Even when I’m not eating, sometimes my brain default thinks about food. It makes it incredibly hard to keep the weight off and even harder to not just give up all together. I didn’t have much money, the accident put me out of work for a while, so I was struggling to get by to a point where food was scarce. I didn’t have the stamina to get a part time job on the street but also had too much pride to ask my parents for help. It didn’t take a therapist to recognize that I was a mess. This is the lowest point my life had had, and it was affecting every aspect of living.

After the accident I couldn’t eat or sleep, and talking was even difficult. I had been driving home from a concert at night. It was a really really good day. I am thankful for that, that it was at least a great last day to have. While flipping through the stations on the radio a drunk driver coming from the opposite direction had gotten in the lane just enough to bump me. When I tried to turn the car, and keep some of it from bashing into the other drivers I over adjusted and turned it right into a tree. I was going 60 miles per hour, the other driver was going 80. He spun out and went down hard into a ditch. They tried to revive him for a few hours after, but eventually either he lost the will to live or his BAC got the better of his body.

Even though I was the victim of that accident I had a tremendous amount of guilt. I was upset the other man died. Even if he was being a jerk, I didn’t want his family to have to deal with that loss. I was sure he was going through something bad if he had been driving after drinking. They said he was three times over the legal limit and almost bound to die anyway. When his parents visited me they told me about his life. He had found out that his wife had been cheating on him. He didn’t want to tell anyone, he wanted to keep it from his kids so that they could work it out in private. She wouldn’t admit to it and it drove him mad, making him unsure of what to do. That night they had a huge argument and he was going to finally decide to break it off. His mom was crying very very hard. She was upset that he made a dumb decision. She said he had talked about how depressed he was, and how he almost didn’t have the will to go on. She had wished she had listened better and gotten him a therapist.

When I learned all of this instead of making me feel better it made me feel much worse. I thought of him a lot, especially after Tom called the wedding off. I should have seen it coming. He had never wanted to set a date. We had dated for six years before that, all through college and then after graduation. We were happy with each other, but when we lost the spark I knew that the engagement was a way of trying to fix a broken relationship. I swore we would both get over it, that all couples go through this kind of thing, and most do. And then it all changed with the accident. I saw him less and less. He talked stopped talking about our future, and stopped talking to me. When he broke it off I thought maybe he just needed some time away. Maybe my accident was causing us both to be depressed. It was depressing him, but he didn’t want to fix things. Instead he started a dumb new relationship last June with lady long legs.

That’s why the worst part about all of this was the collateral damage. I gained the 70 pounds because I was bedridden and almost addicted to painkillers. As I healed I was dealing more and more with problems in my personal life, and one thing that was always there for me no matter what was food.

When he left he never really left my life. My parents had known the Middletons before I had ever met Tom. When we started dating it just made them better friends. They all swore that it was destiny or part of some greater plan. I was foolish enough to believe it. We had a good time at the University of San Diego. I loved that he was different than me. I was incredibly expressive, I tried auditioning for plays and graduated with a major in English and Creative Writing. Tom was a Computer Scientist.

We were really exciting to each other. He kept me thinking critically and taught me a few new things about the computer. If I ever wanted new software or couldn’t figure something out I had a professional on standby. When it came to computers I was about as useful as an 80-year-old Grandma that lived on a desert island. He liked that I was artistic and that I was a little bit insane. He told me all the time that I was the most exciting girl he had ever met.

The more we got to know each other the less we had in common. The less we had in common the harder we had to try to make it work. Six years was a really long time to be dragged along. You don’t get dragged that long without severe carpet burns and an excellent sense of what the bottom looks like. He probably felt the same way. None of our friends liked each other. One of the few friends of mine left was Travis.

Travis came in the door, envelope in hand, waving it above his head. I quickly tried to make it look like I wasn’t laying like a lump on the floor.

“What’s in there?”

“My check from that commercial a month ago,” he sang, skipping into the kitchen. Travis had worked with one of the local companies on making a commercial. He had to do really cheesy dialogue and it would air overnight, but it was still acting. He swayed back and forth, probably texting his boyfriend about the money.

“Congrats!” I was very happy for Travis. He was getting a lot of work and doing really well in his field. It made me feel pathetic when I saw his progress in an almost impossible job field and my lack of progress in the easiest field of work.

“So what are we eating tonight?”

“Air. I don’t have money. I can look at your food, though. Sniff it a little maybe.” I crawled back onto the couch and hid under the blanket. “This will be good for my diet. Being broke might be the best thing to happen to me.”

“If you don’t start cheering up I am going to force feed you cocaine.” Travis shot me daggers from his eyes. He was very motivated, happy, and athletic – my exact opposite. Instead of it helping me live a healthy life style it made me more upset at myself. “I just got paid. Dinner is on me.”

“You really don’t have to do this, Travis. You’ve done too much for me.”

Travis walked over to the TV and changed it to the Food Network. “Yum. Look at all that. Maybe we should have Chinese. Maybe Italian. Ooh, how about sushi?”

“Did you ever study methods of torture?” The food on the television looked divine. When your will power is low but your bank account is lower it is hard to pass up free food. “And let’s get salad or something. I really don’t need something heavy.”

“You deserve good food. You already lost 30 pounds. That’s amazing. You should be congratulated.”

“I have had enough congratulations.”

“Well, not from me.” Travis sorted through our cabinets of take out menus.

“How does Italian sound?”

“It sounds like the most delicious thing ever.”

“Great, it’s settled.”

“No, wait!” I thought about my diet. “Isn’t that super heavy in carbs?”

“Okay, not Italian. How about Mexican?”

“Too greasy.”

“What about Thai?”

“Aren’t noodles heavy in carbs?”

“It’s food, so yes. Do you want to eat paper?”

“I don’t want to stay fat.”

I was not having the best day, but I was trying to be more positive. It was hard with the wedding and debt.

“If you want I can help train you. We can get you back in shape. Then if freelancing doesn’t work out, maybe you still have some acting skills that we can get you jobs with.”

“Maybe.”

“Let’s start by walking to get Thai.”