Dear 2014,
What can I say that I haven't already beaten bloody with my fists or hammered against a wall, throttled in a bathtub, or kicked to death in an alleyway at two o'clock in the morning with only a blind homeless man as witness?
You sucked.
You sucked in ways I had previous dreamed impossible.
You fostered in me a neurotic condition I have harbored all my life, but only under your tender care did it blossom into the full blown psychosis I am currently losing control of.
Because of you I stopped sleeping, and when I did, I had nightmares of such emotional power that upon waking, I would resist going back to sleep for fear of their waiting embrace.
I lost hope in you.
I was devastated in you.
You robbed me of time and enjoyment, resources and health, and you elicited from me more tears than a year has any right to.
But thanks anyway.
Thanks for sucking because without this year, I would not know what I can survive, and at what point I finally put my foot down and say, enough!
Goddamnit ENOUGH!
I held friends this year while they were scared and I told them what I couldn't tell myself.
I learned that you can miss someone so much when they're right in front of you that you can't wait until they move to the other side of the world, so you don't feel quite so bad about missing them anymore.
I learned I cannot eat my weight in anything anymore and feel okay the morning after.
I learned that as much as I hate 152 pounds, I don't die when I weigh this much. My man still thinks I'm sexy, and I can still make new friends, wear backless dresses, and take full length selfies.
I learned I can rock red lipstick with the best of them.
I learned that Boston Ballet is an experience everyone should have. It is spellbinding and magical, and I love my Mum so much, but goddammit they NEVER take you off their mailing list, and it is a BITCH.
I learned that I like getting tattooed so much more than I ever thought I would, and my toru kamei backpiece is a real thing that is going to happen.
I learned that I can still dance all night.
I learned how to make black bean brownies. They are delicious.
I learned to love my weird, greying hair, even as I am dyeing it, and especially once I stopped brushing it.
I learned I can do yoga for ten years, and still learn something new.
I learned I can start making a baby inside me, and that if something isn't right, my body can stop that process, and get rid of the evidence because it knows what it's doing, and always has.
I learned I am ready to be a mother.
I learned that I put everyone's needs, wants, and comforts before my own. Every time.
I learned that juicing is fun and pretty and awesome.
I learned how to kayak out on the open ocean.
I learned I could go back to school, and still not feel like part of the group, even ten years down the road, even as an adult, even in a program specifically designed for me, I can feel like an outsider.
I learned I can run the 15 miles between my front door and the singing beach after two months training, and a shit load of hard work.
I learned I can schedule the fuck out of my life when I need to.
I learned how to trade cookies for wine, and to feel even more at home in my weird little witchy city when it is overrun by tourists and trailers and buskers and shot callers.
I learned that I can't push myself too far without there being serious consequences, and that my body is not as young as it used to be. Sometimes you have to rest and be alone with your pain and that is when you are the most scared and possibly the worst company you ever had, but that you might learn the most from yourself.
I learned that as one of three sisters, we still possess extraordinary powers when together.
I learned how to read tarot for strangers, on a ship, as it plunges radically through jarring waves and freezing spray. I learned I am much better at it than I thought I was.
I learned I still have no self control when faced with halloween candy.
I learned there is so much for books yet to teach me.
I learned that sometimes the rockshow is better than church, but a rockstar is never a god, and it is important to grip his hand and thank him like a person, and then let go.
I learned that when something hurts, my instincts are still to bury it in food, and sometimes alcohol, but mostly company, and even when knee deep in all three, real grief will still find you and set you back in your place, and remind you how broken you are.
I learned that sometimes you need to review your year, step back, and let it go, let it all go...
The anger
the hurt
the disappointment
the worry
the pain
the sleepless nights
the guilt
the mistakes
the loneliness
were all lessons.
And now you have the opportunity to be the wiser of them, to take them, and journey forward.
To be free
and
begin
again.
Wednesday, December 31, 2014
Friday, December 26, 2014
A good story
I just finished reading Helen Oyeyemi's Mr. Fox, and all I can think about is the last part. A strange tale about a woman who saves a fox she was originally sent to kill.
The fox learns to read to thank her, and finally, when he finds her, he lays words he has chewed out of newspapers at her feet.
Change me
he asks.
Change you to what?
she replies.
Not want to be fox anymore.
I haven't the skill,
she answers.
Love between men and women is as such.
A man sees his salvation in the capacity of a woman to spare him the consequences he earns with his wicked deeds.
He sees her as his savior and safety, and she becomes intoxicated on this elevation of stature.
She leaves him after the introduction, and it is he who follows her and makes the grand gesture.
Make me not wicked anymore.
For you I want to be redeemed.
In you I see my own redemption.
And the woman cannot help herself.
She is so enamored of her idealization as saint and savior, she agrees.
And the transformation breaks them both.
She must give up all that makes her worthy of his redemption.
And he must give up everything about himself that is worth destroying.
They meet in the middle at death.
Their deconstruction
and complete acceptance that love is what has become of their initial agreement.
That love is never what you envisioned, and you hardly recognize the creature it makes you before it is done.
He may become less the savage, but she becomes less the saint.
And in the end, they are neither the things they began as nor the desires they'd designed.
And their dignified imaginations
corrupt and bloom with disappointment and acceptance and a depth of love never before experienced until you break your own heart to see someone else happy and they tell you it's not enough, but take it anyway.
And love reminds you life will always be a tragedy worth telling.
The fox learns to read to thank her, and finally, when he finds her, he lays words he has chewed out of newspapers at her feet.
Change me
he asks.
Change you to what?
she replies.
Not want to be fox anymore.
I haven't the skill,
she answers.
Love between men and women is as such.
A man sees his salvation in the capacity of a woman to spare him the consequences he earns with his wicked deeds.
He sees her as his savior and safety, and she becomes intoxicated on this elevation of stature.
She leaves him after the introduction, and it is he who follows her and makes the grand gesture.
Make me not wicked anymore.
For you I want to be redeemed.
In you I see my own redemption.
And the woman cannot help herself.
She is so enamored of her idealization as saint and savior, she agrees.
And the transformation breaks them both.
She must give up all that makes her worthy of his redemption.
And he must give up everything about himself that is worth destroying.
They meet in the middle at death.
Their deconstruction
and complete acceptance that love is what has become of their initial agreement.
That love is never what you envisioned, and you hardly recognize the creature it makes you before it is done.
He may become less the savage, but she becomes less the saint.
And in the end, they are neither the things they began as nor the desires they'd designed.
And their dignified imaginations
corrupt and bloom with disappointment and acceptance and a depth of love never before experienced until you break your own heart to see someone else happy and they tell you it's not enough, but take it anyway.
And love reminds you life will always be a tragedy worth telling.
Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Ship Wrecked
My period is three days late.
I took a pregnancy test, one of the 'detects five days before your missed period' ones.
It was negative.
There is only one chance that it happened...one chance from this whole month.
That's how unapproachable I've made myself.
I still fantasize about the test being wrong.
I feel guilty any time I want a glass of wine.
Guiltier when I have one.
I feel a small shiver every time my stomach is noisy, or when I'm hungry in the morning and the thrill of nausea passes through my throat.
When anything that my memory can associate with that brief time period that I knew I was pregnant happens my brain is all too eager to jam a mental pencil down so hard to connect the dots.
I hate it.
I wish there was some way I could disengage the part of my memory that hates me back.
It knows how badly I want to be able to live my life like I did before.
Before Bob and I even decided to try this year.
I wanted to smoke a cigarette so badly today.
I smoked one a week ago when I hurt my back at work. It was a reserve clove I stashed away for a bad day.
And I hadn't even thought about wanting it until that afternoon.
But that's the way addiction works.
And I am addicted to hurting myself.
It's why I wake up in the middle of the night with nightmares once a week now.
I dream that bob is furious with me.
So angry he can't look at me. In the dream it's justified. I did something god awful. I kissed someone, fucked someone, or didn't show up when I promised I would.
I dream I stashed meat away in Kim's apartment where I'm catsitting right now.
She's a vegetarian.
In my dream I just filled her fridge with shiny pink chicken cutlets and stuffed her cupboard with raw hamburger. Porkchops slithered over each other to fall out of the cupboards I'd hidden so many of them there.
She showed up with the vegetarian police. In mirrored aviators and everything.
They found every last piece of raw meat, and they forced me to eat it.
Long strings of sausages, pasty with coagulated animal fat, ground beef turning from rosy to grey in earthworm shaped squiggles, jamming them into my mouth until I gagged.
When I wake up from the dreams I lie awake twisting the ice cold blade of guilt in my guts. In the dark, it is impossible to fully emerge from the cage of awful feelings. I don't fight my way out. I don't feel like I deserve to.
At least I feel like smoking is a pain I can control.
Binging is my own choice.
Drinking and carousing and behaving like a moron so that the next day I hate every moment of the night before is a way of controlling the burning pain of being in this place where I am so completely left out of the decisions that are made about what I get to have and what is ripped away from me.
I want to push every good thing out of my life and fess up to the monster I am:
The barren wasteland of a human being who has never held anything but death between her legs.
I want to go out to the desert and light a fire and sit inside it and wait for the stars to come to me or me to go to them.
There is nothing more lonely than this place of no control, no knowledge, and no justice.
The world is a wicked place and cruelty is rewarded while kindness is punished with humiliation.
I want to be locked inside a chest and dropped into the bottom of the ocean.
I want to be buried alive with the seed of a tree in my stomach that grows into a great oak while I writhe beneath and its roots choke me to sleep.
I want to be a great wooden ship marooned on a sand dune surrounded by lightening struck trees. A place of desolation where it is so dry, your eyes cannot produce tears.
I took a pregnancy test, one of the 'detects five days before your missed period' ones.
It was negative.
There is only one chance that it happened...one chance from this whole month.
That's how unapproachable I've made myself.
I still fantasize about the test being wrong.
I feel guilty any time I want a glass of wine.
Guiltier when I have one.
I feel a small shiver every time my stomach is noisy, or when I'm hungry in the morning and the thrill of nausea passes through my throat.
When anything that my memory can associate with that brief time period that I knew I was pregnant happens my brain is all too eager to jam a mental pencil down so hard to connect the dots.
I hate it.
I wish there was some way I could disengage the part of my memory that hates me back.
It knows how badly I want to be able to live my life like I did before.
Before Bob and I even decided to try this year.
I wanted to smoke a cigarette so badly today.
I smoked one a week ago when I hurt my back at work. It was a reserve clove I stashed away for a bad day.
And I hadn't even thought about wanting it until that afternoon.
But that's the way addiction works.
And I am addicted to hurting myself.
It's why I wake up in the middle of the night with nightmares once a week now.
I dream that bob is furious with me.
So angry he can't look at me. In the dream it's justified. I did something god awful. I kissed someone, fucked someone, or didn't show up when I promised I would.
I dream I stashed meat away in Kim's apartment where I'm catsitting right now.
She's a vegetarian.
In my dream I just filled her fridge with shiny pink chicken cutlets and stuffed her cupboard with raw hamburger. Porkchops slithered over each other to fall out of the cupboards I'd hidden so many of them there.
She showed up with the vegetarian police. In mirrored aviators and everything.
They found every last piece of raw meat, and they forced me to eat it.
Long strings of sausages, pasty with coagulated animal fat, ground beef turning from rosy to grey in earthworm shaped squiggles, jamming them into my mouth until I gagged.
When I wake up from the dreams I lie awake twisting the ice cold blade of guilt in my guts. In the dark, it is impossible to fully emerge from the cage of awful feelings. I don't fight my way out. I don't feel like I deserve to.
At least I feel like smoking is a pain I can control.
Binging is my own choice.
Drinking and carousing and behaving like a moron so that the next day I hate every moment of the night before is a way of controlling the burning pain of being in this place where I am so completely left out of the decisions that are made about what I get to have and what is ripped away from me.
I want to push every good thing out of my life and fess up to the monster I am:
The barren wasteland of a human being who has never held anything but death between her legs.
I want to go out to the desert and light a fire and sit inside it and wait for the stars to come to me or me to go to them.
There is nothing more lonely than this place of no control, no knowledge, and no justice.
The world is a wicked place and cruelty is rewarded while kindness is punished with humiliation.
