epiphany

Twelve years and twenty-five pounds later, I think I've had an epiphany.

I've spent a lot of time yearning to "go back". Back to the years when the bathroom scale would confirm that I'd made my peace with food and weight. Back when I ate almost exclusively to satisfy my natural, God-given, physical hunger signals. When I liked the feeling of lightness in my stomach and knew just exactly where the line between "too much" and "just right" lay.

Sure, those days I often woke up with the very same thought that greets me every single awakening morning that I've had since.

"You're Fat."

But in those days, the scale that I mostly ignored and shunned would confirm in a factual sum that I was indeed very not fat. And so, I could move on. The hard numerical facts and the clothes that continued to fit verified that all the hard mental work I had done to overcome my compulsions and disorders had indeed paid off.

Fast forward to catastrophic event in my personal life. To surging, edgy, skin-crawlingly intense anxiety. To a magnified feeling of helplessness. And terror. And disbelief.

Then interpersonal conflict, word flinging, and fragmented relationships.

The strangest thing began to happen. I had a figurative space at the back of my throat that opened into a chasm of terror and anxiety. I needed not to feel hungry. It frightened me. I felt completely conflicted about my body. I wanted to be thin, but I felt guilty about it. As though it were selfish (snobbish, superior, threatening) somehow. The hole at the back of my throat wanted to eat more food. I, meanwhile, feared the results, all the while feeling conspicuous in my smaller size, but dreading growing larger.

And so the years of conflict ensued.
I ate more because my body asked for more.
I wanted to want to eat less.
I tried everything to convince myself that I wanted to eat less.
I wanted to be thin again, and to not want, and I wanted the anxiety and conflict to go away.
I wanted to stop growing in size and I was afraid of what it all meant. Afraid that I was just dangling inches above a terrible chasm.

But all the while, I was figuring things out, bit by tiny bit. I figured out what different pieces of the conflict were really about. I figured out how to come (mostly) to terms with it.

I eventually noticed that I really had not regressed into the full-blown horrible years of illness. I noticed that my body was asking for more, but just that. Not endless, bottomless, piles of comfort stacked and scooped in bowls and platters. My body simply did not desire the sense of near empty lightness that I'd loved in the days before. It wanted to be solid to the ground, and not in a physical place of anything that felt like lack.

And so I grew.
Alternately accepting my sense of self, my size, and my voice and then feeling terrified and ashamed of them.
Despising the impossible pressure to be successful, thin, hungry, full, fit, perfect... and then making new resolutions to become all those things.

Push.
Pull.

In recent years, I've noticed a new, fledgling voice. A voice that resonates with one I heard in real time at one of my outrageous dress-up parties for women.

We were standing outside in the frost, wine glasses in hand. We were proposing toasts, and then flinging our wine glasses at the porcelain claw foot bathtub that resides in the back yard.

My friend raised her glass and proposed a toast that has rung in my ears ever since:

"Here's to never being hungry again"

.

She was really and truly quitting. Marching straight into herself with eyes wide open, grinning ear to ear. She refused ever to go hungry again in order to become a size that she felt she ought to be. She decided that maybe her body knew.

.

That it was time to be. To eat. To partake.

.

I think my entire insides momentarily paused as I heard her words. They were so simple, so courageous, so terrifyingly tantalizing.

.

I've been thinking about them for almost a year now.

.

Meanwhile, I've continued on my quest of psyche- detangle-ing. I've read a lot of books, always hoping that I'd get the sort of return on my investment that I'd received back in the eighties when I discovered Geneen Roth and her wonderful, life-changing words. Re-reading her work led me to discover that I was in pretty good health, mentally. I was no where near back to where it had all started. (thank God...)

.

On a more recent Amazon search, I ordered the book Transforming Body Image : Learning to Love the Body You Have by Marcia Germaine Hutchinson. I liked the intro. I liked that she didn't fit the typical bill of perfectly nipped and tucked women who go on Oprah to pretend they don't believe in the lies of the beauty myths. This author was not thin, and she'd worked really hard at establishing how to live out her life fully in the vehicle that she'd been given.

.

I skimmed through some of the guided imagery exercises, and skipped past a section entitled: Worksheet: statement of intent. But after thinking about that idea for a few days, I went back to it. What did I in fact intend? Did I want to be thinner? well... yes and no. Not thin at the cost of crazy. Too expensive. Did I want to "straighten out my head" so that I could go back to being thin? well, that's what I thought I wanted. It's what I thought I've wanted for all these years.

But as I stared at the blank spaces beside numbers 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, it slowly dawned on me.

