my stomach hurts. and not because of a binge or throwing up and feeling anxious. i had a bowl of oatmeal and 10am, didn't eat lunch because i wasn't hungry yet, and then whoooosh-the ache came. this happens often and despite seeing specialists and herbalists and acupuncturists, this familiar ache still happens. it is this ache that i wish i could rip out my stomach and put in a new one, or give mine a healing bath and like magic it would all be good again.
oh but wait. this is not my stomach. let's be anatomically correct: the pain is actually located in the intestines...my stomach itself feels fine. i think my intestines literally knot themselves up with the anxiety of having to digest food that my mind wants to hate.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Love Letter
when i was offered the job as Kitchen Mother/Manager at the Institute, i was deeply scared. i am STILL scared. imagine if you were an alchoholic and you were offered a prestigious job with a liquor company. the job comes with all sorts of benefits and you the skillset is what you want to learn and you and everyone else agrees that you would be perfect for the job. oh, you also have all the free booze you want. yay or nay?
taking the job here was like stepping into the most tender hotspot of my relationship with food. i enjoy eating but i cannot say that i love food. i know all sorts of things about food culture and i cannot say that i am a foodie. i cook beautiful meals for people everyday but i cannot say i am a chef. however, food as a symbol holds great power over me, and it is all that it symbolizes that i am most in love with.
Most of all, food means comfort. it means nourishment and coziness and warmth. it also does all sorts of amazing things: it calms, soothes, excites and protects. wow. that is a pretty spectacular list of attributes. I don't even do all those things!
sometime, i would like to write a love letter to food. that would mean a lot....i'm not there yet. even though food does all those fancy things i really don't like it. i feel the word "hate" rolling around on my tounge. i don't think this word is quite right...maybe disdain works better. i wish for things like anorexia, so at least i wouldn't be in such close contact with food-at least then i wouldn't be eating.
i'm confused. do i hate the food or do i hate the eating?
right now my letter to food is this:
Dear Food,
this is Eating, writing you. we spend A LOT of time together, but i know I've haven't been very nice to you. I've blamed, used, resisted, and controlled you - and you've always been there for me, taking care of me, helping me get through the day. thank you for that. it would be really great though if I could stop using you as a way to deal with my emotions. it would be so nice if I didn't work you overtime, by making you my favorite coping strategy. i think about you all the time. but you can see that i've idealized you. i've put you on a pedastal and made you more than you actually are. i have cried and cried over you, making myself miserable over your every morsel and taste. there are times when i have thought that it was different, that i've gotten over you and made peace with you-but i've only buried the issues deeper and deeper. so. i'm writing you a letter, because food: i would like to try to really change things this time. i am wanting SO BAD for things to be different between us and i am hoping that my pure desperation will facillitate change.
i would like to see you differently. i would like to just see you as food and nothing else-no solution no answer no prize and no defeat. you will just be what you've been since the beginning of time. you will soothe my physical hunger not my emotional hunger. you will nourish me and give me just the right amount of energy to help me on my life path. you will be carbohydrates, proteins, fats and minerals. that is all.
Love,
Your Friend,
Eating
taking the job here was like stepping into the most tender hotspot of my relationship with food. i enjoy eating but i cannot say that i love food. i know all sorts of things about food culture and i cannot say that i am a foodie. i cook beautiful meals for people everyday but i cannot say i am a chef. however, food as a symbol holds great power over me, and it is all that it symbolizes that i am most in love with.
Most of all, food means comfort. it means nourishment and coziness and warmth. it also does all sorts of amazing things: it calms, soothes, excites and protects. wow. that is a pretty spectacular list of attributes. I don't even do all those things!
sometime, i would like to write a love letter to food. that would mean a lot....i'm not there yet. even though food does all those fancy things i really don't like it. i feel the word "hate" rolling around on my tounge. i don't think this word is quite right...maybe disdain works better. i wish for things like anorexia, so at least i wouldn't be in such close contact with food-at least then i wouldn't be eating.
i'm confused. do i hate the food or do i hate the eating?
