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.

people. PEOPLE! What Scurvey Luck!

(Bedknobs and Broomsticks)
This line from my childhood story on record has been bouncing around unrelentingly in my head over the past number of days. It's what the bear says after fishing in the beautiful briney sea and pulling up a bed filled with people. It was so not what he'd hoped to haul in.

And it fits.
It's great to theorize about people and how to get along with them, and how to be the sort of person that gives life to others. It's quite another thing to try and live the thing out. There are so many holes in my heart and in my perceptions. There is so much hunger and neediness and fear.
I love watching our dog Shadow when people come to the door, and especially when Brian comes home from work. She is unabashedly needy and enthusiastic. She launches herself at people, turns herself in circles, tries to grow wings and fly so she can cover mouths and noses with sloppy dog kisses. She never grows self-conscious or embarrassed of her neediness and enthusiasm. She doesn't appear to indulge self-doubt or construct alter-egos to hide her flawed self behind.

But I'm afraid my own neediness embarrasses me. My own vulnerabilites make me indulge in speculations and put thoughts in other people's heads. And worse than that, sometimes people just annoy me. It becomes a tricky balance to recognize my own frailties and acknowledge them, but not to the exclusion of all the simultaneous holes and neediness of the people I am interacting with. It's tempting to begin the compare my relational style with those of others. That's potentially dangerous because we all have our own strengths and weaknesses and the way to celebrate a strength is not by comparing it to anothers' weakness. It's cheap strokes to feel self-righteous by pouncing on someone else's apparent failures.

It's just sad to have a lightbulb moment and see that even when you are being "yourself" , you land up hurting and disappointing, ignoring and disregarding, or just generally annoying people. And you know that this phenomenon will never stop.

I don't know how anyone can stand to be a pastor or a counsellor. I imagine that people have some pretty massive expectations of their relational skills. I imagine that they are expected to be selfless at all times. To do this well and not land up drooling into a bib wrapped in a straight jacket must require a really intense knowledge of your place in God's set up. To do it well and maintain joy and peace must require a constant dependence on the Holy Spirit- a really effective running conversation with the Designer. And a pretty fine tuned knowledge of yourself- your strengths, weaknesses, temptations, typical pitfalls. I see these type of skills a great deal in the pastor of my church. I am hugely encouraged by this example. (I still don't want to be a pastor though....)

Ironically, I've also seen a lot of churched people fall into quite a trap of gossip and finger pointing. Alternately, a lot of nonreligious people have taught me respect for others, the guidelines of love and goodness, and the freedom in loving others without fear. That's not to suggest that church people got it wrong and yellow brand people have it all together relationally. That would be stupid and judgemental as well. It is evident that people who call themselves followers of Jesus don't hold all the relational cards (duh). Which leads me to think that it's more a matter of the heart? Do we get "points" for meaning well? Is it more important to remain supple and willing to learn, willing to humble self and ask questions? Sometimes Christians are so acclimatized to looking for categories of "right" and "wrong", that they forget that people's perceptions should probably trump all of that. And a lot of the time, relationships are just plain muddy. They require dialogue. Redefinition. Active listening.

People. What scurvey luck! A fish I could just fry and eat...

Writers Club

With the calendar indicating that my fortieth birthday was imminent, I wanted to do something stick-neck-out-ish to challenge myself not to get fat and complacent. So, I joined the Steinbach Arts Council writers club. I felt sort of shy about pretending to think of myself as a writer, and wondered if I'd feel stupid and naked there, much like I did in science, geography, and history (oh, and math...) throughout my school life. But the point was to challenge myself. Stick my neck out. Take some risks.

The first challenge was the Carillon News annual Christmas writing contest. I couldn't think of a thing to write. But I got very stern with myself and had myself a bit of a talking to.

"Self.

You MUST submit something. It does not have to be brilliant. It only has to be written, and submitted."

In the back of my mind, I knew that if I sent something in and didn't get so much as a nod, I would know for sure what a boneheadlosernogoodgoodfornothingwannabe I was. So, it was pretty easy to beat my own personal best. So far, my personal best had involved staying small so that there was no question about it- I could not succeed.

The other, much larger, much scarier, much more tear-inducing concern was that two Decembers ago, my brother Ken had won first place in that very same writing contest. He wrote an incredibly brilliant, layered piece that was so loaded in symbolism that much of it embarrassingly sailed right over my head.

