It Was Me All Along: A Memoir (26 page)

SEATTLE WAS PRECISELY THE PICTURE
that people painted it to be: mountains and water and nothing but lush, lush greenery. And hipsters. So many hipsters. And though the landscape took my breath away, it was the culture that I truly fell for. I found a life in and through and made of food.

When Daniel and I stepped off the plane with nowhere to live, we set up temporary residence at the Holiday Inn on Aurora. In the mornings, while Daniel slept, I’d venture out to some local coffee shop to blog. After a couple of days, I started browsing online for possible jobs. On Craigslist, an ad read, “Hiring a social media intern interested in food and writing.” New to the whole social media scene, but proving adept at building a blog audience, I applied. Much of me felt certain I’d never get the internship, never even hear back from the company, Foodista, a two-year-old cooking website, though I loved the idea of working there. Surfing around the site, I was smitten. The design was clean and
unpretentious. There was a question-and-answer forum where the community of users posted and answered food and cooking questions. And unlike other recipe sites I frequented, Foodista was a food encyclopedia as well. A Wikipedia of food, I’d come to realize five minutes into cruising its pages.

I assumed my luck would be similar to what it was with the slew of other jobs I’d applied for after graduating, which is to say, nonexistent. Surely they’d received résumés from dozens of people more qualified for the position. Still, it was worth a shot. After hitting Send on my reply, I went about exploring the Emerald City.

I’d all but forgotten about my application until three days later, when I checked my e-mail after a long afternoon walk with Daniel. In my Inbox sat a reply from the community outreach director at Foodista. An hour later, we were on the phone for an hour-long interview. Two days later, I was entering their building for an interview with the cofounder and CEO, Barnaby Dorfman. For nearly two hours, he and I sat in the open urban loft space and talked about the job, my work in film and his work with IMDb (the Internet Movie Database), our mutual fascination with the Pacific Northwest, the few years he’d spent living in New England while attending Dartmouth, his childhood in Manhattan, and all things food. We were alike in so many ways. Barnaby was down-to-earth and casual, and also very, very smart—almost exhaustive in the span of his knowledge. When I left the office, I was sure the meeting had gone as well as a meeting possibly could. I wanted the job more than I’d gone in wanting it.

On Monday, three days later, I was hired. On Tuesday, Daniel and I said farewell to suitcase living at the Holiday Inn and moved into our first Seattle apartment, sitting elegantly on the top of
Queen Anne’s highest hill. And Wednesday I began what would be one of my most passionate career choices. Foodista was small enough that I felt at home in the office. I’d always considered myself a people person, but these people—my seven colleagues—were a rarity. Within my first few days of work, I’d settled into a delicious comfort with each of them. Barnaby, Sheri, Colin, Karlyn, Jesse, Patrick, and Jeff. They came to be my family.

After a month of proving myself to be a hardworking part of the team, I was promoted to a full-time staff member and assigned even greater editorial responsibility. I advanced from blogging once weekly to controlling all social media—everything from Facebook to Twitter. When the vice president of the company, Sheri, took her maternity leave, I was allowed a heavy hand in planning Foodista’s renowned annual events, the International Food Blogger Conferences. For these, I sought out more than a dozen local chefs, restaurants, and even street food trucks to come and serve food during the weekend-long conference.

My work there fell neatly in line with all that I was doing in my personal life. The blog, the social media, the events—the fusion of passions couldn’t have made more sense for me at the time. Each piece that I was working on synchronized with another. I’d also found a network of like-minded food friends. Seattle felt like destiny’s gift, all of it existing in oddly perfect harmony. I was happy, intensely happy.

And the blog—my baby if ever I’d known one—grew. I fell deeper in love with writing. I poured my energy, all my eccentric intensity, into developing recipes, crafting stories, telling my own truth about weight loss and maintenance.

A few times a week, my coworkers and I would walk to one of
our favorite restaurants near the office for lunch. Often our cravings united for the tacos at Barracuda Taqueria—two small, fresh corn tortillas piled with limey cabbage slaw and plump sautéed shrimp, drizzled with avocado crema. When Mexican wasn’t the vibe, we opted for Vietnamese. Steaming bowls of pho made with spicy pineapple- and beef-flavored broth, filled to the brim with vegetables and tofu, thin rice noodles, and topped with crispy bean sprouts, fresh Thai basil, and hot chili sauce. This exotic bowlful had become my go-to comfort food on the days when it poured down rain outside.

