So Much I Want to Tell You

by Anna Akana

  I was a binge eater. I’d eat until it physically hurt. I’d eat even when I wasn’t hungry. Anytime there was food nearby, I was eating it. I’d stuff snacks into my purse and take other people’s leftovers home. I’d accompany my mom to the grocery store, pick out my favorite items, then stash them in my room once we’d gotten home.

  I loved the sensation of eating, the taste of food, the feeling of it in my stomach filling me up (until it’s too late and too much). I’m not sure why I did this. Maybe it’s because my parents always told me to finish everything on my plate. Maybe it’s from the ROTC camps I went to as a kid where I’d be physically exhausted every day and only given fifteen minutes to wolf down my food. Maybe it’s simply because I love food. I live for it. I wake up every day looking forward to what I’m going to eat.

  When I was in my late teens, my relationship to food was so unhealthy that when I was broke, I would still go to expensive restaurants by myself and max out my credit cards on $300 meals. Life’s too short to eat terribly, I’d rationalize. Food is an experience that I’m willing to pay good money for! It keeps me alive. When I couldn’t afford good food, I would binge on Costco mac and cheese, potato chips, and other junk food.

  I also worked at a sushi restaurant. Because I could speak Japanese to the chefs and Spanish to the kitchen guys, I was a favorite of theirs and I’d often drop hints about how much I loved certain dishes. They’d happily cook something for me, and I’d spend all day stuffing my face with crispy rice and baked salmon rolls. When my shift was over, I’d put in a to-go order large enough to feed a small family and inhale it all at home. By then it was dinnertime, and I’d be off to try a new restaurant.

  I denied my binge-eating habit for a long time. I wasn’t fat, so it wasn’t a disorder, right? Plus I rarely threw up. Sure, I would crumple up in a ball after a meal, holding my stomach in pain, waiting to slowly digest everything. But that wasn’t a problem as long as I was willing to sit with the pain and shame, right?

  There was also the fact that my best friend ate just as much as I did. I used to joke that we both probably had tapeworms. We loved food and we could eat so much of it. Part of me romanticized the idea that two little Asian girls could eat as much as we did. Maybe eventually we’d be competitors in eating tournaments and put our skills to good use. I liked the disbelieving looks we received when we finished our plates and asked our dining companions if they were going to finish theirs. I felt oddly proud.

  Then I started having serious stomach problems. Sharp stabs of pain would come from nowhere, paralyzing me for an hour or two at a time. At first it would only happen once a week or so, but soon it was happening almost every other day. I had no health insurance at the time, so the only doctor’s visit I could afford was the Internet. I tried drinking ginger teas and cayenne pepper–lemon juice shots, but those only made my stomach problems worse.

  On top of this, my financial situation was getting out of hand: the majority of my credit cards were maxed out from taking myself out to restaurants. I’d be late on rent, but I refused to cut back on food. It was out of the question. I could die tomorrow. Did I really want my last meal to be mediocre and bland?

  Then I went to a seven-day silent meditation retreat in Joshua Tree. Initially I’d been convinced by my then-boyfriend to attend. He thought it would be good for me. He dropped out at the last second, and since I’d already paid (a donation amount, but still), I decided to go anyway.

  The retreat provided vegetarian meals for all seven days. I spent nearly every day waiting for when we could get food. I’d sometimes duck out of walking meditation and check in on the cafeteria, hoping for a snack. The spread was weak: apples, bananas, and almond butter.

  On the retreat, I felt like I was starving. I wasn’t, of course, but when you’re used to being filled to the brim, anything else feels hollow and empty. I’d sometimes run to the cafeteria ten minutes before lunch started so I could be first in line. I’d wolf down my food, then discreetly step back in line to get a second helping. Occasionally a third. During the long days of the retreat, food was my salvation. Like it always was.

