My brother was 17 when he ran away from home. I was 23 at the time, well into my eating disorder, and already estranged from my parents. Yet, I spiraled into panic with the rest of my family and photocopied missing person posters, reviewed tidal charts with the police to determine where his body might wash up, and slept in my childhood bedroom with my 15 year-old sister. My parents and sisters did other unimaginable tasks like decipher a cryptic postcard my brother sent from the road which led to the discovery of his abandoned car in Santa Cruz.
We banded together the five of us, found ways to cope, managed the influx of visitors day and night and the emotion of candlelight vigils held in our living room, and reminded each other to breathe. And when my brother came walking home a week later, all the worse for wear having traveled overnight by bus from Los Angeles, we grabbed each other in a great big hug, relieved to be six again. Over the days that followed, a subtle softening occurred between parents and children while the curtains of our inner workings parted ever so slightly, exposing everyday challenges that had always hummed along, barely a vibration, before shattering the windows around us.
Families aren't the slightest bit transparent; they are impossible to see into until something of this magnitude happens and friends bear witness to mothers and fathers and children falling to their knees in anguish or in grace. For my family, my brother's disappearance and surprise return brought about a gentle buffer of amnesty, if only for that brief season of terror and relief, and rather than peer at one another through the familiar thicket of history and pride and disappointment, we saw each other as breakable, mortal human beings made of bones, blood, fear, and love. And when that chapter ended and we returned in earnest to our routines and preconceptions and estrangements, we carried equally within us a token of that hard-won innocence as the curtains slowly fell back into place, shielding us once more from the eyes of the world.
In Wild Geese, Mary Oliver writes:
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you about mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting --
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
In my hospital writings, I chronicled my family's visits and documented my pain at being so nakedly exposed. Without the security of my job, my relationships, and my house, I was a terribly frightened, fragile young woman living at the mercy of well-meaning but nonetheless unfamiliar medical staff. Not a family, indeed. Years of wall-building and self-protection were no match for the shame of wearing hospital clothing and weeping in the corner during meal time. The girl my family had always known was nowhere to be seen, yet I remained to accept her visitors.
At the time, it seemed to me that everything I had built and worked for was gone. When I was discharged from the hospital for the last time I didn't even have a home to return to. But, I was determined to make it on my own, and so I did.
Re-building genuine ties with my family took much longer than re-establishing a home for myself as my treatment eventually ended and real life began again. Even during my pregnancy I maintained my distance, calling to share the news that I was having a girl, but keeping my private fears and questions to myself. It wasn't until I was in labor, and experiencing the sheer uproarious pain of childbirth, that I finally called out for my mom.
It astonishes me how gradually the seams of a relationship pull apart, stitch by broken stitch, yet how quickly they can be mended. The arrival of my daughter brought about more than just a resurgence of my own vitality, it opened doors that had been sealed shut for years. Just as my brother's casual stroll back into our lives fused the shattered pieces of our hearts, so did the appearance of one small baby girl, reminding us with her newness that anything is possible.
I think about what Mary Oliver writes: "You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting." To me, this instruction falls in direct opposition to what I've always believed to be my duty to my family and the world. There is a right way forward, often aligned with the path of least resistance, and it is to be followed without question. Black is on one side, white is on the other, and together they meet in sharp contrast, forming a long straight line down the middle. Room for error is nothing more than a vacuum of time and space.
I haven't lived in a straight line, nor has anyone I've ever met, yet I spend much of my time crawling through the desert, repenting.
Letting the "soft animal" of my body "love what it loves" is another inconceivable concept. It is always with great shame that I explore my thoughts and feelings, nervously reaching into the shadows of my mind and heart, afraid I'll find darkness where light is supposed to be. Though no one can see it from the outside, I writhe in discomfort and despair when I unearth genuine feelings of love and concern for others. Attachment feels like a nightmare until the soft lullaby of trust comes drifting through and I reawaken.
Every once in a while the jaws of my earliest confusion clamp shut and I'm suddenly locked in mid-step. Perhaps my heart has opened itself too fully to another, or my mind has traveled too far into unknown territory. No matter the consequences, the journey often ends in regret, and so I have adapted to hiding away, lonely as this is. Just today I found myself burrowing into my dark, quiet place -- that tiny little corner where, even if someone peers in through the windows, I cannot be seen.
And yet...
Sometimes when I'm hiking out in the clear, blue open, I'll stop for a moment to feel the wind. I'll stand atop a rock or plant myself in the grass, throw my head back, close my eyes, and let my hair and clothes whip around me. In these moments I'm listening. Listening to a voice that can't be heard otherwise. It doesn't speak to me like family, and it doesn't sound like a friend; it doesn't even sound like the narrator who guides me through my day, sometimes pleasantly and sometimes impatiently. Instead it is calm, peaceful, and assured, and comes from the very center of my being.
Even though I can't yet access this deep wisdom as I wander aimlessly through my life, alternately hidden and exposed, I know that it exists. I only have to be still for a moment to hear the quiet voice speaking. And the older I get the more I realize that it is always there, gently nudging and nurturing me along my way, whether I can hear it or not. It gets lost in the rush and color and pace of daily life, often supplanted completely by outside noise, but it is as constant as the thrum of my own heart beat, and just as necessary.
Admittedly, I still try my hardest to live in the absence of my own divine intercedence, resisting the urge to surrender with a kind of poisonous power that astounds me at times. But, what is life if not the opportunity to untangle the thread of who we are from where we've been so that we can sew something entirely new?
I feel blessed to know the love of family and friends, and to have the presence of mind to appreciate myself every once in a while, flaws and all. And I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a child while peripherally exploring the mysterious recesses of my own heart and soul -- learning worlds about life and love and family in the process.
More than anything, though, the most amazing lesson emerging from my tentative dance is the fact that what make this life special are the very things in me that make it possible. This knowledge brings with it a delicate coating of bliss and the lightest dusting of forgiveness, reminding me, when I falter and lose my way, why I'm here.
~ Katie
Wild Geese, Mary Oliver, New and Selected Poems, Volume 1, 1992.
Title quote: George Eliot
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Some people come into our lives and quickly go. Some stay for a while, leave footprints on our hearts, and we are never, ever the same. ~Flavia Weedn
It's easy for me to talk about my illness now. The word "anorexia" rolls off of my tongue with an ease I never would have imagined. Yes I was anorexic, yes I starved myself, yes I endured years of treatment before I began to heal my mind, body, and spirit, and yes I'm still experiencing the joys and challenges of surviving my dark decade.
An illness such as mine seems quantifiable. It appears to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It starts slowly with a loss of control, builds into a beast of its own making, and has to be dismantled piece by piece before the threat is gone. In my case, my symptoms were treated, my thoughts and feelings were rearranged, and my body was eventually restored. And that, it seems, is the end of the story.
So why, I've been asking myself, do I still feel compelled to write about it? What questions have I not answered? What is there left to tell? What I am coming to understand, as memories continue to rise and flatten out before me, is that my illness is merely a lens through which I can view my life as a whole thus far, and gradually begin to understand why I came so close to losing it all.
When I was a child, my grandparents lived on a farm in rural Petaluma. I remember leaving for home one night when I was 8 years old and looking back at their farmhouse glowing against the night sky. As we drove alongside the slotted fence leading down the gravel road, I struggled to see into their windows because I was sure, in the way children are sure of such things, that the people I knew as grandparents were now taking off their masks and turning into strangers. I wanted to catch them in the act because I was convinced that the entire evening had been a charade for the sake of the grandchildren, complete with costumes and facemasks and theater. What truth, I wondered, was being obscured? Soon after, my grandparents separated, and eventually divorced.
I remember laying in bed at night, too, and looking around my room and wondering if everything lost its color in the darkness. To me, my toys and clothes and curtains looked black, white, and gray in the moonlight. As I drifted off to sleep, I imagined that color lived only in the daytime, or perhaps only within light, but never within the objects themselves. In the morning I was always relieved and slightly surprised to find that my room was once again filled with shades of red and blue and pink and green.
It's almost as if I can hold up a looking glass and see the world now exactly as I saw it back then. I was not a naturally trusting child and kept myself in constant reserve, closely examining everything that came into view. When I encountered things I didn't understand, I stepped back and watched until things made sense again. I didn't entirely trust my environment and dealt with change by imagining that what I saw wasn't actually real. I felt that life, real life, was taking place just below the surface of what I could see, only I didn't have the tools to access it. I was on the outside, standing on the very top of my tippy toes with my young fingers curled into the splintered window pane, trying to see through the impossibly fogged glass.