right now my letter to food is this:
Dear Food,
this is Eating, writing you. we spend A LOT of time together, but i know I've haven't been very nice to you. I've blamed, used, resisted, and controlled you - and you've always been there for me, taking care of me, helping me get through the day. thank you for that. it would be really great though if I could stop using you as a way to deal with my emotions. it would be so nice if I didn't work you overtime, by making you my favorite coping strategy. i think about you all the time. but you can see that i've idealized you. i've put you on a pedastal and made you more than you actually are. i have cried and cried over you, making myself miserable over your every morsel and taste. there are times when i have thought that it was different, that i've gotten over you and made peace with you-but i've only buried the issues deeper and deeper. so. i'm writing you a letter, because food: i would like to try to really change things this time. i am wanting SO BAD for things to be different between us and i am hoping that my pure desperation will facillitate change.
i would like to see you differently. i would like to just see you as food and nothing else-no solution no answer no prize and no defeat. you will just be what you've been since the beginning of time. you will soothe my physical hunger not my emotional hunger. you will nourish me and give me just the right amount of energy to help me on my life path. you will be carbohydrates, proteins, fats and minerals. that is all.
Love,
Your Friend,
Eating
Vegan Underbelly
today is roughly the one year anniversary that i decided to become vegan. but i'm not really celebrating. instead, i'm examining ALL the reasons that led me to make this decision. whenever food is involved, things get kind of blurry...logic and emotion become tangled in a totally confusing knot. oh, then throw spirituality into the mix and it really becomes a full blown mess.
in this mess, many truths exist without canceling each other out.
for example, not eating meat is linked to my practice of ahimsa-nonviolence. i firmly believe that eating the flesh of another being is a violent act, by consuming that animal i am ingesting the violence that was used to kill the animal, that energy becomes a part of me and my peace is disturbed. as soon as the word "energy" gets thrown into the conversation, i know i lose credibility among most western thinkers, but for me this is a tangible sensation. i remember the first couple weeks i was vegan-i felt like i was on a perpetual high, my body felt peaceful and pure. it felt like light was pouring in and polishing my insides.
a couple days ago i ate a meatball the size of my fist. for real. not the soy kind, the cow kind. and then there was another time three months ago that i absolutely had to eat chicken and i went to the store and got a leg of roasted chicken and inhaled it right there in the store. another time i was on cape cod and there was blue fish for dinner. i might have had three servings of that fish and felt the ocean salty and vast inside of me, felt the slipperiness and the flowing currents against scales and fins and tails.
so do i get the prestigious pretentious honor of calling myself Vegan? i guess it depends on how snotty you are about it. because here lies the conflict: ever since i can remember, food has either been restricted from me or i have restricted food from myself. so with that kind of history, can i really say that choosing to be Vegan came from purely spiritual/political roots? probably not, i did choose it because it made me feel better but i also chose it because YAY! this is a food restriction that i can really be successful at 99% of the time. i have made a rule for myself and i've been so good for following it and i'm such a good eater and i'm really good at this diet. again, this gets confusing because while it becomes part of my history of making and breaking diets, this is more than a diet because it is also a spiritual practice and a political decision.
so...sarcasm aside, i DO feel good about following a vegan diet, but it doesn't come without a touch of shame for playing into my game of restriction and self degradation.
in this mess, many truths exist without canceling each other out.
for example, not eating meat is linked to my practice of ahimsa-nonviolence. i firmly believe that eating the flesh of another being is a violent act, by consuming that animal i am ingesting the violence that was used to kill the animal, that energy becomes a part of me and my peace is disturbed. as soon as the word "energy" gets thrown into the conversation, i know i lose credibility among most western thinkers, but for me this is a tangible sensation. i remember the first couple weeks i was vegan-i felt like i was on a perpetual high, my body felt peaceful and pure. it felt like light was pouring in and polishing my insides.
a couple days ago i ate a meatball the size of my fist. for real. not the soy kind, the cow kind. and then there was another time three months ago that i absolutely had to eat chicken and i went to the store and got a leg of roasted chicken and inhaled it right there in the store. another time i was on cape cod and there was blue fish for dinner. i might have had three servings of that fish and felt the ocean salty and vast inside of me, felt the slipperiness and the flowing currents against scales and fins and tails.
so do i get the prestigious pretentious honor of calling myself Vegan? i guess it depends on how snotty you are about it. because here lies the conflict: ever since i can remember, food has either been restricted from me or i have restricted food from myself. so with that kind of history, can i really say that choosing to be Vegan came from purely spiritual/political roots? probably not, i did choose it because it made me feel better but i also chose it because YAY! this is a food restriction that i can really be successful at 99% of the time. i have made a rule for myself and i've been so good for following it and i'm such a good eater and i'm really good at this diet. again, this gets confusing because while it becomes part of my history of making and breaking diets, this is more than a diet because it is also a spiritual practice and a political decision.
so...sarcasm aside, i DO feel good about following a vegan diet, but it doesn't come without a touch of shame for playing into my game of restriction and self degradation.
