tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-74892485387018074642024-03-07T23:35:37.109-08:00Gonzo MotherhoodSleep deprivation's a hell of a drug.Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.comBlogger76125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-73301004763049321702018-06-07T09:30:00.001-07:002018-06-07T09:30:16.387-07:00My Trash Can LifeWhen I was deep in the throes of my ED, one of the hardest experiences I could possibly endure was being around a food I had labeled "bad" "unhealthy" "treaty" and "wrong."<br />
Seeing those adjectives now, I realize how totally fucked my perceptions of food really were, and I can unpack the whole rollicking psychologically breakdown surrounding how I got there, but that's not what I want to do today.<br />
Today I want to talk about something I think a lot of people do, even if they've never had an eating disorder, but for me, the ED symptom was an indication of a larger problem.<br />
See, this is how it went.<br />
I worked someplace, where on a semi-regular basis, someone would thoughtfully bring in a treat for us. A box of donuts, homemade cookies, a cheese platter, etc.<br />
I would stare at this thing ALL. DAMN. DAY. I was convinced that if someone saw me partake in the treat they would judge me. "Oh look at Jess, scarfing down that donut. What a pig. What a total slob."<br />Of course that was the ED talking. Nobody thought that way except me.<br />
To everybody else, it was just a box of donuts, have one, don't have one, whatever.<br />
To me, it was fucking torture.<br />
By the time my coworkers were leaving, and I was the last person to leave most days, I would be left alone with the remains of the treat.<br />
It was often a cardboard box with three half donuts, crusty and hard from sitting out all day, their fillings or toppings spilled out and smeared, their icing ruined, ready for the trash can. It was unspoken that my coworkers anticipated, I would just toss the thing at the end of the night.<br />
Except I couldn't.<br />
When it came time for me to shove the box down into the black plastic bag, I would be overcome with a series of feelings, all of which so strong it was impossible to untangle them at the moment.<br />
I will attempt to do so now.<br />
<br />
I can't believe I made it the whole day without caving and eating a donut! I am superwoman! I am so good! I am healthy! Controlled! I ate fruit and drank loads of water! I should celebrate my commitment and willpower!<br />
<br />
I am sad and hungry. I can't believe I don't get to have a donut. I worked just as hard as everyone else. They were brought in for everyone. I watched Sara eat the one that I would have wanted for myself if I had been allowed to pick one out. She didn't even look like she enjoyed it. I think she threw the last bite away. I wish I was allowed a donut.<br />
<br />
(Remember I am the only person who was dictating what I was and was not "allowed")<br />
<br />
I'm a fucking grown up! I am allowed to eat whatever the fuck I want! This is so stupid! You call yourself a feminist! You're disgusting! You still restrict like you did when you were anorexic! You pretend to be so progressive, but really you're just a coward, so scared that everyone's going to find out you have nothing to offer other than your physical appearance. You don't by the way. You are nothing without your thin, young, body. You are worthless otherwise.<br />
<br />
That's not true!<br />
<br />
Then throw them away!<br />
<br />
And I would angrily take a bite from one of the left behind donuts, and the taste would flood me, the sugar with dissolve into my bloodstream, and my heart would race. Before I could breathe, I'd have stuffed all of the leftovers into my mouth, chewing eagerly, anxiously, swallowing in dry, angry gulps, barely tasting the different types of donut, sometimes choking or scraping my throat raw in an effort to get them down fast enough.<br />
<br />
Then I would chug a bunch of water and my stomach would constrict and bloat and finally, red faced and ashamed, I would berate myself for giving in to temptation, for eating literal garbage, for being as worthless as I knew I was all along.<br />
<br />
Writing all that down is so sad to me now.<br />
I still struggle with that negativity.<br />
But I no longer let it interfere with my eating.<br />
I have worked, and will continue to work, really hard to treat my body like the wonderful machine and vessel it is.<br />
<br />
You'll be happy to know that at least once a week, I go and I buy myself a donut, exactly the kind that looks good to me, and I sit down and i enjoy every mouthful with a nice dreamy dark cup of coffee.<br />
I am always surprised by how much pleasure the experience gives me now. That eating the thing that I really want is so enjoyable. It's fresh, not stale. It's soft, not rough. It's the one I want, not the one I settle for. When I am done, I am satiated.<br />
<br />
I have even done the unthinkable and not been able to finish a whole donut in one sitting. I have wrapped up the other half and put it away in the fridge for a later cup of coffee. I have forgotten it was there, or discovered it and been delighted to enjoy it a day or two later.<br />
<br />
When in the midst of my disorder such behavior completely blew my mind. I never dreamed I would be able to eat things with joy. I always thought I would feel merciless disgust, self pity, and remorse surrounding those foods I associated with binges.<br />
<br />
I've been thinking about this a lot today because I think that somehow that behavior, like a bubble in some extra thick psychological wallpaper, has popped up somewhere else in my life.<br />
<br />
I remember one of the thoughts I had back during those out of control times was, "You're a garbage person. You're literally eating trash right now."<br />
<br />
It made me feel so worthless, so helpless, and like I was always going to be that way.<br />
<br />
Like I deserved to.<br />
<br />
And now, I know that I do not...<br />
<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-15966657647378173122018-05-17T05:50:00.001-07:002018-05-17T05:50:16.757-07:00Manners MattersOnce upon a time I was a little girl, and I wore ribbons in my hair, delighted in shoes with buckles, and twirling around with abandon to get the skirts of my dresses to flare out and make me feel like a fairy.<br />
I delighted also in being the solemn, mature eldest child in my family, and I glommed on to words I thought made me seem older than I was. I was especially conscious of being polite. It was so pleasant to trot up to my mother after attending a birthday party and listen to the parents praise 'Jessica's exceptional manners.'<br />
I still recall the single time I attended my best friend Becky's birthday party and I was so excited at cake time I was sitting on my knees on the bench around the table while she blew out the candles on her cake. I wiggled my body with joy and completely forgot about the polite little girl who would sit in her chair patiently. Becky's father was a little bit older than my dad, and he reminded me of a mysterious old wizard. He had an office with an abstract chess set whose pieces were all made of twisted, heavy metal, and Becky and I used to attempt to play without really knowing which shape was what. Mostly we liked the clunking noise they made on the board and against one another.<br />
He seemed very friendly, and so when he admonished me for not sitting in my seat properly, I turned and with an uncharacteristic flare of rebellion, stuck my tongue out instead of obeying his order.<br />
<br />
To be fair, he was a total gentleman disciplinarian. He came over and asked me very sternly to come with him to his office where he told me it was very impolite to ignore the rules when you are a guest at someone's house, he also told me that he knew I was a good little girl and that it seemed odd for me to be so disrespectful.<br />
I burst into tears and was so upset that even when he guided me back to the table with a kindly hand on my shoulder and got me a nice big piece of cake, I could hardly swallow a mouthful.<br />
It should tell you a lot about me to say that on some nights when I can't sleep, after I've run through every stupid thing I've ever done and every time I've ever wronged anyone, this memory rises to the surface like the bloated corpse of a long dead manatee, and I still feel a curl of guilt in my stomach like an ancient thread of steel wool.<br />
<br />
This being said, I think the emphasis on manners in my childhood had a great deal to do with being brought up by parents of the Commonwealth, in a country still under English rule. I think it also has a great deal to do with my being a girl.<br />
<br />
Everyone likes a polite little girl. And I really liked being liked.<br />
<br />
Of course, when I moved to America, the politeness thing made me stand out like a sore thumb, alongside my soft Australian accent, it was the most definitive thing about me, and it quickly got me shoved out of line for the bathrooms, laughed at during class discussions, and ostracized from most playground games.<br />
<br />
But before you go feeling bad for me, let's get to the meat of this post.<br />Now that I am an adult, I feel that manners make for superior humans, of all genders, races, origins, and languages.<br />
Being polite, especially to strangers, is the first vestige of kindness.<br />
You are polite because you may never see the person to whom you are being it ever again.<br />
You have no idea if they are having the best day or the worst day.<br />
<br />
I cannot tell you how many times I was walking the streets of wherever I lived struggling with my medium to well done depression, and a small gesture made me feel like maybe I wasn't a worthless piece of shit.<br />
<br />
Working in the service industry for most of my life has led me to interact with thousands of people in microcosmic conversations, and I can tell you with confidence that I know how a please, a may I, and a heartfelt thank you can completely transform a human confrontation.<br />
<br />
I know this from being on both sides. I have single handedly moved someone's mood from absolutely dreadful to surprisingly pleasant with a few pleases and thank yous and the honest questions, "How are you doing? You having a good day?"<br />
I have also been flattened by a crap person, who dismisses me, treats me like a moron, and then finds something to yell at me about because they are a small human with no power in their life other than to make someone they don't know sad.<br />
It is a really awful feeling to know that a stranger thinks of you as a throw-away-person.<br />
<br />
Because here's the thing,<br />
we're all both throw-away-people and lovely humans to one another.<br />
<br />
I can be a total bitch if I want to be. I know you can too.<br />
I can lock eyes with a stranger, look at the way they hold themselves or park their car, decide that I am better than they, and cut them in line to the deli counter just like they can to me, but it is heinously rude, and genuinely makes me feel bad.<br />
<br />
I believe that every action we do has a kinetic energy of either positive or negative nature, and it is possible to make both yourself and another person feel like the world is worth staying in by stepping back and saying the words, "no you go ahead."<br /><br />I am always amazed when people blow through crosswalks, or jostle in lines, or make a big deal about getting somewhere before someone else because it really doesn't matter. I would rather take the extra four seconds to let an old dude cross the street than get to wherever I'm going.<br />
<br />
In these times of frightening social distance, where we feel so safe inside social media as to say absolutely awful things to absolute strangers on the internet, I see people retreat from actual person-to-person interactions more and more.<br />
Don't get me wrong, there's a lot more unabashed solicitation going on now that there ever was before.<br />
I can't walk a block without a tall young dude asking if I have spare dollar for a bus, or an enthusiastic person in a beanie with a clipboard trying to get me to sign a petition, or a twenty something wearing nine hundred dollars' worth of make up and cologne asking if I'm happy with my pore size, mortgage interest rate, or data plan.<br />
<br />
STILL. THESE ARE HUMANS. They deserve a respectful shake of the head and a smile, or if that doesn't put them off a, "I'm sorry, no thank you."<br />
You don't even have to put in the I'm sorry if you don't like, but No Thank you, goes a really long way.<br />
So does door holding.<br />
Like, for everyone.<br />
If you go through a door, just flick your eyes back and see if there is someone behind you, and hold it for them for the .25 of a second it takes for them to get to it.<br />It doesn't make you late for things.<br />
It doesn't make the stranger think they can be your friend now, and if so, and you're not into that then say, "no thank you," and walk away, or if you're totally about new friends, then great! You have one!<br />
<br />
Manners are the thing that evolve into kindness. They are the gestures that remind all of us that we are in this thing together.<br />
Letting someone go ahead of you may be something you can do every day, until that one day that you really are late, and you really do need to get somewhere really soon, and YOU SHOULD STILL BE POLITE.<br />
YES.<br />
Because manners karma is real, and the more politeness you exhibit, the more it comes back to you.<br />
<br />
I find people's wallets a lot.<br />
I always have.<br />
I find pocketbooks and purses, laptop bags and phones, and sometimes I just find money on the street.<br />
<br />
And you can bet your sweet bippy I take the wallets and the pocketbooks and anything else to the police station.<br />
Did you know that you can drop off someone's wallet at the library if you find a library card in it because their library account has a phone number, and the librarians can call them to return their shit?<br />
Yes. You can do that.<br />
<br />
I've called people and heard the relief gush from their voice when they realize that their stuff is found.<br />
I've turned over phones and watched previously horrendous humans smile gratefully and say "Oh my god, thank you so much!"<br /><br />
And even if they didn't that's not the point.<br />
<br />
The point is I know how fucking crazed I would be if I lost my phone or wallet.<br />
I know I'd be a mess, trying to figure out how to replace all my cards, my IDs, cancel my accounts with every single goddamn thing, and then trying to remember new account numbers.<br />
<br />
And you know what?<br />
<br />
I've never had to do it, because whenever I've misplaced my shit, some kind human has found it and returned it.<br />
<br />
Manners Karma, people.<br />
<br />
Anyway.<br />
<br />
I just wanted to impress upon you how small the planet is, how alike we are, and how it really does not hurt you to say those pleases and thank yous and to hold doors, and take a moment to turn in the phone you found in the bathroom of the coffeeshop because it is these small, every day moments, that make us all okay. They remind us that the world hasn't completely turned into a dumpster fire, and that we're all just doing our best to be human beings.<br />
<br />
So thank you, for reading, and for that thing, you know, that thing you did for me that time.<br />
Thanks for that.Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-45577779838914081632018-05-15T12:13:00.000-07:002018-05-15T12:13:49.028-07:00Poop City. Population: YouI was having a conversation with a friend of mine about motherhood the other day.<br />
She jokingly suggested that we change the title of mother to "fecal manager," because all we do is clean up poop, all the poop, in every form.<br />
<br />
Yes.<br />
<br />
This is really a post about shit.<br />
<br />
So turn away if you are like I used to be, someone who might identify as fecal-phobic.<br />
<br />
If you're still here, you were warned.<br />
<br />
When you sign on to have a child, you are aware, in the abstract, that you will be forced, as a kind of payment for the amazing wonder of bringing a child into this world, to deal with their poop. You comprehend the idea, but you'd rather not think about it. You buy diapers and marvel at their smallness. You decide you want to do cloth diapers or biodegradable diapers. You've read that diapers make up some horrific percentage of landfills, and you refuse to be part of that problem.<br />
You get up on that pulpit reserved for not-yet-parents and you sway with the conviction of your gospel.<br />
You forget about everything else.<br />
<br />
You forget you have a cat and that the cat poops.<br />
You are allowed to forget that the cat poops because the cat poops into a convenient little box that you rake once every couple of days (or weeks if you're lazy). If you're extra lucky, you get to pass that task to your partner while you're pregnant because toxoplasmosis is a thing now.<br />
You forget you have a dog.<br />
In the world before you have a child, bringing yourself to pick up your dog's poop in a little plastic bag is the epitome of filth.<br />
You place two, maybe three bags over your hand and you still shudder with revulsion as your claw closes around the turd. You scamper to the nearest trash barrel and fire it like a missile from your person.<br />
If you're really honest, a lot of the time, you run off with your dog before anyone can notice she did anything.<br />
<br />
You hate poop.<br />
A lot.<br />
<br />
When you have a baby, your entire view of poop changes.<br />
The first few days you are concerned with the baby doing it at all, what they expel is important, the frequency with which is leaves them is also notable. The amount is comparable to what they pour onto sanitary napkins in commercials, which is to say, not much, and taken care of quickly and easily.<br />
<br />
Then you leave the hospital, the changes are still novel, and you're still very concerned with them. You're surprised with how clinically you regard them actually, but there's this weird feeling that the baby is still part of your body, and watching its functions is akin to popping your zits. You're a little grossed out, but more fascinated that you produced something capable of producing other things. It's like a magic trick inside a russian nesting doll.<br />
But it's also poop.<br />
You don't forget that.<br />
It just doesn't bother you as much...yet.<br />
<br />
The bothering actually sneaks up on you.<br />
<br />
It shivers through you when your partner returns to work, and you change a diaper blowout at 6:30am, which takes a while because there are washings and wipings and outfit swaps that must take place. You come into the kitchen and the dog has peed all over the floor because you didn't get her out early enough and your partner forgot, since you always used to get the dog out before the baby was born.<br />
You feel extra skeeved out by cleaning up the pee because you have to do it while the baby is strapped to you.<br />
What if a microscopic fleck of dog pee gets on your baby?!!! You wash your hands eight times.<br />
<br />
You take the dog out and conveniently forget to pick up her poop because you've already had to deal with enough today.<br />
<br />
