my need to write, thereby taking away from the time I should be spending working on my short story collection. This is, of course, a bunch of bullshit, since writing doesn't work that way. There isn't a reserve, and once it's empty there's no more. The truth is that I've made myself more and more isolated this year. I didn't even know this was what I was doing, or at least didn't admit it, until I started reading Drinking; A Love Story. More on this later.
I have good reasons for my isolation. My mom was being treated for cancer, my dog got sick, my kids keep me busy, I'm working. But I've come to see that there were times I could have had lunch with friends, had coffee with a colleague, and I chose not to.
So, here's the truth, or at least as much of it as I'm willing to tell you. I have pica. It's a disorder in which people chew on or eat things that are not food. I've had it since I can remember. It started when I was very little (a toddler) with me licking ashtrays, eating dirt, chewing the tops off matches if I could find some. At one point a doctor said this was caused by low iron, but that wasn't true, because iron supplements didn't make it go away.
When I started reading, I began chewing on paper. I realize how horrifying this is to people who love books, but it's true. I'm a carnal lover of books. I can't draw the line between my love of reading and my love of ripping off the bottom of the page, putting it into my mouth, and folding the paper into perfect squares with my tongue. No other paper works the same as the book you are reading at that time. In my family, this is called "Why are you eating books?!?" I'm not eating them. I'm chewing on the paper. And swallowing it.
Very, very few people know this secret. My family. Two or three friends. More people probably knew when I was younger and not so good at keeping secrets.
I don't eat paper any more. Very much. I've moved to cloth and wool. I remember when my daughter was a baby and I had to wash her clothes in Dreft. When I opened the washer and the smell hit me, I was overcome with the urge to chew on her clothes (I didn't). For many months now it's been one scarf. It's white, and it used to have big chunks of string clumped together hanging off the end. It doesn't any more. I started to get scared when I had to have a pair of scissors nearby constantly to cut pieces off the actual scarf itself. At some point I had told myself that as long as it was just the string, not the wool itself, it wasn't that big of a deal. Now I've given up making rules about it, and every day the scarf hangs right there in the closet, on the door, and every day it gets a little bit shorter. What am I going to do when it's summer and it doesn't make sense to have a scarf in the closet?
I tell my counselor that I'm not interested in learning to stop having pica. It's not damaging me. I can control it. It's not like I do it in public. Except that I do. I'm doing it right now. I can't leave the house without cutting several pieces and putting them in my pocket. In the fall, I started having terrible stomach pain. I've broken my front teeth four times on various items (plastic mostly), and now my dentist tells me that my back teeth are so grinded down they may have to be removed. I can't go anywhere without a bottle of water, because I choke on things, even if it's actual food. I'm terrified that I'm going to end up with an esophageal blockage like my dog and people will not believe the irony.
I'm the weird kid in the third grade who sits in the corner and rocks. That's what it feels like. It's like if I can't chew on something all the time, the anxiety will be too much to handle. I could describe exactly how it feels, why it works, but I won't, because no matter how familiar the need for comfort might sound, a part of your brain will still be thinking, but, dude, you're eating paper. That's fucking weird.
But I've ignored all of this for as long as possible. I'm not an alcoholic. Having pica is not like having a problem with alcohol. But it is an addiction. And reading Drinking; A Love Story, sometimes I have to reread a page like the information is going to be on a test because it's so true. I have other addictions. I'm just too weird for them to be alcohol and drugs. I have to pick the odd ones. Pica is one of them. I'm starting to realize how much my addictions control my every day life. Some things I can still do. I can teach without anxiety, because it's not really me teaching. It's this persona I put on when I get in the front of the classroom. This person says the same things every term, makes the same jokes, writes the same notes on the board. But lately I've begun to see cracks-- even when I'm teaching I begin to feel anxious. Tired. I don't want to do this any more. I just want to go home and hide. I can go to my girls' functions, because that's the public mom me. I avoid other parents-- I carry a book and disdain conversation.
I believe people think of me as someone who's not scared to tell the truth, who is honest. And I am, about those things I allow people to know. But there are secrets I keep-- some I will always keep. At some point in this last year, the secrets got too heavy or something. Because now I feel nailed in place. I have to be alone. I am tired. And at some point I have to unload some of these secrets. I have to at least acknowledge to myself that my behavior has become a problem. You are what you do, not who you think you are or who you want to be. My secrets have, in most of the ways that count, taken over my life.