  Though there was no talking among the attendees at the retreat, the instructors held daily lectures. On the fifth day, our lecture was on food. I was a little surprised. We’d spent the other days on more substantive topics: A teacher talked about his former drug addiction and how he found himself through meditation. Another discussed how childhood trauma determines a lot about how we view the world as adults. And there was one particularly moving speech from someone who’d had a near-death experience. Mindful eating? How underwhelming.

  But as I listened to this instructor speak, I grew afraid. It was like he was talking right to me. He told the crowd how he was a binge eater. How he’d been skinny his whole life, so he’d never thought it was a problem. He talked about craving food the moment he woke up, and having an insatiable hunger that was only satisfied when it turned into self-disgust and physical pain. He was describing me. He was describing my problem. A problem I refused to recognize as one because the effects were invisible. Because who cares that a skinny person eats a lot?

  I listened attentively to the rest of his speech. He encouraged everyone to eat their next meal mindfully. To chew slowly and relish each bite instead of inhaling their food. To breathe between bites and be grateful that you have food at all. To stop when you were comfortably full. That was the hardest thing for him to learn, he said—to stop when he was full.

  We broke for lunch, and I didn’t power-walk to the front of the line. Instead, I told myself I was going to take my time. Though my reflex was to pile food high on my plate, I restrained myself, aiming for a portion that seemed right for my body size. I sat down and forced myself to take small bites. I chewed thoroughly. I drank water and breathed between bites. I slowed down and ate mindfully.

  I ate the whole meal and waited for the feeling of fullness to come. I felt a dull weight in my stomach, but nothing close to the fullness I was used to. I glanced at the line. There were still twenty or so people in it. I could go back up and get another helping. Maybe just a small one. A half one. I didn’t have to get another full meal. I just needed to be full.

  That’s when I realized I did have a problem with food. I craved the feeling of needing to get back up, of having to get more food. I was using food as a drug. I couldn’t control myself. Worse, it was an invisible problem. No one else could point it out because it was something that no one else saw. Only I really knew how I felt about food, how much pain my body was in after meals, and how desperately I needed to feed myself physically to feel emotionally satisfied.

  Over the next few years, my attempt at mindful eating had its ups and downs. It was particularly hard whenever I went through an emotionally stressful time like a breakup or a career blow. Though I’ve vowed to cook more, I am still prone to immediately say “Let’s celebrate by going out to eat!” whenever something good happens, instantly thinking of all the restaurants and all-you-can-eat Korean BBQ places in town.

  I’d often go to the other extreme—I would skip meals when I felt like I’d had too much for the day. This was a horrible idea. I’d just end up starving and then I’d binge again. My stomach grew and shrank, causing me pain and discomfort every time I ate.

  Even though I’m now aware of my problem with food, I still love it. I grew up on steak and potatoes in a family that always encouraged second helpings. My father told me that the best things money can buy are good food and memorable experiences. My mother loved cooking huge portions, and we showed our love for her by eating everything on our plate. Food is still one of the things I am willing to pay good money for. Nothing makes me happier than trying a new Peruvian tapas place or introducing a friend to my favorite dish.

  But knowing that I have this problem—and treating it seriously—helps me manage it. I no longer flippantly tell myself that it’s fine because I’m skinny or because I don’t throw up. I eat smaller portions. I drink more water between
bites. I breathe and slow the hell down. Because my relationship to food isn’t just about loving to eat. It’s an insatiable, emotional craving. Filling myself up physically is just a way for me to temporarily feel okay emotionally. I’m trying to literally fill the void of emptiness. But just because my problem is invisible doesn’t mean I should ignore it. If anything, it’s an even stronger reminder to own up to it and be mindful about how I treat it.

  Knowing yourself is the first step toward loving yourself. Embracing the flawed parts of who you are can only make you stronger. I know it sounds New Age-y and clichéd, but honestly, all I want is to be a better person. And I can only achieve that by realizing where I am now.

