Managing The Basics

Tomorrow evening I talk to Katie. This means that tomorrow morning I have to stand on a scale and have Tish weight me so that she can call Katie and give her the number.  My stomach gets achy feeling just thinking about it.

I am so fat. I’m ashamed and embarrassed. I just hate the thought that both Tish and Katie know what I weigh.  I probably weigh twice what Katie weighs.

Tonight is a gym night for me. I’m going to do 25 minutes weights like I’m supposed to, but I think I’m going to 40 to 45 minutes cardio. I didn’t go to the gym on Monday, so I figure I can work out longer than normal to make up for it.

To learn the transport by the pain,
As blind men learn the sun;
To die of thirst, suspecting
That brooks in meadows run;

To stay the homesick, homesick feet
Upon a foreign shore
Haunted by native lands, the while,
And blue, beloved air –

This is the sovereign anguish,
This, the signal woe!
These are the patient laureates
Whose voices, trained below,

Ascend in ceaseless carol,
Inaudible, indeed,
To us, the duller scholars
Of the mysterious bard!

- Emily Dickinson

I remember the stories you used to tell me about your time at Tenley. How Mindy would come and visit you and the two of you would torture the ED patients on your unit by walking around and offering them the chocolate chip cookies that were kept in the unit kitchen. At the time I thought that was hysterically funny, and — don’t tell anyone — part of me still does.

Grandma Jane and I are in touch, not often, but with some regularity. Grandpa Leonard isn’t doing very well, but he is in good spirits. I visited them last spring and we took a bunch of pictures together. I still haven’t gotten them developed, I think in large part because I know the pictures won’t do the day justice.

It was a hot day with a warm breeze. Grandma Jane took me to visit you. I’m sure you’re disappointed with your view – it can’t be nearly exciting enough for you – but I approve whole-heartedly. From your place under a shade tree you can see two fields. One the farmer has let turn to meadow with yellow wildflowers blooming, but the other field is still being used to make hay. It smells sweet, just like West Virginia hay, but it looks different. Longer, fuller. I think it must be the higher quality mid-western soil.

You probably spend your time debating military and economic policy with Nixon and Regan. Go easy on them, sister. They are no match for you. They couldn’t have gotten into Wellsely even if that had had vaginas. Just please wear decent clothes. It really isn’t fair for the men when they have to try to keep up with your wit when you’re running around with a scarf wrapped around your bra as your shirt. It is just impossible for them to handle brains and breasts at the same time.

I miss you. Save a seat for me at the table.

(PS: Mom found about about the condom wrapper under my alarm clock. Sorry. I slipped one day. If it makes you feel better she wasn’t mad. She thought it was kinda funny.)

One of my geology professors from JMU emailed this weekend. He’s my favorite prof of all time. His classes actually made me think and not just regurgitate information. He and his wife graciously offered to open their home to me when I was afraid I was going to be coming back from Chicago with no place to live and his wife has occasionally read this blog, so he knows what is going on in my life.  It was nice to know that he’s thinking of me and I appreciated his kind and encouraging words.

So why am I sitting at the computer crying?

Thinking of him and my time at JMU makes me remember how far I am from where I was. I don’t think anyone could have looked at me then and imagined that I’d end up where I am now. I took all the hard classes, even the ones I didn’t have to, and I always blew the top off the curve. I could have had anything I wanted after graduation: any job, any grad school.

Instead of getting an impressing job in geophysics or accepting a  Rhodes scholarship, I got an eating disorder. I’ve wasted two and half years and hundreds of thousands of dollars and have nothing to show for it. I’m fat. I’m depressed.

I am such a loser. I always have been. Those four years at JMU were an anomaly. I was popular. I was genuinely happy and content with my life. I loved what I was doing. Gabe and I lived in a house that we rented so we didn’t have  to face the challenges that come with home-ownership. My sister was talking to me. It was a magical time.

I don’t know why I thought it would last.

Nothing is right in my life now. The one and only good thing I have in my life is my husband and I love him so much that I don’t want him to love me anymore. He deserves better. He deserves to be with someone who is happy and healthy.

God played a mean joke on me when he gave me those years at JMU. He gave me something I had never had before: a taste of normalcy. But all he allowed me was a taste.

Pattern recognition: I binge/purge after my sessions with Dr. Shemo.

Solution: Stop seeing Dr. Shemo.

Because I have a nagging suspicious that Gabe would not approve of that solution, I’ve come up with another one.

Second Solution: tell Dr. Shemo and Katie about my pattern of binging/purging once I leave a session with him. Come up with a plan to prevent it.

