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âIf you lose hope, youâre done. You might as well give up.â
This is what my mother said to me on the phone tonight in the context of her participation in the activist group thatâs trying to save the hillside in my hometown from corporate development. The pragmatist in me balks because as far as my understanding of history is concerned, the group of passionate Davids who manage to beat the Goliaths in these situations are the exception not the rule. But even so, I absolutely acknowledge the positive things begotten by that situation.
For one, itâs community building, and this is specifically pertinent in the life of my mother. Up until a year ago when she picked up her gemologist career where it had left off, she was immersed in an unsupportive work community and coupled with her leadership role in combatting the challenges our family faces, the stress was getting the best of her. But now she is on the upswing. She sends me texts when she is sitting on the floor of city hall waiting for a meeting to start; she tells me she loves the people sheâs meeting and interacting with.
She even told me she MET AN INTERESTING MAN. That is only the second time I have heard her say that with the implication of romantic interest in AS LONG AS I CAN REMEMBER. âHeâs probably married,â she said flippantly, âbut still, it was a feeling I havenât felt these past few years.â
Really Iâm talking about her situation because of how I am realizing I can use it to inspire my own.
I have been battling an eating disorder for at least eight years. It really reached a crescendo this semester, or really this year in general. I restricted my eating throughout my whole trip to Europe, and struggled in the first month of school to manage my stress levels after going going going going for so long. And then, I made the fateful decision to sleep with my ex one last time when I went home for my best friendâs wedding. I thought it would be comfortable, safe. You could hear the ocean from his bedroom after all, and the last time I left he had fallen asleep holding my hand, and woken up only just enough to grab it when I left in the middle of the night, as is my preferred exit route.
But I donât have to get into it, I have gotten into it with my therapist, my mom, close friends that I trust, all except for one, and she will probably read this post. I donât have to get into the way my body intuitively wanted to stay away from him that night, how I shrank from his touch like he was made of slime. I donât have to talk about the panic-stricken feeling I felt in my chest on the whole drive to his house that I thought was perhaps because I was afraid of being pulled over after having a few glasses of wine hours before. How I experienced this sense of unreality standing in his room, how I said aloud, âI just canât believe Iâm really here.â
I spent the night that time, a comfortable bed having been the main allure of my sleeping there. I woke later than I wanted to, it was hot, and I had a long drive ahead of me. I felt sick, and I attributed it to the wine--but a week and a half later, after dragging myself back up the coast in time for class, I found out it was something more. As fate would have it, I was able to make an appointment and get into the health center right away, which was good, because I was very uncomfortable by that point.
I remember the shock of it running all the way up my body and out the crown of my head/forehead (this was the moment I would later identify in therapy that I began to severely dissociate.) The pain of the blister being prodded by a swab felt like a thick metal needle. My legs were made of jelly as I walked out of there, barely having soothed my hysterical sobs into silent tears. I was so disoriented it took me half an hour to find the route to my car, and with every step the sensation of hot shards of glass chafed my private skin.Â
I think I went to Sageâs that night, I think I drove the 45 minutes into the mountains after I picked up my medicine and a numbing gel from CVS. I had school the next morning but no way was I going to go back to the house where I was living with the man and all the kids sitting there trimming and talking about festivals and their experience in Thailand. In fact, it became very hard for me to be at that house at all. I sat there one day because I needed to get some work done and make some money, but these two boys who are kind of my friends but kind of very immature just happened to pick this day to joke around with me, and many of their jokes became especially sexual.Â
âHey Chloe, do you want to visit the Eiffel Tower?â one of them said. They might have high-fived, or I might be superimposing another moment of my life. Who knows. I thought of a retort right away but had to take a few deep breaths first to settle the thoughts in my mind. (If you only knew you little shit that I just went in the bathroom and squirted lidocaine on my bleeding sores; that I am currently sitting on a stack of toilet paper that is colored a different, more magenta looking blood that I know is not a period; that I have been wrapping up these bloody pieces of paper and putting them in my purse until I can throw them away somewhere else because there is no trash can in this bathroom; that I am in pain, so much pain and I havenât the faintest idea of how to conceive of myself as a person who is worthy of real love, let alone the frat boyâs sex doll objectification youâre getting at...)
I looked up from my work with a casual smirk and my signature cocked eyebrow.