1. I want to live in conscious awareness.

And that was it! I wanted to stop trying to talk myself out of where I was. Where I am. Who I am. Where I'm going. I wanted to be aware of being afraid and then be gentle in my reply.

I want to stop being afraid that I'm wasting my life worrying, and just listen to the worries. Notice. nod. Skip the lectures. Sit with my own self. Take my time.

And when my mental apparitions arrive in their hazy shapes of disapproving humans, I want to notice that too. Remember they've got their own boo-boos that make them a bit crazy and a touch judgemental. They probably need a touch of the same kind of gentle that I do. Their harsh edges don't have to be absorbed by my own fear of lack and fear of disapproval.

I might be hungry again, and I might not.

But I intend to stay awake for every nuance, every new piece that becomes part of this picture called woman. May I invite you to come along?

A toast then. To women, wherever you might be.

Who Are We, Really?

The believer-of-Jesus in me cringes a little posting something with a title like that. But only because my less evolved self fears the disappointment I must be to my more godly friends. Ah well, I can only be me with any sense of authenticity. I kind of know the church answers to this question, and I don't think that's really what my core question is anyhow. A favourite blogger of mine is currently dealing with the painful reality of surrendering her mother's mind and personality to that shameless thief: Alzheimers disease. In the post, she raises the question of "who are we without our memories?" I "hmmm-ed" thoughtfully at the question, as I have worked for some years with people harshly changed by dementia and alzheimers. I only ever knew them as ill, since it was their diagnosis which brought them into the care of medical personnal. Still, I often stared into the photographs on their bureaus and walls to try and get a whiff of who they once were. Mother. Father. Professional. Funny, gifted, brilliant, flashy. All was in the past. And it made me wonder who, or what a person is. We describe people by their character, or behaviors, or talents. But is there a core to what a person is? Are we simply bodies with chemicals coursing through us that direct our choices, attributes, and personalities? I mean that question entirely apart from the question of "soul" and "spirit", since they transcend the physical and have everlasting qualities. I'm talking more about the here and now.

This question first exploded in my head some years ago when a close friend experienced her first bipolar induced mania. Her body carried on, but SHE was not directing it. She was gone. My friend had died, but her body walked among us. It held within it some memories of when its rightful owner occupied it, but the memories were polluted and poisoned. Instead of providing a familiar place for loved ones to meet, they twisted and tainted what once was, and perceived old friends as newly identified enemies.

The agony was worse than death. And it begged the question: Who are we really? Chemicals held together by synapse and sinew? A portable lab? A sort of "matrix" existance where we see what we want to see, but can't or don't acknowledge its fragility? If I have more or less of a particular chemical, would I become a person who struggles with rage? artistic excellence? Would I become more, or less likeable? socially acceptable? deceived?

If I were involved in an accident involving serious head injury, my personality could become permanently altered. Is that then the "who" that I am? How do we know that the original "who" is the real one? Is there something entirely untouchable, entirely "core" that can define us regardless of life's cruelties?

And what about something more mundane and innocuous like all the millions of little decisions we make in all the millions of moments that make up the years of our lives? As they develop grooves of familiarity in our grey matter, they shape us into who we are. Are we then the culmination of chemicals, culture, and choices?

And why does this feel like such a scarey thing to question?

News Flash: Mental Illness Kills

Time to remove stigma, misunderstanding, and mystique from an illness that changes the exchanges of vital chemicals in the brain. Its devastating enough to live with a diagnosis of liver disease, cancer, or diabetes, but when the organ that goes into failure is also the one that directs decision making; the consequences can be devastating.

Mental illness is not an embarrassing condition that weak people are susceptable to. In my experience, its often particularily gifted people who have to learn to live fully with the additional reality of these form of illnesses. Nor is it that people "choose" the illness. (well, except for some criminals who see claiming the status as their best option).

As with any other malady, there are medical treatment options. Some are effective immediately, some require "tweaking" over time, some are ineffective. Just like cancer.

Sometimes, people die.

Allow that to be an oppurtunity to bring the truth about mental illness into the light. Use it to educate those fortunate enough to not know the reality of it firsthand. Ask the question: how best can we be helpful to people who suffer? Don't sit back in judgement or look for someone, or something to blame, any more than you would the victem of heart failure. Don't bother to sit up a little higher in your self-righteous pharisee-ism, grateful that you're not an embarrassment to your loved ones.

Maybe if we gain some perspective and understanding, we'll all become part of the solution for the other zillions of people who are currently suffering... right under our noses. This is not an illness that will go away because we refuse to acknowledge it. This is not an illness that has to end in tragedy.

The tragedy is undeniable, but it need not be served with a side dish of shame.