Then a couple of months later, as you're dragging the dog away from her latest deposit, trying to adjust a larger baby in his sling, attempting to juggle the leash and the house key and your phone as well, a woman comes out and yells at you for not picking up your dog's poop. You point at your baby. She says, "I don't care."<br />
You clumsily use your shoe to kick the poop off her lawn into a storm drain while she folds her arms and watches.<br />
You hold the tears back until you are back to your driveway.<br />
<br />
A year later, your kid is wearing the horrible landfill diapers like every other kid.<br />
You gave up on biodegradable after the six-blowouts-in-one-day day.<br />
<br />
You're a bit more of a poop warrior now.<br />
You've had it in your hair.<br />
You've washed it out of so many shirts, you've stopped buying nice shirts unless you have to go somewhere, and you have three "going out shirts."<br />
You've sieved turds out of your bathtub and tied onesies like shit-filled balloons and lobbed them right into the trash along with the diaper inside them because there isn't bleach enough in the world for that mess.<br />
You've dealt with a stomach bug that ripped through you, your kid, and your husband and left you retching into a toilet, while you held your kid away from your face, and through it all, you thought about the diaper you would have to change when it was all done.<br />
<br />
Oh fuck.<br />
Someone has to clean the cat's box now, don't they?<br />
<br />
And it's rancid when you get to it, because you genuinely forgot it existed until one June morning it smelled like ammonia and death and you were suddenly acutely aware that you didn't know the last time you bought litter.<br />
<br />
You tie a rag over your face like you're in a dystopian movie and you wear gardening gloves, and the curse words you utter while the baby lumbers around his pack n' play in the other room, are the filthiest most offensive things you've ever said.<br />
<br />
Another year goes by.<br />
You've begun potty training the kid, but the dog is very old and doesn't make it outside at least once a day and relieves herself with no discrimination on the linoleum.<br />
You're child knows to stop when he enters the kitchen and to point at whatever's desecration the floor. He can identify it by name even while you stoop to wipe the spot with antibacterial wipes, or scoop up the matter and then run a mop across the surface.<br />
You clean your kitchen floor more times than you change your kid's diaper now, and you refuse to go barefoot into the room anymore.<br />
<br />
Your potty training child has suddenly decided to lie about when he has to poop so you have to take your chances with diapers versus underwear, swimtrunks versus pull ups, or tarp versus hose.<br />
<br />
Sometimes you use all of it, and there's still fucking poop in your hair.<br />
<br />
You feel like you have to model good, responsible behavior for your kid, so you scoop up the dog poop every time you take her outside.<br />
You clean the cat's box every thursday, which is trash day, and you haul a bag of landfill diapers and litter to the curb and apologize to the sky for fucking the planet up, and then stand there a minute and wonder what you used to do with your amazingly poop-free youth before your partner sends you a text that says,<br />
<i>Are you coming back?</i><br />
It almost sends you into an existential crisis that question, and you have no answer for it because you'd be lying if you hadn't just considered running down the street in your pajamas and bare feet, running until you were far away, alongside a highway with your thumb out squinting into backseats to make sure there's no duct tape and chloroform waiting for you, but instead you return. You sniff your fingers, because you are convinced now that you smell of poop, everywhere, all the time.<br />
You wash your hands.<br />
You wipe the kitchen floor. You watch your red-faced son squat over a plastic bucket shaped like a frog and you have a canister of m&ms you shake him encouragingly.<br />
<br />
You find yourself saying, "Come on, sweetie! Poop for Mummy!" with the kind of enthusiasm reserved for high school cheerleaders whose boyfriends have just miraculously recovered from cancer in time to be quarterback for the big game.<br />
<br />
<br />
You sometimes look longingly at a bottle of wine at two in the afternoon, wondering if you have a glass if you'll turn into one of those moms from tv, and instead you lock yourself in the bathroom, ironically, and cry while your child watches some pixar monstrosity in the next room. You hope the emotionally manipulative soundtrack drowns out your heart wrenching sobs.<br />
<br />
Then you sigh, and wash your face, and go back out there, and he greets you like you were gone for a thousand years, and you get kisses and hugs, and his little sweaty fists balled up into your armpits and ribcage and everything falls away for a little bit.<br />
You sigh and you stop thinking about the future for a second, and you relax. Maybe you think about the fact that there are parents who would trade limbs to have their babies back with all the shitty diapers they could make.<br />
Maybe you think about that time your parents talk about, when as a baby, you painted the walls of your crib with a booty blast to frighten for centuries.<br />
Maybe you just close your eyes, and sniff your baby's little head and remind yourself someday, someday very soon, he'll be grabbing an apple after school, pecking you on the cheek, and running out the door to some mischief or another, and by then he should be potty trained...probably.<br />
<br />
Then a little wistfulness mixes in with the sweet, hay and milk smell of baby hair and you think how odd it is that wistfulness smells so much like ammonia, and goddammit, when did you last buy litter?<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-50404380270882925112018-05-11T04:53:00.000-07:002018-05-11T04:53:00.224-07:00What was and the MotherLast night, I took ten minutes.<br /><br />I took ten minutes, and I realized she is still there.<br />
<br />
The woman I was before I had a baby.<br />
<br />
In here, pushing through the jungle of guilt vines, choked with responsibility mosquitoes, thick with the oppressive humidity of doubt and the anxiety of everyday darkness. She's in here. She's still here. She's okay.<br />
<br />
I worked from five thirty in the evening until nine thirty making cookies like I do every tuesday and thursday in the cafe a block from my apartment. I worked with the twenty four and twenty five year olds that I work with regularly. They played music from video games that have hundreds of hours of story lines and from bands whose members weren't born when I graduated high school. They talked obsessively about how stressed out working at a cafe made them, about how they were the only things keeping the place together, about how they "couldn't handle much more of this."<br />I smiled and kept doing their dishes.<br />I got my cookies made. I listened to them whinge about dating and apps and being single and being an introvert because apparently everyone's an introvert now, and they know their Myer-Briggs label, and they practically wear it as a t-shirt or use it as the heading on their resume. It's always been cool to be broken, but now it's cool to tell everyone your diagnosis and compare meds.<br />
No shame...maybe that's a good thing?<br />
<br />
It's all the same though.<br />
The vocabulary is different.<br />
The music is unfamiliar, and the technology has changed things a little, but it's still pretty miserable to be twenty. All the internal conflict, and an endless amount of energy to fuel the self doubt and discovery.<br />
<br />
The night wore on. I listened. I thought about the rest of the day, how I'd been cleaning up the geriatric dog's accidents, chasing the baby, trying to get him to eat, taking my Dad out to lunch, getting myself to a dentist appointment, and making the baby and my husband's dinners all before I headed out the door to my shift.<br /><br />
I thought about how four or five years ago, when the compound housed all my closest friends, and we all worked in cafes and bakeries, how we used to waste time like it was an olympic sport.<br />
Entire days were spent doing whatever we liked.<br />
I could come and go as I pleased, go to the beach and change my mind halfway there.<br />
Still, I would worry.<br />
I would obsess about restricting and over-exercising and not getting fat.<br />
I would obsess about reading books and being at parties or bars or seeing people and being clever and funny and looking like I had my shit together.<br />
I wanted people to think I was a big deal so badly.<br />
<br />
But so much of the best times were just sitting around with my friends, drinking coffee and listening to music and talking. Or sitting out on the porch having a glass of wine and singing along as my best friend strummed her ukelele. Or even taking slow wanders around the cemetery or the beach, working through the fogs of our emotions and forgetting to feel the breeze on our skins.<br />
<br />
One of the things I miss the most since having a child, and the forced isolation it incurs, is the casual ways I could always access my friends.<br />
<br />
I struggled so much with the feeling that I was being left behind.<br />
I was anchored to my couch for an entire year, nursing and cleaning and finishing my masters degree.<br />
Then I was stepping gingerly away from the couch and the baby, overwhelmed by how reluctant I was to leave him even for a couple of hours, confused as to who I was now that my priorities were so different from my single or child-free friends.<br />
<br />
It hurt.<br />
I know, right?<br />
It doesn't make any sense.<br />
<br />
It hurt that I had changed so much I could barely stand to leave my kid with his dad for a couple of hours and toddle down the street to see a jazz band play. It hurt that I skipped parties so much that I stopped being told they were happening.<br />
It hurt that couples I had introduced were no longer texting me to come to their backyard bonfires or that the times I saw them were alway incidental, and I missed them, and they missed me, and we'd make promises to call each other for a drink, knowing as we walked away that we were never going to follow through.<br />
<br />
Most days, I am spent by seven pm. I've spent twelve hours caring for my kid while his dad's away at work, and he's a magical joy of a human being, but he's also more exhausting that I ever fathomed another human could be.<br />
It's surprised me how working a couple of days at the cafe has helped expand my perspective.<br />
<br />
Last night, I came home from my shift, and I was tired, and I was hungry, but I was also kind of flying.<br />
I'd made an absolute ton of cookies in a very short amount of time.<br />
One of which was an experimental riff on oreos, and I'd never made them before, so when the results turned out spectacularly, I was over the moon.<br />
I walked home and it was a surprisingly mild night.<br />
I'd forgotten my coat, and barely missed it.<br />
One of the blessed twenty somethings had handed me a third of a bottle of rosé that they couldn't serve, so I poured it into a glass when I got home, and I sat down on the porch.<br /><br />It was almost ten, and my husband texted me, "Where are you," and I lied. I said I was taking out the dog, but instead I sat out under the stars and watched the blossoms from the apple tree in our yard shed all its petals like snow.<br />
<br />
I sat out there, and I took sweet sips of the wine and breathed, and I realized it's all still here.<br />
The parties, the books, the beautiful nights, the walks through the cemetery, the long talks, the fires, the coffee, the music, and the laughter. It's all still here waiting for me whenever I'm ready.<br />I sort of thought I'd been swallowed by motherhood, and that there was no coming back, and in a way, that's true.<br />
<br />
I finished the glass of wine, and a breeze that smelled like someone's laundry steam floated by and was criss crossed by one that smelled like ocean. The petals floated by and settled into dimples in the grass and asphalt. I lifted my hand to move a stray hair off my cheek and my knuckles smelled like buttercream, and I smiled because I'm still me.<br />
<br />
She's here whenever I am still.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-83004838521205886622018-04-20T06:32:00.001-07:002018-04-20T06:32:14.167-07:00The old adage: <i>No news is good news</i>, bothers me, because for me it is outweighed by another phrase, <i>if you can't say anything nice, don't say anything at all</i>.<br />
This is an odd discovery at 36 years of age, but with everyone and their mom suddenly proclaiming whether or not they're an introvert or extrovert, taking myers briggs tests, and spending hours on buzzfeed answering arbitrary questions to find out what kind of a cake they'd be if they were in fact a cake, it feels like something worth addressing.<br />
<br />
I, like so very many people, struggle with anxiety/depression.<br />
<br />
This is the part where you say, "GIANT DUH."<br />
<br />
My Beard and I frequently talk about this because he is one who suffers from this too.<br />
Honestly, everyone does. I think there are two conditions to this statement.<br />
1. You are more prone to be anxious or more prone to be depressed and this affects your reactions to stress.<br />
2. You can either manage it alone, or through a variety of wonderful measures (therapy, medication, journaling, long spousal conversations, in-patient care, etc and any combination of these).<br />
<br />
Firstly, there is no wrong way to have anxiety/depression.<br />
Secondly, certain environmental factors will nurture a whole population to simultaneously experience heightened symptoms of their condition, however it manifests.<br />
<br />
All of this to say, when I am depressed, one of the biggest tells is that I stop writing. I stop reading. I stop talking to people. I retreat because I don't have anything good to say, so I don't feel worthy of talking.<br />
<br />
Hello, I am there, guys.<br />
<br />
The last six months have been so fraught with illness, storms, and the general fuckery of the world, that I feel like I am drowning.<br />
<br />
There hasn't been a single holiday since Halloween that hasn't seen us punished with sickness.<br />
Thanksgiving-Dreadful cold and ear infection for the baby, dreadful cold for Beard, Strep for me.<br />
Bastian's Birthday-another cold for all of us, the baby with a fever high enough to take us to the ER.<br />
Christmas-A norovirus that laid us out for six days.<br />
New years-Another cold<br />
The week after new years-the bomb cyclone that marooned us in Boston and cancelled our trip to see Beard's family.<br />
Early March and Jess's big trip to a Florida writing conference- 2 giant storms, delayed flights, and finally an allergic reaction to a bug bite that landed me in a Tampa emergency room.<br />
(sidenote, I still attended the panel I was on, but I was FLYING on benadryl).<br />
Middlemarch-two more storms, and Bastian hitting his head and passing out for a second which was one of the scariest things I've ever seen.<br />
My birthday (last day of March)/Easter-another stomach virus that laid the whole fam out for 8 days.<br />
<br />
And here we are.<br />
<br />
I have had many conversations with people about how lucky I am.<br />
I am so grateful for so many things. I know we are beyond fortunate. Things could have been so much worse.<br />
<br />
But it's okay that I'm also really struggling.<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-12126329559952142422018-02-21T05:15:00.001-08:002018-02-21T05:15:19.239-08:00Progress is for LoversLast night, I got home from my four hour shift at the cafe where I bake cookies a couple of days a week.<br />
It was 9:30pm, and I wasn't sure if I was hungry. You know that weird space where you just can't tell if you are actually hungry or if you just think you should eat something? That feeling.<br />
<br />
If you have ever struggled with disordered eating, then you know this feeling is torture.<br />
<br />
It's the devil.<br />
<br />
The big fuck you.<br />
<br />
If you aren't comfortable with talking about this stuff by now then you should probably just bugger off. I know there are literally 1.5 people who read this thing, and they're probably just bots, but I keep writing it because it helps me, and well...who knows...maybe someone who needs to see this will see if at exactly the right time.<br />
Anyway,<br />
so having disordered eating of any kind means you are constantly in a tornado of confusion, guilt, distrust, and bodily function.<br />
Your body is doing its best to just keep you alive, sending you its signals to eat, pee, dance, sleep, or whatever, and your ED is taking any information it sends you at all and making it all about your worth and food. It's trying to make the organic, complex, messy balance of sustenance some kind of puzzle you can solve and then miraculously be thinner and by virtue of that thinness happier, wealthier, more confident, blah blah bullshit.<br />
<br />
After years of this abuse, you get so out of touch with your body's signals that any feelings of hunger and fullness can have all kinds of emotional significance.<br />
<br />
If you had peered into my life three or five, or even thirteen years ago, you would have seen a person absolutely twisted by conflict upon returning home from work.<br />
<br />
Let's unpack this.<br />
<br />
I used to always skip breakfast. In fact, every morning was an opportunity to see "how long I could go without eating."<br />
And every goddamn day, I would make it to a certain time, sometimes noon, sometimes four p.m. sometimes ten thirty in the morning, and I wouldn't be able to go any longer.<br />
And the binge/diet mentality would take over and I would eat everything in sight. Then I would be overfull, uncomfortable, and guilt stricken, swearing up and down that I would not eat for longer, that I would exercise to burn it all off, atone atone atone.<br />
<br />
A few years back, coming home from a late shift was permission to eat everything in my cupboards. It was the perfect scenario. Nobody else was awake to see me do it. There was a hollow ache in my gut where, even if I had eaten a normal amount of food during the day, I was already anticipating the next day's restriction, so I would feel like I HAD to eat in excess to survive it.<br />
<br />
Inevitably I found myself engaging in the most damaging behaviors, shoving food down my throat that I didn't want until I felt full and nauseated, crying and raging at my failure at the restriction and control I so desperately sought, and then crawling into bed to feel bloated and ashamed for a night of fitful sleep. Only to start the whole cycle over again the next day.<br />
<br />
I would refuse offers of bites of cookie from friends at cafes, only to come home and eat row after row of oreos so I wouldn't feel deprived.<br />
<br />
I would order the salad, or the lightest possible option at a restaurant, load my plate with vegetables at barbecues, skip desserts, and smile virtuously as others split the key lime pie slice, only to go home and scoop out half the peanut butter jar using cheez its as spoons.<br />
<br />
Finding myself in last night's position to begin with, would never have happened.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