I want to be locked inside a chest and dropped into the bottom of the ocean.
I want to be buried alive with the seed of a tree in my stomach that grows into a great oak while I writhe beneath and its roots choke me to sleep.
I want to be a great wooden ship marooned on a sand dune surrounded by lightening struck trees. A place of desolation where it is so dry, your eyes cannot produce tears.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Sky Red at Morning Sailors take Warning
Pink.
Fruit.
As I write this, I am taking bites of grapefruit.
It is 9:35am and I have not had a cup of coffee yet.
I am not at work.
It is still raining.
I am not dead.
These are good things.
At least, I'm in a better place than I was last night, and I can look at them that way now.
I don't remember the last time I ate before ten in the morning.
I ALWAYS skip breakfast.
I OFTEN skip lunch.
I USUALLY don't eat until after three or four in the afternoon on my days off.
At work, since I'm up earlier, I give in to hunger pangs by one.
Ten years ago, when I restricted, I used to eat breakfast every day.
The same thing.
A quarter of a cup of grapenuts.
A teaspoon of jam.
6 ounces of hot soy milk poured over.
A small apple.
It amounted to about 275-300 calories.
I ate it at 8am every morning, by myself in the cafeteria at school. I read while I ate, but I took at least a half an hour to chew, swallow, masticate, and breathe.
My best habits somehow thrown in and slathered up with my worst.
I then wouldn't eat again until five in the evening.
I took a coffee at 2pm. It was a soy latte with no sugar.
At five, my stomach had already been groaning audibly for an hour.
I would race to the dining hall and fill a bowl with raw veggies and cubes of cold, gelatinous tofu.
I dumped salt and pepper and balsamic vinegar over the whole thing until it was barely recognizable. Then I went to the toaster and got a single slice of multigrain bread, which I toasted, and ate dry.
The whole thing usually amounted to about 300-400 calories.
Then I would allow myself a small portion of whatever the cafeteria was serving for dessert.
It didn't matter what it was, just a small serving, I told myself, to keep from feeling like I was denied the finer things.
At the end of the day, I clocked in between 900-1100 calories.
I called those good days.
On bad days, I would give in to my rumbling stomach at 9pm. I would eat fistfuls of popcorn, chocolate, and nuts until my stomach hurt.
I would then punish myself with horrendous hateful self talk.
I would refuse to eat any single thing until five o clock the next evening, when I would allow myself my regular dinner, and somehow, that allowed me to be forgiven, to assume that I was okay, and still in control.
Since I stopped being anorexic, I have never gotten the balance right.
I feel like any time I eat I am binging. I feel that way especially if I eat after eight at night.
For that reason, for ten years, I have started every single day punishing myself.
No breakfast.
You don't deserve it.
You fucked up last night.
No matter what I had done. Even on the days that I was re-triggered and didn't eat at all for an entire day (and I had three of those this spring), I would not allow myself to eat breakfast.
Breakfast eaters are weak, I told myself.
They're also more deserving than you.
They didn't inhale a whole container of cashews last night.
So today, after the darkest night I've had in a very long while, I wake up. I do some back friendly yoga to slowly, hopefully recuperate from this gnarly injury, and I cut up a grapefruit.
I am eating it slowly, savoring it, the gem like segments with their sweet and sour bright pink juice.
I am doing this because I need to make some changes to how I live my life right now, how I eat and breathe and work and sleep.
Because I am making myself miserable, and it has been going on for too long.
Fruit.
As I write this, I am taking bites of grapefruit.
It is 9:35am and I have not had a cup of coffee yet.
I am not at work.
It is still raining.
I am not dead.
These are good things.
At least, I'm in a better place than I was last night, and I can look at them that way now.
I don't remember the last time I ate before ten in the morning.
I ALWAYS skip breakfast.
I OFTEN skip lunch.
I USUALLY don't eat until after three or four in the afternoon on my days off.
At work, since I'm up earlier, I give in to hunger pangs by one.
Ten years ago, when I restricted, I used to eat breakfast every day.
The same thing.
A quarter of a cup of grapenuts.
A teaspoon of jam.
6 ounces of hot soy milk poured over.
A small apple.
It amounted to about 275-300 calories.
I ate it at 8am every morning, by myself in the cafeteria at school. I read while I ate, but I took at least a half an hour to chew, swallow, masticate, and breathe.
My best habits somehow thrown in and slathered up with my worst.
I then wouldn't eat again until five in the evening.
I took a coffee at 2pm. It was a soy latte with no sugar.
At five, my stomach had already been groaning audibly for an hour.
I would race to the dining hall and fill a bowl with raw veggies and cubes of cold, gelatinous tofu.
I dumped salt and pepper and balsamic vinegar over the whole thing until it was barely recognizable. Then I went to the toaster and got a single slice of multigrain bread, which I toasted, and ate dry.
The whole thing usually amounted to about 300-400 calories.
Then I would allow myself a small portion of whatever the cafeteria was serving for dessert.
It didn't matter what it was, just a small serving, I told myself, to keep from feeling like I was denied the finer things.
At the end of the day, I clocked in between 900-1100 calories.
I called those good days.
On bad days, I would give in to my rumbling stomach at 9pm. I would eat fistfuls of popcorn, chocolate, and nuts until my stomach hurt.
I would then punish myself with horrendous hateful self talk.
I would refuse to eat any single thing until five o clock the next evening, when I would allow myself my regular dinner, and somehow, that allowed me to be forgiven, to assume that I was okay, and still in control.
Since I stopped being anorexic, I have never gotten the balance right.
I feel like any time I eat I am binging. I feel that way especially if I eat after eight at night.
For that reason, for ten years, I have started every single day punishing myself.
No breakfast.
You don't deserve it.
You fucked up last night.
No matter what I had done. Even on the days that I was re-triggered and didn't eat at all for an entire day (and I had three of those this spring), I would not allow myself to eat breakfast.
Breakfast eaters are weak, I told myself.
They're also more deserving than you.
They didn't inhale a whole container of cashews last night.
So today, after the darkest night I've had in a very long while, I wake up. I do some back friendly yoga to slowly, hopefully recuperate from this gnarly injury, and I cut up a grapefruit.
I am eating it slowly, savoring it, the gem like segments with their sweet and sour bright pink juice.
I am doing this because I need to make some changes to how I live my life right now, how I eat and breathe and work and sleep.
Because I am making myself miserable, and it has been going on for too long.
Tuesday, December 9, 2014
Dark Place
When does it feel better?
Today was the first in my two days off.
I woke up to pouring rain.
It has rained relentlessly all day.
It's the kind of rain that soaks you as soon as you walk out the door. Your jacket can be watertight, your boots can be knee high, but you're still soaked within in 90 seconds of stepping out from under the front porch.
My back is still fucked up.
I can't do yoga.
The rain is so thick and awful that I couldn't go for a walk or a run or anyplace.
I managed to get to the store. It's a 1.4 mile trip round trip.
I bought kale and pears and oranges.
I bought molasses cookie mix and apple cinnamon rice cakes and plain yoghurt.
I drank an entire pot of coffee by myself, and I tried to christmas shop online.
I bought a few trinkets.
I'd had these great plans to take the train into boston and go shopping around the pru. I was going to get coffee at a place I'd never been before and buy marzipan at cardulo's.
The weather was too disgusting to even think of that.
I wished it was snowing instead. Then at least I'd be able to walk about in the quiet beauty of slow motion snow flakes falling by the ocean instead of water sluicing through my eyes and my nose and my mouth.
I came home from the store and unpacked my groceries.
I turned on christmas music and baked the cookies.
I texted a friend to come visit, and she stopped in.
We drank a beer, and she tested some of the cookies. She asked me how I was doing, and I honestly told her, pretty bad.
She asked if she could help, which is all anyone can do when faced with that response, and I shrugged.
'There's nothing for you to do other than to ask,' I said because it's true.
I tried to boil my christmas puddings.
One leaked into the water.
The other one boiled dry and then overflowed into the water and burned.
I got more sad.
I ate the whole package of rice cakes.
2 pears.
4 cookies.
a cup of yoghurt.
some mincemeat from a jar.
My stomach doubled me over in cramps immediately after.
It's been an hour now, and the cramps haven't gone away.
My back still hurts too much for me to do anything.
I feel like the most pathetic, ugly, non-contributing member of society.
I feel worthless and parasitic.
I feel like my body hates me, and wants me to fail.
I feel sabotaged by everything I am.
Nobody would miss me. Not really. They say they would but they'd only miss what I did for them. They wouldn't actually miss the person I am.
They'd only miss the conveniences I gave them.
Fuck.
Today was the first in my two days off.
I woke up to pouring rain.
It has rained relentlessly all day.
It's the kind of rain that soaks you as soon as you walk out the door. Your jacket can be watertight, your boots can be knee high, but you're still soaked within in 90 seconds of stepping out from under the front porch.
My back is still fucked up.
I can't do yoga.
The rain is so thick and awful that I couldn't go for a walk or a run or anyplace.
I managed to get to the store. It's a 1.4 mile trip round trip.
I bought kale and pears and oranges.
I bought molasses cookie mix and apple cinnamon rice cakes and plain yoghurt.
I drank an entire pot of coffee by myself, and I tried to christmas shop online.
I bought a few trinkets.
I'd had these great plans to take the train into boston and go shopping around the pru. I was going to get coffee at a place I'd never been before and buy marzipan at cardulo's.
The weather was too disgusting to even think of that.
I wished it was snowing instead. Then at least I'd be able to walk about in the quiet beauty of slow motion snow flakes falling by the ocean instead of water sluicing through my eyes and my nose and my mouth.
I came home from the store and unpacked my groceries.
I turned on christmas music and baked the cookies.
I texted a friend to come visit, and she stopped in.
We drank a beer, and she tested some of the cookies. She asked me how I was doing, and I honestly told her, pretty bad.
She asked if she could help, which is all anyone can do when faced with that response, and I shrugged.
'There's nothing for you to do other than to ask,' I said because it's true.
I tried to boil my christmas puddings.
One leaked into the water.
The other one boiled dry and then overflowed into the water and burned.
I got more sad.
I ate the whole package of rice cakes.
2 pears.
4 cookies.
a cup of yoghurt.
some mincemeat from a jar.
My stomach doubled me over in cramps immediately after.
It's been an hour now, and the cramps haven't gone away.
My back still hurts too much for me to do anything.
I feel like the most pathetic, ugly, non-contributing member of society.
I feel worthless and parasitic.
I feel like my body hates me, and wants me to fail.
I feel sabotaged by everything I am.
Nobody would miss me. Not really. They say they would but they'd only miss what I did for them. They wouldn't actually miss the person I am.
They'd only miss the conveniences I gave them.
Fuck.
Monday, December 8, 2014
Sick Like Me
I am thirty two years old.
I am thirty two years old, and I am married.
I am thirty two years old. I am married. I have health insurance. I am paying down my debt. I can afford to buy groceries and pay my utilities. I have a dog and a cat.
Why then?
Why the fuck is it so hard to feed myself like a grown up?
Beard and I have completely off schedules right now, and, since I depend so heavily on other people's schedules to regulate meal times and the way that I manage my disordered eating, I have been left to my own devices for so long the way I eat has completely flown off the rails.
Today I got up with an outrageous back pain. I did something yesterday that tweaked it entirely the wrong way, and I barely slept all night.
I had a terrible dream.
I woke up and waited for the alarm to go off.
My morning routine is usually as follows:
6:00am get up.
6:10am thirty minutes of yoga
6:45am shower, get dressed, chug 16oz of water.
7:30am leave the house
walk the 2.7 miles to work.
8:15 arrive at work.
9am first coffee of the day
Right now my coffee is a three shot americano with an ounce of skim milk and about half an ounce of the super treaty eggnog we're getting from the dairy one town over. I don't need sugar thanks to this treaty thing, but I get all kinds of liberal with the cinnamon and nutmeg.
Usually I don't have time to eat until 1pm, but today I was ravenous at 11am.
It was slow, so I put together a salad: greens, cukes, about a cup of roasted cherry tomatoes, olives, and balsamic dressing, a couple of slices of mozzarella.
I ate it in about fifteen minutes.
Two hours later, still ravenous, I ate a sourdough olive roll. It was singed at the edges, and the salad had been a little acidic for my stomach, so eating the bread settled it which was nice.