On weekends, I cooked with the same zeal I’d discovered in Philly and Rome. I went to the outdoor farmers’ markets in Fremont and Ballard, finding kindred spirits in Seattleites, most of whom were as interested in organics and food ethics as I was. I loved seeing the fresh ingredients around me, especially the seasonal produce. It seemed as though everything I could want was grown locally in the Pacific Northwest. And I came to credit those vegetables that I bought every Sunday with helping me to be able to eat what I wanted.

In the process of losing and maintaining my weight, I had long thought that fruits and vegetables made eating healthy easier. It was their fibrous, filling nature. I tried pairing whatever meal I craved with a mound of vegetables. It mattered less what was gracing one side of my plate, and more that the other side was overpopulated with plants. But it wasn’t until I arrived in Seattle that I discovered I could enjoy those vegetables all the time. There I found ones I loved and discovered new ways to make them delicious. Caramelized brussels sprouts, sweet early peas, grilled white corn on the cob, and roasted butternut squash. I didn’t just quarantine
a green on my dinner plate and promise to eat it for health’s sake. I found out which vegetables tasted best to me, and which methods of preparing them made them as lovely as what I’d find in restaurants. And I experimented. I bought a new and different veggie each week. I used herbs and spices and introduced butter as a flavor rather than a foundation. I learned that roasting vegetables develops a sweetness without adding sugar. I was continually inspired to try out recipes and techniques, knowing that at least half the fun in cooking was the ideation beforehand.

Each night as I prepared dinner, I made it a point to balance that perfect square of cheesy lasagna, those two slices of my favorite homemade spicy caramelized-onion pizza, the chicken with mustard marsala sauce with at least double that of vegetables. When Daniel and I went out to eat at our favorite diner, the 5 Spot, I started with a salad and ate half of my burger, then shared my ancho-dusted fries with him. I brought my leftovers home for another meal. I felt content to eat whatever I wanted within reason because I didn’t worry about whether a small portion would leave me hungry; the vegetables took care of that.

Every Saturday morning, I’d sit in the corner window of Starbucks on Queen Anne Avenue with a grande Americano and a bagel from Noah’s, toasted as tan as is safe by toaster standards and spread with cream cheese. This breakfast was how I’d begin my weekend of cooking, writing, and food photography. And when I told a friend about my much-loved ritual, about the sunny spot in all my many Seattle Saturday mornings, she paused. She smiled, relieved. “I’m so glad to hear you like bagels. I eat them every now and then, but I always feel a little guilty about it.”

I took a breath, not knowing if I’d been paid a compliment or
been given a warning that bagels were calorie-laden carb bombs. I started scanning my memory of the previous day, the day before, and even the one before that, inspecting all that I’d eaten. What I ate, what I drank—they came to me in flashes. In between fruits, vegetables, crusty bread from Macrina Bakery, and a brownie from the pan I’d made for my coworkers, I noted that the bagel had hardly stood out as an exception to how I’d come to eat normally. I realized that her remark, in some small, indirect way, showed me how far I’d come in my relationship with food.

What I’d learned is that enjoyment and satisfaction can’t always be quantified as energy input and output. Treating myself to foods and meals that might have put me in a caloric surplus did not make me fat, as I’d once feared they would. Intellectually, I always knew that all food was fine in moderation, but now the practical reality finally clicked. Bagels, as basic a food as they are, could be lovable to me because I was not eating them by the baker’s dozen. Long gone were the days when I’d eat a bagel sandwich in the middle of the night along with a large fry and a doughnut, during a long drive with Sabrina in Amherst. I now made bagels special, like spaghetti and meatballs with Mom and Paul and popcorn with Melissa. They would have become mundane, no doubt, if I’d paid no mind to when or where or why I was eating them. The beautiful part about those doughy
O’
s was that I appreciated them most on Saturday mornings, eaten while sitting in my favorite coffee shop up the street. And when I’d finish my one bagel, I’d think,
Gracious, that was good
. And then I’d write. I’d put that bagel to work upstairs in my mind. And after a few hours had passed, I’d move on with my Saturday and my wide-open weekend, happy that I’d had my favorite breakfast on my favorite day, in my favorite corner
of Seattle. I didn’t regret it. I didn’t spend precious mental energy considering what I might have eaten, what more I could have had for those calories I’d spent, how any plan of healthy eating has been ruined before noon—or worrying that a binge was awaiting. I’d just be left with the satisfaction.