Now, I find myself the mother of a child who bears the same kind of wonderment deep within her own mind. A soulful taking in of the world, bringing unsettled and unanswerable questions that skip out and about when night falls, testing me and teasing me, and leading me back to that very same seat of confusion.
This week, she and I are processing grief and trying to understand how the loss of a mother impacts a young family. Who will care for her children when she is gone? How will their lives change without her? When will we die? How can we be sure that an accident like this won't happen to us?
Cuddling with her at the end of the day, and doing my best to answer her questions honestly, we are merely two little girls trying to make sense of a world that doesn't make sense. Last night, after crying in the dark for a few minutes and snuggling up against me, she asked, "Mom, a long time ago, were things everywhere only gray? Because when I look at pictures, the only color I see is gray." I assured her there has always been color in the world, and that the gray only lives in the pictures, but I knew that her question was much larger than that, and that she was looking for an answer I haven't yet found.
In searching for peace and forgiveness within myself over these past years, I've often wished I could grab hold of the world, dig my fingers deep into its shoulders, look it straight in the eye, and make it understand that the symptoms of an eating disorder, or other such illness, are simply the waves of a vast ocean of confusion and unrest crashing onto the shores of our bodies. Starvation is nothing more than an expression of something otherwise inexpressible in its enormity.
Looking back on my own childhood, and now glimpsing life through the eyes of my daughter, I see how I've always grappled with an unending need to know where the road ahead curves, dips, and climbs. It is no wonder that I tried with all of my might to erase this unsettling hunger from my life during my twenties. As a parent now, trying desperately to protect my daughter from her own set of frights and worries, I see so clearly that this is a need that can never be met. For the same reasons I couldn't comprehend the world as a child, she can't either. The best I can do for her is hug her when she cries, tell her how much I love her, and try to help her understand the practicalities of an unimaginable loss.
I am devastated by the death of my friend, but am learning from her passing that one moment doesn't guarantee the next. Through this haze of grief, I am beginning to understand that I will take my questions with me to my grave, just as we all do when we pass. I don't need to chase them away or stomp them out, I simply need to tuck them into my mind and move on with my life. It is not my burden to seek a definitive understanding of the world; rather, it is my duty to give myself fully to the people around me so that we all have hands to hold when grief comes crashing down, and someone to smile with when a moment of bliss breezes through.
Given my lifelong struggle, I am not sure I will ever be without fear of the unknown or that I won't scramble around at times trying to find something solid to hold on to. I cannot promise myself that the lessons I am learning today will settle into permanence and become part of each step I take forward. But, what I owe to myself and to the precious people who leave us far too soon is a constant, often painful, surrender to what life delivers no matter how ready or secure I feel. There is nothing inside of today that guarantees tomorrow for any of us.
These sweet little moments that make up our days, whether they build upon or chisel away at the mystery of life, have to be enough...because they are all that we have.
~ Katie
An illness such as mine seems quantifiable. It appears to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. It starts slowly with a loss of control, builds into a beast of its own making, and has to be dismantled piece by piece before the threat is gone. In my case, my symptoms were treated, my thoughts and feelings were rearranged, and my body was eventually restored. And that, it seems, is the end of the story.
So why, I've been asking myself, do I still feel compelled to write about it? What questions have I not answered? What is there left to tell? What I am coming to understand, as memories continue to rise and flatten out before me, is that my illness is merely a lens through which I can view my life as a whole thus far, and gradually begin to understand why I came so close to losing it all.
When I was a child, my grandparents lived on a farm in rural Petaluma. I remember leaving for home one night when I was 8 years old and looking back at their farmhouse glowing against the night sky. As we drove alongside the slotted fence leading down the gravel road, I struggled to see into their windows because I was sure, in the way children are sure of such things, that the people I knew as grandparents were now taking off their masks and turning into strangers. I wanted to catch them in the act because I was convinced that the entire evening had been a charade for the sake of the grandchildren, complete with costumes and facemasks and theater. What truth, I wondered, was being obscured? Soon after, my grandparents separated, and eventually divorced.
I remember laying in bed at night, too, and looking around my room and wondering if everything lost its color in the darkness. To me, my toys and clothes and curtains looked black, white, and gray in the moonlight. As I drifted off to sleep, I imagined that color lived only in the daytime, or perhaps only within light, but never within the objects themselves. In the morning I was always relieved and slightly surprised to find that my room was once again filled with shades of red and blue and pink and green.
It's almost as if I can hold up a looking glass and see the world now exactly as I saw it back then. I was not a naturally trusting child and kept myself in constant reserve, closely examining everything that came into view. When I encountered things I didn't understand, I stepped back and watched until things made sense again. I didn't entirely trust my environment and dealt with change by imagining that what I saw wasn't actually real. I felt that life, real life, was taking place just below the surface of what I could see, only I didn't have the tools to access it. I was on the outside, standing on the very top of my tippy toes with my young fingers curled into the splintered window pane, trying to see through the impossibly fogged glass.
Now, I find myself the mother of a child who bears the same kind of wonderment deep within her own mind. A soulful taking in of the world, bringing unsettled and unanswerable questions that skip out and about when night falls, testing me and teasing me, and leading me back to that very same seat of confusion.
This week, she and I are processing grief and trying to understand how the loss of a mother impacts a young family. Who will care for her children when she is gone? How will their lives change without her? When will we die? How can we be sure that an accident like this won't happen to us?
Cuddling with her at the end of the day, and doing my best to answer her questions honestly, we are merely two little girls trying to make sense of a world that doesn't make sense. Last night, after crying in the dark for a few minutes and snuggling up against me, she asked, "Mom, a long time ago, were things everywhere only gray? Because when I look at pictures, the only color I see is gray." I assured her there has always been color in the world, and that the gray only lives in the pictures, but I knew that her question was much larger than that, and that she was looking for an answer I haven't yet found.
In searching for peace and forgiveness within myself over these past years, I've often wished I could grab hold of the world, dig my fingers deep into its shoulders, look it straight in the eye, and make it understand that the symptoms of an eating disorder, or other such illness, are simply the waves of a vast ocean of confusion and unrest crashing onto the shores of our bodies. Starvation is nothing more than an expression of something otherwise inexpressible in its enormity.
Looking back on my own childhood, and now glimpsing life through the eyes of my daughter, I see how I've always grappled with an unending need to know where the road ahead curves, dips, and climbs. It is no wonder that I tried with all of my might to erase this unsettling hunger from my life during my twenties. As a parent now, trying desperately to protect my daughter from her own set of frights and worries, I see so clearly that this is a need that can never be met. For the same reasons I couldn't comprehend the world as a child, she can't either. The best I can do for her is hug her when she cries, tell her how much I love her, and try to help her understand the practicalities of an unimaginable loss.
I am devastated by the death of my friend, but am learning from her passing that one moment doesn't guarantee the next. Through this haze of grief, I am beginning to understand that I will take my questions with me to my grave, just as we all do when we pass. I don't need to chase them away or stomp them out, I simply need to tuck them into my mind and move on with my life. It is not my burden to seek a definitive understanding of the world; rather, it is my duty to give myself fully to the people around me so that we all have hands to hold when grief comes crashing down, and someone to smile with when a moment of bliss breezes through.
Given my lifelong struggle, I am not sure I will ever be without fear of the unknown or that I won't scramble around at times trying to find something solid to hold on to. I cannot promise myself that the lessons I am learning today will settle into permanence and become part of each step I take forward. But, what I owe to myself and to the precious people who leave us far too soon is a constant, often painful, surrender to what life delivers no matter how ready or secure I feel. There is nothing inside of today that guarantees tomorrow for any of us.
These sweet little moments that make up our days, whether they build upon or chisel away at the mystery of life, have to be enough...because they are all that we have.
~ Katie
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
I don't want to go up to the mountains, I don't need to go down to the sea, gonna sit right here till we unravel the mystery. ~ Marc Cohn
My anorexia was an attempt to turn everything gray into black and white, to create sharp relief where the edges of my life blurred.
Starvation simplifies everything. It numbs the constant strike of life upon the skin and dims the roar of people, places, and time passing by. Hunger gave me purpose, it made me feel as though I understood myself. I was one with my needs and my needs were all I had.
