puberty

Hi.  I’m here.  I haven’t been posting as much lately.  Or maybe it just feels that way, since I’ve been working my program in so many other ways lately.  For instance: 12 meetings in 12 days.

And I am exhausted.  And I have no idea what to write.  I guess I’ll write that I am starting to feel a bit of recovery, and I’m glad of it, but part of me doesn’t want to let go completely.  Doesn’t want to really, fully surrender to the process.  See, the thing is, I am remembering the perverse fascination I had with eating disorders before mine really ballooned into existence–remembering books I read about anorexia by flashlight in my sleeping bag at summer camp, thinking how exciting and strange it would be to just not eat, how weird to not be able to see what you looked like in the mirror, how wonderful and glamorous to be so skinny and depressed; I remember thinking I’d never have the willpower to pull that off, being such an awkward, frumpily-dressed kid, a so-often-unable-to-stop eater.  I remember being an adolescent who felt uncomfortably large and even womanly–matronly, almost–at the age of twelve when her period came, and compared to her best friend, a very small-boned best friend, who didn’t menstruate until she was past sixteen, I remember feeling old and big and sickened by myself.

Interestingly, I didn’t have these memories on hand until tonight–just now.  This evening, I went to a Body Image focus meeting where the qualifier recalled the moments in her childhood that cemented the self-loathing, the not-good-enough-ness.  Even during my own share, I didn’t have these memories unburied yet.  I said to the room that I didn’t recall hating my body until I started college.  Interesting how things then rise to the surface.

When I was in middle school we were taught how to have self-esteem.  We learned what body image was.  We were supposed to be confident, to be happy, healthy, and heterosexual.  Most people seemed not to take issue with this kind of training.  But for whatever reason, growing up, I felt a lot of shame.  Shame when I played football with my dad in a big t-shirt in the front yard and he said he could see my breasts.  Shame when I broached the topic of purchasing a B-R-A with my mother: yes, I had to spell it, not say it, lest one lose one’s dignity.  Shame when it was time to start shaving my legs (I did it secretly, so as not to lose the bet I had with my cousin that I’d hold out till I was 16).  When I needed sanitary napkins.  When a curious 7th grade boy tried to wrest such said napkin out of my locker, then out of my hand, then he begged to know what it was, and he finally opened it up and threw it on the ground for all the 7th grade world to see.   When afore-mentioned small-boned best friend wanted to know if I had started my you-know-what?  Forget it.  I wasn’t talking about it.

Talking about it wasn’t what anyone had done with me–my mom handed me a book to prepare me for the changes my body would undergo–so I didn’t see fit to do it with anyone else.  I talked, I lost something.  My dignity, for example, or the bet I had going with my cousin.  Not to mention my childhood: at all costs, I must not lose sight of my childhood.

So puberty was tough.  And high school?  I guess I still remember feeling big-ish, remember having bigger thighs than other girls at ballet camp did, remember what it felt like to have breasts that moved uncomfortably (and visibly) when we did bourées and sautés across the floor.  Remember eating a larger percentage of my lunch (um, 100) than many other girls there.  And once, at lunch, one girl mentioned something off-hand about bulimia; I remember laughing ; she shot me a vengeful look and said, “Actually, it’s a really serious problem and I had it for two years.  Don’t be so rude.  God.”  As she damn well should have said.  But at that time, at my tender, innocent, sheltered age–fifteen, but still hanging on to that childhood!–I still didn’t believe eating disorders were real.  They were fascinating, yes, attractive somehow, but forget about it.  Once I started eating, I could hardly stop, and my young digestive system never once told me to.  I had never met anyone who willingly restricted their eating, and vomiting to lose weight sounded impossibly silly to me at the time.

I remember avoiding too-tiny shorts and midriff-revealing tops–not necessarily because of my body, but because I knew I wasn’t allowed to be sexy (this was never articulated, necessarily, it just was).  I avoided sex, drugs, and alcohol at all costs: or else childhood would be lost, lost, lost.

Just some memories.  Paralyzed fish that have surfaced after long underwater years.  Skimming the surface.

Yours in recovery,

L.

some days of a some in some

Today marked day 8 of an 8 in 8 which may progress into a some more in some more, or maybe a 30 in 30.  My reluctance to say I’m doing a 30 in 30 (for the newcomer: 30 consecutive days of at least one OA meeting a day) is not reluctance, per se.  Rather, it is rooted in a spirit of taking it easy.  My favorite line in the Big Book: “Relax and take it easy” (from a segment which begins ”Upon awakening…,” which starts on p. 86 of the Third Edition).  I mean, not to point out the obvious, but it actually took me over a year (well, until today) to figure out that 1) This is a dis-ease. And 2) Ease is the opposite of disease.  So, I want ease.  Not dis-ease.

Ease comes to mind when I remember that I am a recovering compulsive over- and under-eater and exerciser and body-hater and perfectionist and over-achiever.  I am recovering, and when anyone’s recovering from anything, be it a headcold or 12-step-worthy stuff, I say “take it easy.”  So these days I tell myself–and my fellows–to take it easy.

