“What’d you have for breakfast?”

“That’s a really hard one,” I say.

“Okay, what about lunch?”

I pause. “Another challenging question.”

The nutritionist’s questions get tougher.

“So, do you wait until you’re hungry to eat?”

I had to restrain myself from rolling my eyes. I don’t know when I’m hungry — I’ve devoted years of my life to thinking about food, but that was one question I forgot to answer. I probably should have known, though, that in going to see a nutritionist, I was most likely going to have to talk about food.

For so long, I’d felt like my body was “wrong” and then that my attempts to change my body were “wrong.” I don’t gamble because I know it’s a losing proposition, statistically speaking, and yet, I was playing a game in which I literally could not win. Was I bad at it, or was it a poorly designed game?

I quit drinking about nine months ago. I once told a friend I worried I had a drinking problem. She asked if I drank every day. I grimaced. Not only did I drink every day, I’d been doing that long before I thought I had a drinking problem. It was normal. By which I mean, I knew plenty of people who did. Booze helped me do the things I did at night — date, perform stand-up comedy, occasionally relax. For years, I experienced very little downside. I found something that worked, so why wouldn’t it do it every day?

I had tried to moderate my drinking for years. I’d successfully restrict myself to one drink per night, but I’d hate it. Or I’d drink only two nights a week, which didn’t make those nights any better so much as they made every other night significantly worse. Or I’d only drink at parties, but I wasn’t popular enough. Or on dates, but I didn’t want to ruin the fun of drinking by introducing a dull man. Or when I was sad, or happy, or had just gotten rejected, or had something to celebrate. The problem with relying on alcohol to soothe any particular emotion is you always have some emotion. I’m not a tech billionaire, I feel things. So I quit. I’m deeply grateful I quit drinking. I’m even more grateful, though, that you even can. Trying to keep it in my life was a true logistical nightmare. The best-case scenario when you have a problem is that you can eliminate it entirely — most problems aren’t that simple.

I don’t think was ever a “normal” eater. I have a distinct memory of wanting to lose weight when I was in kindergarten. People started telling me to lose weight when I was 10. When the weekly weigh-ins began that year, I had but one thought — things would never be fun again. This was the end of youthful indiscretion. I hadn’t even gotten my period yet — my pessimism had set in two years before I commenced with the free-bleeding.

Abstinence was the easiest option with booze — I don’t think it’s insane that I at least wanted to try it out with food.

I wasn’t wrong. My life was fun, but food was never again uncomplicated. When I was 16, I found an easy answer. I could just throw up, so I got into that for a minute. A friend later told me I “really hadn’t thought it through,” but I disagree. I was 16. I didn’t know what the inside of my stomach looked like. I didn’t know how teeth erode. I knew three things: 1) I wanted to be thinner; 2) I was devoting all my energy to restricting my eating; and 3) there was an option to eat food without gaining weight. I think I’d chosen wisely given the information at the time.

Eventually, I recovered from my stint as a bulimic. I was again living within the acceptable bounds of womanhood. It’s totally okay to obsess over food, it’s just not okay to do so in a way that worries the people around you. Between being told from a young age that my body was “wrong” and being told from a still-young-but-older age that the things I was doing to fix it were “wrong,” I figured I should just stay silent, as I did for the next 10 years.

I would have sought out more help if I felt like I was off-base, but I did not. I was physically healthy and functional, I just thought about food every second of the day. In my experience with every other part of life, if you’re trying and failing, you need to try more. My mental energy was wholly devoted to a goal that seemed important. And let me tell you — I’m not the one who invented the idea that it was good to be skinny (but can you imagine how rich I’d be if I had?!). Still, I always thought I was overcomplicating things. It was just food — should it be so strenuous?

I find managing my drinking significantly easier than managing food because I don’t have to. I don’t drink. It’s like taking an open-book test — you can still mess up, but if you do, it’s because you’re dumb (that is a joke). When I crave wine, as I often do, I know the craving will subside. Giving up alcohol entirely was deeply taxing, but also, simple. In fact, one of the heaviest parts was admitting that something everyone else loved had become so difficult I couldn’t keep managing it.

When I crave food, I’m genuinely confused. I told the aforementioned nutritionist I didn’t know how to eat. She told me to wait until I felt hungry in my stomach to eat. I waited 20 hours and almost passed out. She then said to wait until I wanted to eat, and I involuntarily laughed. The last time I didn’t want to eat, I had the flu. Is it weird to want food all the time?

Unlike alcohol, you can’t very well eliminate food, although that certainly never stopped me from trying. There have been so many times I wished I could just give it up entirely to free myself mentally. For instance, I actually see the appeal of Soylent, except it does taste verifiably awful.

I had a body, but it wasn’t the “right” one, so I threw all my mental energy at fixing it. That still wasn’t enough, though, probably because my body wasn’t actually wrong to begin with. Bodies can’t be wrong.

I was reading about this piece of wearable tech called Pavlok that allows you to zap yourself when you’re about to engage in a behavior you’d like to stop doing. Is this what we’ve been reduced to as a society? We’re so surrounded by addictive temptations that we treat ourselves as dogs in a futile attempt to resist them? I thought I should try to use it for food, which seems like a crazy idea until you actually read that Pavlok is recommended to help people kick sugar addictions. So my idea was kinda not that weird if you think about it. I don’t think starving myself was an attempt to lose weight as much as it was an attempt to get rid of a problem. Abstinence was the easiest option with booze — I don’t think it’s insane that I at least wanted to try it out with food.

