Binge eating, books and black humour

I’m still unemployed and feeling useless and inadequate. Especially after taking a look at journalist Johann Hari’s Twitter feed, which seems to me a pretty good induction into the world of Things That Really Matter.

So, yesterday I decided to just let go - behaviour approved by spiritualists, apparently. I did something I hadn’t done for a while. I went to the supermarket and purchased the following items:

1 x 150g bag salt and vinegar crisps

1 x 150g bag cheese and onion crisps

1 jar garlic mayo (for dipping)

1 x 450g tub crème brûlée flavour ice cream

1 x 120g bar Cadbury’s Fruit and Nut

1 iced lemon Madeira cake

1 packet salted caramel brownies

1 ‘two buttered slices’ snack pack Soreen malt loaf

This was straight after having been to the library, where I took out the following books (a bit random, as Lewisham library is too small to have much of a selection):

The Life and Death of Democracy by John Keane (“A gargantuan feat of erudition” – Guardian)

On Liberty by John Stuart Mill

Exuberance: The Passion for Life by Kay Redfield Jamison (“That rare writer who can offer a kind of unified field theory of science and art” – The Washington Post Book World)

Pathological Altruism, edited by Barbara Oakley, Ariel Knafo, GuruprasadMadhavan, and David Sloan Wilson (“A scholarly yet surprisingly sprightly volume” – New York Times)

After some time spent chomping and flicking through my selected volumes, I began to feel marginally better. I took all the food I hadn’t eaten downstairs and left it in the kitchen with a note for my flatmates:

FREE FOOD!

Regrettably, due to the conjecture that I am a fat, useless waste of space, I today took the decision to purchase numerous items of junk food and contribute to the phenomenon of ‘binge eating’.

However, since I have now cheered up a little and no longer wish to commit suicide by self-inflicted explosion of my fat, useless stomach, I wish to offer the leftover portion of these items to you, my dear flatmates.

Please either consume, or remove and hide, your desired items by tomorrow morning – otherwise they will be thrown away.

x

“Black humour was my saviour”, says Rae Earl, author of the hilarious My Fat, Mad Teenage Diary. “I had to find a way to cope with my head”. And perhaps I am writing this for one of the same reasons she eventually published her diaries; that “pain is trivial except insofar as you can use it to connect with other people’s pain, and if you can do that, you can be released from it” (a James Baldwin quote I found on, you guessed it, Johann Hari’s Twitter).

I ate those things because I wanted to forget for a while how sad, disappointed and scared of life I am. I took out the books because I still hope every day that I can change – learn to focus, concentrate, build arguments and use them in some helpful way.

In case you’re interested, here are some things I have learned from my erudite literature picks, in the limited amount of time I’ve spent reading so far:

• The first self-governing assemblies were actually in the Middle East, not Ancient Greece as is popularly thought. The Ancient Greeks liked to pretend they invented democracy, and this myth persisted because of the confirmation bias of Europeans, who regarded Europe as the cradle of civilisation and anti-barbarism (the arrogance of people from a young country –just like Americans now think they invented “freedom”).
•  “Democracy required that people see through talk of gods and nature and claims to privilege based on superiority of brain or blood… It implied that the most important political problem is how to prevent rule by the few, or by the rich or powerful who claim to be supermen”. (NB: people understood this in 2000 BC.)
• The word ‘enthusiasm’ comes from the Greek ‘en theos’ – a god within.
• Pathological altruism may be a factor in why depression is diagnosed more in women.Due to evolutionary biology/socialisation/let’s not start an argument, girls play more of a caregiving role that requires heightened empathy towards others. All children think the world revolves around them and events are within their control so, when they cannot soothe other people’s pain(e.g. in an upbringing which involves excessive parental criticism, or depressed parents the child cannot cheer up), very empathetic children suffer anxiety, sadness and guilt. Towards adulthood the anxiety and guilt become internalised, leading to negative thought processes/interpretation of events. This is a huge risk factor for adult depression.
• I’m very empathetic. Hooray, I’ve found explanation #1,247 for my underachievement! ;)
• I can’t say I’ve read much of On Liberty yet, but read this amazing dedication:

“To the beloved and deplored memory of her who was the inspirer, and in part the author, of all that is best in my writings—the friend and wife whose exalted sense of truth and right was my strongest incitement, and whose approbation was my chief reward—I dedicate this volume. Like all that I have written for many years, it belongs as much to her as to me; but the work as it stands has had, in a very insufficient degree, the inestimable advantage of her revision; some of the most important portions having been reserved for a more careful examination, which they are now destined never to receive. Were I but capable of interpreting to the world one-half the great thoughts and noble feelings which are buried in her grave, I should be the medium of a greater benefit to it, than is ever likely to arise from anything that I can write, unprompted and unassisted by her all but unrivalled wisdom.”

P.S. By the way, garlic mayo on its own is not that great for dipping crisps in. It needs something herby, and something crunchy to give it a bit of texture.