I was then able to take a couple of pain pills for my back, which was feeling pretty wretched at that point.
Normally, I stay until a little after four in the afternoon, but the medicine barely touched my back pain, so I took off at three instead. Normally, also, I walk the 2.7 miles home again, but luckily Beard had the day off, so he came to pick me up.
If I left work like I usually do on Mondays, I would have stopped at the store on the way home and bought the makings for our dinner, and I wouldn't have gotten in until 5:30pm. I would have taken the dog out, made dinner, and been ready to eat with the man when he got home at 6:30.
Today i boiled the kettle and made a pot of tea. Then I lay on the floor while watching a terrible movie and rolled a tennis ball in the knot in my back.
I drank three huge cups of tea with milk and honey.
The last one I dribbled a little bit of baileys into, and then didn't finish it because it just didn't taste good.
Around five I got hungry.
Of course there was nothing to eat, so I did some scrounging.
I ended up eating 2 morning star farms vegetarian corndogs and half a bag of cape cod potato chips.
Craving something sweet, I pawed through the contents of the fridge, but there was nothing appealing, so I tried my hand at a mug cake.
I mashed up an overripe banana with a spoonful of brown sugar, an egg white, some vanilla, cinnamon, and a couple of spoonfuls of flour. I nuked the sucker for three minutes, and broke up a cube of dark chocolate over the top when it came out of the microwave. When the chocolate melted I drizzled a spoonful of milk over the top, and took a spoon to the bitch.
I forced myself to drink another glass and a half of water.
Now I feel full...
Not overfull, but my brain keeps telling me that I overate. That I am a pig, and my appetite is out of control.
I don't know anymore.
Writing it down here, it doesn't look that bad. I certainly feel like there are plenty of people who eat more than that on a regular basis, but i also don't have the slightest clue if it was good for me.
I'm sure the chips were not a good choice.
...
Maybe we'll document a few more of these days, since nobody reads this anyway, I have nothing to be ashamed of, and perhaps I can examine the evidence and figure out a way back from this fucked up mindset of disordered control and eating chaos.
I am thirty two years old, and I am married.
I am thirty two years old. I am married. I have health insurance. I am paying down my debt. I can afford to buy groceries and pay my utilities. I have a dog and a cat.
Why then?
Why the fuck is it so hard to feed myself like a grown up?
Beard and I have completely off schedules right now, and, since I depend so heavily on other people's schedules to regulate meal times and the way that I manage my disordered eating, I have been left to my own devices for so long the way I eat has completely flown off the rails.
Today I got up with an outrageous back pain. I did something yesterday that tweaked it entirely the wrong way, and I barely slept all night.
I had a terrible dream.
I woke up and waited for the alarm to go off.
My morning routine is usually as follows:
6:00am get up.
6:10am thirty minutes of yoga
6:45am shower, get dressed, chug 16oz of water.
7:30am leave the house
walk the 2.7 miles to work.
8:15 arrive at work.
9am first coffee of the day
Right now my coffee is a three shot americano with an ounce of skim milk and about half an ounce of the super treaty eggnog we're getting from the dairy one town over. I don't need sugar thanks to this treaty thing, but I get all kinds of liberal with the cinnamon and nutmeg.
Usually I don't have time to eat until 1pm, but today I was ravenous at 11am.
It was slow, so I put together a salad: greens, cukes, about a cup of roasted cherry tomatoes, olives, and balsamic dressing, a couple of slices of mozzarella.
I ate it in about fifteen minutes.
Two hours later, still ravenous, I ate a sourdough olive roll. It was singed at the edges, and the salad had been a little acidic for my stomach, so eating the bread settled it which was nice.
I was then able to take a couple of pain pills for my back, which was feeling pretty wretched at that point.
Normally, I stay until a little after four in the afternoon, but the medicine barely touched my back pain, so I took off at three instead. Normally, also, I walk the 2.7 miles home again, but luckily Beard had the day off, so he came to pick me up.
If I left work like I usually do on Mondays, I would have stopped at the store on the way home and bought the makings for our dinner, and I wouldn't have gotten in until 5:30pm. I would have taken the dog out, made dinner, and been ready to eat with the man when he got home at 6:30.
Today i boiled the kettle and made a pot of tea. Then I lay on the floor while watching a terrible movie and rolled a tennis ball in the knot in my back.
I drank three huge cups of tea with milk and honey.
The last one I dribbled a little bit of baileys into, and then didn't finish it because it just didn't taste good.
Around five I got hungry.
Of course there was nothing to eat, so I did some scrounging.
I ended up eating 2 morning star farms vegetarian corndogs and half a bag of cape cod potato chips.
Craving something sweet, I pawed through the contents of the fridge, but there was nothing appealing, so I tried my hand at a mug cake.
I mashed up an overripe banana with a spoonful of brown sugar, an egg white, some vanilla, cinnamon, and a couple of spoonfuls of flour. I nuked the sucker for three minutes, and broke up a cube of dark chocolate over the top when it came out of the microwave. When the chocolate melted I drizzled a spoonful of milk over the top, and took a spoon to the bitch.
I forced myself to drink another glass and a half of water.
Now I feel full...
Not overfull, but my brain keeps telling me that I overate. That I am a pig, and my appetite is out of control.
I don't know anymore.
Writing it down here, it doesn't look that bad. I certainly feel like there are plenty of people who eat more than that on a regular basis, but i also don't have the slightest clue if it was good for me.
I'm sure the chips were not a good choice.
...
Maybe we'll document a few more of these days, since nobody reads this anyway, I have nothing to be ashamed of, and perhaps I can examine the evidence and figure out a way back from this fucked up mindset of disordered control and eating chaos.
Saturday, December 6, 2014
Bereft
Probably not the place for this, but I have to put it somewhere.
Today would have been the due date for my baby.
It feels like a hoax, or a lie to call what I could not carry to fruition a baby.
Truth is, I saw it. When I miscarried, I looked, and I saw what left me, and it could never have been mistaken for a baby.
Logically I know that what happened was a frenzy of procreation that didn't go right.
Cells multiplied and divided. The climate of my body began to change to encourage the growth of the new inhabitant, but then something twigged in the system.
This was not viable.
What was growing was not going to develop into a life.
An evolutionary system override kicked into gear, and my body became toxic. It cut off the nourishment, the hormone supply, it efficiently rid my body of the bad investment in a matter of two days.
I can examine the evidence. I can see that my body was not ready. That this life was not viable. That it in no way diminishes my ability to carry a different pregnancy to term.
Grief, I am learning, is not a reasonable creature.
I was doing really well.
I'd not thought about it in almost a month. I knew the date was approaching in december, but it was November. I figured I had time.
Then, on thanksgiving, sitting on my sister's floor with a belly full of laughter and wine and with a room full of loving beloved people singing and carrying on around me, the black sorrow loomed up and swallowed me utterly, with no warning.
I jumped up as though electrocuted and barreled down the stairs to my own apartment. I put on some loud music and sobbed hard.
I remember the thought I'd had when the nurse on the phone set up my ultrasound and told me my due date was december 6th.
Congratulations, she said, and I'd been stunned.
Right.
I thought.
Congratulations, indeed! I was to be congratulated. I was knocked up, and it was wanted! The beard and I were going to rocket into parenthood like shooting stars of promise and adulthood.
We were terrified, but in a knee shaky, ready to climb onto the rollercoaster kind of way.
What we were was ready, and that was the scariest thing of all.
Over the brief time we knew I became a scientific observer of my body's changes.
My stomach rumbled incessantly. My tummy began to pouf a little. I was hungry at weird times and not interested in certain foods other times. I never once experienced nausea, and that was a good thing!
It was approaching Easter at the bakery, one of the bigger holidays in my business's world.
It was a happy and silly thing. I was going to show up at 5am to pack hot cross buns into boxes and frosted orange rum cakes into slices. I was going to wear bunny ears and serve coffee to all our regulars.
I toyed with the idea of telling one person...just as a treat. I knew it was still the first trimester, but I was almost at ten weeks. It couldn't hurt to tell someone.
Then there was pink.
I tried to ignore it. All the internet thingies said pink was normal.
I went to a brunch after work.
I left a bit early. I felt sort of peaked.
When I got home, pink turned to red.
I went to the hospital and had blood drawn, and they called me back that night to confirm what was happening.
I felt all the things. Beard felt them too.
It was hard.
Easter, right?
What a fucking joke.
Here it is the most exciting, fertile, treaty time of the goddamn year, and my body decides to kill the life inside it.
My sense of irony is truly incredible.
But time marches on.
The moments I was overwhelmed by sadness became fewer and further between.
I began to forget.
It was hardest when I got my period.
Not that I was ready to try again, but that it just reminded me of that process. The whole thing.
Then thanksgiving, and the free fall into unexpected sadness.
It feels so unreasonable. I think about the women who have stillborn children. Who have to go through the pain and emotional wreckage of that labor. I think about women who have a child and then have a miscarriage and then get pregnant again right away. As if they can somehow tape over the hole in their heart with this new creation. I suppose they can. I think about women who can't have children at all, and I wonder if I will join their ranks. It was my first pregnancy. I have had problems menstruating in the past. Perhaps this is a thing my body cannot do. I think about women who have children who die of SIDS or fever or women who can't stop smoking meth and give birth to hurt children. I think about women who drive their cars into lakes with their babies strapped into the back seat, and women who watch their children chase balls into the street never to return. I think about all the lost children and the devastation in their wake and where on the meter my own loss falls. How much value does it have? Am I allowed to feel the hurt as deeply as I do, or am I being indulgent and weak? Am I simply obsessing like I always do, and skipping on a tragedy like a needle in the warped groove of a record?
But that would be overcomplicating matters.
The truth is today was always going to be sad.
I was told, seven months ago, that I would be meeting my baby today.
It's a full moon, and I would have gone into labor tonight. I know it.
I would have delivered exactly when I was supposed to.
Tonight, Beard would have sat with me until the contractions were down to five minutes apart, and then we would have hopped into the car and driven to the hospital. We would have called my parents, my employers, our nearest and dearest friends.
People would have come to the hospital to sit in the waiting room for updates. They would ask if we needed anything on their way over. They would watch videos on their phones to kill time.
I would be doing some of the hardest work of my life, and sometime in the late hours of december sixth, possibly the early hours of december 7th, we would have met our baby.
Here is where my dream pops like a bubble.
I can imagine all the circumstances.
I did during that couple of weeks in April. I pictured how big I would be at thanksgiving. I imagined how I would have to leave work, and how I would probably be just well enough to drive up to my parents place at Christmas with the newborn, and it would be our first holiday as a family.
My parents would meet their first grandchild.
Yet somehow, I cannot accurately picture the child itself.
This is where the expanse of my imagination simply stops.
Call it self preservation, or merely the simple cramp of the human ego not allowing me to see further than my own experience, but I am not able to imagine holding the warm new bundle. I can't fathom it's face, whether it would have hair or a snub nose or ears that stick out. I can't even decide whether it would have been a boy or a girl.
I guess the saddest part about this grief of mine is not that I am mourning the loss of a baby, but that I am mourning the loss of an idea.
The idea of all this joy.
The idea of how exciting it would be to share this with my beardly one.
The idea of the love I would feel for it.
The idea of the entire course of my life being repurposed for this new avenue of motherhood.
It was terrifying to confront as a prospect.
But I was ready.
It is bone achingly sad to review my catalogue of hope and know that none of these things are true.
And yes, logically, I know there is a high statistically chance that I will experience everything I looked forward to in April at a later time in my life.
but that doesn't change the fact that grief is unreasonable by nature, and so I will sit here, inside it.
For a little while longer.
I am permitted that.
At least.
Today would have been the due date for my baby.
It feels like a hoax, or a lie to call what I could not carry to fruition a baby.
Truth is, I saw it. When I miscarried, I looked, and I saw what left me, and it could never have been mistaken for a baby.
Logically I know that what happened was a frenzy of procreation that didn't go right.
Cells multiplied and divided. The climate of my body began to change to encourage the growth of the new inhabitant, but then something twigged in the system.
This was not viable.
What was growing was not going to develop into a life.