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<br />
Yesterday it was beautiful out.<br />
The unseasonably warm weather, made going for a long walk seem entirely delightful. There was nothing about it that screamed "punishment" or "atonement." It was just beautiful, and I wanted to enjoy soaking up the vitamin d with the baby.<br />
<br />
I had a smoothie for breakfast, I made it with spinach, banana, cherries, and milk. I sprinkled it with sunflower seeds and I ate it with a handful of salted peanuts. It was filling and delicious.<br />
Then I went for my walk with the babe.<br />
We ended up going further than I'd thought we would because it was just so pleasant to be outside after being trapped indoors all winter. On the way there, we ate some barbecue potato chips and a big coconut water because eating salty chips while walking is treaty and nice.<br />
We walked for close to two hours, and then spent a third bouncing around a playground.<br />
When we came home, it was four in the afternoon, and we were both ravenous.<br />
<br />
Rather than trying to put off that hunger, push it further, like I used to, I sat down and made vegetarian nachos with crackers instead of chips. I piled them high with black beans and cheese and salsa. We shared them with our hands and they were great! We laughed a lot and licked our fingers.<br />
<br />
Then we went into the other room to play.<br />
Shortly after getting in there I realized I was still a little hungry, but I also wanted something kind of sweet.<br />
I got up and made a thick piece of toast with peanut butter, a drizzle of maple syrup, and a handful of chocolate chips. I also recognized that my impulse to eat in a binge kind of way was there, lurking, like it often still is when I eat more than what my ED brain is programmed to think of as "a healthy portion." I am still training my brain not to have those associations. It is taking time.<br /><br />
One way that I battle this is by getting a glass of water when I get whatever it is I am craving at that time, Ice Cream, Peanut Butter, Chocolate, all those things that I used to make myself sick on, are still a little nerve racking to eat, so I bring a glass of water, and I drink it when I am finished with my snack, and then, if I am still hungry or still craving that thing, I have some more, but a lot of the time I am satisfied.<br />
One thing I NEVER DID while bingeing was drink water. I knew it would take up space in my stomach that I was planning to cram full of food, so I avoided it like the plague, as a result, not only was I often really uncomfortable, but horrendously dehydrated both during and after a binge.<br />
<br />
I ate my toast, and the baby helped me eat some of of chocolate chips, so I got up and sprinkled on some more. I drank my water.<br />
<br />
It was totally nice.<br />
<br />
Of course, when the time for my shift came around, I was reluctant to go, but I also really enjoy having time away from the baby now (full disclosure). It reminds me to miss him, which is very necessary after spending a day chasing him, getting bopped on the head by him, cleaning up after him, rescuing him from tantrums, etc.<br />
<br />
So I went to my shift, and I made cookies, for four hours. Since I was adequately fed, I didn't feel crazy around them, which is SUCH A HUGE DEAL.<br />
I drank a couple of cans of seltzer because I'd had a lot of salt, and I was very thirsty.<br />
It wasn't until about 8:30pm that I took a few bites of a chocolate chip and marshmallow cookie I made as an experiment and a rice krispie treat sprinkled with sea salt. They both turned out really well, and I was pleased, but I didn't feel like I needed more than a bite or two to tell how good they were. I didn't want more.<br />
<br />
I CANNOT TELL YOU WHAT A FUCKING CRAZY THING THAT IS TO WRITE.<br />
<br />
As recently as three years ago, I would have been sobbing if you told me I could ever take a bite of cookie and then leave the rest. My brain was so rewired to believe that one bite was equal to the fall of the roman empire that I would have presumed a binge was inevitable. I would have forced myself to binge, fulfilled my own prophecy, because I didn't know how to forgive myself, I didn't know that there was nothing to forgive.<br />
<br />
So I came home, and both the baby and the husband were asleep, and I was alone, in my kitchen at ten o clock at night, the most dangerous time for me to be in those circumstances.<br />
<br />
And I stopped and I checked in with my body.<br />
<br />
It went like this.<br />
<br />
Hey Body.<br />
<i>Oh hey.</i><br />
I know we had a couple of bites of that cookie at work, but it's been a good five hours since you had a meal. Are you hungry?<br />
<i>Uh...I'm not sure actually. I'm not starving, if that's what you mean, but I don't know if I'm good to wait until morning before I eat again. Do you want me to wake you up in a few hours?</i><br />
No. No Body, I really need my sleep.<br />
<i>Oh. Okay, so what should we do then?</i><br />
Well, how about we have a bowl of cereal and see how we feel after?<br />
<i>Oh yeah, that sounds nice.</i><br />
<br />
And that's what I did.<br />
<br />
I didn't keep cereal in my house for ten years.<br />
<br />
TEN FUCKING YEARS.<br />
Because it was a trigger food.<br />
<br />
But a few weeks ago, I realized that it was perfect for occasions just like this one, where I wasn't hungry enough to eat something big, but I needed a little something to get me through until I was really hungry.<br />
<br />
So I poured out a bowl of Cinnamon Life, which is my current jam, topped it with a handful of sunflower seeds for salt and crunch and protein, and I sat down and ate it while kind of defragging from the night.<br />
I didn't look at my phone. I didn't mindlessly shovel it in as fast as I could. I didn't need to. I enjoyed it, and about halfway through, I realized, I probably could eat more. I probably could eat about three more bowls of cereal, maybe with chocolate chips thrown in, and peanut butter, and and and...<br />
<br />
But that was just my old ED/Binge voice trying to get its say in.<br />
<br />
So I rinsed my spoon and cup, brushed my teeth, and said.<br />
<br />
Hey Body.<br />
<i>Hmm?</i><br />
Are you hungrier or sleepier right now?<br />
<i>Mmm sleepier for sure.</i><br />
Cool.<br />
<br />
Because I knew if it was hungrier, it would wake me up, and i could eat again.<br />
<br />
<br />
There are no more starvation nights. No more days devoted to trying to control my will power.<br />
<br />
There is just a soft, gentle conversation between me and my body, and I am so grateful to her for being here and doing her part, after so many long years of abuse.<br />
<br />
And believe me, if I can get here, Fucking anybody can.<br />
<br />
<br />
Nobody was so certain that she was beyond broken, fucked, and unrepairable than I was.<br />
And sometimes it is still a struggle, and I slide backwards, and I binge, and I restrict, and I mess up, and that's okay.<br />
<br />
I breathe, and I keep talking to her, and she keeps talking back, and we listen.<br />
<br />
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<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-21437124657292913282018-02-13T12:09:00.000-08:002018-02-13T12:09:38.714-08:00The Very Temporary Toddler RealityRight this moment, i am able to put my fingers on a keyboard and type sentences because my 26 month old son is only requiring me to intermittently make wadges of play dough turn magically into marbles between my palms.<br />We are now stoutly in the times of the toddler, and so my days are the least my own they have been since we first brought the baby home from the hospital.<br />
At any given moment he is climbing, hiding, running, hopping, smashing, thieving, masticating, harassing, exploring, touching, and generally using every other verb that exists.<br />
There is no stasis, no time to recover, only time enough to use my adult logic to guess at what he's headed for next.<br />
At the library we cannot make it through storytime without at meltdown that ends with me bundling up his thirty three pounds in my arms and marching out of the room as he squalls and flails.<br />
On walks, he picks up pebbles and chunks of asphalt and tucks them happily into his pockets for me to retrieve later and throw out my front door lest he get the idea to swallow them at some point.<br />
His favorite words are buddy, mama, and no.<br />
He likes reading books but not nearly as much as he likes watching Trollhunters (the cartoon on netflix), he loves peeling bananas but only eats them about half as much.<br />
He hugs everybody, but sometimes hits, and he roars with utter abandon.<br />
<br />
He is wonderful.<br />
I love him harder and more ferociously every day, but I am also so thoroughly exhausted by him and in desperate need of a break by five o clock than I ever was when he was a small milkfed pudgeball.<br />
<br />
It's a mutual sadness my beard and I muse over constantly, how it is possible to love him and be so delighted by him while also so infuriated and fatigued by him.<br />
Is this why parents scream so much? I wonder. Is this the place that we all get to when our kids reach perception and is it why our first memories of our parents are their tyrannical rule?<br />
<br />
It's neverending, the catching and protecting and worrying. BEfore you can pour milk in your coffee in the morning, the little fingers have stuffed the plump cheeks with dogfood that you must first pry out of the mouth and then hide away. Then provide some substitute, some consolation, and another activity of a less gravel chomping nature, by which time the coffee is cold and the milk is tepid.<br />
<br />
Still this is the age of magic.<br />
<br />
And it is flying by.<br />
<br />
Each day he grasps more and teeters on the edge of lucid understanding of the world around him in all its awe and horror.<br />
<br />
I find myself relying on an afternoon movie every day to assUAGE SOME OF THE MADNESS. LIKE THE FACT THAT HE HAS NOW PUSHED THE CAPSLOCK BUTTON AND I CANNOT TU`RN IT OFF.<br />
<br />
IF THE WEATHER WERE BETTER, I TELL MYSELF, WE WOULD SPEND THIS TIME OUTSIDE, PARTYING IN THE MUD, RUNNING ON THE BEACH, COMBING THE SAND AND THE GRASS FOR ACORN CAPS AND PEBBLES, SUCKING IN GREAT GUSTS OF FRESH AIR AND SINGING THE MADE UP SONGS OF HAPPY GO LUCKY CHILDHOOD.<br />
<br />
BUT THANKS TO New England's nasty late winter days, we are more often than not just about frantic by 3pm, and in order to not scream cry in front of my child for the following two hours, I put on the muppets, the trollhunters, the disney cartoons, and berate myself for the shit job I am doing as a parent.<br />
<br />
In those brief moments of respite, it is possible to remind myself that this is the briefest time, and it will feel so sad and ancient ten to twelve years from now, when he is running out the door with his friends and shooting me judgey looks over the dinner table. In five years when he's seven, he'll already be so different from the sweet, cuddly tornado he is now, I will probably have already forgotten how I used to stress cry in the bathroom while the Fraggles sang, or drank a glass of wine at four pm on a Friday just to remind myself that I was an adult and got to treat myself once in a while.<br />
<br />
Which is why, in the ten minutes it has taken to write this confession, the play dough has lost its spellbinding powers, and I am now forced to abandon it without anything close to a resolution.<br />
<br />
Time as they say and Toddler, wait for no man.Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-56612925581088522602018-01-09T05:13:00.002-08:002018-01-09T05:13:51.252-08:00A Very Raw and Truthful Account of What It Looks Like When I Backslide In Recovery TW: ED, Restriction, Bingeing. Something happened in December that threw off my recovery.<br />
<br />
For some people, this might be an intense family gathering surrounded not only by the food that you're "supposed" to indulge in all while under the scrutiny of the people whose opinions if not matter the most, certainly are expressed most vocally and irrepressibly.<br />
<br />
For others maybe it's not the family that's triggering; maybe it's the office party where there's all this pressure to bring something indulgent, but know that if any of your coworkers see you snacking they'll all be talking about you in the bathroom.<br />
<br />
Who knows...there are tons of triggering moments. None more so than the fucking diabolical launch of all the New Years' Juice Cleanse, Slim Quick, Paleo bullshit diet plans and the relentless flogging of gym memberships and fitness classes as methods by which we "atone" for anything so human as enjoying food for a little while.<br />
<br />
Anyway, all of this is to say that these have been triggers for me in the past.<br />
<br />
But not this year.<br />
<br />
This year, I was bamboozled by six weeks of illness starting the week before Thanksgiving.<br />
Having a two year old, and beginning to work with the public again after a reprieve from exposure to their unwashed masses meant that starting November 15th, there was a cold in our house, and one of us had it, in some form or another, FOR A GODDAMN MONTH.<br />
<br />
Somewhere between the antibiotics, emergency room visits for skyrocketing fevers, sinus infections, pediatrician appointments, buckets of used tissues, sacks of cough drops, chicken soup and pots of tea, Thanksgiving and my son's second birthday happened.<br />
<br />
Neither of which we could celebrate because one or all of us were so under the weather.<br />
<br />
And then the week before Christmas, we thought we were in the clear. We figured a month must have done it, but the germ gods had other plans.<br />
<br />
I came down with it first.<br />
A 24 hour stomach bug that put me on the toilet with a trash pail in front of my face for the better part of 8 hours. It was so bad and so sudden, I had to ask my husband to stay home from work because after a night of mandatorily evacuating my body, I was too weak to stand, let alone care for our agile and vigorous toddler.<br />
<br />
And he was amazing.<br />
My Beard brought the babe to me to nurse and cuddle because he was frightened and confused by his prone mama. After the six hours of chills, shakes, and crippling stomach pain that followed in the wake of the horrors, he took the babe away and brought me gingerale, pedialyte, and later, saltines and pepto bismol.<br />
<br />
It was a rough bug, but a quick one, and I was surprised at how much more human I felt almost exactly 24 hours after the symptoms came on.<br />
Of course, as I was settling into bed with my son at that exact moment of relief, the toddler came down with the bug and began his six hours of bodily voiding.<br />
<br />
I was surprised at how competent I felt considering how weak I was, but my husband had to go to work the next day, and so I immediately became dedicated nurse locked in until the 24 hours had had its way and finished with my child.<br />
<br />
As I'm sure you can imagine, freshly absolved of the bug myself, getting our little guy through that with which I had so recently tangled did not make me want anything more than the few crackers I managed to help him eat before we went to bed that night.<br />
When we got up the next day, I was more concerned with getting the baby to eat and drink than I was with putting anything more than a cup of weak tea into my system.<br />
<br />
Then...suddenly it was the afternoon, and I was alone with the baby, and I realized it had been almost three days since I'd eaten more than a piece of dry toast.<br />
<br />
I checked my stomach for feelings of hunger, and there was nothing.<br />
<br />
And here I was, triggered, triggered harder than I had been since I had the baby.<br />
<br />
I knew I had lost weight.<br />
<br />
I knew I was probably the thinnest I had been since I had my baby.<br />
<br />
I knew if I looked at my body what I would see.<br />
<br />
And here's the shitty thing.<br />
<br />
I looked anyway.<br />
<br />
I looked and it made me even further divorced from my actual bodily feelings.<br />
<br />
There was suddenly an ease to this starvation thing.<br />
<br />
I mean...I'd been so sick...I didn't feel like eating, and now my stomach was so small, even a few pieces of toast filled me up to the brim.<br />
<br />
I could hear the nasty whispers of that voice I had spent so long trying to silence.<br />
You know what it sounds like.<br />
You know how it wheedles and promises and tells you that just by listening to it over the cues of your actual body, you can get everything you ever wanted.<br />
<br />
<br />
Fuck.<br />
<br />
I admit...I didn't handle it well.<br />
<br />
It scared me.<br />
<br />
I ate pizza that night.<br />
My first real meal in three days, and I didn't binge, but it did feel weird and wrong and uncomfortable.<br />
<br />
I tried to sit with those feelings.<br />
<br />
And then my husband came down with the stomach bug.<br />
And then it was Christmas, and we were too weak to travel, so we got rescued by my parents, who took us up to their house, but the baby wasn't recovering as quickly as I had thought, and so meal times were interrupted and aborted. I ended up having to miss several meal times and scrape together my sustenance from leftovers carefully wrapped and put away by my mother who chittered and worried about me the whole time.<br />
<br />
And here's the ugly truth:<br />ED's LOVE THAT SHIT.<br />
<br />
They love that nagging from loved one's<br />
"ooh you're looking a bit thin, dear."<br />"Did you get enough to eat? You can't afford to miss a meal!"<br />"Is that all you're going to have? Are you sure? Wouldn't you just like a little bit more?"<br /><br />And it's like a high, the control, the power, the repetitive, "No thank you. I'm good. No thanks. I'm all set. No. No. No."<br /><br />I can't speak for anybody else, but for me, in the grips of the ED Voice, the inquiries as to whether I'm eating enough, the commentary on me being thin, the constant asking if I'm okay...<br />
<br />
That's what I'm missing in my life, and that's all I want.<br />
<br />
I want to be cared for.<br />
I want to be worried about.<br />
I want it to matter to someone that I am struggling.<br />
I want my depression, anxiety, fear, and worry; my suffering, my sacrifices, my martyrdom to be written all over me, so somebody asks me if I'm okay.<br />
<br />
It makes me feel like i matter at a time when I am incapable of asserting to myself that I matter at all.<br />
<br />
To be noticed...it's huge.<br />
<br />
And it makes sense. I mean, here I was, caring for my child, my husband, taking care of myself as best I could, dealing with sickness after sickness in these unrelenting waves, and all I wanted was somebody to take over. I just wanted an adult to come in and take care of things so i could have a day where I didn't have to be the strong one.<br />
<br />
Except we don't get those in real life, not as parents, not as adults, and the closest I could get, was getting thinner and getting worried about, and then getting the privilege of saying no no no, and the satisfaction that maybe they'd keep worrying enough to check in on me again, in a week, when I didn't know if I'd be okay yet, when I was certain, I'd need checking in on.<br />
<br />