Saturday, November 28, 2009
Kingdom of Love
i spent the day in what i would call "recovery". i've been here before. the day before i have binge eaten, then i cry about it, i go to sleep and then i wake up, remember what happened yesterday and spend the rest of the day trying to gain control again. this includes but is not limited to, crying more, telling myself that i won't binge again-i many even tell myself that i shouldn't ever eat again, i reach out to friends for support, i exercise, drink detox tea, search the internet for solutions, eat guiltily and fearfully, gather hope up around me that i can get better.
today, more than other recovery days, i spent A LOT of time on the internet. i don't know why i was surprised, but i was-to find tons of videos of women (and men) who like me, have a binge eating disorder. two of the women that i listened to most say they are free from their eating disorder. it is pretty awesome to listen to someone who does and thinks what i've been saying and doing since i was...i don't know-13?12?10? with seemingly no shame or embarrassment they shared the details of their battle, and what they learned in order to heal.
honestly, i am embarrassed to tell even my therapist that i binge eat. i would much rather say to her that i don't eat at all or that if i do, i throw it all up. actually, the times when i do throw up, i feel proud of myself for getting rid of some of the food. it becomes a win, even though it puts me in another disorder camp.
the act of eating itself is shameful and i have spent the greater part of my life obsessively feeling bad about it. it is hard to be poetic here. i am trying to write this in a pretty way but it just doesn't flow that way. there are some days that my eating doesn't feel gross, it becomes more about nourishment and mindfulness-BUT it also becomes more virtuous, more "good".
I AM OVER BEING GOOD
i want to just BE.
in an ideal world food would just be food and i would just be me. food would not have magical powers of destroying a day or saving a day, it would come satisfy hunger and then go away only to come back when hunger came again. it would not make me cry or keep my from going out to see friends. it would not keep my mind busy and instead i could think about how beautiful the day is or i could paint or read or love freely and openly.
there is one thing that everyone who has either been through this or just want to help in some way says the same thing: that i must journal.
as someone who is a pretty good writer and enjoys writing and has journaled off and on most of my life, I don't know why i have been so resistant to this seemingly simple task.
maybe i am afraid at what is going to show up on those pages? maybe i am skeptical that it could really do anything special for me? maybe i am just lazy? LAZY?
lazy. no, not lazy-helpless. no, not helpless, just self-loathing.
well, for some reason-and i will not try to over analyze why, this format feels possible to me. granted, it is certainly nothing like the prettiness of pages bound together, gleaming blank and ready to receive all that pours out. there is no lovely cursive handwriting, black on white, or sloppy slurs that aren't even letters or words after a few paragraphs. it is far less satisfying in some ways for sure, and yet-if this is how it's gonna come out, then so be it.
even though this is a blog i hope to have some privacy as a default to the millions of postings that are going up around me in each moment. i don't expect that my parents will stumble upon it and i assume that unless i tell someone that i am here, they would never know...
so with that undertaking of anonymity, i will embark upon constructing my Kingdom of Love.
today, more than other recovery days, i spent A LOT of time on the internet. i don't know why i was surprised, but i was-to find tons of videos of women (and men) who like me, have a binge eating disorder. two of the women that i listened to most say they are free from their eating disorder. it is pretty awesome to listen to someone who does and thinks what i've been saying and doing since i was...i don't know-13?12?10? with seemingly no shame or embarrassment they shared the details of their battle, and what they learned in order to heal.
honestly, i am embarrassed to tell even my therapist that i binge eat. i would much rather say to her that i don't eat at all or that if i do, i throw it all up. actually, the times when i do throw up, i feel proud of myself for getting rid of some of the food. it becomes a win, even though it puts me in another disorder camp.
the act of eating itself is shameful and i have spent the greater part of my life obsessively feeling bad about it. it is hard to be poetic here. i am trying to write this in a pretty way but it just doesn't flow that way. there are some days that my eating doesn't feel gross, it becomes more about nourishment and mindfulness-BUT it also becomes more virtuous, more "good".
