It's always sort of unnerving to be reminded of the lessons learned in BabyBio at socially inopportune times. What it comes down to is that we are not the masters of our own destiny -- we are slaves to biology, and science is a cruel master.
Let's take a step back. We live in a country hyper-saturated with cheap, convenient, high-caloric food that delivers very little nutrition -- but malnutrition is much more difficult to detect than starvation. The garbage food pushed as impulse purchases or with carefully choreographed advertisement pervades the diets of even the most stringent health fanatics, and we frequently finish eating thinking we've satisfied our body's need for fuel and nutrients, when, in truth, we've just consumed empty calories. We're full, but we haven't really given our bodies what they need. In the semblance of an autonomous adult life I've carved for myself, I've shrugged off many of the unhealthy eating habits of my childhood. I'm generally pretty good, and I indulge when I can't ignore a craving. Yeah there are occasional fast food and candy binges, but they're few and far between -- and I always regret them as soon as it happens. I've grown to crave things like fresh cherries rather than Sour Patch Kids. I watch what I eat because I care about my body and my health; plus, it's a helluva lot easier to maintain good health than to restore it once you've lost it.
But I make mistakes. In fact it happens a few times a week that I'll altogether forget to eat a meal. Boys never understand this, they have this uncanny ability to make sure they get all their meals in. But sometimes there's no time. Sometimes you're not hungry because your previous meal was X-hundred calories and really, how many of those are you using behind your desk? And sometimes you just plain forget -- there's a point in the hunger cycle where your body says "Oh, f*ck it, I don't even care if you feed me anymore." Example: It's 11am, I've been up since 7 and I still haven't eaten. Maybe I should get on that...
Outright not eating can be disastrous, especially when your body hasn't been nourished with quite the right combination of salts and sugars and liquids and assorted chemical compounds required for the most basic bodily functions. Functions like maintaining consciousness.
Last night I came home from work and snacked absent-mindedly on candy while studying vocabulary for the GREs. By 9:30 I was en-route to Adam's Morgan to socialize and meet some friends of a friend -- no, I hadn't eaten an actual dinner, but I wasn't really hungry because I'd noshed a little, and didn't really think much of it. I wasn't planning on going nuts -- we weren't gearing up for one of my famously bacchanalian soirees, I just wanted to nurse a cocktail and sing the praises of Ralph Nader with some fellow progressives until the clock hit 01:23:45 06/07/08. Instead, I ended up sitting in an ambulance with a device monitoring my heartrate and blood oxygen levels on my finger.
I fainted. Right there in the middle of a bar in Adam's Morgan. Fainted, not passed out drunk. I wasn't drunk. No; malnutrition and dehydration got the best of me and I went down, hard. Three times. Once I started shaking -- not quite a seizure, but it's not a good sign, either. It means there's something very, very wrong. What that "something" is, I'm not entirely sure. Maybe if I knew, this wouldn't have been happening to me intermittently since I was 4 years old. What I am sure about is that it was the most embarrassing thing that's happened since the night that... well, frankly, I don't want to talk about that night.
The human body blows my mind. It's simultaneously resilient beyond even the most unreasonable expectations (see: people who survive 90 days in a life raft after being shipwrecked, etc.), and the most fragile thing on earth (see: fainting because the thermometer hits 85+). I've subjected my body to much more strenuous abuse, and yet it's a little dirty dancing in a crowded club that lands me unconscious on the ground?? And now I'm nervous to push my body and explore my physical limits. If I can't dance for an hour in 90-degree heat, how am I supposed run 7 miles in the middle of August? What if I fainted during the road race? How would my parents find me? What would happen? Fainting during an organized road race heavily monitored by ambulances and trained professionals is much less unnerving than fainting in the middle of downtown DC on one of my runs.
I usually love the summer heat -- the humidity you practically have to swim through, the weight of the temperature, the perceived permanence, the inevitable thunderstorms to release the tension pushing down on everyone in the city -- it's usually my favorite thing about living here. But now I'm nervous.
I'm mad at my body for being just as much of a pawn of mortality as the fetal pig I dissected in high school. But more than that, I'm mad at myself for not taking better care of my body. I'm mad at myself for not owning the situation. I'm mad at myself for having been in Adam's Morgan in the first place. And I'm definitely mad that I missed 01:23:45 06/07/08.
I guess I'll go eat now so I don't end up with another seizure-fit and miss the second go-around.
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