I told you it's the ugly truth, but it's pulling it out and examining it under the bright, unforgiving light that takes away its power, because here's the thing.<br />
<br />
The body fights back.<br />
<br />
Here we are, two weeks after my parents' house.<br />
<br />
Life is still doing it's thing.<br />
There are blizzards that bring all travel, work, and plans to a halt.<br />
There is a cabin feverish child brought to frenzy by being stuck indoors for weeks on end.<br />There is holiday burn out and aftermath and packages to send and cancelled deliveries, and every other thing that makes you tear your hair out this time of year.<br />
And everybody else is dealing with it too, so nobody's asking if you're okay anymore.<br />
<br />
The pendulum always swings back.<br />
<br />
All of a sudden, you find yourself engaging in behaviors you haven't done in months, maybe years.<br />
You're waiting until nobody's around and then eating half a huge bar of chocolate in great big gobbles. The gluey sweetness fills your mouth but you barely register the flavor. You swallow as fast as you can. You're halfway through the bar, which is maybe a pound, and you realize what you're doing and it scares you.<br />
<br />
Your kid is in a high chair watching, and though he's not old enough to understand, he's soaking it all in. The strange behavior. The way that Mummy doesn't eat like Daddy, doesn't eat like anybody else.<br />
<br />
You're flooded with shame and guilt, and the binge feelings you worked so hard to quell are surging through you alongside the sugar rush, telling you how worthless you are, what a terrible mother you are, what a horrible example. It's all connected. It's all fused into one terrible cycle, and you're as stuck inside it as a lost swimmer trapped in the curl of an undertow, being dragged out to deep water.<br />
<br />
That's how it feels.<br />
<br />
But you prepared for this.<br />
<br />I mean I prepared for this.<br />
<br />
I am not the weak, struggling girl I was ten, five, even two years ago.<br />
<br />
I know this game.<br />
<br />
I recognize this tide.<br />
<br />
I know if I change the direction of my thoughts, I can escape it.<br />
<br />
So I wrap up the rest of the bar of chocolate and I put it away.<br />
I take three deep breaths, and I pour myself a glass of water.<br />
<br />
I'm not ready to drink it.<br />
There's too much going on, and my body feels all kinds of crazy, so I just take it with me, like a safety blanket or a life preserver. This glass of water is going to make me feel better in about an hour, when my body is struggling to metabolize the binge, and I need to be ready to take care of it, to tell it, that it's okay, that I am working on it, and we are going to get out of this together.<br />
<br />
Later, I drink the water.<br />
It took more than an hour for me to feel like I had room enough for it in my belly.<br />
<br />
It was about three and a half hours later, as I was lying in bed.<br />
The darkness was there, and the baby was asleep, so it was just me, alone with all of the confusion.<br />
The ED voice screeching as loud as ever about "making up for it tomorrow" about "worthless lack of self control" about "you deserve everything bad that happens to you because look at how disgusting and pathetic you are."<br />
<br />
And I drink the water and I quietly tell it to go fuck itself.<br />
<br />
There is no point in saying, "what's done is done."<br />
<br />
What's done is what haunts me and drives my actions.<br />
<br />
So instead, I breathe, and I keep drinking the water, which is a very small, very pointed way of getting out of this. I tell myself it's okay. I forgive myself over and over. I remind myself that my body went through shock recently.<br />
<br />
It went through a period of almost three weeks of starvation, and its natural response was to get as much into it as humanly possible when it finally got past my ED.<br />
<br />
It was scared that I was going to starve it again.<br />
<br />
It was trying to save me.<br />
<br />
When I realize this last part, I feel the hot sting of tears behind my eyes, and I tell my body, with my hands on the soft mound of my stomach, "I'm sorry."<br />
<br />
That's all.<br />
That's where this began, and it's where it continues.<br />
<br />
No matter how many times I slip backwards on this journey, I start with the apology to my body.<br />
"It's okay."<br />"You did the thing you were meant to do."<br />"I'm sorry, and I will do better by you now."<br /><br />I manage to fall asleep, and I keep breathing, confident that I have slipped lose of the undertow, and can begin swimming back for shore. I know I can get there. I just have to keep going.Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-19117286042143417652018-01-07T11:57:00.002-08:002018-01-07T11:57:42.848-08:00Winter WellFor as long as I can remember, I have endured Winter.<br />
I have no enjoyed it.<br />
I have not delighted in it, used it, anticipated it, or waited for it with bated breath.<br />
<br />
I have known, like any New Englander (and while not one by birth, I believe my 20 odd years of New England winters should designate me at least the honorary claim), that<br />
Winter Was Coming And I Needed To Prepare.<br />
<br />
As a child in Canada, I found winter mesmerizing at first. Coming from a place like Australia, where the winters were comparable to the best possible slightly drizzly day in late May according to Canadian Meteorological rules, I found the relentless deposits of snow and blistering cold to be fascinating in the way that only a child can be fascinated by things that can kill her.<br />
<br />
I made snow men. I snowshoed. I skied. I tried ice skating and wasn't terrible at it. I shoveled and was abysmal at it. I learned how to tie a scarf around my face and pull my hat down in negative forty degree weather so that only your eyes were exposed, and then I learned what frozen eyelashes felt like.<br />
<br />
When we moved to Maine, the luster had very much rubbed off of Winter.<br />
As a teenager I was required to be moody and hate everything, and so I hated Winter fiercely.<br />
I hated it for keeping me indoors (when all I wanted to do was read anyway).<br />I hated it for the shoveling my parents demanded I do every time there was a blizzard.<br />
I hated it for the feeling of cold that seeped into my bones and which could only be driven away by gaining five to ten pounds in three months and as a teenage girl this was the kind of Catch 22 that made one suicidal.<br />
By the time I had enough fat on me to keep the cold away, the cold went away on its own, and it was presumed that I should be ready to strut around in the shortest of denim shorts and flimsiest sundresses as only true New England girls do once the thermometer goes above 50 outside.<br />
<br />
As a young adult, I escaped Winter by having a love affair with California.<br />
I have yet to resolve my feelings about this country's West Coast, but suffice it to say, that there is somewhere nestled to the Pacific where I am certain I could have the New England bled right out of me if I were to try. And I wouldn't hate it.<br />
<br />
But here's where I am with Winter now.<br />
I am in my mid-thirties, a time, when a great deal of uncertainty and self doubt begins to move out of the rotation on the "Most Important Things To Obsess About on an Hourly Basis" list.<br /><br />
I had a baby a little over two years ago, and so many of the things on that list have little to nothing to do with me anymore at all.<br />
<br />
Then there is the peculiarity of Winter.<br />
<br />
In a time when we are pressured to constantly move.<br />
A time when we are never successful enough, beautiful enough, relevant enough, rich enough, clever enough, well read enough, charitable enough, funny enough, fuckable enough, or productive enough...<br />
A time when you feel like you must update your blog your twitter your facebook your instagram your "followers' your friends you family with every single moment of your completely ordinary day and somehow sell it like it was something superior to everyone else's completely ordinary day...<br />
<br />
In this time, Winter makes you stop.<br />
<br />
Winter doesn't give you a reason to go out.<br />
Winter forces you to find reasons to stay in and slow down.<br />
<br />
Winter makes you stay inside your head, inside your house, inside yourself.<br />
<br />
And as a person in these times, that is quite difficult.<br />
<br />
In fact, I watch many many people take this time to escape themselves very seriously.<br />
The book vacations using credit cards and scamper away to the tropics where they can run around and pretend their lives aren't waiting for them the moment they get back.<br />
They go on cruises so laughably distracting from the routines of everyday life that they must create new routines inside their ship lives to keep from going mad.<br />
They expunge all evidence of the holidays and dedicate themselves religiously to militaristic diet and exercise regimens that fill their brains with calculations and meaningless arithmetic all boiling down to DO YOU OR DO YOU NOT DESERVE A COOKIE WORTHLESS FLESH MACHINE?<br />
<br />
Very few people actually dwell inside the Winter, and thusly, themselves.<br />
<br />
Do not be fooled.<br />
<br />
Even the bullshit American appropriation of hygge-hype has nothing to do with the actual ministrations of what hygge stands for. It's much more a way of excusing one's introverted behavior by means of hashtag.<br />
<br />
Gods forbid we don't feel guilty for sitting on our couch with a book and a cup of tea.<br />
<br />
Which is what I am getting at.<br />
<br />
In Winter, I clean my house.<br />
I scrub the cupboards and I purge my closets.<br />
I pine sol the bathroom and I reorganize all the books on my shelves.<br />
I do this, because I am spending so much more time inside I want it to be a nice place to be.<br />
I buy a couple of fat candles that I will enjoy lighting when the sun leaves us at 4:23pm.<br />
<br />
I invest in a nice brand of hot chocolate, and the good biscuits, or I learn to bake a new kind of cookie that I can put in my little cookie jar and feel very fancy when I reach in and there they are, all warm and slightly crumbly from the dry air.<br />
<br />
I don't fuss with exercise.<br />
<br />
If the weather is decent, I take a walk, but never for distance, only for silence, to appreciate the ocean, or the way the world goes all to whispers during a snowstorm.<br />
<br />
If there's been a snowstorm, I get up, first thing in the morning, put on my favorite music on my headphones, and I shovel out the driveway. While I do this, I fantasize about the enormous breakfast and twelve cups of coffee I am going to have when I am done because nothing is so delicious as the food and drink you consume after shoveling snow.<br />
<br />
I don't worry about gaining weight. If I do, it will keep me warm.<br />
If I don't, I have a thirty pound baby who likes to take naps on my chest for that.<br />
<br />
It's almost sneaked up on me, but I believe I have finally learned how to winter.<br />
<br />
And Winter well at that.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-55591978973871244102018-01-01T04:44:00.002-08:002018-01-01T04:44:57.360-08:00NEW YEAR'S REVOLUTIONGood Morning 2018.<br />
<br />
Right away, you tried to play your same old 2017 tricks, but we are wiser now.<br />
We are smarter, more resilient, less naive.<br />
<br />
In 2017, I felt like nothing was in my control.<br />I felt at the mercy of the media, of politicians, of big companies who couldn't care less about me.<br />I felt manipulated, overlooked, exposed and vulnerable.<br /><br />I felt powerless.<br />
<br />
<br />
And as the end of the year approached, I began to realize the biggest thing I wanted to take away from this year was the overcoming of that powerless feeling.<br />
<br />
So when I opened facebook at 7am on January 1st 2018 and the first fucking thing the stupid bloody algorithms tried to tell me was that North Korea was constantly ready to push their nuclear button, I said, "FUCK THIS and FUCK YOU."<br />
<br />
Because no.<br />
<br />
I don't think we're on the brink of nuclear war.<br />
<br />
I think the current administration wants us to believe we are because then we will cling to it.<br />
We will be so cowed by the biggest, scariest threat that they can feed us, that we will let them "do whatever it takes to protect us," and gobble up all the stupid fear mongering bullshit news articles about "escalating tensions," "good guys and bad guys," and every other carefully chosen phrase that will not make you freak out, but put you in a low level of anxiety and tension that makes you feel vulnerable, weak, and desperate for a big, strong hero to tell you, "Do not worry citizens. I have this under control."<br /><br />
You are being manipulated.<br />
Every article you read.<br />
Every headline.<br />
Every tv show.<br />
<br />
All of it is designed to make you feel a certain way.<br />
Every piece of media you engage with is designed to make you feel invested in a plotline, or character development, or mounting dramatic tension.<br />
Not every source of such material is in it for simple entertainment value.<br />
<br />
And it is really really really fucking important to know where you're getting your entertainment/news/media from, and what they benefit from if you wholly engage with their manipulation.<br />
<br />
They may get a second season of their incredibly well written netflix series.<br />
<br />
They may get a third article on the well read blog that's gaining popularity.<br />
<br />
They may get a third release of their celebrity endorsed clothing line.<br />
<br />
And they may get a second term in office, or avoid prosecution for their multitudes of crimes, if we, as the consumers do not pay attention.<br />
<br />
SO NO. I WILL NOT BE BUYING YOUR CULTIVATED FUCKING WAR SEEDS. I WILL NOT BE BUYING INTO YOUR POORLY CONSTRUCTED SUBPLOT.<br /><br />2017 was really hard.<br />
<br />
It was a year of disillusionment and fear.<br />
<br />
Part of that was realizing that there are still a ton of people who hate other people for no bloody reason, which I admit, was really brutal.<br />
<br />
I, like many, believed we were well on our way to a new time of peace, love, hope, and understanding.<br />
<br />
The thing about all that really nice stuff, is that it's like a garden, it must be tended to and taken care of, or else it withers and dies.<br />
<br />
If you leave the garden to everyone else, you will come out one day and there will be no tomatoes for your pasta sauce. You have to water the garden. You have to plant the seeds too. You may even need to teach your children or your friends how to take care of the plants should you get ill or need to take a break so that the garden survives your absence, but the thing is, WE ARE ALL RESPONSIBLE FOR THESE FUCKING TOMATOES.<br />
<br />
Long story short, it is okay if you had a rough 2017.<br />
It is okay if you are tired, and it feels overwhelming to go right out and check on your garden right now.<br /><br />
BUT WE SURVIVED YOU GUYS.<br />
AND WE WILL KEEP SURVIVING.<br />
<br />
IN FACT WE WILL THRIVE AND SO WILL OUR TOMATOES.<br />
<br />
Okay that metaphor is a little ridiculous now...<br />
<br />
But truly.<br />
<br />
Don't let the follies of last year inform your decisions for this year, or exhaust you before you've even begun.<br />
<br />
Do not read articles that discourage you from resisting.<br />
You do not have to believe something just because it is in print.<br />
You do not have to believe something because it is on tv, because it is on a well reputed blog, or because it is being spouted by the supposed leader of your country.<br />
<br />
You do not have to believe a god damn word.<br />
<br />
And you shouldn't.<br />
<br />
Because you are being manipulated.<br />
Constantly.<br />
And you can decide not to be.<br />
You can decide to turn off the computer, or the phone, or the television.<br />
You can talk to your friends, read other articles, and speak with the representatives who engage with and stand up for your beliefs.<br />
<br />
Believe me when I say this alone is an act of rebellion.<br />
Continued education is an act of revolution, and choosing not to be manipulated is a virtue of that education.<br />
<br />
Believe me when I say, we are going to thrive this year.<br />
2018 is not a year of fear for us.<br />
<br />
It is a year of fear for THEM.<br />
BECAUSE THEY ARE TERRIFIED OF US.<br />
WE HAVE THE POWER.<br />
BECAUSE WE HAVE THE MAJORITY.<br />
<br />
HAPPY NEW YEARS REVOLUTION.<br />
<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-73805569440447681782017-11-17T09:56:00.002-08:002017-11-17T09:56:42.776-08:00Creature of HabitThe thing about coping mechanisms, addictions, and eating disorders is that even years into recovery, they still like to present themselves as your first recourse whenever you find yourself in a stressful situation.<br />
<br />
For the last few months, I think I can safely admit that I was depressed.<br />
Back in August, after a trip for a family wedding that, while in no way disastrous, felt extravagant and unappreciated, I began to tumble down an all too familiar chasm of anxiety.<br />
It was partially spurred by the the use of a substantial amount of funds for the trip and my concern that it didn't leave us with "enough" to make ends meet through the rest of the year.<br />
<br />
That's right, I started worrying about things in December back in August.<br />
<br />
It was compounded by the relentless terrible news I saw in the media every day.<br />
<br />
I kept worrying about how i could take care of my son, how I could protect him, how was I going to make up for the fact that I'd brought him into a terribly dangerous world where people purposefully ignored the environment, turned away the hungry and hurt from their doors, fought over meaningless social platforms, and burst into schools, concerts, and churches to murder each other. In this world, it wasn't safe to walk down the street because a nazi/terrorist in a truck could plow into you just for having the gall to protest the normalization of bigotry and hatred.<br />
<br />
Before long I was drowning in fear. I couldn't control anything. I couldn't even financially care for my family because no matter how many jobs I applied for or freelance positions I wrote samples for, or manuscripts I sent out, I never got a bite.<br /><br />My feelings of inadequacy multiplied and bred in the shadow of these fears. They began to consume my sleep, my time with my son, my relationships, my body, myself.<br /><br />I should warn you. This is not a comeback kid story. This is not a "And then I had an epiphany and turned my whole life around" story.<br />
<br />
This is the truth.<br />
<br />
I cried every day.<br />
I retreated from conversations with friends because I didn't want to tell them how poorly I was doing.<br />
I called my dad every day and talked to him for fifteen minutes before hanging up because every time I thought he would say the thing that made me feel better, he was a human being and just asked me how the baby was doing, and whether I'd tried a new recipe for bread, and what book I was reading, and I couldn't fathom being a normal person who wanted to bake bread, or had the concentration to read a book, or could accurately describe how her child was, because everything was terrible, I was terrible, nothing made any sense, and I was somehow still falling, always falling, always getting sadder, more anxious, wondering if this was how it would be from now on.<br />