It is only as life has softened from the constant palpation of uncertainty that I see how desperately I craved a kind of clarity that simply doesn't exist. I wanted everything in its place; neatly folded, stacked, and put away. For years there was no buffer around me, no room for error, no dreaminess, no confusion. There was simply right and wrong...black and white.
I did not stray from my routine. When my car broke down after work one day, I simply called my brother and had him drop me off at the gym. Life never delivered anything more important than my bruising schedule.
One night, after a particularly long stretch of starvation, and after hours of consideration, I bought myself dinner and left it in my room while I stepped out. At the time, I was renting a room from a family, and their dog came in and ate my food. Every last bite. I was devastated. Starving, exhausted, and aggrieved, I called the restaurant and begged them to stay open long enough for me to drive back. The trip took 40 minutes, but I couldn't change my plan. My calculations were set; I had to eat that particular meal.
When I made my lunchtime salads, I counted dried cranberries and shavings of carrots. I could pour exactly 9 nuts into my hand from the bag without even trying. I weighed, I measured. Everything was precise and there was absolutely no room for variance. Anywhere. Three slices of tempeh, two teaspoons of cottage cheese, 4 rice cakes, 5 mile run, 1 hour and twenty minutes on the bike, click, click, click...
Because of this, everything else seemed so clear. It was as if my lifestyle provided the kind of lucidity I needed. I had nothing but my workouts, my job, and the management of my starving body. I didn't shower, I hardly changed my clothes, I never wore make-up, and I paid no attention to my hair. If I was covered up, I was fine.
Easing from a black and white world back into color threaded through with gray has been very difficult. I find myself holding up my hand in the middle of conversations when things feel too heavy to bear. During weekends alone, I close off for days, drive for hours, burrow into my little world where there are no people, no sounds, no chance of misunderstandings or rejection. I settle in for long stretches of just me. That's where I feel safest.
Slowly, this is changing, but the silence of my own life still draws me in.
A friend recently told me about a personal loss. I couldn't wrap my mind around the magnitude of it and realized, for the first time, that pieces of life actually splinter off and can't be reabsorbed back into the body, or into the mind or heart. We lose things. We lose people. We feel despair. Huge crevaces open up inside of us and sometimes there isn't enough to fill them and so a little bit of breeze always slips through. Life isn't a series of stones set neatly aside one another, it's a patchwork of bliss, fear, sadness, peace...blisters, glimmers, holes, tears.
This kind of understanding wouldn't have been imaginable, or acceptable, 10 years ago.
Sometimes, though, I still find myself wanting to hammer these miscellaneous pieces back into place. Shove them down and sand the edges until everything is smooth again. Wipe away the dust, shine up the wood...good as new. But I can't, and so these messy fragments join the orbiting debris that encircles me and I have no choice but to move on.
It's nights like tonight, when the gray swallows me whole, that I wish I had a roadmap. I don't wish for the numbness anymore, or for the sharp delineation that comes at such a high price, but I long for something with a bit of demarcation and topography so that I know how far the road extends if I head west, and if there are any impassable mountains along the way. Is that a shallow valley to the north, or an ocean? How can I be sure?
It's nights like tonight that I remember how much easier life was when my heart simply slept.
Over the past week I've encountered two women with eating disorders. One was young, about the age I was during the height of my illness, and the other was an older woman whose starvation was extremely advanced and long-term. Unfortunately, anorexia can persist for a lifetime. In my treatment group, I met women who'd struggled for over twenty years with the disease, vacillating between a life of freedom and uncertainty and a life of safety and control. This is a nearly impossible struggle to overcome, and one that has very little to do with food.
And yet, it is possible to move past this struggle. But how? When I see those lost and closed faces I wonder why I'm here and not there anymore. What was the piece, or pieces, that saved me? Was it my doctors who had the same conversation with me day after day, month after month, year after year, never once losing their focus or patience? Was it the nurses in the hospital who talked to me about faith and confidence and persistence and forgiveness? Was it Rich who went grocery shopping with me every day? Was it my daughter who came along in spite of it all? Was it my distant yet penetrating love for my family and friends? Was it something inside of me...?
I wish I could capture those magical and elusive circumstances, bottle them up, and hand them to the women who struggle. They'd reject my help outright, I know, but I never fail to wonder what's going to make the difference for them, if anything. I wonder what's missing for these women. Why does starvation gain a toehold and hang on for dear life?
The truth is, I know what's missing. I know the question that starvation answers. I know the silence that anorexia speaks.
It is interesting to look back on my twenties and find that my desires and passions often traveled no further than the pages of my journal. My feelings, fresh and unspoken, were somehow too shameful to share and so I tucked them away and kept them hidden. The moment my heart left its safe little corner, I grabbed it, scolded it, and wrestled it back into place. I afforded very little leeway to what felt potentially damaging and hurtful, but what, in retrospect, looks like little more than love.
In my most nervous, uncertain times I am silent, shut down, afraid that one loose word will send me hurtling into the wild river thrashing its way through the canyon. And so I stay quiet, watchful, distant. But I'm learning that as I let people in, and let my heart do some of the talking, the frighteningly powerful river below thins to a gentle stream and I'm not so afraid anymore.
Maybe there is no going back, but there has to be more than standing still. There are words left to be spoken, and I'm finding the courage to speak them.
~ Katie
Starvation simplifies everything. It numbs the constant strike of life upon the skin and dims the roar of people, places, and time passing by. Hunger gave me purpose, it made me feel as though I understood myself. I was one with my needs and my needs were all I had.
It is only as life has softened from the constant palpation of uncertainty that I see how desperately I craved a kind of clarity that simply doesn't exist. I wanted everything in its place; neatly folded, stacked, and put away. For years there was no buffer around me, no room for error, no dreaminess, no confusion. There was simply right and wrong...black and white.
I did not stray from my routine. When my car broke down after work one day, I simply called my brother and had him drop me off at the gym. Life never delivered anything more important than my bruising schedule.
One night, after a particularly long stretch of starvation, and after hours of consideration, I bought myself dinner and left it in my room while I stepped out. At the time, I was renting a room from a family, and their dog came in and ate my food. Every last bite. I was devastated. Starving, exhausted, and aggrieved, I called the restaurant and begged them to stay open long enough for me to drive back. The trip took 40 minutes, but I couldn't change my plan. My calculations were set; I had to eat that particular meal.
When I made my lunchtime salads, I counted dried cranberries and shavings of carrots. I could pour exactly 9 nuts into my hand from the bag without even trying. I weighed, I measured. Everything was precise and there was absolutely no room for variance. Anywhere. Three slices of tempeh, two teaspoons of cottage cheese, 4 rice cakes, 5 mile run, 1 hour and twenty minutes on the bike, click, click, click...
Because of this, everything else seemed so clear. It was as if my lifestyle provided the kind of lucidity I needed. I had nothing but my workouts, my job, and the management of my starving body. I didn't shower, I hardly changed my clothes, I never wore make-up, and I paid no attention to my hair. If I was covered up, I was fine.
Easing from a black and white world back into color threaded through with gray has been very difficult. I find myself holding up my hand in the middle of conversations when things feel too heavy to bear. During weekends alone, I close off for days, drive for hours, burrow into my little world where there are no people, no sounds, no chance of misunderstandings or rejection. I settle in for long stretches of just me. That's where I feel safest.
Slowly, this is changing, but the silence of my own life still draws me in.
A friend recently told me about a personal loss. I couldn't wrap my mind around the magnitude of it and realized, for the first time, that pieces of life actually splinter off and can't be reabsorbed back into the body, or into the mind or heart. We lose things. We lose people. We feel despair. Huge crevaces open up inside of us and sometimes there isn't enough to fill them and so a little bit of breeze always slips through. Life isn't a series of stones set neatly aside one another, it's a patchwork of bliss, fear, sadness, peace...blisters, glimmers, holes, tears.
This kind of understanding wouldn't have been imaginable, or acceptable, 10 years ago.
Sometimes, though, I still find myself wanting to hammer these miscellaneous pieces back into place. Shove them down and sand the edges until everything is smooth again. Wipe away the dust, shine up the wood...good as new. But I can't, and so these messy fragments join the orbiting debris that encircles me and I have no choice but to move on.