Compounding the problem is the guilt. Food and drink are two of life’s joys, they say, so why did I let them make me so miserable? I’ve spiraled into pits of self-loathing for letting them turn into obsessions. I’ve found myself jealous of people in much worse circumstances than me because they’re “allowed” to drink and I’m somehow not. I’m pretty uniformly jealous of anyone I see eating a cookie — what kind of sick fuck am I? I could just buy a cookie. Holidays should be fun, but I’m so scared of being unable to control myself around abundance that I avoided this one entirely. Of course, I feel guilty. I always have. It’s just food and booze, and I’m so lucky to have easy access to both. It shouldn’t be that arduous.

Then, I went on a silent retreat and forgave myself. That wasn’t the intention. I wanted to find inner calm and put down my phone and maybe tap into my “spiritual side” (and maybe run for president or something). I didn’t intend to forgive myself because I didn’t even know I had to. It’s funny — I get so pissed off at guys for not noticing when I’m obviously furious (hint: if the text ends with a period, apologize). On the other hand, I’d been holding my own problems against myself for 15 years without realizing how angry I was.

I’ve always thought I created misery out of nothing. That I was the freak. The weird one (not that “weird” is even “bad” — it’s one of those words watered down to the point of being meaningless, but I assume you all get what I mean, etc.). I’d look around me and think everyone else figured out how to do it. I realized, though, when given the time to reflect, that I didn’t get there by making any grave mistakes. At each step of the process, I made a reasonable choice given the information I had.

Here’s how I came to drink too much. I’d drink, and I’d feel good. Later, I’d want to feel good again, so I’d return to the thing that made me feel good. I’d always been shy and introverted, and then, I wasn’t. I wanted to do stand-up comedy but I was nervous about getting on stage, and then, I wasn’t. I found a solution and I stuck with it. I don’t look back and wonder what I was thinking all those nights I wandered around alone on a dark San Francisco street until 2 a.m., knowing full well I’d have to wake up for work in four hours. I knew how I got there. It’s only when I strung a series of logical steps together that it became a problem.

Here’s how I became obsessed with food. I had a body, but it wasn’t the “right” one, so I threw all my mental energy at fixing it. That still wasn’t enough, though, probably because my body wasn’t actually wrong to begin with. Bodies can’t be wrong. I’m going to go ahead and assert that.

It took me realizing that I wasn’t a freak for having problems with alcohol to realize I wasn’t a freak for having problems with food.

I had so much shame about food for so long, but I never spoke about it. I wasn’t alone, I just felt like I was. Talking about drinking was much easier. I was 27 when I quit. I was older and wiser and, most importantly, I’d failed at many more things. Now, thank God, I’ve failed professionally and romantically and financially and personally and I locked myself out of my apartment two days ago and I failed my road test four times and I once got booed off stage for making fun of B*rnie S*nders (who I actually like, do not cancel me!). I’m just less embarrassed overall. And I’ve learned something kind of useful — the thing about problems is sometimes they appear without you even inviting them.

The argument from that piece (this one, Holly Whitaker’s, the one I just cited, the one I’ve read seven thousand times) that I most love is the first one. She doesn’t use the term “alcoholic” because “it asserts that it’s normal to consume an addictive substance with ease, and abnormal to not be able to.” Maybe it’s alcohol that’s weird, not me. And maybe it’s beauty standards — has anyone ever thought to critique them? Maybe they’re the dumb ones.

It took me realizing that I wasn’t a freak for having problems with alcohol to realize I wasn’t a freak for having problems with food. When I quit drinking, I admitted I couldn’t figure it out. I gave it the solid collegiate try for a decade or so, and it got the better of me. When friends went a month without drinking and then went back to it, I’d be so jealous. They knew how to do it, and I didn’t. But then, I had a great epiphany when I realized alcohol was the problem (for me — I’m not trying to demonize anyone else’s drinking). It’s not on me for not wanting it around anymore.

I’m trying to learn that food, on the other hand, isn’t toxic (well, some of it is, read Michael Pollan, or don’t, it’s all corn). I’ve been volunteering at farmers markets and in gardens to help repair my relationship with food, to see it as a form of sustenance, not my enemy. A friend asked if I was trying to remember where our food comes from. I am not. I grew up in rural Manhattan. I am trying to learn for the first time. Maybe instead of beating myself up for finding food so demanding, I can give myself credit for picking up a new skill in my late twenties. I think I will learn Mandarin next.

Drinking ultimately didn’t make me happy, and being thin hasn’t made me happy. But was I misguided for thinking they would? All signs suggested otherwise.

I recently watched Beautiful Boy with my sister. We had differing opinions on the quality, but we could come together to agree that Timothée Chalamet is hot. Anyway, in the movie, he plays a meth addict. The movie doesn’t really address why he became a meth addict, except that it felt good. I liked this, she did not. We don’t actually have to know what went “wrong” in his character’s life. We just have to know that drugs made him feel good, so he kept returning. I tried to do a deep-dive on the real-life beautiful boy, Nic Sheff, to learn more, but I ended up mostly just looking at pictures of Timothée. Research is a drag, I explained to my friend getting a PhD.