I AM OVER BEING GOOD
i want to just BE.
in an ideal world food would just be food and i would just be me. food would not have magical powers of destroying a day or saving a day, it would come satisfy hunger and then go away only to come back when hunger came again. it would not make me cry or keep my from going out to see friends. it would not keep my mind busy and instead i could think about how beautiful the day is or i could paint or read or love freely and openly.
there is one thing that everyone who has either been through this or just want to help in some way says the same thing: that i must journal.
as someone who is a pretty good writer and enjoys writing and has journaled off and on most of my life, I don't know why i have been so resistant to this seemingly simple task.
maybe i am afraid at what is going to show up on those pages? maybe i am skeptical that it could really do anything special for me? maybe i am just lazy? LAZY?
lazy. no, not lazy-helpless. no, not helpless, just self-loathing.
well, for some reason-and i will not try to over analyze why, this format feels possible to me. granted, it is certainly nothing like the prettiness of pages bound together, gleaming blank and ready to receive all that pours out. there is no lovely cursive handwriting, black on white, or sloppy slurs that aren't even letters or words after a few paragraphs. it is far less satisfying in some ways for sure, and yet-if this is how it's gonna come out, then so be it.
even though this is a blog i hope to have some privacy as a default to the millions of postings that are going up around me in each moment. i don't expect that my parents will stumble upon it and i assume that unless i tell someone that i am here, they would never know...
so with that undertaking of anonymity, i will embark upon constructing my Kingdom of Love.
rock bottom
a friend told me that she doesn't believe in "rock bottom". she says that at every single moment we have the ability to move forward and change our behavior. i believe her and i also believe that Rock Bottom can look different every time we arrive in this dark place. It can look SO different each time that every time we arrive here, our mind thinks it might be different this time and says, "this is it, i can't do this anymore, i MUST change." this change in scenery is so deceiving that we don't see that it's ALWAYS the same destination for the same path of thoughts and behaviors.
this time, I thought it would be good to pause here in this place and look around. i'm acquainting myself with this space that only with my great creativity and motivation, could i create.
Creativity and Motivation???!!! yes, my friend. i am THE GREATEST ARCHITECT of my life. and at this moment, and certainly in past moments, i've built for myself The Best Place to Feel Sorry for Myself. and like all of the tyrannies in history, this palatial wonder has been torn down and rebuilt a million times...ruins of the past are scattered all across the landscape of my history-some more spectacular than others, some mere shacks. i am so good at building these places to soothe and sorrow. and like many tyrannical empires, not very good at changing my behavior to change the end result. i would someday like to have a permanent home in a Kingdom of Love that i build with the most advance technology of all....LOVE. more specifically SELF LOVE.
the former four letter word seems so have so much more popularity in our world, garnering a wide range of reactions and definitions. for advanced scientific purposes i thought it would be helpful to give the definitions for these two words:
LOVE:
WHAT??!! Merriam-Webster has got to get out another edition with a new and improved definition for Self Love. Should I really be so surprised at the brevity of this definition? And, isn't this interesting? it is almost some twisted kind of irony that i go seeking with naive earnestness what self love means and with such a mediocre answer, i am impelled forced made to create my own definition. this is the hard part.
i would also like to point out that the dictionary notes that the origin of the word "love" is from the 12th century, while "self love" is referenced to 1563. this is not surprising at all, in this case the egg came before the chicken: for we can see in the history of our own lives that it is out of the love that we felt for another that we understood what love is. and unless you were among the fortunate, you may never have been told by that other that you have that love within yourself! at all times! for and from you 24/7! on the contrary, we are often told that that kind of love is (note again the dictionary definition), narcissistic and self serving. actually, the more i read that dictionary definition again and again, the more infuriated i become. I AM REALLY ANGRY!!!
i am angry that i am 25 years old and i don't really know what my own definition is. sure, i could guess at what Self Love might mean, what it might feel like and how someone might practice it, but it's such a wavering ambiguous light, that to grasp at it is to lose it.
i can say without any doubt that i have been in love 4 times in my life.
i can say with much doubt that i love myself.
