In her imagining, hitting bottom would be a hellscape of jagged emotions, and a rollercoaster ride of pain. It was mildly curious then that her world was simply empty. No ambition or thirst, no drive or hunger. The absence of taste was strange, she used to love to eat. Sometimes she would play a little game and try to test her lack of desire by imagining a decadent desert.

“Chocolate lava cake?” No.

“Boston cream pie?” Nothing.

It got to the point where she couldn’t even conjure a memory of specific foods.

She continued to dance. Modern and Afro Haitian, often back-to-back at an airy studio off Astor Place. Learning the combinations of movement piece by piece in place, then joining them together. Finally gathering speed and moving across the floor hips shaking, shoulders shimmying to the African beats of a djimbe and congas. The studio was lined with floor to ceiling mirrors, and when she caught her reflection, she saw a thick figure as ungainly as a moose. She avoided looking. After three hours her leotard would be so soaked with sweat, that she could have wrung it out. She swallowed room temperature water, and as the endorphins kicked in, she would head home to the East village. Walking from the hips. Shoulders down, chest erect, abdomen sucked in, legs turned out. A dancers duck walk. Occasionally she forced herself to stop at Angelicas Kitchen to eat a small plate of macrobiotic food. Chewing mechanically, the food, even the slice of moist cornbread would taste of nothing. This would be all she would eat in the day.

Trying to be patient with herself she continued to put one foot in front of the other and move through her life, thinking this odd experience would pass. She worked nights as a server in a restaurant uptown, among a staff of crisp white shirts, bowties and long aprons cinched at the waist. When the chef brought out samplings of nightly specials, she stood back from the feeding frenzy, preferring to listen to others discuss the dishes. This helped her form descriptions for her customers.

Her clothes were getting loose, and she dropped a cup size in her bra. “That’s an odd place to lose weight,” she thought. Yet the image of the moose remained. There was no anger, or cutting, no other vicious signs of self-loathing. Just a grey film over everything as if the world was out of focus.

She visited her sister’s family, the original promoters of the adage:  You can’t be too rich, or too thin. They looked at her and were horrified. Apparently, you can be too thin.

“Clearly,” she thought, “I need some help to guide me out of this.”

The office was on the East side, in the 50’s. Oriental carpet, a settee, two armchairs and a large desk off to the side. The blinds were closed, and table lamps lit giving the professional setting a homey feel. She sat in an armchair facing the windows. The therapist, an older greying man with round glasses asked, “What brings you here?”

Tears began to spill onto her cheeks as she manages to choke out, “I’m so embarrassed.”

“Don’t be embarrassed, it’s very common to cry.” He says, handing her a tissue.

“No, I’m embarrassed to be here.”

He tilts his head, a question in his eyes.

“We WASPs sweep everything under the carpet until it gets lumpy, but we don’t ask for help.” She explains.

Chuckling he says, “How would you describe yourself?”

“I feel,” she began, and then swallowing a hollow laugh says, “Fat, ugly and stupid. That about covers it.”

“OK, what is one thing that you are absolutely sure of? One thing you never doubt?”

She was quiet for a time searching for the thing that was her constant. The one thing that she had effortlessly called upon over and over in her life. Finally, it came to her. The force that was as natural to her as breathing, something she had often taken for granted and then summoned at will. She said, “My creativity. It’s never left me.”

“Then that’s your first steppingstone.”

At times the work was hard, and at times remarkably easy. She likened it to sweating while cleaning out closets. Opening a box of guilt carried around for years after breaking up with her first boyfriend, made her smile and shake her head. It was a relief to toss it out. The box of suppressed emotions following her father’s death was examined, sifted and carefully put back on a shelf. She came to realize the closets were not meant to be empty, just tidy and manageable, and she began to feel unafraid to revisit them.

Many, many weeks later, walking through the subway at Times Square, a stranger falls into step with her. “You walk like a Sea Captain!” he says.

Warily she glances at him. He is wearing a suit and carrying a briefcase.

“That’s a new one,” she thinks.

“You don’t know what that means do you?”

“Uh, no.”

“It means you walk with dignity and grace.” He nods and heads off to the 7 train.

She barely breaks her stride as a slow smile spreads across her face and when she catches her reflection she sees a slender woman smiling back at her.

As she climbs the stairs the smell of hot candied almonds makes her stomach rumble.

Cara Mead an emerging writer, lives in the Berkshires where she and her husband are building a new home. She credits a lifetime of diverse careers, travel opportunities and particularly her big, beautiful, extended family as inspiration for her writing. Cara loves to embrace life’s absurdities and marvel at everyday serendipity..