I felt really intimidated to swim in the same pool as my really smart, really talented brother who I'd never see again on this side.

The day before the deadline, I still had no epiphany of brilliance.

So, I tricked myself. I logged into my blogspot, and just did what I do: Open the gates of neural pathology and semantics, and let my fingers do the talking.

I couldn't get the dang laptop to connect to the internet. But, determined to beat my pathetic personal best, I phoned the editer and asked for an extension until the following morning, so that my less electronically crippled husband could help me out with the internet issue.

A few days later, I received an e-mail from the fearless leader of the writers club, congratulating the media winners. I anxiously scanned the names in the e-mail and found that my name was not in the mix. Now I was really starting to feel like I was back in grade 11 geography. Plus, I was ashamed at my selfishness. Here I was part of a secret club- kind of like a writers cult or something, and I ought to be thrilled for all the cult members who had gotten their names in print. Instead I resented and envied them.

But then.
On the first Wednesday of the month of December, I got a phone call from my mother.

"Well.... You made it!" she chirped.
"Made it through what, mom?"
"You made it in the paper!"

Here's where it gets all layered and weird and holy and Anne-Lammott-ish.
All the layers started floating and intersecting and a whole bunch of them got bunched up in my tear ducts and clogged up my throat and my ability to breathe. I couldn't speak. I began to fear that my mother was victem to the dreaded dementia and she was hallucinating.

I made her read the name out loud. Tell me the page number. Tell me she was sure. And I wept. For my brother, for me, for life.

But what about writers club? Well, it turns out that they had done an internal review on each other's work and voted in the best pieces to be sent to the editer of the paper. I hadn't been able to make it to that month's session, and just assumed that I ought to send my work directly to the editer himself.

Which meant that I was the only member of the cult to get paid for the honour of seeing my name in print. I was like some kind of writer snob now, who could write off huge portions of her house, due to being a writer and all. I would have to claim the thirty-five big ones on my income tax receipt, look for tax cuts, try not to let it all go to my head- remember the small town from whence I came...

What I really learned was this: Time will continue to pass in 24 hour segments. You can live small, offend no one, not even dare to take any risks. Or you can celebrate. Embrace. Live out loud. You may or may not get your strokes, but at least you know you challenged your own status quo.
At least you get to know your own heart.

On Loving People

I've come across a few instances in my blogging life where people choose to go into the "witness relocation program", pack up their virtual online life, and start all over again somewhere else under an assumed identity. Either that, or just sort of vanish. Its not difficult to understand. Talk about a platform for worldwide misinterpretation and vulnerability- providing an oppurtunity for every tom, dick and harry to tell you what your problem is and why you should take it elsewhere.

But there's more than one parallel to "real life". Who doesn't hide behind something? Who isn't afraid on some level of people's judgements, hatred, misunderstanding?

Life as a human is chock full of relationships. And it doesn't take any amount of insight to know that loving people is a quagmire of complications, subject to perspective bound interpretations.

Which brings me to God, and love, and authenticity. The more you allow life to grow you, the more people you love. The more people you allow into your heart, the more your heart expands to allow for the numbers. The more people taking up your heart space, the more you realize how much pain, ugliness, disappointment, and sorrow there is in this life. The more you recognize its existance, the more you want to be useful in some capacity, to ease the pain, to be part of a solution, but ironically, you simultaneously realize that you can "help" no one, that you are utterly bound in your own selfishness and stunted desires and distracting mind games.

Which brings me back to God. And back to the question about how do we people want to live these lives we've been given? I've got to say, that for myself, despite the pain and sense of powerlessness, I wouldn't have it any other way- at least when I think of the richness brought about through human relationships. What wealth we share in terms of beauty in a whole bunch of broken people desiring to give one another a hand up and a shoulder to cry on, and some stuff to laugh about- Together. It provides a sense that God is very creative and makes all sorts of different people for all sorts of different reasons.