An evolutionary system override kicked into gear, and my body became toxic. It cut off the nourishment, the hormone supply, it efficiently rid my body of the bad investment in a matter of two days.
I can examine the evidence. I can see that my body was not ready. That this life was not viable. That it in no way diminishes my ability to carry a different pregnancy to term.
Grief, I am learning, is not a reasonable creature.
I was doing really well.
I'd not thought about it in almost a month. I knew the date was approaching in december, but it was November. I figured I had time.
Then, on thanksgiving, sitting on my sister's floor with a belly full of laughter and wine and with a room full of loving beloved people singing and carrying on around me, the black sorrow loomed up and swallowed me utterly, with no warning.
I jumped up as though electrocuted and barreled down the stairs to my own apartment. I put on some loud music and sobbed hard.
I remember the thought I'd had when the nurse on the phone set up my ultrasound and told me my due date was december 6th.
Congratulations, she said, and I'd been stunned.
Right.
I thought.
Congratulations, indeed! I was to be congratulated. I was knocked up, and it was wanted! The beard and I were going to rocket into parenthood like shooting stars of promise and adulthood.
We were terrified, but in a knee shaky, ready to climb onto the rollercoaster kind of way.
What we were was ready, and that was the scariest thing of all.
Over the brief time we knew I became a scientific observer of my body's changes.
My stomach rumbled incessantly. My tummy began to pouf a little. I was hungry at weird times and not interested in certain foods other times. I never once experienced nausea, and that was a good thing!
It was approaching Easter at the bakery, one of the bigger holidays in my business's world.
It was a happy and silly thing. I was going to show up at 5am to pack hot cross buns into boxes and frosted orange rum cakes into slices. I was going to wear bunny ears and serve coffee to all our regulars.
I toyed with the idea of telling one person...just as a treat. I knew it was still the first trimester, but I was almost at ten weeks. It couldn't hurt to tell someone.
Then there was pink.
I tried to ignore it. All the internet thingies said pink was normal.
I went to a brunch after work.
I left a bit early. I felt sort of peaked.
When I got home, pink turned to red.
I went to the hospital and had blood drawn, and they called me back that night to confirm what was happening.
I felt all the things. Beard felt them too.
It was hard.
Easter, right?
What a fucking joke.
Here it is the most exciting, fertile, treaty time of the goddamn year, and my body decides to kill the life inside it.
My sense of irony is truly incredible.
But time marches on.
The moments I was overwhelmed by sadness became fewer and further between.
I began to forget.
It was hardest when I got my period.
Not that I was ready to try again, but that it just reminded me of that process. The whole thing.
Then thanksgiving, and the free fall into unexpected sadness.
It feels so unreasonable. I think about the women who have stillborn children. Who have to go through the pain and emotional wreckage of that labor. I think about women who have a child and then have a miscarriage and then get pregnant again right away. As if they can somehow tape over the hole in their heart with this new creation. I suppose they can. I think about women who can't have children at all, and I wonder if I will join their ranks. It was my first pregnancy. I have had problems menstruating in the past. Perhaps this is a thing my body cannot do. I think about women who have children who die of SIDS or fever or women who can't stop smoking meth and give birth to hurt children. I think about women who drive their cars into lakes with their babies strapped into the back seat, and women who watch their children chase balls into the street never to return. I think about all the lost children and the devastation in their wake and where on the meter my own loss falls. How much value does it have? Am I allowed to feel the hurt as deeply as I do, or am I being indulgent and weak? Am I simply obsessing like I always do, and skipping on a tragedy like a needle in the warped groove of a record?
But that would be overcomplicating matters.
The truth is today was always going to be sad.
I was told, seven months ago, that I would be meeting my baby today.
It's a full moon, and I would have gone into labor tonight. I know it.
I would have delivered exactly when I was supposed to.
Tonight, Beard would have sat with me until the contractions were down to five minutes apart, and then we would have hopped into the car and driven to the hospital. We would have called my parents, my employers, our nearest and dearest friends.
People would have come to the hospital to sit in the waiting room for updates. They would ask if we needed anything on their way over. They would watch videos on their phones to kill time.
I would be doing some of the hardest work of my life, and sometime in the late hours of december sixth, possibly the early hours of december 7th, we would have met our baby.
Here is where my dream pops like a bubble.
I can imagine all the circumstances.
I did during that couple of weeks in April. I pictured how big I would be at thanksgiving. I imagined how I would have to leave work, and how I would probably be just well enough to drive up to my parents place at Christmas with the newborn, and it would be our first holiday as a family.
My parents would meet their first grandchild.
Yet somehow, I cannot accurately picture the child itself.
This is where the expanse of my imagination simply stops.
Call it self preservation, or merely the simple cramp of the human ego not allowing me to see further than my own experience, but I am not able to imagine holding the warm new bundle. I can't fathom it's face, whether it would have hair or a snub nose or ears that stick out. I can't even decide whether it would have been a boy or a girl.
I guess the saddest part about this grief of mine is not that I am mourning the loss of a baby, but that I am mourning the loss of an idea.
The idea of all this joy.
The idea of how exciting it would be to share this with my beardly one.
The idea of the love I would feel for it.
The idea of the entire course of my life being repurposed for this new avenue of motherhood.
It was terrifying to confront as a prospect.
But I was ready.
It is bone achingly sad to review my catalogue of hope and know that none of these things are true.
And yes, logically, I know there is a high statistically chance that I will experience everything I looked forward to in April at a later time in my life.
but that doesn't change the fact that grief is unreasonable by nature, and so I will sit here, inside it.
For a little while longer.
I am permitted that.
At least.
Wednesday, November 19, 2014
Having a bad time of it
So...
Stress.
I am fully aware that i am a bit of a control freak.
When I was younger (read: unmarried and done with school), I would challenge myself to do wild things, shake up my schedule, be impulsive, all in the name of proving to myself that I wouldn't die if things weren't planned out to the minute.
Some of the most magical things of my life happened because of these impetuous choices, also some of the stupidest things...
Now that I am a grown up in all of the trappings of adulthood (read: I pay my bills on time, totes married, committed to my job, also a full time grad school student), my options to be impulsive are incredibly limited.
Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my days off, and to the rest of the world, they're just two more days getting in the way of Friday. To me, they are my venus and apollo, my days to spend all morning in my pajamas finishing a pot of coffee while catching up on the internet and world news, read books in bars at three in the afternoon, to shop for clothes, get laundry done, buy groceries, take long walks through crispy leaves, try new recipes, and get in some extended yoga practice.
All
by
myself.
Truthfully, I'm in a wicked weird place right now. Most of my friends are done with their grad degrees, they're no longer working stupid retail jobs. Not even my husband has the same days off as me right now, so I spend the majority of my days off alone.
A sort of natural rhythm worked itself out.
Monday nights I would attempt to jam something social into my week.
Five o clock drinks with friends at the beginning of their work week, or a movie night with my herrband to remind him he does actually live with a woman and isn't being haunted by a loving poltergeist.
Tuesday morning after sleeping in to the obscene hour of 8am, get cracking on my work, and by the afternoon, some kind of seeping damp loneliness would begin to set into me.
I'd check the clock, it would be two or so, and I'd need to get some fresh air.
In summer I'd trot down to the beach for a swim. I always find it difficult to be lonely at the ocean, and I'd people watch, jump in the waves, and maybe work through some tricky plot or thesis I was trying to navigate.
The herrband would get home shortly after I made it back to the house. I'd pick up groceries on the way back from my walk, beach or not, and we'd eat dinner together. Then he'd pack himself off to bed at a reasonable hour, and I'd be left to my own devices to finish an assignment and then slump in front of the television, telling myself it was a reward for all the stuff I'd accomplished.
It was never enough though.
Sure enough, as soon as my partner's tail disappeared into the bedroom the seeping loneliness returned, and with it the cooing indulgent voice that alway necessitates the binge.
You've worked so hard
You're all alone
Nobody to judge you
What else is going to make you feel better instantly?
A bath?
A tv show?
Weakly my will power would argue tepid points about hard work being its own reward, long term goals, and how crappy I would feel if I gave in, but not once did those work.
Not.
Once.
As the stress of the semester increased, so did the frequency of the binges.
I'd worked so hard for the first half of the year to get them down to once every two weeks, and here they were creeping up on me, at first, only ever tuesday night, then mondays became a binge night too, and as the end of the semester approached, sundays joined them.
Now my semester is done. This is the first weekend (tuesday and wednesday) I have not had a HUGE deadline hanging over my head in five and a half months, and the need to binge WAS STILL THERE.
The loneliness was still there.
The sadness.
But now I don't even have the excuse that I can let my will power slip because I was doing so much other stuff it was too much to have to keep tabs on my disordered eating on top of everything else.
I read an article last week that was all about the in between land of 'disordered eating'. Never diagnosed as textbook anorexics or bulimics, people who fall into this grey area are never given serious treatment for their problems because their physical health never gets to the brink of disaster.
Here! I thought finally.
Here is where I dwell! On the borders of the disorder with the other halfway marks.
We're miserable, we obsess, we fall into unhealthy patterns of behavior, we are trapped in compulsions and behavioral loops, and staggering amounts of shame, but because we don't either tip the scale to the point of deadly obesity or break our friend's hearts with our ribs sagging through our skin, we go unnoticed, untreated, and fretfully, unhappily, unwell.
Here is a link to the article I read.
It reminded me of how trapping the mentality of disordered eating is.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/08/feel-guilty-but-hate-my-body-feminist-confesses
Not only do we get stuck in these loops, because we fly under the radar, we are secretly congratulating ourselves for not getting caught. I'm not as sick as her, we think to ourselves looking at the girl who picks at her lunch in front of her coworkers, terrified of people seeing her eat.
BUT WE ARE.
I am just as sick as her.
When people watch me eat, I make deliberate, healthy decisions. I eat until I'm satisfied, 'an elegant sufficiency' as my father would say, and then I set down my knife and fork as though the urge to pick them up again won't even cross my mind.
It's all a terrible act.
Here's the scary scary truth.
When a girl with an eating disorder declares that she isn't hungry,
When she selects the caesar salad with the dressing on the side and the chicken breast, and she only eats half of it,
When she shakes her head and says thanks but no thanks to the homemade cookies at the break table,
When she declares widely and openly that she had SUCH a big breakfast and she couldn't possibly do lunch,
SHE IS A LIAR.
She is lying so hard to herself, and she knows it.
She is counting on knowing it.
Whether she is lying because she hasn't eaten anything in twenty four hours and won't allow herself to for another twelve because she promised her diary she'd do a 36 hour fast-
Whether she is lying because she ate an entire tub of frozen cookie dough from her freezer last night, and feels sick to her stomach this morning and can't even fathom a drop of coffee wedging into her stomach-
Whether she tried her pants on this morning and they were just a little too tight-
Whether her loved one remarked casually that it looked like she might need a new bra because her boobs were getting a little too luscious-
That girl is hurting.
That girl is me.
I am lonely.
I am so lonely that I have to drown the loneliness in these fast or dare games I play by myself all alone.
Don't eat anything for twelve hours. Get a crumb of self esteem.
Manage not to binge for five days. Get a drop of forgiveness.
Succeed in leaving half the chicken caesar salad on my plate. Actually attempt to seduce husband and try not to think about what gut looks like mid-coitus.
This is the terrible reasoning of the disordered eating loop, and I live there. Like one of those matchbox cars traveling endlessly on a self-propelling plastic track, I drive around and around with the same creeping, awful, lonely games of atonement, restriction, hunger, failure, and shame.
I am so afraid of my hunger.
That it is bigger than I am.
That nothing will ever be enough.
That EVERYTHING isn't enough.
That I will one day get caught in the middle of a binge and disgust someone so much they never speak to me again.
That I will lost what little control I have and explode into a seething, revolting, control-less mass mess.
I want to forget this more than anything else.
I wish I believed it was still possible for me to do that.
Stress.
I am fully aware that i am a bit of a control freak.
When I was younger (read: unmarried and done with school), I would challenge myself to do wild things, shake up my schedule, be impulsive, all in the name of proving to myself that I wouldn't die if things weren't planned out to the minute.
Some of the most magical things of my life happened because of these impetuous choices, also some of the stupidest things...