Possible prevention plan:

1. Contract with Dr. Shemo that I will make it home safely.

2. Pre-plan my Monday meals and snack. Tell Gabe my pre-plan and stick to it.

3. Bring my snack and water with me and eat it in the car on the way home.

4. Don’t stop in Harrisonburg for any reason. (This means making sure I have enough gas in my car on Sunday night.)

5. Leave all my cash, debit card, and check book at home. (Bring one check with me to pay Dr. Shemo.)

6. Call Tish when I’m leaving Charlottesville and tell her I will make it home safely.

7. Call Tish when I get home and let her know how I did.

8. Eat (my pre-planned) lunch as soon as I get home.

9. Read or color mandalas for about an hour after eating, then go to the gym.

10. Have a healthy (i.e. Katie approved) session at the gym.

11. Check in with Tish before I leave Monterey.

12. Make sure that Gabe will be home when I get home from the gym.

13. Hang out with Gabe for the rest of the evening/nigh. DO NOT be alone.

14. Email Katie and give her my complete food and behavior log for the day before I go to bed.

15. If at any time on Monday I feel unsafe, I must STOP, take a deep breath, say an Our Father, and then call a supportive person. (Supportive People = Bev, Brooke, Kenzie, Cyndi, Becky D, Becky B, Mel, Heather, Kenzie, Heidi, Amy, Vicki, Elise, Kari.)

I feel so freakin’ fat. FAT. FAAAAAAAAAATTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTTT.

Gabe took me to H-burg this afternoon to see Lakeview Terrace. (Hint: wait until it comes out on DVD. Not worth the cash to see it in a theater, even if it does star my man SLJ.) The show started at 4:30, and I purposely didn’t eat my afternoon snack before we went. I was determined to do something that normal people do when they go see a movie: eat a small bag of popcorn.

I wasn’t brave enough to put butter on it, but I did eat it. And I felt triumphant, like “Take that stupid Mr. Eating Disorder!” for all of about 30 seconds. Ok, maybe 47 and a half seconds, but definitely not a full minute. The guilt and the gross and the “oh-my-gosh-I-have-no-idea-how-many-calories-I-ate-but-I’m-sure-its-too-many” factor set in super fast.

I’m home now. It’s 9:30 and I’m faced with the fact that I still haven’t eaten dinner. At this point I have no intention to. I’m justifying it by telling myself I must have at least gotten enough calories today with all the popcorn I ate, and that my “day count” is only counting days of not binging/purging, NOT days following my MP, so I’ll still be on a roll as far as that goes.

I am such a worthless excuse for a human being.

FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT FAT

WORTHLESS WORTHLESS WORTHLESS WORTHLESS WORTHLESS

FAT

Decided I was only going to eat half my dinner and skip my PM snack completely.

Then Gabe told me how proud he was of me for working so hard at recovery and reminded me how well I’ve done NOT binging and purging. That gave me guilt. Major guilt. Episcopalian guilt isn’t as bad as Catholic guilt, but it’s right up there. So I got up out of our warm cozy bed where we were reading with each other and I went into the kitchen. I poured myself a bowl of raisin bran with milk.

And I ate it. And it is still in my tummy, not in the toilet.

Because, after all, as Heidi so perfectly put it: my meal plan is reasonable.

(And Katie is always right.)

Imagine two men.

Man #1 is a 29 year old married white man who has lived in rural West Virginia his entire life. He has taken some college classes but on the whole has no desire to go back and get a degree. He says, “yes ma’am” and “yes, sir” instead of “yeah.” He and his father work the farm that has supported the family for five generations. He loves to take his nephews for tractor rides. In his spare time he goes fishing and turkey hunting. He is an expert sharp shooter – he has no competitive bone in his body, but if he wanted to he could be a nationally recognized target shooter. He wants his children to be home-schooled and he changes his own oil. He registered to vote as a Republican on his 18th birthday and voted for Bush in 2000.

Man #2 is also white and 29 years old. He has been married for four years and lives on the East Coast. He loves to listen to National Public Radio and has been to two live productions of Garrison Keillor’s A Prairie Home Companion.  His favorite food is Thai and Ethiopian and he knows how to fix killer tofu, which he does on a regular basis. He spends his Sunday afternoons relaxing with his wife reading the Sunday Washington Post. He thinks drugs should be legalized and that there are instances when abortion is permissible. He supports his wife in her career choices and encourages her to keep advancing. He does the laundry as often as she does. He sees nothing wrong with civil marriages for gays and lesbians and thinks that American needs a system of universal health care. He voted for Kerry in 2004.