  3

  MONEY, WORK, AND CAREER

  My job didn’t exist five years ago. I’m living in the Wild West of new media. Who knows if it’s here to stay? If I’m here to stay? Whatever happens, I’ve learned a lot about creating a career for yourself. Whether you’re drowning in debt, trying to find a job you actually are excited to do, or are afraid of being your own boss, the following chapters are filled with the things I wish I’d known when I was starting out.

  More Money, More Independence

  As a kid, I thought I knew what money did: you gave it to people and you got stuff in return. It was easy. It was simple. Money was what made life fun. There were so many things to want to use it for—candy, books, clothes. When you get older, though, you realize that it’s not quite as simple. When you are an adult, you realize money is meant for bigger things—a house, a retirement fund, a safety net in case you have an unstable, brand-new job creating YouTube videos.

  When you’re in high school, no one ever really talks about how money works: how to make it, how to manage it, where to put it so it makes more money for you. My mom and dad never taught us jack about personal finance. I’ve probably Googled the difference between a Roth and a traditional IRA several dozen times, because when you don’t learn it young, you learn it hard. And man, have I learned money hard.

  I can’t tell you how you should make money, but I promise there are a million ways to do it. Trust me, I’ve tried a lot of them, and I haven’t even scratched the surface. I’ve always been interested in business. And my first venture was not unique—it was a lemonade stand. Now, quick sidebar here: I want to let you know that a lot of the business strategies I had as a child were—how should I say this?—dick moves. I didn’t know anything about business. I was just a greedy child. I don’t operate like that today. I discovered a little thing called ethics. But back to the lemonade stand.

  I diluted the lemonade with water. I realized I could sell adults a really watery-ass cup of lemonade and make more money with my lemons and sugar that way. Pretty stupid, considering that the lemons and sugar were taken from my parents, so I had no overhead costs at all, but my head was in the right place. My heart, however, had no idea this was a mean thing to do to a nice adult trying to help out my “business.”

  When my lemonade stand went bust, as lemonade stands inevitably do, I tried selling flower seeds. By selling, I mean spending hours picking seeds from flowers in my neighbor’s garden and then selling them back to her. When I told my dad what I had been doing, he burst out laughing. I had spent an entire day earning a $1 paycheck, but ultimately I had sold our neighbor’s garden right back to her.

  I didn’t stop there. When I was in middle school, there was a girl who sold candy out of her backpack. I bought candy from her a few times until I thought, Hey, everyone loves candy! I should try this. The next time my parents went to Costco, I insisted I come along. After I explained my business plan to them, Mom loaned me the start-up cash: $20.

  I purchased the candy in bulk and used up all of my mom’s plastic sandwich bags to package the product. I spent a few hours packing bag after bag after bag, then sorting them in the various pockets of my backpack. (After discovering all her sandwich bags were gone, Mom demanded I buy my own on our next Costco trip.) The next day, I opened up shop (my backpack) at the opposite end of the school from my rival. Thanks to Costco’s bulk sales, I could afford to sell it at a lower rate, and I found people were pleasantly surprised to learn that my candy was much cheaper than my competitor’s. Once I had most of the kids in the school getting their Skittles and Sour Patch Kids from me, the other girl eventually stopped selling candy. So of course I jacked prices way up. At twelve, I had effectively created a monopoly on the candy industry.

  Sure, there was only one other girl selling candy, and I used super-unethical business practices to undercut her and push her out—but, hey, pretty impressive for a kid who didn’t know jack about business, right? And it wasn’t as if I were trying to be cutthroat; there were times I’d give Kris or Will candy, or eat my own product, or use my profits to buy us all something nice. I just loved having money. Money was power. Money was magic. You could turn it into anything you wanted if you had enough. And the profits were insane! I was making twenty bucks a day, baby! I was rolling in the cash money so hard that I was ready to upgrade to premium product: Gushers. Fruit Roll-Ups. Fruit by the Foot. But those dreams were short-lived.