Now that I am a grown up in all of the trappings of adulthood (read: I pay my bills on time, totes married, committed to my job, also a full time grad school student), my options to be impulsive are incredibly limited.
Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my days off, and to the rest of the world, they're just two more days getting in the way of Friday. To me, they are my venus and apollo, my days to spend all morning in my pajamas finishing a pot of coffee while catching up on the internet and world news, read books in bars at three in the afternoon, to shop for clothes, get laundry done, buy groceries, take long walks through crispy leaves, try new recipes, and get in some extended yoga practice.
All
by
myself.
Truthfully, I'm in a wicked weird place right now. Most of my friends are done with their grad degrees, they're no longer working stupid retail jobs. Not even my husband has the same days off as me right now, so I spend the majority of my days off alone.
A sort of natural rhythm worked itself out.
Monday nights I would attempt to jam something social into my week.
Five o clock drinks with friends at the beginning of their work week, or a movie night with my herrband to remind him he does actually live with a woman and isn't being haunted by a loving poltergeist.
Tuesday morning after sleeping in to the obscene hour of 8am, get cracking on my work, and by the afternoon, some kind of seeping damp loneliness would begin to set into me.
I'd check the clock, it would be two or so, and I'd need to get some fresh air.
In summer I'd trot down to the beach for a swim. I always find it difficult to be lonely at the ocean, and I'd people watch, jump in the waves, and maybe work through some tricky plot or thesis I was trying to navigate.
The herrband would get home shortly after I made it back to the house. I'd pick up groceries on the way back from my walk, beach or not, and we'd eat dinner together. Then he'd pack himself off to bed at a reasonable hour, and I'd be left to my own devices to finish an assignment and then slump in front of the television, telling myself it was a reward for all the stuff I'd accomplished.
It was never enough though.
Sure enough, as soon as my partner's tail disappeared into the bedroom the seeping loneliness returned, and with it the cooing indulgent voice that alway necessitates the binge.
You've worked so hard
You're all alone
Nobody to judge you
What else is going to make you feel better instantly?
A bath?
A tv show?
Weakly my will power would argue tepid points about hard work being its own reward, long term goals, and how crappy I would feel if I gave in, but not once did those work.
Not.
Once.
As the stress of the semester increased, so did the frequency of the binges.
I'd worked so hard for the first half of the year to get them down to once every two weeks, and here they were creeping up on me, at first, only ever tuesday night, then mondays became a binge night too, and as the end of the semester approached, sundays joined them.
Now my semester is done. This is the first weekend (tuesday and wednesday) I have not had a HUGE deadline hanging over my head in five and a half months, and the need to binge WAS STILL THERE.
The loneliness was still there.
The sadness.
But now I don't even have the excuse that I can let my will power slip because I was doing so much other stuff it was too much to have to keep tabs on my disordered eating on top of everything else.
I read an article last week that was all about the in between land of 'disordered eating'. Never diagnosed as textbook anorexics or bulimics, people who fall into this grey area are never given serious treatment for their problems because their physical health never gets to the brink of disaster.
Here! I thought finally.
Here is where I dwell! On the borders of the disorder with the other halfway marks.
We're miserable, we obsess, we fall into unhealthy patterns of behavior, we are trapped in compulsions and behavioral loops, and staggering amounts of shame, but because we don't either tip the scale to the point of deadly obesity or break our friend's hearts with our ribs sagging through our skin, we go unnoticed, untreated, and fretfully, unhappily, unwell.
Here is a link to the article I read.
It reminded me of how trapping the mentality of disordered eating is.
http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2014/nov/08/feel-guilty-but-hate-my-body-feminist-confesses
Not only do we get stuck in these loops, because we fly under the radar, we are secretly congratulating ourselves for not getting caught. I'm not as sick as her, we think to ourselves looking at the girl who picks at her lunch in front of her coworkers, terrified of people seeing her eat.
BUT WE ARE.
I am just as sick as her.
When people watch me eat, I make deliberate, healthy decisions. I eat until I'm satisfied, 'an elegant sufficiency' as my father would say, and then I set down my knife and fork as though the urge to pick them up again won't even cross my mind.
It's all a terrible act.
Here's the scary scary truth.
When a girl with an eating disorder declares that she isn't hungry,
When she selects the caesar salad with the dressing on the side and the chicken breast, and she only eats half of it,
When she shakes her head and says thanks but no thanks to the homemade cookies at the break table,
When she declares widely and openly that she had SUCH a big breakfast and she couldn't possibly do lunch,
SHE IS A LIAR.
She is lying so hard to herself, and she knows it.
She is counting on knowing it.
Whether she is lying because she hasn't eaten anything in twenty four hours and won't allow herself to for another twelve because she promised her diary she'd do a 36 hour fast-
Whether she is lying because she ate an entire tub of frozen cookie dough from her freezer last night, and feels sick to her stomach this morning and can't even fathom a drop of coffee wedging into her stomach-
Whether she tried her pants on this morning and they were just a little too tight-
Whether her loved one remarked casually that it looked like she might need a new bra because her boobs were getting a little too luscious-
That girl is hurting.
That girl is me.
I am lonely.
I am so lonely that I have to drown the loneliness in these fast or dare games I play by myself all alone.
Don't eat anything for twelve hours. Get a crumb of self esteem.
Manage not to binge for five days. Get a drop of forgiveness.
Succeed in leaving half the chicken caesar salad on my plate. Actually attempt to seduce husband and try not to think about what gut looks like mid-coitus.
This is the terrible reasoning of the disordered eating loop, and I live there. Like one of those matchbox cars traveling endlessly on a self-propelling plastic track, I drive around and around with the same creeping, awful, lonely games of atonement, restriction, hunger, failure, and shame.
I am so afraid of my hunger.
That it is bigger than I am.
That nothing will ever be enough.
That EVERYTHING isn't enough.
That I will one day get caught in the middle of a binge and disgust someone so much they never speak to me again.
That I will lost what little control I have and explode into a seething, revolting, control-less mass mess.
I want to forget this more than anything else.
I wish I believed it was still possible for me to do that.
Sunday, November 2, 2014
The middle of the night monsters, and their sugar fiends.
Is it okay?
At what age does it stop being all right to give in to bad habits?
Tantrums?
Over indulgence?
Recklessness?
Selfishness?
Impulsivity?
I might have made up that last one. It might be impulsiveness.
I don't know that I care.
It's two days after halloween.
My stress levels are through the roof.
I've eaten at least a bag of halloween candy, and I am wired to the max on sugar.
I know I should be sleeping,
that I'll feel like an utter horrorshow tomorrow, but for some reason (anxiety), I can't settle down.
It used to be, when I was a teenager, when I got stressed out, I couldn't eat.
Food just didn't interest me.
I was too preoccupied with feeling all of my feels.
Now, when I am the most stressed out is when all of the cupcakes and wine disappear.
My skin gets gnarly, my hips get wide, and my fury at my lack of will power threatens to topple all the hard anti-negativity work I have done.
It's so ridiculously difficult to be a woman and deal with your stress healthfully.
We are told repeatedly to be more available, stronger, wiser, more capable, more resilient.
We are held up on pedestals one moment and torn down from them the next for the same behavior.
Many of us are struggling with serious issues, and it seems perfectly acceptable for the whole world to continued to demand demand demand the impossible, until we break.
I am in the final three weeks of my first semester of grad school, and it is really putting me through my paces.
I've put down 30,000 words of a novel, read 12 books since july, and written fifteen three page papers.
I have three more books, three more papers, and a thousand more words to put down before November 20th.
I am also working full time managing the bakery, and we only just surfaced from the impossibly crazy October Halloween Salem tourism gamut.
We have two weeks to gather our wagons, and then the same week that I send off my final papers for school, I begin an eleven day work week that includes the twelve hour work day before thanksgiving.
On top of this is my husband's birthday, which is the 20th of the month, and the preparation for our own wee little turkey day celebration.
I can't handle it.
I am so crispy I might snap in half.
But instead, I stay up late and look at the stars and stuff miniature sized candy bars in my face and wonder if I'll ever feel normal again. What normal even looks like.
Does normal wake up at six in the morning?
Does it do a half hour of yoga, shower, and then walk three miles to work?
Does it talk bakers out of recipe snarl ups?
Does it count money, help customers, run errands, call vendors, print invoices, field emails, solve customer situations, resolve scheduling conflicts, and jump on bar to make two dozen drinks when the barista suddenly flips her contact and has to run squealing to the bathroom?
Does it walk three more miles home, stopping at the grocery store to buy components for dinner?
Does it make dinner, read fifty pages, write more words, put in a squeak of effort with its partner, and then realize it's still ravenous and ugly and exhausted and doesn't know when it gets to finally let go and relax?
Does it cry on the floor of the bathroom because it just wants something to stop?
Somehow I don't think so.
What does your normal look like?
Is your normal heroic, tragic, humorous, wild, boring, child-filled, work filled, school filled, significant other filled, or something else entirely?
Is it empty?
Are you alone staring at the stars and wondering how in the flying fuck it can dare snow two days into November?
Are you up far too late on a Sunday night, lonely and wondering if you just tore out the front door and ran and ran and ran and never looked back would it be any better?
Me too.
At what age does it stop being all right to give in to bad habits?
Tantrums?
Over indulgence?
Recklessness?
Selfishness?
Impulsivity?
I might have made up that last one. It might be impulsiveness.
I don't know that I care.
It's two days after halloween.
My stress levels are through the roof.
I've eaten at least a bag of halloween candy, and I am wired to the max on sugar.
I know I should be sleeping,
that I'll feel like an utter horrorshow tomorrow, but for some reason (anxiety), I can't settle down.
It used to be, when I was a teenager, when I got stressed out, I couldn't eat.
Food just didn't interest me.
I was too preoccupied with feeling all of my feels.
Now, when I am the most stressed out is when all of the cupcakes and wine disappear.
My skin gets gnarly, my hips get wide, and my fury at my lack of will power threatens to topple all the hard anti-negativity work I have done.
It's so ridiculously difficult to be a woman and deal with your stress healthfully.
We are told repeatedly to be more available, stronger, wiser, more capable, more resilient.
We are held up on pedestals one moment and torn down from them the next for the same behavior.
Many of us are struggling with serious issues, and it seems perfectly acceptable for the whole world to continued to demand demand demand the impossible, until we break.
I am in the final three weeks of my first semester of grad school, and it is really putting me through my paces.
I've put down 30,000 words of a novel, read 12 books since july, and written fifteen three page papers.
I have three more books, three more papers, and a thousand more words to put down before November 20th.
I am also working full time managing the bakery, and we only just surfaced from the impossibly crazy October Halloween Salem tourism gamut.
We have two weeks to gather our wagons, and then the same week that I send off my final papers for school, I begin an eleven day work week that includes the twelve hour work day before thanksgiving.
On top of this is my husband's birthday, which is the 20th of the month, and the preparation for our own wee little turkey day celebration.
I can't handle it.
I am so crispy I might snap in half.
But instead, I stay up late and look at the stars and stuff miniature sized candy bars in my face and wonder if I'll ever feel normal again. What normal even looks like.
Does normal wake up at six in the morning?
Does it do a half hour of yoga, shower, and then walk three miles to work?
Does it talk bakers out of recipe snarl ups?
Does it count money, help customers, run errands, call vendors, print invoices, field emails, solve customer situations, resolve scheduling conflicts, and jump on bar to make two dozen drinks when the barista suddenly flips her contact and has to run squealing to the bathroom?
Does it walk three more miles home, stopping at the grocery store to buy components for dinner?
Does it make dinner, read fifty pages, write more words, put in a squeak of effort with its partner, and then realize it's still ravenous and ugly and exhausted and doesn't know when it gets to finally let go and relax?
Does it cry on the floor of the bathroom because it just wants something to stop?
Somehow I don't think so.
What does your normal look like?
Is your normal heroic, tragic, humorous, wild, boring, child-filled, work filled, school filled, significant other filled, or something else entirely?
Is it empty?
Are you alone staring at the stars and wondering how in the flying fuck it can dare snow two days into November?
Are you up far too late on a Sunday night, lonely and wondering if you just tore out the front door and ran and ran and ran and never looked back would it be any better?
Me too.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
In Which I try to be three people, and introduce you to my demon.