It's nights like tonight, when the gray swallows me whole, that I wish I had a roadmap. I don't wish for the numbness anymore, or for the sharp delineation that comes at such a high price, but I long for something with a bit of demarcation and topography so that I know how far the road extends if I head west, and if there are any impassable mountains along the way. Is that a shallow valley to the north, or an ocean? How can I be sure?
It's nights like tonight that I remember how much easier life was when my heart simply slept.
Over the past week I've encountered two women with eating disorders. One was young, about the age I was during the height of my illness, and the other was an older woman whose starvation was extremely advanced and long-term. Unfortunately, anorexia can persist for a lifetime. In my treatment group, I met women who'd struggled for over twenty years with the disease, vacillating between a life of freedom and uncertainty and a life of safety and control. This is a nearly impossible struggle to overcome, and one that has very little to do with food.
And yet, it is possible to move past this struggle. But how? When I see those lost and closed faces I wonder why I'm here and not there anymore. What was the piece, or pieces, that saved me? Was it my doctors who had the same conversation with me day after day, month after month, year after year, never once losing their focus or patience? Was it the nurses in the hospital who talked to me about faith and confidence and persistence and forgiveness? Was it Rich who went grocery shopping with me every day? Was it my daughter who came along in spite of it all? Was it my distant yet penetrating love for my family and friends? Was it something inside of me...?
I wish I could capture those magical and elusive circumstances, bottle them up, and hand them to the women who struggle. They'd reject my help outright, I know, but I never fail to wonder what's going to make the difference for them, if anything. I wonder what's missing for these women. Why does starvation gain a toehold and hang on for dear life?
The truth is, I know what's missing. I know the question that starvation answers. I know the silence that anorexia speaks.
It is interesting to look back on my twenties and find that my desires and passions often traveled no further than the pages of my journal. My feelings, fresh and unspoken, were somehow too shameful to share and so I tucked them away and kept them hidden. The moment my heart left its safe little corner, I grabbed it, scolded it, and wrestled it back into place. I afforded very little leeway to what felt potentially damaging and hurtful, but what, in retrospect, looks like little more than love.
In my most nervous, uncertain times I am silent, shut down, afraid that one loose word will send me hurtling into the wild river thrashing its way through the canyon. And so I stay quiet, watchful, distant. But I'm learning that as I let people in, and let my heart do some of the talking, the frighteningly powerful river below thins to a gentle stream and I'm not so afraid anymore.
Maybe there is no going back, but there has to be more than standing still. There are words left to be spoken, and I'm finding the courage to speak them.
~ Katie
Sunday, April 11, 2010
You may not see it when it's sticking to your skin, but we're better off for all that we let in. ~ Emily Saliers
I wasn't one of those little girls who dreams of her perfect wedding day. It was almost as if I had no illusions; a big white wedding wasn't in my future. So it's strange to me that I got married so young.
When I was 19, a good friend married her boyfriend. He was stationed at Pendleton while she and I went to school in San Diego. They moved to an apartment in Oceanside and although she finished her degree, we hardly saw her after her wedding.
A co-worker friend came over to my apartment one night during my sophomore year and told me that she and her long-time boyfriend were married for two weeks before they called it quits. A year later she met the boy she'd marry for real.
Another co-worker friend was already married with three kids. She was in her mid-twenties and supervised the college girls.
There was something about marriage that I craved. It seemed so safe, like nothing could hurt me. I don't remember imagining for even a moment while making plans to marry the first boy that we'd spend the rest of our lives together. It was as though my imagination didn't stretch that far into the future, though now I know it wasn't about the rest of our lives but about reversing a downward spiral.
Before I met the boy, I was deeply unhappy at school. I'd had a relationship during my first year that sent me into self-imposed hiding. This kid wasn't violent, but he had a dark streak that frightened me. My knees would buckle and my heart would pound in fear when I saw him on campus. Something about our dynamic knocked me too far off course, and I wondered who I was to enter into something so wrong. I stopped seeing friends and hid at home. I was always scared of running into him at a party so I never went anywhere. It was hard to explain my fear and avoidance at the time which probably had more to do with my own sense of vulnerability than with him. He didn't seem so bad...so why was I terrified?
I don't even remember falling in love with the first boy I married. In fact, I don't think I ever did. It was like a puzzle I was piecing together, trying to make myself whole again, and he was part of the picture.
During our courtship I shaved my head, pierced my nose, and got tattoos. I'd left for college as a sweet-looking girl who managed, in just two years, to strip herself of any trace of femininity. When I walked into women's restrooms I literally heard gasps.
And so, at 21, marriage intersected with a loss of self that was already well underway. When I look back, I see a girl who'd already begun to dismantle herself before starvation even entered the picture. I'd cut off my hair, stopped wearing make-up, covered my body with used rags, and set my expression in a "don't talk to me" way.
I wonder now how it was possible for the boy to even like me then. My tender fragile self was covered over by angry self destruction. I was proud and embarrassed by the fact that I didn't look like anyone else, except for the handful of kids who'd entered college either already lost or found in their own unique way.
Looking back, the depression is clear. My self hatred is apparent. I'd already gotten rid of everything that made me feel desirable, and had cut off all access points to myself. I can see now how this may have frightened my family. I transformed into someone they didn't recognize in so short a time and I didn't want help or advice or love or concern...but really, I was dying for it.
And so that morning, when I woke up to find that I was married, I'd already started down the path that would lead me straight into the heart of my illness. It would take years from that morning before the hardened shell I wore finally softened and people could reach inside of me again.
So much of what I feel now comes from that severe retreat from friendships and civility, almost moreso than from the havoc my eating disorder wreaked. Honestly, sometimes I look in the mirror and am shocked at how normal I appear. I always wonder in those moments...what am I expecting to see?
How I wish now that my twenties hadn't been so destructive! I still carry pain for that person who dropped out of everything and crawled along the margins on her hands and knees. I wish I'd had the calm serenity in my mind to carry me through the rough patches a bit more unscathed. Instead, I wore my pain like a new set of skin.
A few years into recovery, I threw away all of the clothes I'd worn during my illness because I couldn't stand to see evidence of that girl any more. The green pants, the gray sweats, the tattered blue sweatshirt with the "D" embroidered in yellow thread. I used to wear those clothes to work. In fact, I'd wear them to the gym in the morning and they'd dry out a bit while I stood on the BART train platform on my way to Berkeley. It disgusts and embarrasses me now how I used to get on the commuter train in the morning absolutely drenched with sweat while other professionals headed to San Francisco in their suits.
It's those moments, those flashes of memory, that make my skin crawl now. Feeling like an absolute alien for so long can still make me uncomfortable when I enter a room. In some ways, I've left that old awkwardness behind by reminding myself that nothing about me now is going to catch that kind of attention. I'm not displaying that horrific internal unrest anymore, not only because it isn't there but because I have the ability to smile at people on the street if I want to. I spent years unable to look anyone in the eye for fear of what I saw looking back at me.
Maybe this sounds overly dramatic. How could a cute young girl transform herself into a monster who skimmed the periphery of society hoping not to get noticed? But, that's just what I did.
Anorexia treatment didn't just expose the fact that I had severely disordered eating and exercising habits, it also illuminated the fact that the body and face I'd always known had changed, too, unbeknownst to me. The bursts of clarity I've mentioned weren't just an acknowledgement of my inability to eat a raisin, they encompassed the realization that I'd become a shadow of my former self. The first chinks I'd knocked out of my exterior had been intentional, but this had gone far beyond my control and now even I didn't recognize myself.
And so, my dark decade wasn't just about eating or exercise, it was about a total loss of everything that made me who I was. It was almost as if I took a knife, at 21 years old, and slowly carved myself down to the bone, removing every bit of my spirit and my humor and my dreams in the process.
I'm grateful, at 33, to have a head full of dreams once again and a spirit that perseveres even when the world outside feels damp and spongey and cold. As the circumstances of my life continue to change I am astonished sometimes at my ability to bend with the wind instead of break. Sure, I get whipped around in the worst storms that blow through, but I'm still standing when they're gone.
So much of my strength now comes from the people I've chosen as friends. Without them, I wouldn't have a place for my troubles, my joy, my fears, my confusion. I live alone with my daughter and though we have the most wonderfully sweet, and sometimes challenging, existence, I am buoyed by the people who give me hugs and ask with sincerity, "How are you today, Katie?"