  Unfortunately, the school shut me down. I didn’t have a seller’s permit, and therefore I was breaking the law. If only I had known how easy it was to sign up for a seller’s permit, I definitely would have continued fighting for the right to sell candy. The prospect of legitimizing a business with something as adult as a government-issued permit didn’t seem within my reach.

  Still, I was hooked. This wasn’t a lemonade stand, this wasn’t flower seeds, this was real business. Twenty dollars a day? To twelve-year-old me, it might as well have been gold.

  I started looking for other ways to get green. I was a straight-A student and I loved reading. I read something like seventy books a year in my younger days (Stephen King level, son! Sweet Valley High all the way), so I figured that I should try to turn my leisure hours into paying hours as well. My middle school had a program where we had to read books and take computer quizzes on the material for points. You needed a certain number of points in order to pass your grade, so I started offering my services. For a price, of course. Hand over your username, password, and GPA, and I’d make sure you passed. Though I didn’t have the vocabulary for it then, I was charging people flat fees before I could fill out a W-9.

  It was a hit. Soon people were asking if I did essays as well. Essays? You better believe that seventy-books-a-year little old me loved writing fucking essays. Essays were my bread and butter.

  I was also pretty good at drawing. When we lived in Okinawa, my parents chose to live off the military base and enroll me in a Japanese elementary school. I learned the language and the culture, and one of my best friends, Sayaka Yonaha, taught me how to draw in the classic anime style. I’d spend all-nighters obsessed with getting the figures and postures just right. When we made the move to Hawaii, someone at school saw a drawing I was working on and said, “Hey! That’s pretty bad.” I was a little behind on slang, so I didn’t realize that by “bad” he meant “good.” So I yelled at him and said I’d like to see him do better. How dare he insult my art? What a jerk. He held up his hands and said in that old Hawaiian pidgin, “Eh, brah. I meant it was good. Bad as in good, brah. You should be charging people fo’ yo’ pictures, ah.”

  So that’s exactly what I did. You make such a cute couple, I’d gush. Why not buy your girlfriend a cute Japanese drawing of the two of you? Buy your friend a homemade card instead of a dumb one from the store. Want a portrait of yourself? Here, I can create a selfie for you! You don’t have to wait a week for the disposable prints (oh, the simple life before Instagram).

  I started taking a closer look at all my hobbies—could I make money from them? What other skills did I have? Painting, reading, writing, drawing. I wanted to make money off the things I’d always done for free.

  But then puberty hit. I started to notice boys. My love for making money was replaced with my desire to be loved. I still had an online shop where I wo
uld sell my paintings and drawings, and I’d still write essays for people on occasion, but I stopped asking myself how I could make my passion into profit. I started chasing other things.

  That was unfortunate, because my desire to spend money didn’t stop. In high school, I picked up a few jobs. But they were just that: jobs. I worked as a DJ’s assistant, hauling amps and equipment to and from school dances (why anyone would hire a scrawny fourteen-year-old girl to do this, to this day I do not know). I got a job at a smoothie place in the mall, babysat nights and weekends, and worked at various retail stores during the Christmas season. I was no longer an entrepreneurial businesswoman, I was a worker bee. I started seeing everything in terms of work hours. This sweater? Five hours of work. Not worth it. My phone bill? Two weeks of work?! Are you kidding? I did NOT text that much. Those shoes? Way too many hours of work—forget it.

  Then another horrible thing befell my ignorant financial self: credit cards. No teen should be allowed to have a credit card until they’ve been thoroughly prepped on personal finance. Credit cards and impulsive spending are the reasons I ended up tens of thousands of dollars in debt. Credit cards allowed me to fuel what I only later realized was an extremely unhealthy addiction: collecting things. It was so easy to buy the mint first-edition collection of the Watchmen comics on a credit card. Plus, eBay made it a game, a competition, something you could win. I was a sucker for winning, especially if I won something rare. My logic was: If it’s popular now, of course I should buy it! It’ll only increase in value over the years! What an asset!

  So wrong. So. Utterly. Wrong.