This balance is what I’ve made of my life
.

Without a scale in our apartment, I relied on the way my clothing fit to gauge if I’d lost or gained. Unfailingly, I seemed to remain the same, comfortably wearing a size four, depending on the store. Even though I ate a well-balanced diet and knew that I stayed within a healthy calorie range, since I could never truly forget about the numbers, I also knew that my active life played a significant part in helping me to maintain a steady weight. The mild climate in Seattle meant I could walk outside in all seasons. Our apartment in Queen Anne was close enough that I could walk to work at Foodista every day, often needing only rain boots and a light jacket. Each way was a mile and a half, with the return leg being a steep climb uphill, a feat that never failed to leave me lightly covered in sweat upon arriving home at night. In the afternoons at work, my friend Karlyn and I took breaks together, typically involving a trip to Starbucks five blocks away for coffee. On weekends, I took solo strolls around downtown, often popping into Pike Place Market to eye the flower carts and watch the fish being thrown for tourists. I took long Sunday hikes on scenic trails nearby. I met my new friend, Camille, to wander through the Sculpture Park and down along the Elliott Bay Trail whenever our schedules aligned. My car sat in the garage unused for long periods of time.

After two years of Seattle living, I sensed a marked change in my disposition. Life—something that had, just years before, felt so
utterly dark, so difficult—was brighter, lighter. Food—something that had, years earlier, been best friend and enemy all at once—felt now purer, more sacred. My body—a source of tremendous inner turmoil for all the years I had known it—was whole and loved, by me. Still, there were certainly moments when life’s stress would cause one or both sides of my eating disorder to reappear: the binger or the restrictor; those moments exist even now. But I learned to catch my predictable patterns sooner—before I fell too deeply into a bad cycle—and to treat myself with greater compassion.

What I failed to catch, though, was that as I continued to change and grow outward into a new career, a new environment, and new friendships, I was growing away from Daniel.

A year after we moved to Seattle, new government regulations severely limited Daniel’s ability to continue his career. In April 2011, the federal government shut down the major online poker sites where Daniel played daily. His career in online poker was jeopardized and he stopped playing entirely while he figured out what he wanted to do. He began staying home all the time. And at first I understood. He’d always struggled with social anxiety. But then it became something else, in which he barely left. He fell into a deep depression. Seeing him that way, I’d plead with him to come out and meet the new friends I’d made: “We’ll go for half an hour, tops!” Soon I ran out of excuses to tell my coworkers as to why he could never make it out for dinner or drinks after work. I’d have to muddle through arguments with friends who were hurt that my boyfriend didn’t seem to care to meet them.

But the hard truth—the one that I prayed to be untrue no matter how viscerally I felt it, the one that crawled beneath my skin
and gnawed at my bones—was that I’d fallen out of love. I felt as though I’d outgrown us—when really I’d just grown. I’d changed. And then Daniel withdrew.

There were always aspects of our relationship that had bothered me. The ways we differed—things one chooses to overlook, to accept, when in the throes of love. Only now I was less able to overlook them. Having spent seven years with Daniel, I was weary of them. I hated that he slept from three a.m. to twelve noon, which not only meant that I always went to bed and woke up alone, but that anything we did together in the daytime could not begin before midday. I struggled with his inflexibility. But of course, I had my own tragic flaws. In the moments when I was seconds from snapping at him, I reminded myself that he surely had a list equally long of things he disliked about me. I remembered when I was the most rigid and inflexible person on the planet.

None of the grievances mattered, though, when I was completely honest with myself. It wasn’t the differences between us, not my wishing that he’d be less socially anxious, not my constant nagging and pushing him to be more ambitious. It was that I did not love him, romantically, any longer. And that was hard to admit, even to myself. I’d look at him, sitting on the couch in our apartment as I’d walk in the door from work at night, and I’d see my best friend.