I spend a lot of time by myself when my daughter is with her dad. Sometimes I close off for entire weekends, making tentative plans that never materialize. Sometimes all I need to know is that there are people out there in the world who care about me, and then all is right within.
Over the last couple of months, I've watched myself grow tentatively into new friendships, opening up and learning how and when to trust. And though I sometimes still wear the badge of shame that exclaims I'm made up of broken bricks, I know that these people see and appreciate what I've built. And those who know I'm in the process of putting all of these errant pieces of myself into a manageable place so that my past is with me but does lead me, share their journeys with me, too.
It's pretty incredible to look around and find that everyone else is making their way through life just as I am. Despite how we look on the outside, we're all just a bunch of people with flashlights in our hands, making our way through the darkness one step at a time. And when we come upon kindred spirits, we reach out and link arms for a while and travel together.
As much as I doubt and question and worry and regret, I'm happy with my life. I don't struggle nearly as much as I used to. I'm kinder to my body and my heart and my mind now, and I'm finding little bits of sparkling pride within me that are bright enough shine through. I notice the seasons and I watch the sky. I take deep breaths and look up through the trees. And when my daughter is away I ride my bike through the hazy glow of sunset and feel just about as complete as I can.
The calm serenity that I desperately craved for all those years is slowly but surely becoming a faithful companion of mine. And looking ahead into the vast unknown of my life, nothing gives me more peace.
Life never stops giving us chances.
~ Katie
Title quote: All that we let in, Emily Saliers, 2004
When I was 19, a good friend married her boyfriend. He was stationed at Pendleton while she and I went to school in San Diego. They moved to an apartment in Oceanside and although she finished her degree, we hardly saw her after her wedding.
A co-worker friend came over to my apartment one night during my sophomore year and told me that she and her long-time boyfriend were married for two weeks before they called it quits. A year later she met the boy she'd marry for real.
Another co-worker friend was already married with three kids. She was in her mid-twenties and supervised the college girls.
There was something about marriage that I craved. It seemed so safe, like nothing could hurt me. I don't remember imagining for even a moment while making plans to marry the first boy that we'd spend the rest of our lives together. It was as though my imagination didn't stretch that far into the future, though now I know it wasn't about the rest of our lives but about reversing a downward spiral.
Before I met the boy, I was deeply unhappy at school. I'd had a relationship during my first year that sent me into self-imposed hiding. This kid wasn't violent, but he had a dark streak that frightened me. My knees would buckle and my heart would pound in fear when I saw him on campus. Something about our dynamic knocked me too far off course, and I wondered who I was to enter into something so wrong. I stopped seeing friends and hid at home. I was always scared of running into him at a party so I never went anywhere. It was hard to explain my fear and avoidance at the time which probably had more to do with my own sense of vulnerability than with him. He didn't seem so bad...so why was I terrified?
I don't even remember falling in love with the first boy I married. In fact, I don't think I ever did. It was like a puzzle I was piecing together, trying to make myself whole again, and he was part of the picture.
During our courtship I shaved my head, pierced my nose, and got tattoos. I'd left for college as a sweet-looking girl who managed, in just two years, to strip herself of any trace of femininity. When I walked into women's restrooms I literally heard gasps.
And so, at 21, marriage intersected with a loss of self that was already well underway. When I look back, I see a girl who'd already begun to dismantle herself before starvation even entered the picture. I'd cut off my hair, stopped wearing make-up, covered my body with used rags, and set my expression in a "don't talk to me" way.
I wonder now how it was possible for the boy to even like me then. My tender fragile self was covered over by angry self destruction. I was proud and embarrassed by the fact that I didn't look like anyone else, except for the handful of kids who'd entered college either already lost or found in their own unique way.
Looking back, the depression is clear. My self hatred is apparent. I'd already gotten rid of everything that made me feel desirable, and had cut off all access points to myself. I can see now how this may have frightened my family. I transformed into someone they didn't recognize in so short a time and I didn't want help or advice or love or concern...but really, I was dying for it.
And so that morning, when I woke up to find that I was married, I'd already started down the path that would lead me straight into the heart of my illness. It would take years from that morning before the hardened shell I wore finally softened and people could reach inside of me again.
So much of what I feel now comes from that severe retreat from friendships and civility, almost moreso than from the havoc my eating disorder wreaked. Honestly, sometimes I look in the mirror and am shocked at how normal I appear. I always wonder in those moments...what am I expecting to see?
How I wish now that my twenties hadn't been so destructive! I still carry pain for that person who dropped out of everything and crawled along the margins on her hands and knees. I wish I'd had the calm serenity in my mind to carry me through the rough patches a bit more unscathed. Instead, I wore my pain like a new set of skin.
A few years into recovery, I threw away all of the clothes I'd worn during my illness because I couldn't stand to see evidence of that girl any more. The green pants, the gray sweats, the tattered blue sweatshirt with the "D" embroidered in yellow thread. I used to wear those clothes to work. In fact, I'd wear them to the gym in the morning and they'd dry out a bit while I stood on the BART train platform on my way to Berkeley. It disgusts and embarrasses me now how I used to get on the commuter train in the morning absolutely drenched with sweat while other professionals headed to San Francisco in their suits.
It's those moments, those flashes of memory, that make my skin crawl now. Feeling like an absolute alien for so long can still make me uncomfortable when I enter a room. In some ways, I've left that old awkwardness behind by reminding myself that nothing about me now is going to catch that kind of attention. I'm not displaying that horrific internal unrest anymore, not only because it isn't there but because I have the ability to smile at people on the street if I want to. I spent years unable to look anyone in the eye for fear of what I saw looking back at me.
Maybe this sounds overly dramatic. How could a cute young girl transform herself into a monster who skimmed the periphery of society hoping not to get noticed? But, that's just what I did.
Anorexia treatment didn't just expose the fact that I had severely disordered eating and exercising habits, it also illuminated the fact that the body and face I'd always known had changed, too, unbeknownst to me. The bursts of clarity I've mentioned weren't just an acknowledgement of my inability to eat a raisin, they encompassed the realization that I'd become a shadow of my former self. The first chinks I'd knocked out of my exterior had been intentional, but this had gone far beyond my control and now even I didn't recognize myself.
And so, my dark decade wasn't just about eating or exercise, it was about a total loss of everything that made me who I was. It was almost as if I took a knife, at 21 years old, and slowly carved myself down to the bone, removing every bit of my spirit and my humor and my dreams in the process.
I'm grateful, at 33, to have a head full of dreams once again and a spirit that perseveres even when the world outside feels damp and spongey and cold. As the circumstances of my life continue to change I am astonished sometimes at my ability to bend with the wind instead of break. Sure, I get whipped around in the worst storms that blow through, but I'm still standing when they're gone.
So much of my strength now comes from the people I've chosen as friends. Without them, I wouldn't have a place for my troubles, my joy, my fears, my confusion. I live alone with my daughter and though we have the most wonderfully sweet, and sometimes challenging, existence, I am buoyed by the people who give me hugs and ask with sincerity, "How are you today, Katie?"
I spend a lot of time by myself when my daughter is with her dad. Sometimes I close off for entire weekends, making tentative plans that never materialize. Sometimes all I need to know is that there are people out there in the world who care about me, and then all is right within.
Over the last couple of months, I've watched myself grow tentatively into new friendships, opening up and learning how and when to trust. And though I sometimes still wear the badge of shame that exclaims I'm made up of broken bricks, I know that these people see and appreciate what I've built. And those who know I'm in the process of putting all of these errant pieces of myself into a manageable place so that my past is with me but does lead me, share their journeys with me, too.
It's pretty incredible to look around and find that everyone else is making their way through life just as I am. Despite how we look on the outside, we're all just a bunch of people with flashlights in our hands, making our way through the darkness one step at a time. And when we come upon kindred spirits, we reach out and link arms for a while and travel together.
As much as I doubt and question and worry and regret, I'm happy with my life. I don't struggle nearly as much as I used to. I'm kinder to my body and my heart and my mind now, and I'm finding little bits of sparkling pride within me that are bright enough shine through. I notice the seasons and I watch the sky. I take deep breaths and look up through the trees. And when my daughter is away I ride my bike through the hazy glow of sunset and feel just about as complete as I can.
The calm serenity that I desperately craved for all those years is slowly but surely becoming a faithful companion of mine. And looking ahead into the vast unknown of my life, nothing gives me more peace.