<br />
And this went on until about two weeks ago.<br />
Around the end of October, I realized I hit rock bottom.<br />
I looked around rock bottom, and I don't have to tell you what it looked like because I think you know, but I got there, and I knew, this was a different rock bottom than the one I had reached at 28 when I decided I needed therapy, or at 22 when I looked into the ocean one day and thought how nice it would be just to smash myself to pieces on the rocks to make my head go silent once and for all.<br />
<br />
This time rock bottom was a moment of walking to the park. A storm had just blown through, and ripped mighty limbs from trees. Our neighbor's shed had lost its roof. Power zapped out through many neighborhoods including our own. And in that morning light, after the storm, with all the wreckage lying about, the wind still very strong and wild, it was oddly warm out.<br />
<br />
I had been crying all morning, but needs must, and I took the baby for his daily dose of fresh air and found the park deserted.<br />
<br />
Which made sense. Anybody with half a brain was probably tucked inside safely away from all the debris.<br />
<br />
I took the baby out of his stroller, and we went down to the ocean and looked at the waves.<br />
They were crowding the shore, chewing at it hungrily and the sound of thousands of rocks clacking against each other was deafening.<br />
<br />
I picked up a stone. It was round.<br />
And I realized that the ocean wasn't responsible for rounding its edges the way I'd always believed. The ocean just bashed the rocks against each other and it was the friction of touching all those stones, tumbling about in a senseless torrent of waves, that smoothed them down and made them blunt.<br />
<br />
And it wasn't an epiphany, but it made me think about how much I had been blaming the universe and the state of the world for being fucked up and making me miserable, when it had nothing to do with an omniscient force and everything to do with all the other people, all the other rocks, and me allowing them to smash into me over and over and over and feeling like it was out of my hands, and that I had no control over being stuck in this wave.<br />
<br />
But that isn't how it has to be at all.<br />
<br />
And a little voice said, "the good thing about hitting rock bottom, is that there's nowhere to go but up."<br />
And i felt better.<br />
<br />
It was an increment better.<br />
It was a sliver better.<br />
But it was the first time in three months I could remember feeling any bit better instead of worse.<br />
<br />
So I got a job at the local coffeshop working part time so that I didn't need childcare, and I could still spend my days with the baby.<br />
<br />
<br />
*<br />
<br />
<br />
When describing one's life, it is easy to get sucked into the desire of fitting one's story into a narrative.<br />
I want you all to leave off with me on that shoreline, wind-whipped cheeks and howling with renewed fervor for life, but that is not the end of my story.<br />
<br />
It is not even the end of my depression's story, because life is too many simultaneous narratives to ever possibly fit into such a neat and tidy description: beginning-conflict-resolution-end.<br />
<br />
So I got a part time job, and I began to work on my anxiety, and I stopped going on facebook or instagram as much, and I cut certain media outlets out of my life, and I slowly, incrementally, started to feel like perhaps there was a point to what I was doing. Perhaps it wasn't a terrible idea to bring a child into this world, to hope that there might be a future for him that didn't look like my worst nightmares.<br />
<br />
Things like to settle into grooves, habits, and routine.<br />
<br />
I could work at a coffeeshop in Berlin and it would be just a slightly differently nuanced version of the same thing I've been doing for the last fifteen years.<br />
<br />
So this is a new cafe, but the same old habits.<br />
The offensive music we save for the closing.<br />
The pastries we fight over to take home at the end of the day rather than throw them out.<br />
The elaborate shift drinks.<br />
The bad jokes.<br />
The regulars.<br />
The terrible customers.<br />
The mopping.<br />
The cuts and bruises I don't remember receiving.<br />
<br />
And I come home at ten o'clock at night, starved from the running and carrying and lifting and cleaning, and I can feel the old monstrous crutches lean into me heavily as I enter the darkened kitchen.<br />
<br />
The same demons that always lived here telling me to eat until I want to die.<br />
Eat because I didn't have time to during my shift.<br />
But keep eating because I hate myself.<br />
Keep eating because you have to go back tomorrow.<br />
Keep eating because you're lonely, because you miss your kid, because you miss your kid but you don't want to see him right away when you get home because you haven't actually had a moment's peace.<br />
Keep eating because you don't remember how to listen to your body, because your body is a stupid, wretched thing that you have no control over, that will fail you, is failing you, failing you constantly, every moment, even now.<br />
<br />
So it is a small victory but an important one,<br />
that I make a grilled cheese sandwich.<br />
I put butter in the pan, slice up the good, homemade bread.<br />
arranged the cheddar pieces so that they meet the edges of the bread and then press down with the spatula to get that golden toasty outside, with the hot, molten, salty interior.<br />
<br />
I make the grilled cheese because making something to eat was also never how I used to come home from a shift.<br />
<br />
Then I take it, and I sit down in front of the computer, and I put on a site that I can stand to read, that isn't terror infused, and I eat the sandwich slowly. I taste it. I drink a glass of water to wash it down.<br />
When I get to the last bite, it is the best bite, the corner bit with the toastiest edge and the meltiest cheese. I savor it, and then I finish my water, and then I finish the article I am reading.<br />
<br />
I brush my teeth, and then I retrieve my child, and I go to bed.<br />
<br />
The smallest victory, but no less important, because it is so starkly different from how I ever sought comfort in the past.<br />
<br />
And there is still a voice that screams:<br />
<br />
You pig!<br />
Bad mother!<br />
Terrible person!<br />
<br />
But it sounds hollow and desperate now.<br />
There is a voice bigger than it, and it sounds like a wave filled with tumbling rocks, and all the ocean behind it, and it says,<br />
"Good. Now sleep. You've done all that you can."<br />
<br />
And it is enough.<br />
<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-24769509660294836042017-10-06T10:59:00.000-07:002017-10-06T10:59:48.568-07:00WorthyWe threw out our scale a few weeks ago.<br />In fact, I haven't weighed myself in a month, and it wouldn't be that big of a deal if I didn't think about it, every, single day.<br />
<br />
See, weighing myself and seeing a number that corresponded with the idea I had fo no logical reason decided to be the most virtuous helped me make sense of my life.<br />
<br />
I struggle a great deal with feeling worthy.<br />
As in, I don't.<br />
<br />
I won't go into the litany of things from my childhood and young adulthood that destroyed my sense of personal value, but I will boil it down to the three sentences I hear inside my own head more than any other words:<br /><br />"You don't matter."<br />
"Who do you think you are?"<br />
and the biggie...<br />"It's okay for everyone else, but not for you."<br />
<br />
These tenants run just about every decision I make, and back when I had a full blown eating disorder, I created an elaborate system of behaviors that governed whether I could feel worthy that day.<br />
<br />Doing 2,000 sit ups=worthy (no matter if it took two hours and rubbed all the skin off my spine leaving me with a bloody scab I had to cover with make up).<br />
<br />
Not going for a walk because I had too much homework=unworthy<br />
<br />
As an adult in recovery, I have worked really hard to listen to my body and approach my behaviors with curiosity over judgement and forgiveness over shame.<br /><br />But I still had my scale.<br />
<br />
Is it any wonder that, after we threw out the scale, I began to have a real problem with my self worth?<br />
<br />
I was unaware of how so much of what I chose to feel about myself was decided by that arbitrary, whimsical number.<br /><br />I could read all day about how weight is irrelevant to health, muscle versus fat density, body positivity, and HAES, but the information never traveled further than skin deep.<br />
<br />
Nevertheless, I am experiencing a reckoning.<br /><br />I,<br />
-<br />
a thirty five year old woman with multiple degrees, several completed manuscripts, a husband, a son, good friends, a safe neighborhood, and a view of the ocean a ten minute walk from my door,<br />
-<br />
DO NOT KNOW IF I AM WORTH ANYTHING BECAUSE I CAN'T TELL HOW MUCH I WEIGH.<br />
<br />
<br />
Now, my first reaction is to berate myself for being so stupid, superficial, and easily manipulated by our fucked up media and society's perceptions, BUT,<br />
that is one of the fundamental parts of the problem.<br />
I am far too quick to judge myself as faulty or stupid or morally corrupt for fastening onto something so arbitrary, but isn't this an important moment for me?<br />Realizing that my inherent value has nothing to do with a measurement, and more importantly my brain doesn't know how to imbue itself with worth if a body isn't involved, is a big deal<br />
<br />
But now what?<br />How do I change these destructive habits I have practiced for so many years? How do I teach my brain to throw out the veritable lego kingdom built out of millions of bricks of doubt and coping mechanisms of thirty odd years?<br />Is this really why throwing out the scale was so scary I couldn't actually bring myself to do it?<br />Is this why I didn't actually do it until my husband handed it to me and told me to take it outside and junk it?<br />
<br />
Ugh.<br />
<br />
So here I am, a girl standing in front of a mirror, asking it to love her.<br />
<br />
No strings, no scales, no immediate pay off.<br />
<br />
No caloric equations that will somehow placate the mind into believing something was managed.<br />
<br />
No balancing of scales of any kind, no measurements, literally, just a girl and her mind, a girl and her body as vehicle, as sensory receptor, as child creator and sustainer, just a body for god's sake!<br /><br />Nothing more, certainly,<br />
but finally, nothing less. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-41591671260317406032017-08-22T11:37:00.001-07:002017-08-22T11:37:09.906-07:00A Snowball's ChanceYou know how sometimes you're chugging along, doing your thing, and something comes along and hits you like a mac truck?<br />
Maybe it was something you were prepared to have interrupt your routine, like, say a trip to the top-middle of the country for a wedding...<br />
You tie up all your loose ends, doing laundry, emptying the fridge of perishables, and taking out the trash so it doesn't fester in your seven day absence.<br />
You arrange for the dog to spend the time with your Dad in Maine where she can run about in the woods and be fattened up with sneaky table scraps.<br />
You get a friend to stop by the house and feed the cat. You transfer money and budget for gas. You make seventy six checklists and you shockingly get out the door on the day at the time you planned for, and like tumblers in a lock, everything clicks like it's supposed to.<br />
<br />
Then, a mid-west relation on your husband's side, someone with too much make up, or bad breath from a sour stomach, shakes your hand, touches the baby's cheek, or kisses you hello beside your eye, and introduces a fucking cold germ.<br />
<br />
The trip continues to go pretty much as planned.<br /><br />
I mean, sure, the world is in chaos, terrible things are happening that make your too anxious to eat regularly. You make some poor decisions like drinking diet coke at four in the afternoon because you're doing that whole "vacation with a baby not sleeping thing," and you maybe eat two frosted rose cookie favors from the wedding while lying in a hotel bed one night after you flee the wedding because it didn't start until 6pm, and so the baby went into meltdown just as they brought out the entrees, and so you haven't eaten anything but half a bread roll and three forkfuls of wilted romaine in italian dressing.<br />
<br />
But these are all details that get lost in the relief as soon as you set foot in your own house a week later.<br />
<br />
Except you wake up the following day with a head full of bees and a throat paved in crushed glass.<br />
You, your Beard, and your baby, are sicker than a pack of dogs, and due to all the travel and emotional strain, it knocks you out for yet another week.<br />
<br />
By the time you get back on your feet, it's almost the third week of August.<br />
You're hurtling well toward Autumn with many stores already shuffling in their Halloween decor, and a desire to drink hot coffee and sit outside beside a smoky fire and eat apple after apple.<br /><br />or at least that's what you want it to be.<br />
<br />
That anxious feeling in your stomach never went away.<br />
<br />
In fact, now that you have the biggest financial commitment of the year, and the requisite gnarly cold out of your way, you have nothing but the hideous world to focus on.<br />
<br />
You want to be enjoying the last beach days. You take the baby to the beach during the eclipse thinking it will be magical, but instead the water is choked with foul smelling algae, and you flee the stench after ten minutes under the sickly half-sun.<br /><br />The class you've had to reschedule twice now has to be cancelled due to an open house, and your baby won't take a nap, and your fall classes don't have enough sign ups to run yet, so you're anxiety takes hold of money fears, and you find yourself swinging back and forth between nausea and ravenous hunger, fear and survival, self loathing and self preservation.<br />
<br />
Your need for stability and reassurance is constant. You get no succor from talking to people who ordinarily make you feel better, hopeful, like you matter, like you can make things better.<br /><br />That's what it all boils down to.<br /><br /><br /><br />Control.<br /><br /><br />You have so little right now.<br /><br />With a child who you want to leave a wonderful world, a world better than the one you brought him into.<br />
<br />
With an old demon that threatens its ugly rise every time you feel ineffective and lost.<br /><br />With all the small grievances snowballing against you its really difficult to stay warm and be certain you'll get back to safety.<br />
<br />
I feel like I'm trapped inside an avalanche and I don't know which way is up.<br />
<br />
But, I've got to spit, and see which way it falls, and then start digging.<br />I have to dig my way out, and trust the sun is shining once I'm free.<br />
<br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-53298079111405720102017-08-04T13:00:00.000-07:002017-08-04T13:00:06.904-07:00It's Friday.<br />
<br />
So there are only three days left before the great Cronk roadtrip to Detroit MI for Cronk the younger's wedding.<br />
<br />
This meant my brain thought it would be a wonderful time (at around 3am this morning) to list all the things I haven't done yet to prepare for said road trip, namely the copious amounts of laundry.<br />
Also, I think Baz is teething again because he's been night nursing a ton, and while I was listing laundry, counting phone chargers, and trying to figure out if we needed to bring all of the books the baby wants to read, I was also fantasizing about eating peanut butter, tortilla chips, and frozen bananas.<br />
<br />
I feel like I need to blog more regularly, so that I come across as less of a psycho and more of a human, so here's a recap of my week.<br />
<br />
Monday-<br />
I finished reading the pieces written by the students in my Magical Fiction class and doodled notes on them. I spent an hour on zillow looking at apartments in Portsmouth and Dover, NH, which are beautiful, and much more affordable than the North Shore.<br />
Still, we don't really have the extra moolah to move right now, so I got depressed and strapped the now 30lb baby to my chest and went for an extra long walk to clear my head. I toodled down to the Beverly market for the first time this year and bought some corn and zucchini. I was surprised at how little produce there was in comparison to how many stands were selling bread. I hung out at the Pigs Fly stand drooling over their stuff for longer than I probably should have considering I don't think buying bread makes sense when I have Fang (my homegrown starter) lurking in the fridge waiting to be turned into magic.<br />
<br />
Tuesday-<br />
My Dad came down in the afternoon to hang out with the baby and help with the childcare so I could leave for my class in Boston. We drank tea and ate slices of the zucchini bread I baked that morning. Auntie Rex came over and the baby delighted in having so much attention.<br />
We left the babe with my Dad and ducked out so I could buy a Rose for my class to share, and Rex got me to the train depot in plenty of time.<br />
For the first time this summer, I made it to Grub without having to run halfway across Boston.<br />I chilled the Rose, and then the rest of the students arrived.<br />
They're a really lovely group, and between them there were brownies, almond cookies, pretzels, hummus, and blueberry cake. One very industrious student took it upon himself to make ice shot glasses in the freezer and brought out a bottle of rum, but he was the only one brave enough to try it.<br />
If I were to drink anything stronger than a glass of wine, there would be no way I'd make it home in one piece. I'd probably end up on the Fung Wah bus to NYC with a garbage bag full of balloon animals and a box of krispy kremes (not that I've ever done that...ever).<br />
I got home on the 11pm train after a wonderful class, and fell into bed with the bairn.<br />
<br />
Wednesday-<br />
My late Tuesday nights always melt into eeeeeeaaaaaarly Wednesday mornings. The baby does not care what time I get home from class. He's up at 5:30, and so I am too.<br />
Thank god for coffee.<br />
It was humid and hot, so we went down to the beach at about 8:30am. The baby bypasses the playground and goes running straight for the water, and honestly, I can't blame him, so we splashed and frolicked for a bit, until I could feel the sun starting to scorch up my shoulders, about quarter after nine. It's a good thing too, because I checked my phone and saw a few texts about a coffee date with my darling InkWitch that I totally blanked on thanks to the no sleep. I wrapped the babe up, swaddled him into the stroller and raced for the coffee shop, still making it there in time for the date.<br />