On Sunday at church, I listened to a fitting teaching about God and His sense of direction. How the Spirit of Jesus speaks in ways we can each hear. Through the boredom, the monotony, the looooooong stretches of life where no miracles or "breakthroughs" occur in your life. Where you are angry, disillusioned, mad at God, not sure any more why you are compelled to follow that "still, small voice" since it doesn't seem to be taking you into any euphoric mountaintop places or even into a place of endless patience with your spouse and children. But I got a picture of prayer moving things in the spiritual that goes beyond my sense of immediacy and my desired results. I saw a picture of us all being interlocked in varying and creative ways. That a loving heart- a heart that loves God, hurts when others hurt. Cries when others cry. Lends a hand.

How does this relate to the witness protection program? Here's how I see it. We ought not be too quick to judge others, or to offer them really valuable advice, unless it compells relentlessly from that place deep inside. People's pain won't disappear because of a seven point address on why they are hurting, what they did wrong to get hurt in the first place, and how to turn into a better person so that they don't keep getting hurt. I think our good intentions to make people feel better often drives them away. Sends them into hiding. Then we can pretend that they are not hurting anymore, because we don't have to listen to it any more. i think that a more accurate truth is that we are all mixed up all the time. We all struggle with something. We all stumble over some repetitive theme til we want to scream and run for the hills.

And we all have the capacity to listen. To tune into how to love one another. It's bound to be flawed. Its bound to be painful.

But would you really have it any other way?

Language Barriers

Brian and I did not go to work today. It was Sam's appointment with the pediatric neurologist, and coincidently, Brian damaged his finger on the weekend and needed to tend to that as well. So we headed off to the city first thing in the morning, just the three of us. After navigating the children's hospital and getting Sam through another appointment with no "pokes", we were off to the Pan Am Sports Injury Clinic. In two and a half hours of moving from waiting area to waiting area, Sam made a lot of new friends. By our third waiting room (the one after x-ray, but before splints) we came around the corner to a chuckle and a "Hi Sam!" from a cheery man with a heavy accent who we'd been periodically sharing spaces with for a few hours. He reminisced about his three sons, grown up now, and how he imagined that Sam was a bright and happy boy, since he was actively asking question after question throughout the morning waits. We smiled and easily understood one another.

The long awaited reward for all that doctoring was a midday meal at McDonald's. We noted pessimistically that it was precisely lunch time, and we were located directly across from a high school. Should be reminiscient of field trips, we speculated. Brian graciously gave me the best "people-watching" position at the table, and I noticed all the unspoken languages amongst the teenaged patrons. The ones with skateboards wore their hoods, slouched, and let their pants drag behind them. Certain girls seemed to understand that language. A lone boy sat behind us, avoiding eye contact and concentrating on his soft drink. I wondered whether he didn't understand the language? or didn't want to? Was he new to the school? How did kids manage life some days, I wondered.

An energetic and friendly McDonald's employee, way beyond the age of "earning a couple of extra bucks" scooted around graciously picking up garbage that the kids literally crunched up and threw onto the floor around them. Not only was he quick, he was genuinely friendly. I tried to imagine having such a good attitude after bussing tables at a fast food store, serving snotty nosed teens, and not earning a whole lot for the effort. I knew for sure that I'd want to throw myself off of Abe's hill if I had to trade places with him.

Then, as we licked the last of our hot fudge off our fingers, it happened.
Surly-mc-surls'a'lot beside us got up to get a refill. Simultaneously, energetic clean-up boy- turned-man came around the corner and scooped up the paper wrappers and ketchups and deposited them into the trash. Surly I-hate-my-life guy came back from the counter and began the language. "HEY! Did you just F*%#@'in take away my F*%#@'n Food?!"

And here's the thing. Clean up guy stayed nice. Even though he could have been the brat's dad. Maybe even Grandfather.

But Surly wasn't done.
Nope, he stormed to the counter to complain to the manager, to demand a replacement meal, to snatch a comment card and make great show of filling it in in view of all the staff.

I was mad at him, and felt sorry for clean up guy. I noticed that clean up guy was looking more worried than annoyed, and that annoyed me even more because of the man's age, and the position he was in, having to take F&%*'s from some snotty nosed overgrown kid.

But then I started wondering about surly-McQ's language. Did he get taught at home that the only way to get what you need is by being aggressive? Mean? F%#@$-ish?

And that's the thing. Most of us only know our own language very well and so we interpret everyone around us through that filter.

There's no feel-good conclusion here. I still think it stinks that decent people have to (microwave) burgers and push brooms after stink-faced customers. But maybe it stinks just as bad that this kid never learned better conflict management.