Life never stops giving us chances.
~ Katie
Title quote: All that we let in, Emily Saliers, 2004
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination. ~ Mary Oliver
For the most part, I've always considered my compulsion to write a curse, something I could never escape. Growing up, the need was an intricate web I fought my way through: a dense, sticky net of feeling and color and sound that stretched itself out in a flagrant, uncomfortable display. Writing wasn't something that sat easily within me, and it regularly forced its way out.
Early on, writing poetry helped me make sense of myself and the world. In grade school, I scribbled rhymes in my awkward, unformed handwriting on scraps of paper. Somewhere under my bed, in one of my memory boxes, is the first poem I ever wrote -- a tiny time capsule of my earliest dreams and humor. The subject matter: boys.
In junior high my writing took a dark, forested turn and I lost touch with the depth of my expression. In high school, I was finally old enough to carry the weight of my words and kept a notebook with me at all times.
While in college, I published a poem and wrote another piece that was incorporated into the medical anthropology curriculum. During lecture breaks, I leaned against cool concrete buildings and wrote line after line of silly, angsty musings. I sent long, languorous letters to friends afar and squeezed poetry from every inch of myself. Writing was a listless yet appropriately cerebral pastime in those days. I was a lost and wandering poet.
During the following years when my illness left me with no energy or inclination to make conversation and my mind compressed into a heavy, dead mass, the compulsion to write remained alive. The infrastructure of my poetry buckled, however, leaving verbs touching verbs touching adjectives with little or no punctuation. Messy phrases, chaotic juxtapositions, crass, weathered, profane words all intertwined with recountings of my bizarre diet: "carrot juice for dinner tonight and sixteen million brown rice cakes and sushi and peanut butter and a peach."
I can't make sense of it now: "a galloping leap of self into the space created by distance, laying down its highway in passing."
Sometimes, though, I see an attempt to make real the very, very unreal: "today it is the whipping of moods, brain-frothing switches inverting all parts (her eyes, minds, hands) once semi-solid, footing the breakage, damning serenity, but all in jest."
Some of it is sad: "The mirror doesn't reflect me anymore. I look to it for guidance, to let me know when I've gone too far. But often, it will only tell me I have not gone far enough."
And some graphic: "My insides are coming out of hiding."
But something in me changed during the final months of my treatment and I stopped writing all together. The flow of words that never ceased suddenly dried up and I was left with no inroad, no sense of evolution, no hold on space.
It was a relief to be released, frankly; no one could get to me, nor I to myself. My life cast no more ugliness. There was no drifting line in the water, no glinting lure, no net waiting by the side of the boat, only still waters lapping a calm shore, obscuring what lurked below.
Something about the recovery process silenced me, made me hate and distrust myself and reject what already seemed like a curse. I threw away my lined notebooks and writings from adolescence on. Pages of words typed in fading ink, crudely marked with my edits and notations, went into the trash. I held onto a few journals, but only because the books were of such fine quality I couldn't throw them away. I kept the rubber-banded stack of papers from the hospital in case one day I needed a road map back to the place I'd already forgotten.
Every once in a while, though, that strike of lightening would flash on the horizon and I’d look into the distance and wonder: Is it time to start again? No, I'd quickly decide. It was easy, for a while, to lose myself in the rush and pull of daily life and ignore the familiar and growing pressure...that voice...my voice...
Last summer, however, after my world tipped upside down and everything spilled and splattered out, I sat in front of my computer for a long, long time and called for the storm. Though it brought deep pain, I let the coursing rawness move through me once again until I arrived at a single poem -- one with just enough weight to snap the lock on my emotions. It ripped me wide open.
The Gardener
with his hands
he turns over her earth,
a barter to upend convention -
plaiting seed rows,
guiding roots
downward until
her land has no choice but to
flower and sprout.
his love affair with
her soil
is clean,
rapturous -
unspooling questions in me about
my own hands,
their work,
and the seasons bringing change;
how the space between two people cannot be
harvested,
held,
understood.
and my own heart breaks
knowing
that the seeds of this life, lovingly tended,
bear seeds of their own in time that will
one day
take to the wind.
watching the reach and tangle of his devotion,
I wonder if there is wisdom
in cultivating dreams
this way,
amassing the treasures of a farmer -
fruit heavy on the vine,
bitter to sweet to rot,
single moments in perfect
fleeting suspension.
but at dusk,
after the day has claimed its newness and yields again,
I realize that
no answers grow here -
only gifts for which
we could not have known
to ask.
In the months after writing this poem I allowed the need back in, sometimes hesitantly and sometimes with punishing regret. There is nothing painless about tacking oneself to the wall for casual observation, and I often resent this ridiculous desire to drag my feelings into the light. After all, I try to make good use of my time and this seems like the worst kind of waste.
And with this vulnerability comes a rolling sense of loss, too, an unending feeling that whatever solidity I’ve offered the world is now softened and blurred by my writing. What is there of a woman if she ebbs and flows with the tide? Who is she really? I’m confronted over and over by the realization that nothing is as sure and as sturdy as it looks on the outside, certainly not me.
In Dogfish, Mary Oliver writes:
I wanted
the past to go away, I wanted
to leave it, like another country; I wanted
my life to close, and open
like a hinge, like a wing, like the part of the song
where it falls
down over the rocks: an explosion, a discovery;
I wanted
to hurry into the work of my life; I wanted to know,
whoever I was, I was
alive
for a little while.
Perhaps Mary Oliver doesn’t feel the same burst of shame I experience every time I push my tender thoughts and feelings out of the nest. Maybe she doesn’t squirm in the presence of her self-knowledge, or shield herself from the blinding glare of her inner beauty, dignity, grace, confusion, and despair as it reflects off of her work. But, perhaps she does.
I am always grateful, after reading bits of published poetry, that writers fight and win this war. After all, without the courage of those who take the time to explain the world and themselves in it, I would know very little.
And so I choose to share.
~ Katie
Quotes: Wild Geese and Dogfish, both by Mary Oliver (Dream Work, 1986)
Monday, March 29, 2010
The best way out is always through. ~ Robert Frost
Why this?
But because
the clouds
are too light
to carry me
away...
(July 23, 2001)
My recovery from anorexia was a dark, ugly time, yet now I experience it as one of the most beautiful, radiant stretches of my life thus far.
It was an opportunity like no other to decide if I wanted to live or die. I teetered at the crossroads for a long time, permeable to the forces around me encouraging one path over another. I listened to the rhythm of my pulse, counted my heartbeats, and measured the likelihood of my survival against a chart that hung on the wall.
I was an angry patient, railing against a diagnosis I didn't believe in, but one that kept me imprisoned. My voice was a drifting whisper in the cacophony of sound. Why did perfect strangers have the right to overrule my decisions, tearing every last bit of my control away? What made these people who didn't live under my skin more powerful than I was?
The doctor who treated me during my first stay in the hospital had an office climbing with plants, giving the room a fresh, wet smell of dirt. I would inhale the damp cool deeply and feel grateful for this reminder of the earth outside. But, I didn't agree with what the doctor had to say and I hated him for his haughtiness.
One afternoon while passing him in the hallway, I voiced a growing panic that I might die if I didn't exercise. Literally. I pleaded for a quick walk on the treadmill. Maybe only 10 minutes? How about 5? Not enough to burn off the toast I'd choked down for breakfast, but enough to ease this suffocation. Please, please, I begged, until I was yelling. I don't remember his words, but I do remember the shake of his head and quick retreat.
At one point during my hospital treatment, a fellow patient said to me, "I've seen thinner." Looking back, I'm sure she was trying to ease my mind, but at the time I journaled: "When I get better I'm going to write a book or develop a lecture so that I can expound on WHAT NOT TO SAY to a person struggling with an eating disorder -- especially if that person is sitting in a fucking hospital trying to come to terms with his/her problem."
Skipping higher
where
heaven awaits,
Fertility
breathing.
(June 7, 2001)
As I've mentioned, having a baby was the only pin that pricked my heart during the worst of my eating disorder. It was the subject my doctor would bring up when I was most deadened. She'd ask: on a scale from 1 - 10, how motivated are you to get better? I'd hover between 6 - 10. Then: on that same scale, how willing are you to get better? 2 or a 3. I knew deep down that I needed to get better, but I was unwilling to do the work...until she mentioned having a baby, and then my numbers aligned.