It was one of those necessary lovely things. We only had about an hour to visit, but InkWitch is so generous in spirit and in body, that I always feel really well cared for in her presence. She brought a rattlesnake toy for the babe, and tea and a talisman for me. I've been wearing the talisman for the rest of the week, and it reminds me how much I am loved by a very special witchy lady.<br />
After the coffee date, I ran a few errands, then my third wind abandoned me, and by noon, we were back at the house. I curled up so the babe could get a post-lunch nap and wished with all my might that I could fall asleep too, but not for this Aries. As long as the sun is shining, my eyes are open.<br />
The afternoon involved a lot of reading. Baz picked out book after book, and I read and read. It makes me so happy that he might love reading as much as I and his Dad do.<br />
<br />
Thursday-<br />
I woke up with a baking fever. I had a recipe kicking around in my head for Sauerkraut Sourdough, so I mixed up the dough at seven thirty while the coffee pot burbled and the baby finished his sweet potato pancakes. I fiddled with the kraut, but still, it added a bit more liquid than I wanted, and so, when I left for (yes, another coffee date), I was a bit nervous about the final rise.<br />
This has been the week for seeing friends who've been so busy that our schedules never properly aligned. With the trip next week, I got worried I wouldn't get to visit with anybody, so I jammed everything in to this seven day block. It makes me sound way more social than I usually am. Most weeks, we don't see a soul, and I start talking to the walls to feel less crazy. That's how it works, right?<br />
Another early hour at the beach, some running around, and then, an eleven thirty lunch/coffee date with Auntie Face. Auntie Face is really a term of endearment, because she is fiercely beautiful and serves serious face. I am in awe of her luminescence.<br />
I drank two (TWO!!!) iced lattes, and Baz purloined her almonds and dried mango (he's lucky he's cute), then we walked down to another park and played around a fairy tree while talking about the world between worlds. I try to be grateful for the humans I have in my village around here. It's remarkable...how we all find each other exactly when we need to.<br />
After such a busy date, the babe was tuckered out. We came home and he collapsed into his afternoon nap. Sometime I'm going to have to sleep train him, but for now, I relish the feeling of his little body completely at rest on my heart. It makes me feel stronger and more magical than I ever dreamed possible.<br />
The nap ended abruptly, and I nervously bunged the sloppy kraut bread into the oven, then we read a few more books before dinner.<br />
Shockingly the bread turned out marvelous!<br />
Savory, tangy, sour, and salty without an overload of anything. It was really good! The baby ate a piece with his peas and chopped up hamburger, and I had a chunk with some cheese.<br />
I typically eat my biggest meal around two in the afternoon, and then eat a snack and then another snack instead of dinner because the end of the day is super busy, but I guess I didn't eat enough yesterday because of the late night hangries.<br />
<br />
Friday-<br />
And here we are!<br />
This morning, I confirmed our rental car reservation, bought some weekend groceries (fruit, cat food, whipped cream, and taco fixin's) but was strangely waylaid by a package of raisin bran muffins. I couldn't tell you why, but I had to have them.<br />
We then scooted straight up the hilliest hill in my neighborhood to visit Auntie Treat, who spoiled us with homemade palmiers (teensy little three bite wonders), and fancy coffee. The babe was in heaven racing around with Auntie Treat's two doggos. We got our exercise too, trying to keep him from eating trinkets, pulling out wires, and knocking over glasses as well.<br />
By then the babe was ready for his nap, so we spirited back home, where I inhaled a banana/peach/sweet potato/coconut yoghurt smoothie the size of my head.<br />
Later I took the babe outside and let him play in the baby pool (another present from Inkwitch), and picked some tomatoes from the garden, before coming back in to split one of the muffins and some salty salty peanuts. Nom nom nom.<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-28351035951736605492017-07-15T16:13:00.002-07:002017-07-15T16:13:45.944-07:00An Admission of GuiltRecovery is not linear.<br />
<br />
I repeat this to myself as I realize that I am waiting for my scale to zero out so I can step on it before I get in the shower.<br />
<br />
It's a habit I got into when I was pregnant, weighing myself every Tuesday, but I kept it up after the baby was born, and I realized the other day that I am no longer doing it on Tuesdays.<br />
I am weighing myself every morning.<br />
<br />
Then something else started happening.<br />
<br />
I started seeing a number I wanted to keep.<br />
A low number.<br />
<br />
And without even thinking about it, all of them, all of the behaviors I've worked so hard to let go of in the last two years began creeping back into my days.<br />
<br />
And so did all of their consequences.<br />
<br />
Weird food rules.<br />
<br />
Like not allowing myself to eat before 11am.<br />
<br />
Even when my stomach is growling.<br />
<br />
Not allowing myself this or that thing if I haven't had blank number of servings of vegetables first.<br />
<br />
Not allowing myself to eat before I've gone for a morning walk.<br />
<br />
Not allowing myself to eat if I haven't had 16oz of water first.<br />
<br />
And fuck fuck fucking fuck, I let it tell me all of that.<br />
<br />
I made excuses for it. Like it was a bad boyfriend.<br />
<br />
I'm not really restricting, I'm eating plenty of food.<br />
I'm not ignoring my body's needs, I always stop when I feel full.<br />
I'm not keeping myself from eating certain foods, I eat anything I want.<br />
<br />
Then the pendulum swung, and I binged.<br />
<br />
I felt so hungry, and I ate right through my hunger cues into my fullness cues and then past those into my discomfort.<br />
<br />
I ate enough to feel sick to my stomach and not to want to eat again for the rest of the day.<br />
<br />
Then the shame began.<br />
<br />
I lay awake wondering what I'd done wrong.<br />
I woke up vowing today would be different,<br />
and then I did it again.<br />
<br />
You read that right.<br />
<br />
I restricted all day, and then I binged at night.<br />
<br />
And this time, I felt like I was in a car my Eating Disorder was driving drunk, and I knew it was dangerous, I knew I should pull over and get out, but I just had to see if it really was going to crash, and I really was going to die.<br />
<br />
And the thing is, it didn't crash this time.<br />
I didn't die.<br />
<br />
But I will be asked to get back in this car every day, every morning, every hour for the rest of my life, and if I say yes every time, one day, I will crash, and I will die, and it will be because I let this thing convince me that a bunch of worthless rules, a bunch of stupid meaningless rules, are more important than my body, my life, and my son. I will pretend that they give me control over the uncontrollable, and then I will miss out on every other important thing happening in my life.<br />
<br />
So I repeat to myself, recovery is not linear.<br />
<br />
And I forgive myself for blundering back into the insidious, sticky swamp of my disordered behaviors. I hope I caught myself in time.<br />
I know that there will be other moments that I fuck this up, but all I can do is take it one hour at a time, one day at a time, one meal at a time, and most importantly, tomorrow, I am going to eat breakfast when I get up and relax for the rest of the day.<br />
<br />
And I am not getting on that fucking scale.<br />
<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-84694076601112845952017-07-14T10:18:00.000-07:002017-07-14T10:18:06.610-07:00Short and BittersweetSometimes I get completely swept up in how fast my baby is going to grow up.<br />
<br />
These days it's so easy to become mired inside the amber of long summer afternoons and even longer sticky, cranky nights. I hold him on my lap and he twiddles wiht my boobs and tries to nurse standing on his head, and by god, it feels endless then. I feel like I'll never get my body back to myself. I feel overwhelmed by the needs of this little person, and I feel crushed by the responsibility of giving him what he needs from moment to moment.<br />
<br />
But it's slipping away nonetheless.<br />
<br />
He races away from me on the beach, a tiny shovel clutched in his fist, and my heart seizes in my chest with the awful certainty that he will repeat this desertion someday, but in a much grander sense.<br />
<br />
That's the truly horrible truth about parenthood:<br />
If you do your job properly, one day, your child will leave you, and they may never look back.<br />
<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-76132613650888889512017-07-12T10:36:00.001-07:002017-07-12T10:36:08.976-07:00Keep Your Home Equity. I wanna Dance!Sometimes I am paralyzed over one very specific task.<br />
<br />
It's usually a money related thing.<br />
<br />
A bill I need to pay in installments because I don't have the lump sum (medical shit),<br />
A debt I am overwhelmed by and need to lower my monthly payments on (student loan shit),<br />
An impending expense I have no desire to incur but must in order to continue as a functioning adult member of society and caretaker of a child (any type of repairs).<br />
<br />
These things are literally heart freezingly stressful for me because deep deep down, I believe that the fact that I find them necessary and unhappy making is a symptom of the terrible life I am leading.<br />
<br />
Honestly, if you wanted to go to the source of pretty much all of my anxiety other than fear of death or injury to my loved ones it's all rooted in this terrible certainty that I am doing my whole damn life wrong.<br />
<br />
Do you ever feel like this?<br />
<br />
Like, obviously a decent person would have met all her deadlines!<br />
This decent person has a savings account for her son, a retirement fund that both she and her husband contribute to, and yet another account in which they are saving for the down payment on a house.<br />
This decent person doesn't feel a hand squeeze her lungs when she sees that the mail has come.<br />
She doesn't mind ordering checks or setting up her bills for automatic payments because she'll never overdraw her account.<br />
<br />
This is the person I believe I should be, and I really really want to be her.<br />
<br />
I want to be her, and I have to believe that I will be her at some point,<br />
but I'm not her right now, and because I'm not, I am constantly sizzling with fear.<br />
<br />
It sucks too, because I hate money.<br />
I hate its importance, the materialism, malcontent, and greed it inspires.<br />
I hate that as soon as I got to my thirties everyone asked me when we were going to buy a house.<br />
<br />
And I actually don't give a shit about owning a house.<br />
<br />
You can't take it with you!<br />
I want to scream.<br />
Why bother tying yourself to a piece of property that will only rob you of any extraneous funds you put aside for the traveling you wanted to do in your old age?<br />
<br />
And smart people, real grown ups, people nothing like me, have answers for all these questions.<br />
Answers that begin with equity and end with 'DON'T YOU WANT TO LEAVE YOUR CHILDREN WITH ANYTHING?'<br />
<br />
And yeah...I do...<br />
but I would much rather leave them with memories than a bunch of stuff they have to figure out how to either get rid of, sell, or store after I die.<br />
<br />
Why is it so difficult to convince people that I don't want THINGS?<br />
<br />
I would much rather go out to a meal with six of my closest friends than get a necklace that cost as much as that dinner.<br />
<br />
I would rather take a trip than invest in an upgraded vehicle.<br />
<br />
I would rather splurge on the vacation, the boat ride, the road trip, and anything other experience that I can lie in bed and relive over and over again in my mind.<br />
<br />
When I am dying, I won't be lying there fondly recalling all my stocks and bonds. I won't be happily going over how many clocks I collected or how, the day before my stroke, I finally got that diamond tennis bracelet I was coveting.<br />
<br />
I will be lost in the memories of the meals laughed over until midnight, the embrace of my loved ones in an airport after a long journey, the sunrises over multicolored oceans, the breathless, weightless feeling of being in a foreign country and trying to memorize how everything feels and looks even though you know it's impossible.<br />
<br />
So here I am, struggling, like everyone else, to equate my idea of a well lived life, with taking care of my family and staying secure, so there's food on the table between vacations, doctor's appointments and vaccines before summer adventures, and electricity pumping into my home, so that on a sick day, my kid and I can curl up and watch ET for the millionth time.<br />
<br />
It's odd, but I feel better writing that all down.<br />
<br />
My Dad once told me that his goal was to die owing a million dollars.<br />
He's in his seventies now, and he laments that he'll probably not get there.<br />
<br />
I laugh at him, but I silently agree.<br />
<br />
Fuck it.<br />
I wanna dance!<br />
<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-38114896373400949932017-07-06T13:35:00.001-07:002017-07-06T13:35:32.540-07:00Falling on a Summer afternoonToday has been a backwards, inside out kind of day.<br />
<br />
Like all of them,<br />
it looks perfectly ordinary from the outside.<br />
We woke up and I fed the baby breakfast: toast made from homemade bread, with peanut butter and bananas and cottage cheese with cinnamon.<br />
We took the dog out.<br />
We cleaned up, got dressed, went to the park.<br />
I drank coffee.<br />
I chased the baby around the park and the beach for an hour. He wanted to see trucks. He chased after dogs. He befriended a four year old and they chased each other around giggling.<br />
We shared a bottle of water, and he ate a handful of pita chips.<br />
He fell asleep in the stroller as I navigated through appalling construction that made the fifteen minute trek to the grocery store take three quarters of an hour.<br />
He woke up in the store after only a little bit, and I peeled a clementine for him.<br />
He sucked the juice out of the segments and I finished the shopping.<br />
I took a weird roundabout way home to avoid the construction, and it was eleven thirty before I got home, and I had been awake for five and a half hours and I hadn't eaten yet.<br />
<br />
Bastian ran around while I made a smoothie, and I forgot I hadn't eaten, even though I was starving, and I put in the frozen leftovers of an almond milk latte from the day before, and after I drank the smoothie, I got such a caffeine buzz, but it was nothing compared to later.<br />
<br />
It's four thirty in the afternoon.<br />
And I think I am fighting a panic attack.<br />
<br />
I did all the normal things.<br />
I talked to my mother on the phone about her trip to Canada to see my Grandmother.<br />
I fed the baby lunch and talked to Bob during his lunch break.<br />
The baby and I went to the library, and played for an hour. I read him The Cat in the Hat.<br />
<br />
Then I left with him in the carrier thinking that he'd fall asleep.<br />
Which he did.<br />
Except I couldn't calm down then.<br />
All I could think about all day was going to the farmers market.<br />
All I had to do was walk for forty minutes with the baby asleep on me, and I would be there.<br />
All I wanted, was for him to sleep, for the wind to blow, for there to be strawberries at the market, for there to be something delicious that surprised me. I wanted to see the baby dance to the musician playing in the square.<br />
<br />
But my legs hurt.<br />
And my eyes felt unfocused.<br />
My head clouded up, and the prospect of walking so far suddenly made me feel weak and sick.<br />
<br />
So I turned around.<br />
I came home.<br />
All I wanted to do was have a lovely market experience with my baby.<br />
But when I couldn't do that,<br />
all I wanted was to sit in front of the computer and write while he slept.<br />
Except, the moment I sat down, he woke up.<br />
<br />
I couldn't stop feeling weak.<br />
<br />
I thought maybe I needed to eat more.<br />
I made toast with hummus.<br />
I drank a huge bottle of water.<br />
<br />
And I feel drunk.<br />
<br />
I feel dizzy and weepy and off.<br />
<br />
I don't want to eat.<br />
<br />
I don't want to be in my house.<br />
<br />
I feel like I've failed everything, and I don't know why.<br />
<br />
Like I'm falling down a tunnel, and I don't have the strength to scrabble at the walls.<br />
<br />
What do I do?<br />
<br />
Wait until it passes.<br />
I guess.<br />
Like everything.WhatWJesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-82972223725749823272017-06-21T08:45:00.000-07:002017-06-21T08:45:15.156-07:00Racing To Win at Losing AKA:ParenthoodI've mainly been using this blog as a therapist's chaise longue to process through my ED recovery lately, and that's okay.<br />
A large part of my recovery story was and is becoming pregnant and then transforming into a mother (still doing that second part), but there are many transformation occurring within and around us all the time.<br />
For example, my baby, my little squish, has suddenly transformed into a toddler.<br />
<br />
I was looking the other way.<br />
At the end of April he was still only just sixteen months. He still had all these little rolls on his arms and legs like the can of biscuits when you first open it. His head was still a little big, and he had very little hair. He slept twice a day and only woke once or twice in the night to nurse a little and then cuddle back down to sleep. He liked books, but couldn't sit still through them, and he played with toys in an abstract way picking them up and putting them down without any kind of idea what they were for. Blocks weren't for stacking so much as knocking over. Toy trucks and trains were for banging on things to make noise, etc.<br />
Then May arrived and blew us apart with a solid five weeks of teething.<br />
Everything went topsy turvy as my kid cut six molars in the course of a month.<br />
Our sleep schedule shot to shit.<br />
He ran fevers, drooled constantly, was congested, sneezing, coughing, and generally miserable. He went back to nursing several time a day to ease the pain, and he didn't play much at all. He couldn't sit still he was so uncomfortable so reading was out. We spent a lot of afternoons plonked in front of the tv watching a movie as he nursed the pain away.<br />
I was happy I could do that much and shoved aside those feelings of guilt that I should be doing more.<br />
Then with the beginning of June the teething ebbed away like the tide.<br />
And strangely, it took with it the last of his babyness, leaving me with a toddler and the feeling that he had become a new animal overnight.<br />
<br />
Suddenly he was eating a ton more food, entire hamburgers at dinner time, bagels and cream cheese for breakfast, his own portions of sweet potato and beans.<br />