As a practicing witch, I simultaneously welcome and dread the massive culmination of holidays that is Hallowe'en.
There are so many things wrapped up in the date that I, good little neurotic that I am, pin a hell of a lot more expectations on the date than any one day has rights to.
It is the end of the Witch's Calendar year, so it is my new year's.
This is a time for reflection on the theme and growth of the last year and a time to prepare and project for the new one. It is also the last harvest, so it is a time for feasting and celebration. I like to take inventory of my accomplishments, of what has come to fruition, and what I'd like to reset and refocus for in the coming quiet, fallow months of winter.
It is also the time at which our loved ancestors who have passed on are closest to mind and spirit. If there are messages to be received or sent between the veils, this is the best time to send them. I like to offer to do palmistry and card readings for my near and dear ones on this night because I consider the avenues to be clearest, and any way that I can help people communicate who wish to is part of my duty as a good little craft practitioner.
It is also a great night for nostalgia and parties!
I love seeing children trick or treat, decking out the house with decorations, baking up a storm of orange and black and pumpkin and bat themed delicacies. I love bobbing for apples, watching spooky movies, making toasts in the graveyard and taking wild whooping walks through the piles of leaves and howling at the moon at midnight.
That's a lot of pressure I put on one night.
It pales, however, in comparison to the amount of pressure I've been putting on myself.
Eating has been very difficult as of late.
Work is mad. October is the busiest time of year for any business in Salem, and we have been rocking it. I am also dealing with a completely green crew, many of whom have never worked in retail before, let alone booming, touristy, holiday retail. There is very little time spent in my bakery without me overseeing, retraining, explaining, trouble-shooting, fixing, petting, coaxing, planning, helping, and giving. Sadly, I get very little of that in return from customers, who deem it their right to take everything, my employers, who think that because I have informed them I plan on leaving in 9 months (that's nine months of notice people!) I am no longer contributing to their business and do not care about my job, and my crew, who don't realize how much work it is to take care of their needs on top of everybody else's.
On top of all this, i am also in the last three weeks of my first semester at grad school. I owe forty pages of writing, about half of which must be critical, and based upon almost one thousand pages of reading that needs to be done.
Most of the time I'm so busy I forget to eat, and then suddenly I'm furious or weeping for no reason, and I can't understand why I'm so miserable, except for-Oh Wait! I haven't eaten in thirteen hours! That's what it is!
On Saturday, I got up at 6am, so I could get dressed up like a phoenix for the halloween theme at work.
I walked my usual two and a half mile trek to the bakery, and immediately jumped into the fray.
We had wave after wave of people from the moment I arrived until four thirty, when I ushered the last, straggling tourist out the door and locked it.
After supervising enough of the clean up that I felt the staff could survive without me, I ran out the door to meet up with a good friend I hadn't seen since before I got married five years ago. Out of nowhere, he just decided to drive down to Salem and hunt me down for coffee. He's been out of the country for at least four years, and I was absolutely gob-smacked to see him.
We spent two hours strolling through the crazy streets of the city, catching up. There were lines and crowds of people around every corner, and eventually we sat on some grass near the ocean. It was nice, but I was starting to feel strange. After a good long hug with my friend, I began my commute home. Another two and a half miles back over the bridge to my apartment.
Somewhere around the top of the bridge, I put my hand in my pocket and discovered a small square of dark chocolate. When my fingers closed around it, I suddenly realized why I felt weird.
It was six o'clock at night, and I'd had one cup of coffee since I'd woke up all day.
There's a moment, before a binge, where I can see the green, furry monster of indulgence poke his head out of my subconscious. He has black horns, leather black paws and disgusting yellow eyes, and he pulls his head out of my routines and points a gleaming, onyx claw at me.
I'm coming for you. He says, and I feel my knees shake.
I'm getting better at recognizing him, so I stopped at a local shop and bought a super delicious, mega healthy spinach wrap, stuffed with falafel, veggies and hummus. I even paused at the corner store for a bottle of my favorite red wine, reasoning with myself that it was a treat that would pacify my demon.
I got home, and there was a new movie on netflix i wanted to see.
It sucked the the herrband wasn't able to be there. He had an all day photography job, and I missed him. With all the work I've been doing, we rarely get to hang out anymore, and any time we do get is in the evenings, since we don't have common days off right now.
Because of his photo job, however, I wouldn't see the beard until almost midnight, so I plunked down on the couch with my sandwich and a glass of wine, and thought to myself, Ah yes, here is the reward for today.
By then it was after seven. I hadn't eaten in about twenty four solid hours, and my stomach had ceased even to make grumbly noises. It mewled like a wet cat.
In a trice the sandwich was gone.
I'd barely even tasted it.
Then I thought, well, I have blueberry muffin that I brought home for the herrband, but he didn't know I was bringing it, so it doesn't matter if I eat it.
Which I did.
Then a handful of halloween candy.
Then I remember the stollen experiment from work earlier that week, and (fully in the clutches of my green demon now) I pulled out the half loaf of thick, sweet, almondy, dried fruity, sugar laden bread, and devoured it. Piece by piece, with no mind to the now squeaking kitten that was my stomach, paralyzed under its weight of food, I polished off every last, rum soaked raisiny crumb.
The demon threw his hands up in the air and did his victory dance.
I had caved.
I was so full I felt ill. My poor body had no idea what to make of the situation. Denied for so long, it couldn't handle the amount of food that had crash landed like a ton of bricks, and I swayed with nausea.
Lucky for me, the demon has trained my body well, and I do not throw up. My gag reflex is under lock and key.
I finished watching my movie, then exhausted, ashamed, and defeated, I retreated to the bedroom, to lie on my back, and will my stomach into serenity. All the while praying that I can get through Sunday without a repeat performance.
Now I know this is a classic routine. The starvation followed by the binge.
It's a dance me and my demon have been doing off and on for ten years, but the self forgiveness thing is still damn near impossible.
Faced with the pain of the overindulgence, my body stays mad at me after these episodes.
I wake up with indigestion. I don't feel hungry until very late in the next day, and then it comes upon me in a rush, setting me up for another overindulgence unless I work incredibly hard to keep the binge demon locked in his cage. It is a very new rarity, that I succeed.
Still, I have succeeded more than once in the last year, and I have to count that among my victories.
The negative shame voices that fill my head are so natural they feel like an instinct I have no control over, and they set in with a spitefulness I feel to my core.
My websites help...It's like having people I can actually talk to about these foul ups and body betrayals. They forgive me when I simply can't, and I'm very grateful for their generators, because without them, I'd feel utterly alone.
I am trying to find my theme for 2015, for last year's was "What happens if you just say yes?"
And I would say that it worked quite well for me. Truly.
This year, I think my theme needs to be:
"Let go. If it's worth it, you don't have to hold on so hard for it to stay."
What do you think?
Can I let the wheel of the year turn, and in doing so, take with it this iron clad grasp i have on so much expectation, so much responsibility?
Can I just let go, and let the healing in?
There are so many things wrapped up in the date that I, good little neurotic that I am, pin a hell of a lot more expectations on the date than any one day has rights to.
It is the end of the Witch's Calendar year, so it is my new year's.
This is a time for reflection on the theme and growth of the last year and a time to prepare and project for the new one. It is also the last harvest, so it is a time for feasting and celebration. I like to take inventory of my accomplishments, of what has come to fruition, and what I'd like to reset and refocus for in the coming quiet, fallow months of winter.
It is also the time at which our loved ancestors who have passed on are closest to mind and spirit. If there are messages to be received or sent between the veils, this is the best time to send them. I like to offer to do palmistry and card readings for my near and dear ones on this night because I consider the avenues to be clearest, and any way that I can help people communicate who wish to is part of my duty as a good little craft practitioner.
It is also a great night for nostalgia and parties!
I love seeing children trick or treat, decking out the house with decorations, baking up a storm of orange and black and pumpkin and bat themed delicacies. I love bobbing for apples, watching spooky movies, making toasts in the graveyard and taking wild whooping walks through the piles of leaves and howling at the moon at midnight.
That's a lot of pressure I put on one night.
It pales, however, in comparison to the amount of pressure I've been putting on myself.
Eating has been very difficult as of late.
Work is mad. October is the busiest time of year for any business in Salem, and we have been rocking it. I am also dealing with a completely green crew, many of whom have never worked in retail before, let alone booming, touristy, holiday retail. There is very little time spent in my bakery without me overseeing, retraining, explaining, trouble-shooting, fixing, petting, coaxing, planning, helping, and giving. Sadly, I get very little of that in return from customers, who deem it their right to take everything, my employers, who think that because I have informed them I plan on leaving in 9 months (that's nine months of notice people!) I am no longer contributing to their business and do not care about my job, and my crew, who don't realize how much work it is to take care of their needs on top of everybody else's.
On top of all this, i am also in the last three weeks of my first semester at grad school. I owe forty pages of writing, about half of which must be critical, and based upon almost one thousand pages of reading that needs to be done.
Most of the time I'm so busy I forget to eat, and then suddenly I'm furious or weeping for no reason, and I can't understand why I'm so miserable, except for-Oh Wait! I haven't eaten in thirteen hours! That's what it is!
On Saturday, I got up at 6am, so I could get dressed up like a phoenix for the halloween theme at work.
I walked my usual two and a half mile trek to the bakery, and immediately jumped into the fray.
We had wave after wave of people from the moment I arrived until four thirty, when I ushered the last, straggling tourist out the door and locked it.
After supervising enough of the clean up that I felt the staff could survive without me, I ran out the door to meet up with a good friend I hadn't seen since before I got married five years ago. Out of nowhere, he just decided to drive down to Salem and hunt me down for coffee. He's been out of the country for at least four years, and I was absolutely gob-smacked to see him.
We spent two hours strolling through the crazy streets of the city, catching up. There were lines and crowds of people around every corner, and eventually we sat on some grass near the ocean. It was nice, but I was starting to feel strange. After a good long hug with my friend, I began my commute home. Another two and a half miles back over the bridge to my apartment.
Somewhere around the top of the bridge, I put my hand in my pocket and discovered a small square of dark chocolate. When my fingers closed around it, I suddenly realized why I felt weird.
It was six o'clock at night, and I'd had one cup of coffee since I'd woke up all day.
There's a moment, before a binge, where I can see the green, furry monster of indulgence poke his head out of my subconscious. He has black horns, leather black paws and disgusting yellow eyes, and he pulls his head out of my routines and points a gleaming, onyx claw at me.
I'm coming for you. He says, and I feel my knees shake.
I'm getting better at recognizing him, so I stopped at a local shop and bought a super delicious, mega healthy spinach wrap, stuffed with falafel, veggies and hummus. I even paused at the corner store for a bottle of my favorite red wine, reasoning with myself that it was a treat that would pacify my demon.
I got home, and there was a new movie on netflix i wanted to see.
It sucked the the herrband wasn't able to be there. He had an all day photography job, and I missed him. With all the work I've been doing, we rarely get to hang out anymore, and any time we do get is in the evenings, since we don't have common days off right now.
Because of his photo job, however, I wouldn't see the beard until almost midnight, so I plunked down on the couch with my sandwich and a glass of wine, and thought to myself, Ah yes, here is the reward for today.
By then it was after seven. I hadn't eaten in about twenty four solid hours, and my stomach had ceased even to make grumbly noises. It mewled like a wet cat.
In a trice the sandwich was gone.
I'd barely even tasted it.
Then I thought, well, I have blueberry muffin that I brought home for the herrband, but he didn't know I was bringing it, so it doesn't matter if I eat it.
Which I did.
Then a handful of halloween candy.
Then I remember the stollen experiment from work earlier that week, and (fully in the clutches of my green demon now) I pulled out the half loaf of thick, sweet, almondy, dried fruity, sugar laden bread, and devoured it. Piece by piece, with no mind to the now squeaking kitten that was my stomach, paralyzed under its weight of food, I polished off every last, rum soaked raisiny crumb.
The demon threw his hands up in the air and did his victory dance.
I had caved.
I was so full I felt ill. My poor body had no idea what to make of the situation. Denied for so long, it couldn't handle the amount of food that had crash landed like a ton of bricks, and I swayed with nausea.
Lucky for me, the demon has trained my body well, and I do not throw up. My gag reflex is under lock and key.