It amazes me how seamlessly and rapidly I traveled between denial and clarity, and what triggered the trips between the two.
What I'm most proud of, having just read through my hospital writings more thoroughly than ever before, is the fact that I did the hard work. The box I've held onto for all these years is a reminder of everything I thought about when it was hard to think at all. There is so much about my recovery that I wouldn't remember had I thrown away the words that were so meaningless to me at the time but now tell a story that astounds me. There is a reason for knowing this story, and perhaps for telling it.
Late last summer, I stumbled upon this poem:
Honeybee ~
Having traveled miles
with unerring precision,
he alights on mica wings,
to feed upon the hearts
of riotously exclaiming flowers.
There is doubt among those closest to me that I've truly emerged from the other side of anorexia, especially in light of my bare admissions here. Though it seems too simple and perhaps a little careless to say, I wouldn't appreciate the honeybee if I was still stuck inside.
Without a doubt, I fought my recovery tooth and nail; but, ultimately I grew tired and began to let go, piece by piece. It was during the fight and ultimate surrender that I primed myself for the lessons that would surface from the shadowy depths of real living. Had I simply gone through the motions of recovery, keeping my heart and mind disengaged, I would still live by anorexia's rules today. Of this I am 100% certain.
I know that I am miles from the girl who earned straight A's in high school and who was dubbed "Best Personality" in her senior class. I know that in making the choices I thought were right for me I confused and ultimately disappointed my family. I wish anorexia had never become the solution that it was for so many years. I wish I could go back, grab the time lost, and shove it into my pocket for safe keeping.
But...I can't.
What I love most about Honeybee is the word mica. It means thin, tough, often transparent, and usually elastic, which I'd like to think is a result of miles and miles of travel. Then, not only does the honeybee alight, it feeds, and not just on what it needs to survive, but on the hearts of riotously exclaiming flowers.
I believe that we admire in others what we most admire in ourselves, and that as I travel the sometimes strange and winding passages ahead I'll seek out fellow honeybees.
For I know that along our winged and luminous journey together, unerringly precise or not, we'll find the sweetest nectar.
~ Katie
But because
the clouds
are too light
to carry me
away...
(July 23, 2001)
My recovery from anorexia was a dark, ugly time, yet now I experience it as one of the most beautiful, radiant stretches of my life thus far.
It was an opportunity like no other to decide if I wanted to live or die. I teetered at the crossroads for a long time, permeable to the forces around me encouraging one path over another. I listened to the rhythm of my pulse, counted my heartbeats, and measured the likelihood of my survival against a chart that hung on the wall.
I was an angry patient, railing against a diagnosis I didn't believe in, but one that kept me imprisoned. My voice was a drifting whisper in the cacophony of sound. Why did perfect strangers have the right to overrule my decisions, tearing every last bit of my control away? What made these people who didn't live under my skin more powerful than I was?
The doctor who treated me during my first stay in the hospital had an office climbing with plants, giving the room a fresh, wet smell of dirt. I would inhale the damp cool deeply and feel grateful for this reminder of the earth outside. But, I didn't agree with what the doctor had to say and I hated him for his haughtiness.
One afternoon while passing him in the hallway, I voiced a growing panic that I might die if I didn't exercise. Literally. I pleaded for a quick walk on the treadmill. Maybe only 10 minutes? How about 5? Not enough to burn off the toast I'd choked down for breakfast, but enough to ease this suffocation. Please, please, I begged, until I was yelling. I don't remember his words, but I do remember the shake of his head and quick retreat.
At one point during my hospital treatment, a fellow patient said to me, "I've seen thinner." Looking back, I'm sure she was trying to ease my mind, but at the time I journaled: "When I get better I'm going to write a book or develop a lecture so that I can expound on WHAT NOT TO SAY to a person struggling with an eating disorder -- especially if that person is sitting in a fucking hospital trying to come to terms with his/her problem."
Skipping higher
where
heaven awaits,
Fertility
breathing.
(June 7, 2001)
As I've mentioned, having a baby was the only pin that pricked my heart during the worst of my eating disorder. It was the subject my doctor would bring up when I was most deadened. She'd ask: on a scale from 1 - 10, how motivated are you to get better? I'd hover between 6 - 10. Then: on that same scale, how willing are you to get better? 2 or a 3. I knew deep down that I needed to get better, but I was unwilling to do the work...until she mentioned having a baby, and then my numbers aligned.
It amazes me how seamlessly and rapidly I traveled between denial and clarity, and what triggered the trips between the two.
What I'm most proud of, having just read through my hospital writings more thoroughly than ever before, is the fact that I did the hard work. The box I've held onto for all these years is a reminder of everything I thought about when it was hard to think at all. There is so much about my recovery that I wouldn't remember had I thrown away the words that were so meaningless to me at the time but now tell a story that astounds me. There is a reason for knowing this story, and perhaps for telling it.
Late last summer, I stumbled upon this poem:
Honeybee ~
Having traveled miles
with unerring precision,
he alights on mica wings,
to feed upon the hearts
of riotously exclaiming flowers.
There is doubt among those closest to me that I've truly emerged from the other side of anorexia, especially in light of my bare admissions here. Though it seems too simple and perhaps a little careless to say, I wouldn't appreciate the honeybee if I was still stuck inside.
Without a doubt, I fought my recovery tooth and nail; but, ultimately I grew tired and began to let go, piece by piece. It was during the fight and ultimate surrender that I primed myself for the lessons that would surface from the shadowy depths of real living. Had I simply gone through the motions of recovery, keeping my heart and mind disengaged, I would still live by anorexia's rules today. Of this I am 100% certain.
I know that I am miles from the girl who earned straight A's in high school and who was dubbed "Best Personality" in her senior class. I know that in making the choices I thought were right for me I confused and ultimately disappointed my family. I wish anorexia had never become the solution that it was for so many years. I wish I could go back, grab the time lost, and shove it into my pocket for safe keeping.
But...I can't.
What I love most about Honeybee is the word mica. It means thin, tough, often transparent, and usually elastic, which I'd like to think is a result of miles and miles of travel. Then, not only does the honeybee alight, it feeds, and not just on what it needs to survive, but on the hearts of riotously exclaiming flowers.
I believe that we admire in others what we most admire in ourselves, and that as I travel the sometimes strange and winding passages ahead I'll seek out fellow honeybees.
For I know that along our winged and luminous journey together, unerringly precise or not, we'll find the sweetest nectar.
~ Katie
Thursday, February 18, 2010
If my ship sails from sight, it doesn't mean my journey ends, it simply means the river bends. ~ John Enoch Powell
When Rich and I separated at the end of 2008 I felt relief. When we battled over custody last year I felt fear. When the settlement agreement arrived last month I felt grief. When the divorce papers arrived last week, dated and filed, my heart finally broke.
I didn't see this coming.
Our life together as full-time co-habitating parents ended in December of 2007. A year later we were maintaining separate residences. The following year we were coordinating holiday schedules so that we could spend Christmas with our daughter. What sort of power did this little piece of paper have over me?
Last week I spun in agony, wearing tiny crystalline shards of pain on my sleeve like sequins. I cried at the office, I cried in my car. I was unable to articulate the impact of this latest milestone and closed myself off. For the new man in my life, this was unnerving and left him examining our still "under construction" relationship. Over a period of days I went from managing it all to dissolving at every turn.
And, for the first time since that late August afternoon when Rich lay crying on our bedroom floor while I flitted nervously between him and our daughter in the next room, my healthy mind and body rebelled.
Food became the enemy once again.
Luckily, I have 4 years of behavioral therapy under my belt. My anorexia doctors taught me how to beat the demon by opening my mouth and putting food inside. What I didn't have time to learn once my baby came along and I was thrust back into the working world, was how to make peace with taking those bites when the going gets tough.
The good news is that my recovery is so well established eating is a non-issue. Sure, my ability to share a meal with friends may disappear at times, but there is always eating taking place sometime, somewhere. What I haven't experienced in a long, long time is the relentless pounding of my inner critic who, thankfully, has been silent all of these years.
With the slightest bit of distance, I can see so clearly when and how the cycle begins. After the settlement agreement arrived I wasn't pleased with how I looked in my clothes, my appetite decreased, and I spent less time getting ready in the morning. By last week I was ashamed of my body, too shy to eat in front of most people, and had cut my clothing options down by half.