Along with the newfound appetite, his body and energy were changing. He didn't want to nap twice a day, instead sometimes he'd play through his a.m. naptime, racing around at a breakneck speed, picking up his toys and examining them with new curiosity. He began to bring me books to read aloud, only to squirm out of my lap halfway through and go to chase the cat or run a train around the floor ON ITS WHEELS like you're supposed to!<br />
<br />
Out of nowhere he threw tantrums when I picked him up to leave the playground, wriggled out of my arms when I tried to dress him in the morning, and refused to sit down in the tub for his bath.<br />
<br />
I felt ambushed by this new, willful child who replaced my dumpling of a boy from only two months earlier. I didn't understand that I needed to discipline him, not just keep him alive, and it blew my mind when one night after chasing him for ten minutes with a t-shirt for him to sleep in, I gave up, and he came over to me with a onesie he picked out himself which he then allowed me to snap onto his body as if to say, "i just wanted to wear this, not the one you chose."<br />
<br />
Yet, there were huge new wonderful things about this toddler, he wrapped his arms around the back of my neck and kissed my face then leaned back and smiled at me and my whole heart exploded with love. He clung to my legs when we went to the library and there were new kids he didn't know, and he held out a hand so I could help him anytime he wanted to climb stairs or descend the steps out of our apartment. He petted the dog and giggled hysterically when she licked his face. He chased the cat, and tickled her ears, and I could tell him to be gentle and he would pet her more softly.<br /><br />
Then he hit a kid in the head with a toy train at the library because he didn't want to share, and the next day, he slapped another baby in the face who was trying to climb the same structure as he.<br />
<br />
Mortified, I bundled his screaming, squirming self into the stroller and ran away, shouting apologies over my shoulder to the understanding parents, descending into a pit of shame on the walk home.<br />
<br />
Now I have these new obstacles to surmount, screen time to police, games to supervise, and lessons to dispense. I feel as though my job as mama, all encompassing love noodle has been pulled out from underneath me and these new responsibilities thrust upon me with no warning.<br />
Perhaps that's the riddle of parenting, just when you catch up to being what your child needs, they shoot ahead of you, and you have race to acclimate to the new thing they need you to be.<br />
<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-6208036861286458612017-06-14T12:53:00.002-07:002017-06-14T12:53:26.757-07:00Thoreauvian vs Pavlovian For a really long time I bought into the idea that I could only "earn" food by doing some form of exercise.<br />
At my most disordered times, this manifested in me running or walking for ten miles or more on an empty stomach and then continuing on to my job, which was being a baker (a very physical job that contrary to popular belief left very little time to actually eat anything) work an eight hour shift, and then come home only to be in such a deficit from only eating one meal the whole day (usually a chunk of bread or a day old muffin) that I would inhale the contents of my fridge and cupboards, only to start the whole fucked up cycle again the next morning.<br />
<br />As I've moved further and further away from those patterns throughout my recovery, I've noticed the voice that screams at me for not doing everything my disorder thinks I should is getting quieter.<br />
<br />
The first thing I found difficult this year has been giving up on the dream of getting back into distance running now that the weather is nice.<br />
<br />
It's tricky because distance running was a very large part of my disordered routine for a long time, but I still truly love the challenge, and I miss it. I have gone on a few runs this spring, and every time, I feel so good afterward. I know my body would really like the chance to train again, but to do it properly.<br />
<br />
Secondly, I do a lot of walking. This we know. It's my main mode of transportation being that I do not drive, and it's also my main form of meditation both before, during, and after my pregnancy.<br />
<br />
I have, however, noticed that it is also the activity that I lean on to expend energy (read: burn calories) when I give in to that voice in my head telling me I need to do some kind of penance before I am allowed to eat.<br />
<br />
This is why I am very curious, because this week, for the first time in about twenty years, I don't feel like walking.<br />
<br />
It's a very strange feeling for me because even my "not walking" still involves me walking distances most people drive like to the corner store, grocery, train station, or post office. I'm lucky, and I live in a pretty town where everything is relatively close, and I can stroll to the library, grab a coffee, and take the baby to the playground on foot with ease.<br />
<br />
I've been doing this as much as possible since the weather got good.<br />
<br />
I have also been doing at least one three mile "excursion walk" every day for about as long as I can remember. Like since I was thirteen and my parents let me leave the house alone. No joke.<br />
<br />
I have walked with ear infections.<br />
I have walked with UTIs.<br />
I have walked after broken hearts, huge fights with my beard, bad news, good news, big meals, no meals, bad storms, rainbows, while pursuing degrees, while growing a human inside my body, while exploring cities and countries I'd never been to before, while pondering the next chapter in a novel or the next journal entry. I have walked hundreds (probably thousands) of miles while on the phone long distance, and it has always felt a certain way:<br />
<br />
Necessary.<br />
<br />
I'm not kidding.<br />
<br />
I walk so much it's officially become part of my identity.<br />
<br />
I am recognized by strangers who often ask me what my name is and "are you the girl I see walking everywhere?"<br />
<br />
Walking and writing go hand in hand, and I feel quite happy being the "walking girl" wherever I live, but there's been a bit of a heat wave this week, and I didn't feel like walking on Monday when it was 96 degrees, and I didn't feel like walking yesterday, when it was 93 degrees.<br />
<br />
Today it is unarguably gorgeous outside.<br />
The temperature is a stunning 71.<br />
The sky is cerulean.<br />
There's a cool breeze, and it's as though the entire world wants to be walked.<br />
<br />
But I don't feel like it.<br />
<br />
<br />
The voices in my head argue, "but then you'll feel better!" "You'll earn an ice cream cone!" "Maybe you'll sort out that scene you're having trouble writing!" "You should call your Dad!"<br />
<br />
I dismiss them all.<br />
<br />
And it feels revolutionary for the walking girl to put her feet up. Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-45161546452553000392017-06-08T12:51:00.001-07:002017-06-08T12:51:16.348-07:00You Will See MeSo I am in recovery from anorexia nervosa and binge eating disorder.<br />
<br />
This means every now and again I relapse.<br />
<br />
It's funny.<br />
<br />
I like to think I've made so much progress, but there are still all these mental and emotional booby traps hiding in my psyche. Sometimes even calling attention to them can cause me to behave irrationally or borrow from my disordered past. Other times there's a relapse on the horizon like the gathering clouds of a storm.<br />
<br />
First of all,<br />
I noticed the other day that my blog is described in the about section as being about motherhood, but really this is about self care. The two are completely different things and, in this society, they rarely walk hand in hand.<br />
<br />
I am considering rewriting the About section so that people stop reading my blog looking for parenting advice. Let's be honest, I don't really write about parenting right now.<br />One of the luxuries of keeping a blog with almost no followers at all is I don't feel pressured to create any kind of "interesting content". Clickbait be gone!<br />This blog exists as a way for me to process one of the biggest-if not the biggest-change my life has ever gone through, which dictated the other biggest change.<br />
I got knocked up ergo I had to confront my eating disorders.<br />
I wanted to have a healthy baby and a healthy me to care for him, so I had to recover. The two were utterly mutual in their exclusivity. There was no skipping one to have the other.<br />
<br />
Anyhoo, so I've been slowly integrating more recovery media voices into my social media diet as it were. I started with Kylie from ImmaEatThat, which is a phenomenal blog written by a phenomenal certified dietician. If you want to read a very sensitive, understanding woman's personal perspectives on recovery from restriction, orthorexia, and BED, she is an excellent place to start.<br />From her I have continued to add people like Isabel Foxen Duke, Alice from Alice Loves Peanut Butter, and many others.<br /><br />To be fair, I also follow people like Jes AKA The Militant Baker, Erin Unleashes, B. Stereo, and Dori Deere, Brittany Gibbons, Joy the Baker, and Deb from Smitten Kitchen. These women are all in their thirties, they're all living very different lives, and some of them aren't in recovery from an ED, but they're women and they love food, which for me is a revolutionary enough description to merit idolization. They're all women. They all eat. Some of them give TED talks. Some of them have children. Some of them are battling with another physical or mental illness than ED recovery, and some of them are so startlingly wholesome they seem to be right out of a Norman Rockwell painting. Some of them are dancers, some of them are models, some of them are photographers, and a couple of them are currently pregnant and sharing all of the weird body dysmorphic stuff that comes along with that journey.<br /><br />If you are not following these women, I feel a little bad for you because they are the smiling faces that greet me from my social media platforms. They are wise, witty, gracious, and grateful. They are nervous, honest, foul-mouthed, confident, and cautious. They fear for the world the same way I do, and the mourn the same things I grieve.<br /><br />They're good sisters, man.<br />
<br />
And they keep me in good company during a time when loneliness is a big big enemy to me getting to a place where I can really trust myself again.<br />
<br />
Because that's the root of recovery.<br />
<br />
Trust.<br />
<br />
Somewhere along our youth, we bought into the idea that we couldn't trust our own bodies and minds to do what was best for us.<br />
<br />
I don't know when it happened for you, but it happened for me when I was six.<br />
A person I was supposed to trust implicitly hurt me irrevocably.<br />
Instead of addressing my hurt, the situation was made entirely about the person who hurt me and what would happen to him if it was found out that he had done this.<br />
<br />
Time has gone by. He is not a bad person. He never hurt another person in that way, and I honestly believe it was because he was out of his mind at the time that the event occurred. I, as a child, was in the wrong place at the wrong time.<br />
<br />
It was not my fault.<br />
<br />
However, that was never explained to me.<br />
<br />
The thing that i remember being impressed upon me the most was that I could never tell anybody about what had happened because it would get him in trouble.<br />
<br />
When I think back to many many things that I did, that I chose to do, or allowed to be done to me, they all lead back to this moment where the two adults I trusted most in the entire world explaining that whatever I felt, whatever I needed to make sense out of the hurt I felt, the desire I had to talk about it was not as important as a grown man's reputation.<br />
They did not say this, but it was the message all the same.<br />
<br />
You and your body are not as important as a man's reputation.<br />
<br />
This seed was sown deeply into me, and it is the one that I have the most trouble addressing.<br />
Even now as I write it, I feel so sorry for the little girl I was. How could anyone have told her that?<br />It feels insane, but even knowing that, as an adult, does not serve to contradict my feelings and reactions of worthlessness in my own life.<br />
<br />
I let a lot of people use me as I grew up.<br />
Including myself.<br />
When I began monitoring my body, one of the bi-products of the decreased nutrition was a plunge in my hormone levels, and without my hormones, I found my emotions more stable. I didn't get as worked up about things as I always had. I could be betrayed, and it didn't faze me.<br />My eating disorder helped me to manage this horrible certainty that<br />
"Everybody else's feelings matter except mine."<br />
"Everybody else's body is worth protecting except mine."<br />
"I will not stand for anyone treating people I love a certain way, but if I am treated that way, I deserve it."<br />
<br />
When my body finally broke the mold of anorexia and the pendulum swung really hard in the other direction, I viewed it as my control being dismantled. I viewed it as my failure as a human.<br />
<br />
But it wasn't.<br />
It was actually my body saying loudly, "I DO MATTER. I WILL NOT ALLOW YOU TO SUFFOCATE ME QUIETLY. I WILL TAKE UP SPACE AND I WILL MATTER. I AM NOT GOING TO BE INVISIBLE ANYMORE."<br />
<br />
All of this to bring me to today...<br />
<br />
<br />
Today I binged.<br />
<br />
I know physically why, but I couldn't put my finger on psychologically what triggered it, but I think I get it now.<br />
<br />
I've been feeling invisible lately.<br />
<br />
I've had a lot of friends make plans with me only to break them.<br />
I've had a lot of plans with friends that I've had to break because of the baby's teething and instead of checking back with me to reschedule, those friends with whom I broke the plans have not been in touch.<br />
I'm sending out my writing and not hearing any replies.<br />
I'm trying to get people to sign up for a class I am teaching, and I'm not getting enough students.<br />
<br />
I feel like nothing I do matters.<br />
<br />
I feel like I don't even need to be seen.<br />
<br />
I feel overlooked, uncounted, and un-missed.<br />
<br />
And moreover, I feel powerless to counter these feelings.<br />
So my body reacted by filling itself up, by fighting back in the only way that has ever got me to slow down and pay attention.<br />
<br />
If I hadn't binged today, I wouldn't have asked these questions. I wouldn't have followed the thread of my disorder all the way back to its painful origins. I wouldn't have reminded myself that when I am at my worst, I feel invisible and of no consequence because that was the overwhelming feeling I took away from the worst experience of my childhood.<br />
<br />
If I didn't do those things, I wouldn't have realized that i need something I am not getting right now.<br />
I need recognition.<br />
I need to be seen.<br />
<br />
I can attend to those needs now.<br />
<br />
For the first time in my life, I think I'm grateful for a binge.<br />
<br />
I'm grateful that my recover thus far has taught me to be curious instead of judgmental in the aftermath.<br /><br />Here I am.<br />
And You will see me.<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-8970979489707296722017-06-05T10:32:00.002-07:002017-06-05T10:32:48.099-07:00The Hardest to Break<br />
<br />
<br />
My last rule.<br />
<br />
<br />
My final rule to shake from the ghost of eating disordered past is the most difficult one.<br />It is the one that I have the most emotional investment in, and the one that has the deepest hooks in my soul.<br />
<br />
We all have one of these, and this is mine.<br />
<br />
Breakfast.<br />
<br />
<br />
I never eat it.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
I think back to when I was a kid, getting ready for school in the morning was a blitzkrieg affair.<br />I hurtled through the shower, getting dressed, packing my homework and books into my backpack, and then downstairs to the kitchen, where every morning, without fail, I took down one of the china bowls, dumped in a pile of cereal, poured on the milk and sat down to eat.<br /><br />This was the time I was at my healthiest relationship with food. I never purposefully skipped meals. I had never understood how girls who sat at lunch could nibble at a yoghurt and then go the rest of the day without eating. It blew my mind. I was always hungry. When I got up in the morning, my stomach often growled, and I raced through my morning routine to get to that cereal, and even though I was in a rush, I always enjoyed the cereal because I liked eating. There was no emotion attached to the act other than nourishment and pleasure.<br />
<br />
When I was finished, I rinsed the bowl and ran out the door. Sometimes I didn't rinse the bowl. Sometimes, I was running late, and I nuked a bagel in the microwave and ate it on the school bus. Sometimes I had a spare five minutes, and I'd treat myself to scrambled eggs. I liked them with loads of black pepper.<br />
<br />
I was always hungry when lunch time rolled around. I never thought twice about my breakfast. It was just part of my day.<br /><br />Sigh.<br />
<br />
I think back to that girl I was, and I feel so sad that she's in for such a rough time. I was always proud of how wholesome and normal I was compared to the numerous girls in my high school who did have eating disorders, or who were cutters, or who got knocked up at sixteen and got abortions or dropped out to raise kids. <br />
<br />
My eating disorder got its hooks in me when I was older. This is probably why it ran away with me the way it did.<br />
<br />
I learned to restrict.<br />
I cut calories. I lost weight.<br />
I tightened and obsessed and got smaller and smaller until people started to take notice.<br />
<br />
Even then, I ate breakfast.<br />
It was a cautiously measured and recorded 300 calories, and I didn't eat again until dinner, but I ate breakfast.<br />
<br />
The one exception was on those rare occasions when I would binge.<br />
Back then a binge was barely anything.<br />
<br />
It would be after dinner <br />(which I ate at five in the evening every day and never allowed myself to eat again afterward).<br />
<br />
Sometimes I was so hungry at night my whole body shook. I would curl around the hollow of my stomach that ached like an empty tomb. I would writhe in agony, counting minutes until the sunrise, when I was allowed to get out of bed, do my sit ups, and then go eat my breakfast.<br />
<br />
Only, every so often, I couldn't make it.<br />
<br />
I'd eat a bag of microwave popcorn with a handful of chocolate chips thrown in, or a stack of rice cakes slathered with peanut butter.<br />
My stomach was so shrunken and shriveled at that point that those quantities made me feel overfull.<br />
I would feel ashamed, and I would punish myself by skipping breakfast the following day.<br />
<br />
If I could add the calories from my binge to the calories from the following day, divide them, and still come up with two numbers under a thousand, then I could relax.<br />
<br />
This was how fucking insane I was.<br />
<br />
When the pendulum finally swung in the other direction, boy did it swing hard.<br />
It felt like all the will power I had ever had in my life was used up, and I had no self control around food.<br />