i am writing today because the path to Rock Bottom is becoming my own personal Grand Canyon. it is ugly and boring and lifeless and dark. i am looking around and all i see is the same ugly boring lifeless darkness stretching out for miles and miles and i want out. in fact, i believe that it is here that i am the most self serving narcissist hater bitch that i could ever be and i honestly don't know how Love (specifically the "in love" kind but inclusive of all love too) can exist in such a place?! how could anything grow here? i can say for sure that there is no green tenderness here, no blue clarity, no red passion, no yellow joy, no purple sweetness. it is devoid of color. yeah, not even black and definitely no white.
i am writing today because i once wanted to be an interior decorator and this would be the biggest design gig i could ever take on.
i am writing today because i am so greatly loved by my lover, my parents, my teachers, my friends that i MUST know self love SO thoroughly in order to love them to the fullest capacity of my being in return.
this time, I thought it would be good to pause here in this place and look around. i'm acquainting myself with this space that only with my great creativity and motivation, could i create.
Creativity and Motivation???!!! yes, my friend. i am THE GREATEST ARCHITECT of my life. and at this moment, and certainly in past moments, i've built for myself The Best Place to Feel Sorry for Myself. and like all of the tyrannies in history, this palatial wonder has been torn down and rebuilt a million times...ruins of the past are scattered all across the landscape of my history-some more spectacular than others, some mere shacks. i am so good at building these places to soothe and sorrow. and like many tyrannical empires, not very good at changing my behavior to change the end result. i would someday like to have a permanent home in a Kingdom of Love that i build with the most advance technology of all....LOVE. more specifically SELF LOVE.
the former four letter word seems so have so much more popularity in our world, garnering a wide range of reactions and definitions. for advanced scientific purposes i thought it would be helpful to give the definitions for these two words:
LOVE:
Main Entry: 1love
Function: noun
Etymology: Middle English, from Old English lufu; akin to Old High German luba love, Old English lēof dear, Latin lubēre, libēre to please
Date: before 12th century
1 a (1) : strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties
2 : warm attachment, enthusiasm, or devotion
3 a : the object of attachment, devotion, or admiration
4 a : unselfish loyal and benevolent concern for the good of another: as (1) : the fatherly concern of God for humankind (2) : brotherly concern for others b : a person's adoration of God
5 : a god or personification of love
6 : an amorous episode : love affair
7 : the sexual embrace : copulation
8 : a score of zero (as in tennis)
9 capitalized Christian Science : god
SELF LOVE:
Main Entry: self–love
Function: noun
Date: 1563
1: love of self: a : conceit b : regard for one's own happiness or advantage
i would also like to point out that the dictionary notes that the origin of the word "love" is from the 12th century, while "self love" is referenced to 1563. this is not surprising at all, in this case the egg came before the chicken: for we can see in the history of our own lives that it is out of the love that we felt for another that we understood what love is. and unless you were among the fortunate, you may never have been told by that other that you have that love within yourself! at all times! for and from you 24/7! on the contrary, we are often told that that kind of love is (note again the dictionary definition), narcissistic and self serving. actually, the more i read that dictionary definition again and again, the more infuriated i become. I AM REALLY ANGRY!!!
i am angry that i am 25 years old and i don't really know what my own definition is. sure, i could guess at what Self Love might mean, what it might feel like and how someone might practice it, but it's such a wavering ambiguous light, that to grasp at it is to lose it.
i can say without any doubt that i have been in love 4 times in my life.
i can say with much doubt that i love myself.
i am writing today because the path to Rock Bottom is becoming my own personal Grand Canyon. it is ugly and boring and lifeless and dark. i am looking around and all i see is the same ugly boring lifeless darkness stretching out for miles and miles and i want out. in fact, i believe that it is here that i am the most self serving narcissist hater bitch that i could ever be and i honestly don't know how Love (specifically the "in love" kind but inclusive of all love too) can exist in such a place?! how could anything grow here? i can say for sure that there is no green tenderness here, no blue clarity, no red passion, no yellow joy, no purple sweetness. it is devoid of color. yeah, not even black and definitely no white.
i am writing today because i once wanted to be an interior decorator and this would be the biggest design gig i could ever take on.
i am writing today because i am so greatly loved by my lover, my parents, my teachers, my friends that i MUST know self love SO thoroughly in order to love them to the fullest capacity of my being in return.
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