Taking it easy ain’t easy, though.  (Don’t care if it’s cheesy, so…oh, God.  She’s rhyming!  What’s happened to her?! It’s the some in some, people.  Makes a huge difference, I gotta say.)  Disregarding the rap-in-progress and getting back to that little slogan I started this paragraph with: the some in some takes work.  For me, this past week, it meant approximately 16 extra subway rides; some, like the commute from 50th St. and 8th Ave. in Manhattan to somewhere in the middle of Brooklyn, took longer than others and deposited me in a seat in a room in a meeting about 30 minutes after the thing had started.  I only heard the last three minutes of the speaker’s qualification, but they were an altogether relatable, recovery-filled, viscerally moving 3 minutes.  You know?  Coming in and hearing exactly what I needed to hear (Actually, I think this statement, which I’ve heard others make many times, is statistically unfair; after all, program is program, and I usually “need to hear” most of it, so…) Anyway.  For me, that night, spending twice as much time on the train than in the actual meeting was “going to any lengths” for my recovery.  Which beats 135 minutes–a rough estimate of total time spent–of bingeing on my couch.  Really.

Today in the meeting I attended I heard a lot about ease and about laughter and letting go.  For me, today, ease is having a sense of humor about all of this.  (Me? In a 12-step program?  Really, HP?  You’re serious?  You’re serious.)  It’s not about being perfect with my food.  It’s about forgiving myself accepting myself and moving on.  It’s about not apologizing or feeling guilty about an extra bite  or a “wrong” food choice here or there, and moving on.  It’s about not restricting when I slip, but rather incorporating more program, more experience, strength, and hope into my life–more meetings!  My some in some!  And the letting go part is huge: I’m assembling my thoughts, as I write, for a new post on the miracles of that topic.

Wow!  What a programmy post this has been!  Maybe I should make a glossary tab for all the lingo...

In love and faith,

L.

 

 

resolutions schmesolutions

A variable (yet ever-present) degree of change over time is God’s (Newton’s?) guarantee to us.  Fortunately, we have free will; our daily–hourly–sometimes split-secondly decisions give us the power to nudge that little thing–change–in different directions.  So here we all are, nudging away, and year after year (mostly commercially motivated, magazine-cover) proclamations of “A New Year, A New You!” insist that the annual re-set of the calendar promises us a sparkly clean slate with which to dramatically make over our mediocre lives.

Bull Shit.

Because all we can really do is nudge.  And I use the word “we” rather ambiguously, because I can really only speak for myself, an addict, and I won’t presume to generalize about the entire human race; after all, certain of us have certainly spurned disproportionate measures of change with whatever nudges we are allotted: Thomas Edison, Rosa Parks, Obama.

What I’m trying to say is that change is gonna happen.  I know what I have to do (always!  not just on perfect, pure and almost symmetrical 1-1-11): get to meetings, work the Steps, and do service.  My program is a triumvirate of the physical, the spiritual, the mental; the unity, the service, the recovery.  I’m not making this up, people.  It’s what my Sponsor told me the first time we sat down together.  It’s written in my Big Book.  I just looked it up.  (I also looked up the word triumvirate, to make sure I was using it correctly, and according to Wikipedia, it’s “a political regime dominated by three powerful individuals…though the three are usually equal on paper, in reality this is rarely the case.”  How appropriate!)

So: New Year’s Resolutions.  Redecorate and clean my room.  Get to the gym at least three times a week.  Make more money.  Learn French.  Organize everything, including my hard drive and email inbox.  Start knitting.  Read or watch the news every day.  Start investing.  Lose at least 10 pounds.  Yada yada yada yada ya.  How silly these all sound!  While some are good ideas, can we agree that suddenly trying to be (what we think would be) perfect all at once on the first of the year (ready, go!) is preposterous?!  And probably not everyone creates such long, impossible lists of self-improvements.  But I can honestly say that a year ago today, that’s probably what my convictions looked like.

So maybe the New Year is a better opportunity for reflection than for planning ahead, since my life seems to have been taking turns lately that I can honestly say I’ve had nothing to do with.  Step One: we admitted we were powerless over food–that our lives had become unmanageable. A year ago today, I was on the painful brink of a break-up in a relationship that just wouldn’t go away, even though one party had moved halfway across the world; I was still wondering what might happen with an ex that had become an ex over a year prior; I was, intensely, “best friends” with someone to whom I felt no real connection; I was bingeing, restricting, and overexercising all the time and drinking a lot; I was making impossible-to-keep and impossible-to-love-myself-otherwise New Year’s Resolutions; I felt distended and miserable, mired in self-loathing and fear, and cocky as hell.  And then a lot of things happened.  A lot of good things, a few tragic things, a lot of difficult things, a lot of selfishness, a lot of laughter.  Nothing all good or all bad.  A lot of prismatic things.

And here we are, on 1-1-11…and in a year, God willing, I’m sure I’ll have had an equally if not more transformative 365 days, with or without resolutions.

Wishing all a peaceful New Year.