I finished watching my movie, then exhausted, ashamed, and defeated, I retreated to the bedroom, to lie on my back, and will my stomach into serenity. All the while praying that I can get through Sunday without a repeat performance.
Now I know this is a classic routine. The starvation followed by the binge.
It's a dance me and my demon have been doing off and on for ten years, but the self forgiveness thing is still damn near impossible.
Faced with the pain of the overindulgence, my body stays mad at me after these episodes.
I wake up with indigestion. I don't feel hungry until very late in the next day, and then it comes upon me in a rush, setting me up for another overindulgence unless I work incredibly hard to keep the binge demon locked in his cage. It is a very new rarity, that I succeed.
Still, I have succeeded more than once in the last year, and I have to count that among my victories.
The negative shame voices that fill my head are so natural they feel like an instinct I have no control over, and they set in with a spitefulness I feel to my core.
My websites help...It's like having people I can actually talk to about these foul ups and body betrayals. They forgive me when I simply can't, and I'm very grateful for their generators, because without them, I'd feel utterly alone.
I am trying to find my theme for 2015, for last year's was "What happens if you just say yes?"
And I would say that it worked quite well for me. Truly.
This year, I think my theme needs to be:
"Let go. If it's worth it, you don't have to hold on so hard for it to stay."
What do you think?
Can I let the wheel of the year turn, and in doing so, take with it this iron clad grasp i have on so much expectation, so much responsibility?
Can I just let go, and let the healing in?
Sunday, October 19, 2014
When Too Much Feels like Not Enough and Even Pages Stick in My Throat.
Times like these, it's difficult to remember how grown ups eat.
I read lots of books.
I am reading a book a week for school right now, and some of them are the type of fiction where the author describes the daily routines of the characters. They are grounded in reality. They wash dishes, forget to pick up the mail, eat breakfast too quickly, and find holes in their cardigans.
In the other kinds of books, nobody remembers to eat, everybody is too busy doing epic things, every word is a mysterious box that must be opened and its contents examined before moving on. There is no room for such frivolities as hair washing and toast. Each syllable has a purpose, a drive, and a subtext. Under every sentence a buried treasure waits.
I want my life to be like the second type of book, full of spectacle, art, and brilliance, but all too often it lolls along in the first type.
I do things like forget to eat until two in the afternoon, and then stuff my face ravenously with pumpkin spice hersheys kisses, which I think are revolting, and would never ordinarily eat except that there is very little in the house right now, and unless I want to cover a slab of bread in cream cheese and maple syrup.
Actually...
that sounds quite nice.
I'll be right back.
Times like these my rapacity terrifies me.
I feel as though I could eat the entire world and want seconds.
There is no pizza big enough, no ice cream container bottomless enough, no quantity of food satisfies me. I seek the binge like a drug addled boyfriend. I want to sink against something bigger and more fucked up than I am, blame it for all of my problems and then shrug off the obvious solutions.
I want to hit my stride, the peak of the binge where I'm halfway between hungry, full, and stuffed motionless, suspended between satiety and action, furiously snuffling for the next thing to devour.
It's confusing, because I use words like 'should' and 'ought to' to describe my feelings of satisfaction.
___________'should' be enough.
___________'ought to' satisfy me.
But it doesn't.
I'm not starving anymore, not ravenous, aching with hunger, but just feeling comfortable isn't good enough. Why is that? Fear? The "well I've fucked it up so far, might as well go down like a prize fighter"mentality? Is it some terrible, internalized female inadequacy that holds me hostage and pries my fingers from around the novel and presses them around the handle of the fridge instead?
I wish I had the answers.
But that's not what this blog is for. I'm not here to tell you I've got it figured out because I don't.
I know that I am sitting here, and the roster of things I could be shoveling into my face is running through my head faster than a digital menu flashing across a screen at the movies.
I could finish the bag of hershey's kisses,
finish the box of almond cookies,
finish the cream cheese with however many slices of bread it takes,
pour the maple syrup over something, anything, pretend it's dessert, pretend it's a cake, soak my fingers in sugar and milk and cram whatever it is down my throat and into my stomach and pray that it's enough to silence the rumble throughout my being that cries for more more more!
More happiness!
More sleep!
More free time!
More adventures!
More indulgences!
All of the things that I don't have time for because of work, grad school, extra work, dogs, husbands, friends, and siblings getting ready to move overseas.
For all of the reasons i say, "someday i'll give myself enough", I feel I never am full, never not hungry, always lifting the clock like a plate to see if there's a crumb of time left for me.
Always shaking the book and running my sticky fingers through the cracks in the spine to see if there's an extra word left, just one more, the right one, that finally gets the rumble to quiet.
I read lots of books.
I am reading a book a week for school right now, and some of them are the type of fiction where the author describes the daily routines of the characters. They are grounded in reality. They wash dishes, forget to pick up the mail, eat breakfast too quickly, and find holes in their cardigans.
In the other kinds of books, nobody remembers to eat, everybody is too busy doing epic things, every word is a mysterious box that must be opened and its contents examined before moving on. There is no room for such frivolities as hair washing and toast. Each syllable has a purpose, a drive, and a subtext. Under every sentence a buried treasure waits.
I want my life to be like the second type of book, full of spectacle, art, and brilliance, but all too often it lolls along in the first type.
I do things like forget to eat until two in the afternoon, and then stuff my face ravenously with pumpkin spice hersheys kisses, which I think are revolting, and would never ordinarily eat except that there is very little in the house right now, and unless I want to cover a slab of bread in cream cheese and maple syrup.
Actually...
that sounds quite nice.
I'll be right back.
Times like these my rapacity terrifies me.
I feel as though I could eat the entire world and want seconds.
There is no pizza big enough, no ice cream container bottomless enough, no quantity of food satisfies me. I seek the binge like a drug addled boyfriend. I want to sink against something bigger and more fucked up than I am, blame it for all of my problems and then shrug off the obvious solutions.
I want to hit my stride, the peak of the binge where I'm halfway between hungry, full, and stuffed motionless, suspended between satiety and action, furiously snuffling for the next thing to devour.
It's confusing, because I use words like 'should' and 'ought to' to describe my feelings of satisfaction.
___________'should' be enough.
___________'ought to' satisfy me.
But it doesn't.
I'm not starving anymore, not ravenous, aching with hunger, but just feeling comfortable isn't good enough. Why is that? Fear? The "well I've fucked it up so far, might as well go down like a prize fighter"mentality? Is it some terrible, internalized female inadequacy that holds me hostage and pries my fingers from around the novel and presses them around the handle of the fridge instead?
I wish I had the answers.
But that's not what this blog is for. I'm not here to tell you I've got it figured out because I don't.
I know that I am sitting here, and the roster of things I could be shoveling into my face is running through my head faster than a digital menu flashing across a screen at the movies.
I could finish the bag of hershey's kisses,
finish the box of almond cookies,
finish the cream cheese with however many slices of bread it takes,
pour the maple syrup over something, anything, pretend it's dessert, pretend it's a cake, soak my fingers in sugar and milk and cram whatever it is down my throat and into my stomach and pray that it's enough to silence the rumble throughout my being that cries for more more more!
More happiness!
More sleep!
More free time!
More adventures!
More indulgences!
All of the things that I don't have time for because of work, grad school, extra work, dogs, husbands, friends, and siblings getting ready to move overseas.
For all of the reasons i say, "someday i'll give myself enough", I feel I never am full, never not hungry, always lifting the clock like a plate to see if there's a crumb of time left for me.
Always shaking the book and running my sticky fingers through the cracks in the spine to see if there's an extra word left, just one more, the right one, that finally gets the rumble to quiet.
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Drowning in a Tea Cup and Other Fables of Hydration
The forming of new habits has been the bane of my existence.
My favorite habits (the unhealthy ones) form without me even noticing.
Grabbing a beer every single night when I get home from work seems to creep up during the summer out of nowhere.
Skipping a coffee date with a good friend turns into skipping the next and the next, until suddenly we just don't talk anymore.
Putting on my pjs and hopping into bed at a reasonable hour only to bugger about with my phone until one in the morning becomes a ritual before I can even blink.
It's the habits I WANT to pick up that are so tricky.
One habit I am trying to make stick is drinking a full 16oz glass of water first thing when I get up every morning.
You should probably know: I hate water.
It's genetic!
I swear it's not my fault!
My parents haven't had a glass of water between them since the late 80's.
One english and one Canadian, both baby boomers, they grew up during the coffee and tea revolution.
In my house growing up there was a pot of coffee on before my mother even knew she was out of bed and in the kitchen. Back when we were broke it was Chockful o' Nuts, which to this day still smells like stomach acid to me.
As soon as the second pot of coffee was gone, they switched to tea, and tea was drunk intermittently throughout the afternoon.
If you go into my parents house at this very moment, there is a pot of tea either boiling hot at my Dad's elbow, going tepid on a coaster as my mother turns the pages of a book, or stone cold and forgotten during its ninth reheating in the microwave.
At dinner, my mother drinks tea, and my father will spoil himself with a glass of lemonade, and then switch back to tea directly after the meal.
Their last physicals both put them at excellent health (ages 60 and 67) so perhaps they're onto something.
I never grew up drinking water.
I wanted to be a grown up so badly I begged to drink tea from the time I was six years old.
They refused and instead served me nursery tea, which was a cup of hot water from the third or fourth steeping of a tea bag, flooded with milk and honey. I treasured these white hot little drinks as my gateway into the adult world, so naturally, as soon as my parents deemed I had finished my growth spurts, I began trying to drink coffee.
I was sailing along merrily, drinking all the drinks except water until around college, when I first experimented with restricting and realized how many extra calories were in those drinks, so I cut them out, and began chugging the vile, flavorless beverage I had avoided my whole life.
After my recovery swung in the other direction, I all but abandoned it, and associated it (sadly like I do a number of things) with that time period.
Until I started working at the bakery about six years ago.
In the back of house, especially in the summer, the bakery would easily rest between eighty and a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. I was lifting hundreds of pounds of flour, hustling in front of a four hundred and fifty degree oven, and shaping countless loaves of bread for eight hours.
My coworker, the second night I was working, hurled a bottle of water at me and said, get this in your face, and nothing had ever tasted better. I became a devoted water drinker, beasting two or three bottles in a shift.
After I stopped working in the back of house and moved to the (while certainly not sedentary) less heated position of manager, I took up running, and for my seasons, I would reach for water as readily and handily as any athlete, something I marveled at: my renewed thirst!
This year I have had to end my season early thanks to my ankle injury, and I can feel bad habits gnawing at the borders of my brain. I want to sleep more, eat more, hide more, due both to the change in seasons and the slowing of my metabolism now that I'm not distance training.
My water intake plummeted.
About a month ago I went out for breakfast with my parents and jokingly asked them about their hereditary hydrophobia.
They laughed and dismissed it of any importance chatting happily away about how they revile the stuff and can't recall the last time they drank any.
My Dad leaned across the table very seriously and remarked, "but I have taken to having a large glass of cranberry juice in the mornings, darling," as if to set my mind at ease.
But JESS, WE'VE BEEN TOLD OUR WHOLE LIVES TO DRINK 8 GLASSES OF WATER A DAY OR WE'LL SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUST!!
That RDA about eight glasses is actually hogwash, you can read about it scientifically here:
http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/water/art-20044256
and
You can read about it in a much more fun and down to earth way here:
http://butterbeliever.com/8-reasons-not-to-drink-8-glasses-of-water-a-day/
As part of my getting back to listening to my body thingy, I realized that nine nights out of ten, I don't drink anything after six in the evening. Weird right?
I just forget...usually because I'm in the midst of some food drama related brain melt, but sometimes because I do get locked into the bad habit of a glass of wine after work is very very nice, and then I get sleepy, and well...you know the rest.
So I have been successfully getting my ass out of bed every morning, and while I walk the dog, I drink a 16oz bottle of water.
At some point in the afternoon I usually reach for another, and then, if I am thirsty later I base my agua needs on how I feel in the moment.
Do I want a water?
Or do I want that giant lemonade?
Or am I just going to give in and make a pot of tea?
You can guess which one wins more often than not, and in the mean time, I'm still getting up in the mornings and feeling good about the first thing I do, so that's something.