Obama might classify man #1 as someone who “holds fast to his religion and his guns;” someone who is backward and againstprogress. A conservative who is satisfied with the status quo and isn’t creative or intelligent enough to realize that there is more to life than hunting and farming.

McCain and his conservative supporters would write off man #2 as a “liberal elite.” They see him as a man out of touch. Only “liberal elites” eat tofu and listen to NPR on the radio as they drive to their favorite Ethiopian restaurant.

The problem for both Obama and McCain is that there is no such thing as man #1 and man #2. There is only Gabe – my husband.

That is the reality, folks. Both man #1 and man #2 are one in the same.

To those fellow Republicans who would label him as an East Coast elitist: you are free to dismiss him if you want to, but you need to realize exactly what it is you are dismissing. He’s far from a radical leftist and more in touch with the needs and concerns of the working and middle class Americans than any Republican who serves in DC.

To the Obama supports who write him off as a  red-neck or hillbilly: to ignore him is to do so at your peril. He may own more rifles than most people own coffee mugs, but you need him to win this election. You may think his work ethic and morals are quaint and old-fashioned, but he is living life the way his mother and father taught him.

Why can’t we stop the name calling, the stereotyping, the misrepresentations, the negative campaign ads, and address the issues that have actual meaning to the electorate?

Oh, I remember: this is an American presidential election. Talking about things that really matter isn’t allowed.

But who’s counting?

To those who have gone before me: your inspiration and success motivate me to keep working on recovery. The best support you give is to allow me the privilege to be a witness to your life as you live out God’s plan for you activly in recovery.

To those who will follow behind me: I pray that your journey is less fraught with challenges than mine, but even if it isn’t, you are worth recovery.

To those who are in this with me and next to me: we are doing the work of recovery everyday, one meal and one bite and one less trip to the bathroom at a time. I am honored to call you my friends.  We will deafen the world with our voices one day as we claim full health for our bodies together.

I read this article in the Washington Post and immediately thought of Heidi’s senior thesis:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/19/AR2008091902149.html

Sex harass victim survivor fights back with cell phone pic

The Associated Press
Friday, September 19, 2008; 2:14 PM

(The correction is mine. We will change the language one correction at a time.)

I only wish I could have been so brave as to have stood up for myself and my body. If the assault itself wasn’t bad enough (as if), I fight with a voice in my head that tells me it was my fault or that I deserved it or that its my fault that he didn’t go to jail and is free to prey on others.

I am not a victim. One day I will be a survivor. Right now, with a whole lotta help from family, friends, and a dietitian (who is always right), I am surviving.

And when I can claim survivor-ship status and truly find my voice and the courage to use it: look out world. I will not be silenced again.

What do you think?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/09/12/notes091208.DTL

1. I talk like a West Virginian. It’s the rest of the country that doesn’t talk normally.

2. This strategy completely works. I’m living proof: the dumber I sound the better I am at managing my ED.  (Sarcasm, people, sarcasm)

3. Raw flesh? Not so much. (And I don’t think that is an ED-thing, either.)

4. Been to WF, but much prefer the veggies straight out of Bev’s garden.

5. I am proud to say that for the first time in my life I do not own any furniture that is older than I am! (Family antiques not withstanding.)

6. It’s in the closet, not the dresser. (KIDDING! KIDDING!)

7. Of course I don’t know what it is! And even if I did, I’d never admit to it. My mother reads this blog for goodness sakes!

8. Not only do I know what “venerable” means, I also know the Latin root. And I can use it in a sentence. In either language.

9. Xanax has been my  inebriant of choice recently.

10. Wrong again. It’s a black bear here.

11. The most “real American” I know is Barry. He’s a hard working, deer hunting, maple syrup making, car fixing farmer. With a ponytail. Who think pot should be legalized. And that the oil industry should be nationalized.

12. I prefer not to think of any part of Karl Rove, least of all his toe-cheese.

13. Our hammers gave me a new foundation and a new roof and a new bathroom. We’re working on the kitchen right now.

14. Early exposure to sacramental wine has lead to my proclivity for really cheap, sweet, Virginia red wine. I still have not forgiven the church for eternally destroying my palate.

15. I don’t really “speak” Latin. Not very many people do outside of the Vatican.

16. Read? Who? Me? As if.

17. Dynamic equilibrium? What’s that? Doesn’t that have something to do with Gould? Oh – that was punctuated equilibrium, wasn’t it? Close enough.

18. Earnhardt? Heck no! I’m for #8. And we’ve even been to Martinsville.

There you have it, readers. I’ll leave the verdict up to you? Am I an elitist?