A Glass of Wine on a Saturday Night

Credit @Ashley Byrd

By Erin Deborah 

Trigger warning: eating disorders

I’m lying in bed, still wine drunk from an evening spent with my best friend in our favourite bar, and I find myself reflecting on how totally calm I feel having ingested half a bottle of wine for no particular reason other than that we fancied a bottle of wine on an inconsequential Saturday night.We were loosely celebrating her birthday, but there was no drama to unpack, no crisis to debrief, no ‘need’ to drink away our sorrows. In short, we were drinking because sometimes, that’s what two best friends want to do on a Saturday night in the middle of November.

It doesn’t seem like much. But I couldn’t always do this. I couldn’t always open a bottle of wine so casually, consume anything without even looking at the label. 

Exactly three years ago today, I was probably in the gym. I likely woke up, spent a few hours on a treadmill, went home for several cups of coffee, ate a precisely calculated amount of vegetables, attempted to do some work, then spent most of the evening sleeping. The thing is, I don’t really know exactly what I did that day. I didn’t take photos, didn’t go out, didn’t really care. 

My life revolved around being as thin as possible. I lived in athleisure, my social calendar was calculated around going to the gym and I found momentary happiness only in the time spent with my best friend, even if I spent the whole time recalculating the number of calories I had consumed in front of her - as though the love she gave me was dependent on the size of my lunch.

Exactly two years ago today, I staged a photo shoot in the Paris apartment I inhabited entirely alone while I desperately tried  to clutch at the straws of who I was. I posed in front of a flashing iPhone camera to try and capture the glimpse of the joy I had begun to notice on the edge of the horizon. I felt liberated. Not okay yet, not calm, definitely not happy. But definitely better. 

Exactly a year ago today, I walked home from dinner to the house I shared with new friends. This I know, because it’s what I did every night in my final year in Durham. I didn’t think too much about what I ate at Friday Night Dinner, and might have even munched on popcorn while watching rubbish TV with friends. I might have hesitated when reaching for a snack, and then thought better of this hesitation - no food will ever hurt me as much as my eating disorder did. 

Life got better, although it wasn’t an easy ride. But I slowly realised that it is too short to spend it worrying about how much I weigh.

All I needed was for it to be a random, inconsequential Saturday night in November for me to go for a few glasses of wine with my best friend for no apparent reason. It took me three years, but it was well worth the wait.