Anorexia starts with a spark and spreads like wildfire. It is a tenacious thief who steals good sense and reason. Once nutrition falls away everything else follows, which is why no matter how harsh and unforgiving the landscape of my mind becomes I will always eat. No matter what.
This recent storm, short as it was, raged invisibly within the confines of my mind. Perhaps the evil little dictator wore herself out too quickly; perhaps she wasn't getting the response she sought. The truth is, these tiny corrective steps I'm taking day after day are leading me in the right direction.
I'm in the driver's seat now.
But, where do I stow this grief so that I can return to my life? Maybe it isn't something I can bury and forget as I've tried to do with so much of my past pain. This ache lives under my skin. It's the reason I'm here. It's the answer I give to my daughter. It's the choice I've made and the path I'm on. It's my every breath.
Rich and I searched for peace together and apart this week. We passed our feelings back and forth and hoped, I'm sure, for some sort of closure. There isn't any. We share a small, impressionable child who needs these lines to remain open for her own health and survival. What passes through them now is goodwill, frustration, tension, hope and...still, this hurt. To give her the life and love we want her to have we must stay permeable.
In 1999, during the year of my first marriage, I considered creating a compilation of all of the things I wanted my eventual daughter to know. It is sweet to look back on my earnest yet troubled 21 year old self and imagine how knowledgeable I thought myself to be. But as young as I was, I wanted to capture and preserve something precious before it was gone -- an innocence I could see fading right before my eyes.
As I do with many dreams I nurtured at the start of my illness, I wonder what would have happened had my mind not slipped away. Would those writings have changed the course of my life as these are doing now?
Instead, I've unknowingly accumulated pages and pages of writing I'm not proud of. Notebooks full of questions and cries for help; margins packed with wild and desperate scribbles. Sentiments I hope never to share with my daughter in life or after my death. I don't know the girl who wrote them and I don't want her to either.
And yet...
On May 30, 2001, in the midst of anorexia's steep climb, I wrote:
The contents
of my story
done then
to bring about
another story.
I
am
waiting
for
her...
In these last few weeks I've plumbed far too deeply into my psyche. I've gone places that don't need to be revisited when there is peace to be found in the sun and the sky and in simply watching the trees blossom and the grass blanket the hills. If nothing else, there is so much richness in each moment with a child that no other journey need be made.
But there is a hazy, undeniable noise building within me as Rich and I pass into our epilogue. It's almost as if our river has ceded another that is forcing its way through the roughage unbound. There is a new truth to my life now and, rather than hide behind its accompanying shame and regret, I am letting it in.
This chapter is over, but the story won't be complete without it.
When I was a little girl, a doctor told my mother I was fortunate: my perpetual stomach aches were a clear signal from my body that things were not okay. Years later, my body would broadcast this same message to the world, teaching me in the process how to listen when it speaks.
These days, I may not hear anything at first, or I may ignore my body's inconvenient little lectures, but eventually the message comes in loudly and clearly. And while I may not be the first to jump when the alarm sounds, I always respond.
Over this week, as I've tried to heed my body's cry and find my sane and lovely voice again, I've realized that I have a whole life ahead of me to craft a story for my daughter. It won't stem from my innocence and it won't center in my regret. In many ways, it has only just begun.
I've often heard the phrase, "life begins at __," applied to varying decades of life. Frankly, I'm starting to think that life begins when you let it.
Dearest life, I'm pleased to inform you that nothing stands in your way.
~ Katie
I didn't see this coming.
Our life together as full-time co-habitating parents ended in December of 2007. A year later we were maintaining separate residences. The following year we were coordinating holiday schedules so that we could spend Christmas with our daughter. What sort of power did this little piece of paper have over me?
Last week I spun in agony, wearing tiny crystalline shards of pain on my sleeve like sequins. I cried at the office, I cried in my car. I was unable to articulate the impact of this latest milestone and closed myself off. For the new man in my life, this was unnerving and left him examining our still "under construction" relationship. Over a period of days I went from managing it all to dissolving at every turn.
And, for the first time since that late August afternoon when Rich lay crying on our bedroom floor while I flitted nervously between him and our daughter in the next room, my healthy mind and body rebelled.
Food became the enemy once again.
Luckily, I have 4 years of behavioral therapy under my belt. My anorexia doctors taught me how to beat the demon by opening my mouth and putting food inside. What I didn't have time to learn once my baby came along and I was thrust back into the working world, was how to make peace with taking those bites when the going gets tough.
The good news is that my recovery is so well established eating is a non-issue. Sure, my ability to share a meal with friends may disappear at times, but there is always eating taking place sometime, somewhere. What I haven't experienced in a long, long time is the relentless pounding of my inner critic who, thankfully, has been silent all of these years.
With the slightest bit of distance, I can see so clearly when and how the cycle begins. After the settlement agreement arrived I wasn't pleased with how I looked in my clothes, my appetite decreased, and I spent less time getting ready in the morning. By last week I was ashamed of my body, too shy to eat in front of most people, and had cut my clothing options down by half.
Anorexia starts with a spark and spreads like wildfire. It is a tenacious thief who steals good sense and reason. Once nutrition falls away everything else follows, which is why no matter how harsh and unforgiving the landscape of my mind becomes I will always eat. No matter what.
This recent storm, short as it was, raged invisibly within the confines of my mind. Perhaps the evil little dictator wore herself out too quickly; perhaps she wasn't getting the response she sought. The truth is, these tiny corrective steps I'm taking day after day are leading me in the right direction.
I'm in the driver's seat now.
But, where do I stow this grief so that I can return to my life? Maybe it isn't something I can bury and forget as I've tried to do with so much of my past pain. This ache lives under my skin. It's the reason I'm here. It's the answer I give to my daughter. It's the choice I've made and the path I'm on. It's my every breath.
Rich and I searched for peace together and apart this week. We passed our feelings back and forth and hoped, I'm sure, for some sort of closure. There isn't any. We share a small, impressionable child who needs these lines to remain open for her own health and survival. What passes through them now is goodwill, frustration, tension, hope and...still, this hurt. To give her the life and love we want her to have we must stay permeable.
In 1999, during the year of my first marriage, I considered creating a compilation of all of the things I wanted my eventual daughter to know. It is sweet to look back on my earnest yet troubled 21 year old self and imagine how knowledgeable I thought myself to be. But as young as I was, I wanted to capture and preserve something precious before it was gone -- an innocence I could see fading right before my eyes.
As I do with many dreams I nurtured at the start of my illness, I wonder what would have happened had my mind not slipped away. Would those writings have changed the course of my life as these are doing now?
Instead, I've unknowingly accumulated pages and pages of writing I'm not proud of. Notebooks full of questions and cries for help; margins packed with wild and desperate scribbles. Sentiments I hope never to share with my daughter in life or after my death. I don't know the girl who wrote them and I don't want her to either.
And yet...
On May 30, 2001, in the midst of anorexia's steep climb, I wrote:
The contents
of my story
done then
to bring about
another story.
I
am
waiting
for
her...
In these last few weeks I've plumbed far too deeply into my psyche. I've gone places that don't need to be revisited when there is peace to be found in the sun and the sky and in simply watching the trees blossom and the grass blanket the hills. If nothing else, there is so much richness in each moment with a child that no other journey need be made.
But there is a hazy, undeniable noise building within me as Rich and I pass into our epilogue. It's almost as if our river has ceded another that is forcing its way through the roughage unbound. There is a new truth to my life now and, rather than hide behind its accompanying shame and regret, I am letting it in.
This chapter is over, but the story won't be complete without it.
When I was a little girl, a doctor told my mother I was fortunate: my perpetual stomach aches were a clear signal from my body that things were not okay. Years later, my body would broadcast this same message to the world, teaching me in the process how to listen when it speaks.
These days, I may not hear anything at first, or I may ignore my body's inconvenient little lectures, but eventually the message comes in loudly and clearly. And while I may not be the first to jump when the alarm sounds, I always respond.
Over this week, as I've tried to heed my body's cry and find my sane and lovely voice again, I've realized that I have a whole life ahead of me to craft a story for my daughter. It won't stem from my innocence and it won't center in my regret. In many ways, it has only just begun.
I've often heard the phrase, "life begins at __," applied to varying decades of life. Frankly, I'm starting to think that life begins when you let it.
Dearest life, I'm pleased to inform you that nothing stands in your way.
~ Katie
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