My favorite habits (the unhealthy ones) form without me even noticing.
Grabbing a beer every single night when I get home from work seems to creep up during the summer out of nowhere.
Skipping a coffee date with a good friend turns into skipping the next and the next, until suddenly we just don't talk anymore.
Putting on my pjs and hopping into bed at a reasonable hour only to bugger about with my phone until one in the morning becomes a ritual before I can even blink.
It's the habits I WANT to pick up that are so tricky.
One habit I am trying to make stick is drinking a full 16oz glass of water first thing when I get up every morning.
You should probably know: I hate water.
It's genetic!
I swear it's not my fault!
My parents haven't had a glass of water between them since the late 80's.
One english and one Canadian, both baby boomers, they grew up during the coffee and tea revolution.
In my house growing up there was a pot of coffee on before my mother even knew she was out of bed and in the kitchen. Back when we were broke it was Chockful o' Nuts, which to this day still smells like stomach acid to me.
As soon as the second pot of coffee was gone, they switched to tea, and tea was drunk intermittently throughout the afternoon.
If you go into my parents house at this very moment, there is a pot of tea either boiling hot at my Dad's elbow, going tepid on a coaster as my mother turns the pages of a book, or stone cold and forgotten during its ninth reheating in the microwave.
At dinner, my mother drinks tea, and my father will spoil himself with a glass of lemonade, and then switch back to tea directly after the meal.
Their last physicals both put them at excellent health (ages 60 and 67) so perhaps they're onto something.
I never grew up drinking water.
I wanted to be a grown up so badly I begged to drink tea from the time I was six years old.
They refused and instead served me nursery tea, which was a cup of hot water from the third or fourth steeping of a tea bag, flooded with milk and honey. I treasured these white hot little drinks as my gateway into the adult world, so naturally, as soon as my parents deemed I had finished my growth spurts, I began trying to drink coffee.
I was sailing along merrily, drinking all the drinks except water until around college, when I first experimented with restricting and realized how many extra calories were in those drinks, so I cut them out, and began chugging the vile, flavorless beverage I had avoided my whole life.
After my recovery swung in the other direction, I all but abandoned it, and associated it (sadly like I do a number of things) with that time period.
Until I started working at the bakery about six years ago.
In the back of house, especially in the summer, the bakery would easily rest between eighty and a hundred degrees Fahrenheit. I was lifting hundreds of pounds of flour, hustling in front of a four hundred and fifty degree oven, and shaping countless loaves of bread for eight hours.
My coworker, the second night I was working, hurled a bottle of water at me and said, get this in your face, and nothing had ever tasted better. I became a devoted water drinker, beasting two or three bottles in a shift.
After I stopped working in the back of house and moved to the (while certainly not sedentary) less heated position of manager, I took up running, and for my seasons, I would reach for water as readily and handily as any athlete, something I marveled at: my renewed thirst!
This year I have had to end my season early thanks to my ankle injury, and I can feel bad habits gnawing at the borders of my brain. I want to sleep more, eat more, hide more, due both to the change in seasons and the slowing of my metabolism now that I'm not distance training.
My water intake plummeted.
About a month ago I went out for breakfast with my parents and jokingly asked them about their hereditary hydrophobia.
They laughed and dismissed it of any importance chatting happily away about how they revile the stuff and can't recall the last time they drank any.
My Dad leaned across the table very seriously and remarked, "but I have taken to having a large glass of cranberry juice in the mornings, darling," as if to set my mind at ease.
But JESS, WE'VE BEEN TOLD OUR WHOLE LIVES TO DRINK 8 GLASSES OF WATER A DAY OR WE'LL SPONTANEOUSLY COMBUST!!
That RDA about eight glasses is actually hogwash, you can read about it scientifically here:
http://www.mayoclinic.org/healthy-living/nutrition-and-healthy-eating/in-depth/water/art-20044256
and
You can read about it in a much more fun and down to earth way here:
http://butterbeliever.com/8-reasons-not-to-drink-8-glasses-of-water-a-day/
As part of my getting back to listening to my body thingy, I realized that nine nights out of ten, I don't drink anything after six in the evening. Weird right?
I just forget...usually because I'm in the midst of some food drama related brain melt, but sometimes because I do get locked into the bad habit of a glass of wine after work is very very nice, and then I get sleepy, and well...you know the rest.
So I have been successfully getting my ass out of bed every morning, and while I walk the dog, I drink a 16oz bottle of water.
At some point in the afternoon I usually reach for another, and then, if I am thirsty later I base my agua needs on how I feel in the moment.
Do I want a water?
Or do I want that giant lemonade?
Or am I just going to give in and make a pot of tea?
You can guess which one wins more often than not, and in the mean time, I'm still getting up in the mornings and feeling good about the first thing I do, so that's something.
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
Who Doesn't Want to be a Phoenix?
The best experiences are often born from fear.
It has taken me a very long time to admit how much of my life my eating disorder controls.
I am creating this blog as a means to my final and lasting recovery.
The fear part is that the blog is public, which means anybody can know my failures and successes.
There is a lot of trepidation that comes along with knowing all you have to do is read this blog to know very personal, very embarrassing facts about me, but part of my recovery is that I must be honest and forthright.
In the ED community it is a well known fact that these disorders flourish in darkness. They thrive on secrecy and shame, and are most successful when feeding into themselves the wicked cycle of fear/anxiety/coping/disordered behavior/self shame/secrecy/fear.
I look at that cycle and I feel cold. There is something so lonely about the ways we abuse ourselves be it drug addiction, food addiction, restriction, self harm, etc. The disorder loves its solitude. It knows that when we are surrounded by a loving and supportive community, it has much less control over both our mental and our physical compulsions.
I will not use this first entry to tell you my full story. It will reveal itself over the course of this blog, as I struggle to maintain a healthy lifestyle free from obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors.
All you need to know is this:
My name is Jess.
I am thirty two years old, and I have been struggling with disordered eating in various manifestations since I was nineteen. Thirteen is a lucky number to me, so I think thirteen years is too long for this to have played such a consuming part of my life. I am creating this blog to share my struggles both through recovery, and the traumas of my past, that still feed into the hold these behaviors have over my life.
I do not feel like sharing my stats with the blog at this time, but I may change my mind in the future.
Suffice to say, I am five foot eight, and I identify as female. I am married to a gorgeous, spooky, wonderful man, and we have no children as of yet, although we would like to begin our family at some point in the next couple of years.
I work full time managing the retail staff of an artisan bakery.
I am also a full time grad student working on my MFA in Creative Writing through a prestigious low residency program. I am currently halfway through my first semester of four.
I see no reason for religion to take up any space on this blog, and I have no desire to discuss my theological beliefs here, but I reserve the right to reference holidays as they pertain to my experiences, and any rituals, attendances, or experiences I have of a religious nature as they affect my journey through recovery.
I make these two promises:
Nothing will be omitted.
Everything I write will be true.
Only by documenting my truth will I be able to build a pyre of the old, negative energies which have fed this disorder for so many years.
Help me set a match to this kindling by only sharing supportive, positive, and helpful stories and information here.
Shaming, critical, or bullying commentary will be immediately deleted and contributors of such will be banned.
I want everyone to feel safe here.
Finally, I want to share a short list of blogs that I go to almost once a day every day, for supportive stories, rants, articles, and movements by incredibly talented and awesome women with their own experiences with disordered eating.
http://www.themilitantbaker.com/
http://brittanyherself.com/
http://www.hungryrunnergirl.com/
http://margaretcho.com/2003/11/06/the-fuck-it-diet/
http://www.virgietovar.com/
http://sadienardini.com/
I should probably warn you that this will not be your typical well thought out, incredibly edited, fancy-type blog.
I am definitely going to say "fuck" a lot.
I am probably going to post recipes that I like, along with weird connected feelings I have to those recipes.
There will probably be some triggering posts at one point or another, but I promise to warn you ahead of time, so you can decide for yourself if you want to come down the rabbit hole with me.
I might post the odd picture. I'm still very new at this whole blog-o-shpiel so it could take a while before this blog looks like anything other than the rambling scribbles of an over-sharer.
All I can say is thank you for being here.
Thanks for showing up and throwing down your old, dried up, no longer useful fear and worry and anxiety because we're gonna throw it on the fire. We're gonna feed it to the flames.
We're gonna scream and whoop and possibly dance naked (yes...I am the naked friend, everybody has one, and I know it's me), and we are going to get this poison out of our systems because we deserve to live and love and laugh with wild abandon!
I am ready to rise.
Come with me.
It has taken me a very long time to admit how much of my life my eating disorder controls.
I am creating this blog as a means to my final and lasting recovery.
The fear part is that the blog is public, which means anybody can know my failures and successes.
There is a lot of trepidation that comes along with knowing all you have to do is read this blog to know very personal, very embarrassing facts about me, but part of my recovery is that I must be honest and forthright.
In the ED community it is a well known fact that these disorders flourish in darkness. They thrive on secrecy and shame, and are most successful when feeding into themselves the wicked cycle of fear/anxiety/coping/disordered behavior/self shame/secrecy/fear.
I look at that cycle and I feel cold. There is something so lonely about the ways we abuse ourselves be it drug addiction, food addiction, restriction, self harm, etc. The disorder loves its solitude. It knows that when we are surrounded by a loving and supportive community, it has much less control over both our mental and our physical compulsions.
I will not use this first entry to tell you my full story. It will reveal itself over the course of this blog, as I struggle to maintain a healthy lifestyle free from obsessive thoughts and compulsive behaviors.
All you need to know is this:
My name is Jess.
I am thirty two years old, and I have been struggling with disordered eating in various manifestations since I was nineteen. Thirteen is a lucky number to me, so I think thirteen years is too long for this to have played such a consuming part of my life. I am creating this blog to share my struggles both through recovery, and the traumas of my past, that still feed into the hold these behaviors have over my life.
I do not feel like sharing my stats with the blog at this time, but I may change my mind in the future.
Suffice to say, I am five foot eight, and I identify as female. I am married to a gorgeous, spooky, wonderful man, and we have no children as of yet, although we would like to begin our family at some point in the next couple of years.
I work full time managing the retail staff of an artisan bakery.
I am also a full time grad student working on my MFA in Creative Writing through a prestigious low residency program. I am currently halfway through my first semester of four.
I see no reason for religion to take up any space on this blog, and I have no desire to discuss my theological beliefs here, but I reserve the right to reference holidays as they pertain to my experiences, and any rituals, attendances, or experiences I have of a religious nature as they affect my journey through recovery.
I make these two promises:
Nothing will be omitted.
Everything I write will be true.
Only by documenting my truth will I be able to build a pyre of the old, negative energies which have fed this disorder for so many years.
Help me set a match to this kindling by only sharing supportive, positive, and helpful stories and information here.
Shaming, critical, or bullying commentary will be immediately deleted and contributors of such will be banned.
I want everyone to feel safe here.
Finally, I want to share a short list of blogs that I go to almost once a day every day, for supportive stories, rants, articles, and movements by incredibly talented and awesome women with their own experiences with disordered eating.
http://www.themilitantbaker.com/
http://brittanyherself.com/
http://www.hungryrunnergirl.com/
http://margaretcho.com/2003/11/06/the-fuck-it-diet/
http://www.virgietovar.com/
http://sadienardini.com/
I should probably warn you that this will not be your typical well thought out, incredibly edited, fancy-type blog.
I am definitely going to say "fuck" a lot.
I am probably going to post recipes that I like, along with weird connected feelings I have to those recipes.
There will probably be some triggering posts at one point or another, but I promise to warn you ahead of time, so you can decide for yourself if you want to come down the rabbit hole with me.
I might post the odd picture. I'm still very new at this whole blog-o-shpiel so it could take a while before this blog looks like anything other than the rambling scribbles of an over-sharer.
All I can say is thank you for being here.
Thanks for showing up and throwing down your old, dried up, no longer useful fear and worry and anxiety because we're gonna throw it on the fire. We're gonna feed it to the flames.
We're gonna scream and whoop and possibly dance naked (yes...I am the naked friend, everybody has one, and I know it's me), and we are going to get this poison out of our systems because we deserve to live and love and laugh with wild abandon!
I am ready to rise.
Come with me.
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