I need a regimen, something with parameters to follow, like the Program. Parameters make things so clear. It’s easier to know when I’m succeeding or failing and therefore how to feel about myself. I decide to see how long I can go being vegan. No animal protein, period. At first I feel light. Hunger is muted. I observe my hunger; like the Ashram teaches, I am the witness. The lightness, the hunger, the high, feel like being in love without the love object. But after six months my hunger is a living thing with tentacles and teeth. I’m craving bloodred steak with the ferocity of my years on the Program. My legs ache and Tim says I cry at night in my sleep about the pain. I’m still going for extremes: the high and the feeling of living on the edge. Riding the razor’s blade to feel alive. I thought my cravings would disappear, but they haven’t. What am I trying to prove? No one is looking over my shoulder. Am I becoming my mother, trying to control the one thing I truly can control? I learn that a few of Tim’s players are following a new diet called Paleo, where an adherent is allowed only meat and vegetables. A diet where meat is considered good for you? I try to let that sink in.
In Whole Foods I am given a sample of a vegan meal replacement powder. In the hours after I have a scoop, I feel balanced and light yet my hunger is satiated. After a few weeks of having the powder and feeling good, I notice something even more amazing. If I eat something that weighs me down, a combination that doesn’t sit right, I have a scoop in the midst of the discomfort and the heaviness lifts. Even eating steak suddenly seems like a nonevent. I read the ingredient label: probiotics, chlorella, maca, berry antioxidants, vitamins, vegan proteins, digestive enzymes. I have used digestive enzymes before and while they have helped, there is something in the combination of this specific powder that lifts the weight while also allowing for the euphoria I used to feel during a fast. The label on the container also reads, high-density nutrition. Dr. Cursio’s Program was supposed to stimulate the cleansing of a fast while feeding us at the same time, but I never felt euphoria or lightness eating blended salads three times a day. Salads, even blended, were hard to digest and weighed me down. But this powder actually seems to achieve what Dr. Cursio was going for. And easily. I’m not in the kitchen all day; I’m not chained to juicers and blenders and crates’ worth of vegetables I need to wash. All I need to do is add a scoop of powder to a glass of water and I feel good. And best of all, I feel free to eat whatever I want. No regimen needed; instead its opposite. Find my way by feeling for it. What feels right to me is unique to me and unique in each moment. No one else knows better than I do.
I’ve been accepted into a writing program. One hand grips the rock on the side of the crevasse, school, class—the lip that I cling to—so I can dip down into these darker realms I need to write from. I remember my struggles with the middle of the day, how tired I felt after I ate. I see now that that was partly why the middle of the day and the middle of any story felt like quicksand. To avoid animal protein, I ate too much cheese, too much bread, too much sugar. As soon as I ate, I’d need to take a nap. By the time I woke up, Em or Luke needed me or the most productive part of the morning had passed. I was going backward, without understanding why.
We hear about Jesse in increments. He makes the USA Sevens team, plays in the Las Vegas tournament before thousands of people.
“You never said you were sorry, do you know that?” Tim and I are driving down to the South Bay to visit his mother for dinner. We cross the new Bay Bridge. The sunset is deep and hard, reds and purples and blues. The city glitters and I can see every light. It’s been three years since I kissed Jesse. “In all this time. It’s the one thing you haven’t said.”
Last week Luke was looking for a VHS tape to play in an old player he had found in the house he is living in near UC Berkeley, where he is a freshman. He came across, tucked in a drawer, Tim’s and my wedding video, which I had not watched, because we hadn’t had the correct machine, or when we had the right machine I couldn’t find the tape, since a month after our wedding. Luke dusted off our old machine and turned it on.
In the video, my younger self kneels at the altar in front of the priest who is marrying us. Tim kneels beside me. Tim has tousled dark auburn hair and a chiseled face. His cheek dimples when he grins at me; he is gorgeous. He looks at me when the priest announces us man and wife, a quick glance, then ducks his head shyly and swallows. It’s a private moment; he isn’t sharing his feelings with me or with anyone. He’s simply absorbing. Then, ready to let me in, he lifts his chin and our eyes meet. He’s beaming. I have never seen this moment. I didn’t register it then, I was so worried about how I looked and about all the details of the day, and I didn’t register it when I watched the video after the wedding. Now, separated by decades, I can take in what I couldn’t then: how lucky I was and how lucky I am, despite my impulses toward sabotage and despite having learned so completely to want what I couldn’t have, to have Tim’s steadfast adoration.
“I’m sorry,” I say.