Aliens! Puke! Blither! Skip this post!

If you think about how much effort it takes, how much real anatomical work and unmitigated misery it requires to lose your lunch, you come to the inescapable conclusion that bulemics are extraterrestrials. That's right, folks: aliens walk among us, and they are not little green men. They are little green women in fashionable clothes. Involuntary vomiting is inhumane. Voluntary vomiting is inhuman.

I know this because I spent most of yesterday crouched over one receptacle or another as the contents of my stomach made a valiant charge for freedom and glory. Which would have been fine if they were a ragtag but noble band of fighters standing firm for Truth and Justice, but they were in fact a salami sandwich, some baby carrots, and an orange. No, it was not pretty. Or maybe it was pretty, in that abstract, Damien-Hirst-on-Zoloft kind of way. (Ah! The self-excoriating joys of TMI!)

Hours -decades, centuries, Cretaceous Periods- later, having fought the Good Fight over the toilet, three metal bowls, and the trash bucket; having thought longingly of the great black coolness of death; having felt my diaphragm howl as if deprived of its final, most artful, most incisive hiccup, I fell asleep. I woke up. I ate eight saltine crackers and felt a little better. I tried to come up with something -anything, really, but preferably some profound existential lesson or compelling humanistic insight- that made it all worth it. I mean, if you're going to puke, you should gain something in exchange, right? Right?

Nothing came up.

Except, perhaps, the pure, inexpressible loveliness of nothing coming up. Also, don't eat old salami.

Love, Anne.