âWell honey, all I can say is I donât have any travel plans right now, but Iâll let you know when Iâm coming.âÂ
The room erupted into peals of guttural laughter. yeah fuckers, I know how to play that game, Iâve been playing it all my life.
And thatâs just the thing. I have been playing this game all my life. Say the right thing, eat the right thing, exercise until your body is in knots and your adrenals are crying for help, forcing your toxins out in big, pussy zits on the spot between your eyes. Who cares if you can be a size two and wear makeup and let your body be a âpretty dollyâ (actual words of a certain âemployerâ I once had) and dance for the people. Look out in the crowd, look at all the drugged out boys imagining how they could unceremoniously fuck you. Itâs love right? Starve yourself until your ballet teacher lovingly squeezes your hip bone through your leotard while you do ron de jambs, see she loves you now. You know how to play the game. You are playing it well.
And when you crash, oh when you crash and you just canât push anymore and all you can do is cry and eat and eat just hide. Just hide until you figure out how to lose the weight again and even then be painfully self-conscious in social scenes, rely on close girlfriends to drag you out to things until you start to become comfortable again.Â
But everything is different now. This is a new game. This is a go to university and actually attend class and actually do the reading and put your whole heart and soul into it and see what a fucking brilliant writer you are and all that you have the potential to be. (I shouldnât say fucking brilliant before the semester is over, but school has been the arena where I bolster my self-coonfidence. The only one really, since Iâve been here.)
This is a place where you donât have a close girlfriend nearby to lean on, and that is maybe the hardest thing. Before, even when things got rough, if there was someone there to talk to at the end of the day, to hold you accountable, to keep you on track, to support you and in turn to give you a chance to breed the closeness that comes with nurturing someone, well things might not have been great, but they were ok. There was A LOT that was going unacknowledged, but things were pretty ok.
Now, itâs a day by day thing. Positives: we are out of that house with the man who wanted to fuck you but never could, we are in an apartment with a sweet lesbian girl who loves astronomy and the vastness of reality, and sometimes when you talk to her her brightness becomes the whole of existence--the couch and the carpet and the wall and the stereo just fall away and there she is sitting there, just she and the phrase, as in a dream,
âWe have to be here for a reason. Not just anybody lands on earth, you know?â
There is literary analysis and the oh so fucking good feeling of your brain making connections between things you have learned, synapses firing and making magic. There is the forest. And there are starting to be, slowly, people that are coming into your life that appreciate you. People that are reaching out and seeing you for the very vulnerable, very real person you are. For the one you are becoming.
There are good choices, and there are not so good choices with food. There are clothes that still fit and clothes that maybe donât. But your skin is starting to look better. Running on the treadmill for half an hour isnât so bad, and hot yoga has always felt good, even though it makes you a little crazy afterwards sometimes so itâs best to plan on bringing a replenishing snack for after and dry clothes so you can go be in nature somewhere for a while.
There are good moments in therapy, and thank god there is a new therapist to continue with. There is a sweet nerdy boy who is your friend. There is a car with a new starter in it that your mom paid for. There is St. Johnâs Wort Tea, which helps. There is your guitar, even though the tuner needs a new battery. There is duality, always, but your peace will always be in embracing that.Â
It is hard not to eat chocolate and almonds (because those two things cause outbreaks right now), but at least there is a refill on your prescription and it is never anything near as bad as the first time. There is the chance to start again tomorrow. There is the chance to drink some wine tonight, if you want, before you get back on antibiotics. (Fourth timeâs a charm?) There is humor. There is the budding sense of humor about things that makes you know it is all healing.
There is the budding sensation, the âembryonicâ (as my therapist called it) sense of a love for myself that is starting to grow. It needs to be nurtured. I am working on having compassion for myself. Because really, that barbie girl, that jessica rabbit creation is one thing to be...but the girl who has an appointment at the career center to talk about teaching abroad in South Korea, and study abroad scholarships, and graduate programs in the field of psycholinguistics; the brave girl who plans to take her guitar to open mic at the coffee shop and sing a song she wrote herself; the girl who gets up and makes it to class and hands in her assignments even if she stayed up to finish the the night before; the girl who reads, who makes art, who forgives herself, who accepts herself even if she does things that are bad for her--
the girl who has the courage to keep going anyway,
thatâs the girl I want to be.
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