<br />
Still.<br />
I always started every day with good intentions.<br />
After binges, I never ate breakfast.<br />
Oftentimes it was because I was still painfully full from the night before.<br />
<br />
After so long restricting and counting calories, I would restrict all day, eat a "diet dinner" and then at nine o clock at night, I would put away amazing quantities of food. My parents were constantly wondering where the gallons of ice cream they bought disappeared to, loaves of bread, and jars of peanut butter.<br />
<br />
Still, every day, I rededicated myself by skipping breakfast.<br />
<br />
It was all a giant cycle.<br />
<br />Diet mindset and disordered eating research shows beyond a shadow of a doubt that this kind of restriction around food always results in a binge later. We cultivate a starvation mindset, and our bodies respond in kind blasting through our resolve and crushing our concept of will power in favor of survival.<br />
After almost two years of being so restrictive around food, my body took back control. I ate everything I could get my hands on because it was so scared I would starve it again.<br />Instead of lying awake at night waiting until I could eat, I was lying awake berating myself for eating. I didn't remember how it felt to sleep unless I was so full I could barely breathe, nauseous and saturated in guilt. I fell asleep every night vowing the next day would be different and then doing the exact same thing, over and over and not understanding that the only way I would ever stop feeling crazy about eating was if I stopped vilifying the act itself.<br />
<br />
It took me years, ten years in fact. I am finally, after spending almost half my life losing my mind fighting my body, I gave in. I started eating when I was hungry. I started stopping when I was full.<br />
<br />
And here's the thing,<br />
I did manage to eat breakfast once or twice in that time.<br />
There were a couple of times while I was pregnant that I made oatmeal and bananas and ate them while my morning sickness told me "Do this, or I'll kill you."<br />
There have even been a few times on holidays that I've munched a piece of toast with a large mug of tea.<br />
<br />
But in my day to day, I keep pushing it.<br />
I keep pushing it to nine...ten...or as of late 11am.<br />
<br />
It's the earliest I can force myself to eat.<br />
<br />
And it's going really poorly.<br />
<br />
Perhaps with the baby's increased nursing, the extra walks to put him down for naps, and some stress, the days run away with me, and before I can think straight sometimes it's noon or one o clock before I've eaten, and then...I kind of binge.<br />
<br />
It's nothing compared to where I was at before, but I can feel my feet slipping on that slope of excuses.<br />
<br />
I deserve better.<br />
<br />
I worked too hard. I still work too hard.<br />
<br />
I cannot fall back into such a horrible void. I deserve to be comfortable.<br />
<br />
I woke up with a grumbling stomach this morning, and I ignored it.<br />
I fought it.<br />
<br />
I shut it up with coffee.<br />
I shut if up with errands and baby and running around.<br />
<br />
Then it was eleven, and I was so hungry I was dizzy.<br />
<br />
I knew the signs.<br />
<br />
I knew I was going to binge, and there are precautions I take now so that I don't hurt myself the way I used to.<br />
<br />
I make a smoothie with a shitload of fruits and veggies.<br />
I eat some nuts and drink a big glass of water.<br />
<br />
Then I take a break.<br />
<br />
I force myself to sit with what I have eaten for at least an hour, so I know that if I am still hungry I can and will feed myself.<br />
<br />
Anyway, they're still rules. They're still food rules. But they're in place to rescue me now instead of doom me. They're there to protect me and my baby.<br />
<br />
And I know I probably need to eradicate them...<br />
<br />
But that's going to have to start with the root of the problem.<br />
<br />
And that problem is breakfast.<br />
<br />
One little change, like all the others, that will eventually help me to get back to that little girl who listened to her body because she hadn't learned how not to yet.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-3666686837481774532017-05-28T13:11:00.001-07:002017-05-28T13:11:22.497-07:00The Least I Can Do Not the Least I Can BeI've been having a weird body week.<br />
<br />
<br />
The babe is getting his molars right now, and all May long he's been in the throes of serious gum pain and snot production, high temperatures and congestion, sneezes and interrupted sleep. It's been rough on both of us, since I am a co-sleeping, breastfeeding, hippie type mama.<br />
Whenever he cuts new teeth, and especially at night, when he's trying to get some rest, he nurses. He nurses A LOT.<br />
This means, because this is how my body is engineered (and not how many women's bodies work), I lose weight. I am constantly hungry, constantly fatigued; my blood sugar rides a roller coaster of unpredictability, and I funnel every calorie from every morsel of food I consume into my boobs.<br />
<br />
This means I have a lot, and I do mean, a lot, of disordered eating thoughts to deal with.<br />
<br />
See, the shitty thing about the ED voice, is that it takes a really long time to go away. I expect that mine will stick with me for another ten years, since it took ten years for me to realize I didn't need it.<br />
<br />
It tells me to look in the mirror.<br />
It tells me to poke my stomach and compare it to the memories I have of my stomach pre-baby, post-baby, last week, and then compare it to every woman's stomach I have ever seen either in person or on television or the internet. It tells me to see if I can grab an inch or if I suck in my gut can I see my ribs? It tells me to snap a photo (just a quick selfie it hisses) and to use the app on my phone to slide that photo side by side of a pic I took of myself when I was three weeks post partum.<br />It tells me to compliment myself on this weight loss and to lord it over others who have little tummies, big tummies, round tummies or flat tummies.<br />
<br />
It's still a fucker, in case you were wondering.<br />
<br />
I've gotten better at separating myself from the ED voice.<br />
I no longer feel guilty when it tells me to feel good because I'm skinnier than Person A.<br />
I know that it is telling me my worth is still dependent on being skinnier than Person A., and when I inevitably gain weight, like a woman, like a human being does, I will no longer be skinnier than Person A. and I will lose value.<br />
<br />
I no longer feel guilty when my ED voice is a bitch, because I know it is one thing above all else:<br />
<br />
It is a liar.<br />
<br />
It lied to me for over a decade, telling me that I had no control over anything in my life, but I could control food and I could control what I looked like and so I might as well be content with that.<br />
It lied to me about what I was worth when I went on vacation and could slip by restricting and lose ten, sometimes fifteen pounds in a week.<br />It lied to me when I inevitably returned from that vacation and my body demanded I binge to make up for those lost pounds.<br />
It lied to me when I said I wasn't hungry for years, when all I wanted was to eat with the comfort, safety, and ease my peers seemed to do so.<br />
It lied to me when it said that I was unlovable, disgusting, and a failure, because I couldn't even get eating right.<br />
<br />
I know it is a liar now, and I call it out on this horse shit.<br />
<br />
I will not get on a scale this week.<br />
It will be unhealthy to know exactly how much weight I have lost due to the extra nursing.<br />
I will not spend time examining my body in the mirror and making comparisons of it to anything.<br />
If I look at myself in the mirror it will be to check if I am clean and presentable, to pick the spinach out of my teeth, and to get those eyeliner wings even.<br />
<br />
I will not calorie count, meal skip, or restrict "just to see" how much weight I can lose with this extra nutritional deficit.<br />
<br />
You know why?<br />
<br />
Because it makes me feel horrible.<br />
<br />
It all makes me feel just awful, and I mean physically, mentally, emotionally.<br />
<br />
Dude, I am ex-hau-sted!<br />
<br />
I am up all night long with this teething babe.<br />
<br />
If I wake up and I want to put whipped cream on my coffee. I am gonna fucking do it, and enjoy it, because I deserve a treaty cup of coffee after getting through a night like that.<br />
<br />
If I wake up and i want a big ass smoothie with three scoops of peanut butter in it, I'm going to make it and drink it and enjoy every sip because I know bananas and peanuts are full of potassium and protein, two nutrients my body is horribly depleted by when the babe nurses.<br />
<br />
If I gain ten pounds when I wean the baby, I am going to relax because my clothes will start fitting me better again, I will stop feeling cold all the time, and I will be sleeping through the night and getting the rest that I need rather than being run ragged through the night by my poor little guy.<br />
<br />
People tell me all the time:<br />
"You lost the baby weight so fast!"<br />
"You look better than ever!"<br />
"Motherhood looks good on you!"<br />
<br />
And none of it is real. In fact, it's toxic.<br />
<br />
I wonder what people would say if I told them the truth.<br />
<br />
I am currently not at a healthy weight.<br />
<br />
I am not comfortable being this thin.<br />
<br />
It is temporary, and I will be bigger when you see me next. What will you say then?<br />
<br />
Anyway, this story might not help anyone...maybe it's just for me.<br />
<br />
Or who knows, maybe you've been sick and lost weight without trying, maybe you went through a growth spurt and despite eating everything you could, you've gotten thinner, maybe you've had horrible anxiety or personal trauma that has kept you from eating properly, or maybe you're one of the millions of people who can't afford to eat properly and you had to use your grocery money to pay an outstanding bill.<br /><br />Regardless, nobody should tell you that your worth is based on your weight, whether it goes up or down, because it will.<br />
<br />
We are living creatures and our mass will change over the course of our lifetimes countlessly.<br />
We live in a society that makes us believe we should have control over it and evaluates our worth based on how much control we exert over our forms.<br />
<br />
I used to buy into those lies.<br />
<br />
Now I recognize them, call them out, and listen to what my body tells me is right for it.<br />
<br />
And I can only hope that you do the same. I know it isn't easy, holy shit, sometimes it is the hardest thing I can think of, but it is so worth it, to release yourself from the guilt and just take care of your body. I know I owe my body so much. It's the least I can do.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-39590202575109538112017-05-15T06:46:00.001-07:002017-05-15T06:46:12.736-07:00Not Shit All the TimeToday is the first day in about eleven that the babe hasn't woken up ten times in the night choking on congestion, snot streaming from his nose in two little rivulets, crying because his mouth hurts more than anything else in the whole world.<br />Today I got up at six fifteen instead of five in the morning.<br />I made coffee, I made banana waffles and the babe ate them happily instead of taking a few bites and then getting frustrated because eating when you are snotting that much is really no fun.<br />
I got pooped on.<br />
Yup.<br />
Smelled that smelly smell that indicated it was time to change the diaper, and when I picked him up, the diaper exploded like a loaded pinata, except in this case instead of candy it was...NOT CANDY.<br />
<br />
And you know what?<br />
I laughed it off.<br />
It's amazing what a full night's sleep will do for you.<br />
<br />
Last week, everything felt like the end of the world.<br />
Between the two of us, the snotting, the screaming, the crying, the inability to console the babe or to tell him that it was going to be okay and molars are total bitches, and every day being about forty degrees and pouring rain I began to lose my grip on reality.<br />
I probably cried every single day last week.<br />
Which isn't to say I didn't try my best.<br />
(hello double negatives how are you?)<br />
<br />
I did.<br />
I really did.<br />
I made waffles last week too.<br />
I paid bills, went for walks in the rain, took the babe to the library to run off steam, and tried really hard to make the best of things.<br />
But by about three o clock in the afternoon, every day, I'd have had it.<br />
The babe would be so tired and ready for his long afternoon nap, but he would also be so uncomfortable that he couldn't settle down, and I would be holding him, rocking him, nursing him, singing to him, on three hours of sleep myself, feeling terribly guilty that I wanted him to go to sleep just so I could get a break, feeling so frustrated that I couldn't explain that his discomfort would not last forever, and then secretly wondering if, in fact, it did last forever, how long before I killed myself?<br />
<br />
Finally something small would push me over the edge, I'd nag my toe, the babe would head butt me so hard I saw stars, or I'd just not be able to take anymore screaming, and I'd put him down in the pack and play and leave the room, sit on the toilet, and cry my heart out.<br />
<br />
Nobody tells you that it's okay to do this.<br />
<br />
I will tell you.<br />
<br />
It is okay to do this.<br />
<br />
Your kid won't die just from being left alone in a safe place (crib, pack and play, carseat, etc) while you have a little breakdown. They might cry. They might scream bloody murder because you aren't paying them attention, but they are okay. I promise.<br />
And you need this.<br />
You need to just have a minute to yourself to feel your feelings because so much of our lives as mothers we push our needs to the side. We drink the coffee cold. We eat the leftovers. We take the 90 second shower and we don't wash our hair. We give our ice cream because their fell on the ground. We spend the afternoon fixing everything because if we didn't, the world would surely end.<br />
So we get to take those minutes to cry.<br />
We get to take those minutes to call our own moms and say "I don't know how you did this?"<br />
We get to give the babies to the Daddies when they get home and say, "I'm going for a walk, by myself. I'll be back in forty minutes."<br />
It doesn't make us shitty.<br />
It makes us better mothers.<br />
<br />
Mothers Day brunches are fine if you're into that sort of thing. Flowers are nice, and of course all the hugs and kisses and homemade cards are priceless, but we should give ourselves the gift of feeling our emotions, safely, and securely without guilt EVERY DAMN DAY.<br />
<br />
Yesterday, I got chocolate. I got to go out with a friend for a cocktail. I got kisses and hugs, and I felt loved and appreciated, but it was this morning when I woke up to a non-screaming, smiling kid who clapped his little hands when i put a waffle down in front of him, that was my gift.<br />It was reassurance that the hard times really don't last forever, and whatever you have to do to survive them is okay.<br />As long as everybody is fed, cleaned up, and safely in bed at the end of the night, it does not matter what you had to do to accomplish that, and you should never feel ashamed if part of getting things done, meant screaming into a pillow while your kid sat safely in his high chair gnawing on a wooden spoon.<br />
<br />
Today, I showered poop off myself and shrugged it off.<br />
I never thought I'd say this but I'll take a happy kid who ruins my outfit over a sobbing kid any day.<br />
<br />
And that's how I know I am getting better at this motherhood thing.Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7489248538701807464.post-23404101665787025842017-05-09T10:18:00.000-07:002017-05-09T10:18:54.853-07:00Toddler Time Out isn't about my kid.What is the point of giving a toddler a time out?<br />
<br />
Will it actually change their behavior?<br />
Teach them that what they did is not okay?<br />
<br />
Probably not.<br />
Will it keep me from losing my shit?<br />
<br />
Yes.<br />
<br />
And today I need that.<br />
<br />
People, it has been almost eighteen months since I had my child, and we are still breastfeeding.<br />
It's good for the most part. He gets over colds faster, it's a wonderful way to comfort him when he's teething or scared or sick, and it's helping to fortify and build his little system to defend itself long after our bfing days are behind us.<br />
But my kid is cutting molars, and he's got a cold, and I have a cold, and we are not sleeping, and he is biting me, and the chairs, and the tables, and he's having total freak outs when I stop him from doing things like shredding antique books, or taking actual bites out of the kitchen table.<br />
<br />
Everywhere I read that this is all normal toddler development, but I am not dealing very well.<br />
<br />
For one thing, I still haven't gotten a period since I got pregnant. Yup. Menses-free for twenty five months now.<br />
But according to the super low bc hormone pills I am taking right now, I should be getting my monthly this week, and maybe it's all psychological, but for the last couple of months, during my would-be shark week, I've had bloating, fatigue, mood swings, and cramping.<br />
No blood.<br />
But everything that usually leads up to it.<br />
<br />
This puts me in a really crap place.<br />
I'm anxious (of course) that my body is broken.<br />
I'm also cranky, hungry (seriously, there is not enough food in the entire house to keep me full right now), and because of teething and congestion and the magic of toddler breastfeeding, we are also not fucking sleeping either, so I am ratchet.<br />
<br />
Is that how the kids use ratchet?<br />
<br />
I don't know.<br />
<br />
I feel like I started out this blog to document the highs and the lows, but I don't have time to write anything. I don't have the perspective to document the emotional roller coaster I am on.<br />
<br />
I barely have the cognitive ability to know that if I don't put my kid in his pack n' play for ten minutes and ignore him that I stand the very real risk of throwing him out the window.*<br />
<br />
So I do.<br />
<br />
I put my screaming, crying, miserable child down in the pack n play, by himself, and I ignore him.<br />
I make sure there are no toys with strings, or blocks he can stand on, or bits small enough he can choke on, and I leave him in there while I go the fuck away.<br />
Sometimes I just go to the kitchen and make a cup of tea.<br />
Sometimes I put on headphones, and listen to three songs.<br />
Sometimes I go to the bathroom and I cry my stupid heart out.<br />
<br />
Because there's still all this other stuff to do.<br />
There are still classes to plan for, bills to pay, errands to run, meals to prepare, dogs to walk, cat boxes to clean, trash to take out, laundry to do, and everything else imaginable.<br />
And I can't fathom any of it if I don't reset.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Jesshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03967195911993210060noreply@blogger.com0