“Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? . . . Has it ever occurred to you, Winston, that by the year 2050, at the very latest, not a single human being will be alive who could understand such a conversation as we are having now? . . . The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact, there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking -- not needing to think.”
With these chilling words, George Orwell introduced a novel and revolutionary concept into our collective cultural consciousness -- namely, that the way to hasten the immolation of any society is to first destroy its ability to communicate. Within the context of Orwell’s dystopian tour de force, 1984, this societal Gotterdammerung is effected by undermining the very foundation of Oceania’s language, slowly and systematically, with an intricate web of conniving machinations so subtle that the duped masses do not even realize the full import of what is happening until it is far too late. We, as readers, see in lurid living detail how the human person, robbed of his ability to communicate, is effectively stripped of his ability to influence society. For ideas, as Orwell would have us know, are of no use to anybody who lacks the means to articulate them.
Within the pages of his compelling tale, however, an equal but opposite truth emerges to the more discerning reader: that, conversely, he who possesses the ability to communicate possesses the means to transform culture. The ultimate use of language is not in a destructive capacity, but in a creative one, and it is this very power of language which is a fundamental reality upon which any civilized society pivots. It is this reality, so self-evident and yet so fraught with implications, which attracted many of us to the study of English in the first place.
In the course of my own history, I was fascinated by the power of words from a very young age. I was all but nocturnal in my childhood years, reading in the dark and ruining my eyes, spending long and sleepless nights poring over Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and Poe, Emily Dickinson, the Brontes, and Jane Austen, Dickens and Shakespeare, Chesterton and Lewis. I was a self-avowed bookworm -- to other, less kind observers, a nerd -- but somewhere in the midst of all those mad midnight encounters, I learned to love literature, free from any trace of pedantry and sophistry, apart from any utilitarian value it might hold, but simply for its own sake.
I was simultaneously drawn to the possibility of co-creation intrinsic to the art form. The very fact that storytelling was not a dead art at all, but rather, a vibrant, living one, fascinated me and inexplicably took hold of my consciousness from the inside out. I was dictating stories at three before I had mastered the motor skills to compose them. At seven, I had moved on to frantically scribbling plays, poetry, and brief sketches about a friendly rabbit named Harles; at ten, I completed a series of short stories about a prepubescent detective, loosely based on myself, of course; at eleven, a maudlin and exceedingly poorly written full-length novella followed; at fifteen, I published my first article. Throughout this period, I was fortunate enough to find myself surrounded by friends and teachers who fostered my interests and encouraged these earliest literary ventures, sub-stellar though they may have been.
At sixteen, I graduated from high school, and the following fall, I began a course of study in English Language and Literature at Christendom College which was both comprehensive and fulfilling. I studied a vast array of authors from a veritable smorgasbord of eras, from Homer, Dante, and Shakespeare to F. Scott Fitzgerald and J.R.R. Tolkien, from pre-civilized ancient Greece to medieval Europe to twentieth-century America and Great Britain. I was in ecstasies at the possibilities which surrounded me, and constantly found myself concocting new and inventive ways to expand my literary horizons. I directed Hamlet and Midsummer Night's Dream for the theater department, supplemented my once-myopic perspective with courses in philosophy, history, and theology, wrote the odd article for the school newspaper, studied Ovid, Livy, and the Italian Renaissance on a semester abroad in Rome, and researched and wrote a forty-page senior thesis on the Shakespearean authorship controversy and the seventeenth Earl of Oxford.
Ultimately, it was during that period that I developed my life’s aspirations, disparate yet interrelated, each uniquely derived from the single unifying principle by which I have ordered all my academic endeavors: to wit, the use of language to effect the transformation of culture. If, platitudinously but truly, the pen is indeed mightier than the sword, then it is the writers of this generation who bear the greatest burden of responsibility for using their gifts to inspire and influence others, to convey truths of vast and eternal cosmic significance in the teeth of public opinion, to capture the hearts of humanity and help them to achieve clarity of vision.
Upon the completion of further studies in English, I, first and foremost, hope to write great works, of various types and various genres, which will enable others to delve into themselves and uncover their own untapped potential. Through fiction, the human person can indirectly attain knowledge of his own nature, of his own interior workings, of man in the context of his interpersonal relationships, of man and his place in the cosmos; through nonfiction, these same tenets may be explored in a more direct manner. I do not intend to limit the scope of my creativity in the future, but rather to explore each realm fully. I intend to write novels, to write scripts, to write poetry; I intend to write essays and editorials and biographies, for each has its proper place in society, and a truly great writer must be well-rounded in every sense of the word. The common underlying theme of each of these writings, however, must always be the discovery and recovery of what it means to be human. Socrates’ wise dictum, an equally resonant challenge to modern-day man with his neurotic psychoses and his nebulous sense of identity, was “know thyself.” The Bard reiterated this exhortation in Hamlet, penning the immortal words, “This above all / To thine own self be true / And it must follow, as the night the day, / Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Writing thus becomes a hallowed endeavor, an apostolate of mercy, an ennobled mission to reveal man to himself.
Similarly, I intend to heed the Cassandra-like croakings of Orwell in 1984, and undertake to not only make use of what I personally have been given, but to ensure that the gift that is literacy is placed in the protection of future generations as well. The written word is a thing of mysterious permanence, and thus the very future of society, the preservation of its history, the continuation of its purpose, belongs to those who not only know how to think, but know how to put into words what they think. With that in mind, I also intend to pursue some teaching in the future as well. Modern education is standing in desperate need of a resurgence of interest in literature, rhetoric, composition, and the fine arts. We are an increasingly technical and technological era, an era of transient realities and disposable values, of instant gratification and laissez-faire morality. The short-lived nature of our collective societal attention span and the jaded dispassion with which we view the things which are truly important bear witness to the fact that we desperately need a new renaissance of art and literature, for through these venues we may hope to explore the eternal questions of who we are, why we are here, where we came from, and where we are going. A real and abiding appreciation for this sort of self-discovery is something which must be instilled from the very foundation – in the classroom.
In all these ways, while Orwell’s 1984 provided society with a devastating and soul-wrenching depiction of the power of illiteracy, in the final analysis, Orwell’s lesson is an incomplete one. As lovers of the English language, we must cling with the most fervent hope and obdurate passion to the converse but coequal tenet: that ultimately, the power of literacy to prevail is much stronger still. My own study of English literature has equipped me well in the past to embark on a personal quest to revive the art of storytelling and to instill new appreciation of the infinite significance of the written word and its redemptive power in those around me. I trust it will continue to do so.
When I was three, I wanted to write the books that would change the world. It was a dream well worth pursuing.
It still is.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Update
I am far, far overdue for a post.
Suffice it to say that things have been... quite hit-or-miss.
I've fallen off the bandwagon a good bit. I'm not going to lie here. But I've also made an active, concentrated effort to go to Mass and confession more -- have hit quite a few 12-step meetings -- and just asked someone there to be my sponsor in this process. So I'm confident that I will continue to make more headway, with God's grace. I just suck and screw up a lot.
Will write more later...
Suffice it to say that things have been... quite hit-or-miss.
I've fallen off the bandwagon a good bit. I'm not going to lie here. But I've also made an active, concentrated effort to go to Mass and confession more -- have hit quite a few 12-step meetings -- and just asked someone there to be my sponsor in this process. So I'm confident that I will continue to make more headway, with God's grace. I just suck and screw up a lot.
Will write more later...
Saturday, March 7, 2009
What Recovery Means
Donna was bad, to begin with.
Okay, not ontologically. "You're not a shitty human being," as my friend Kelsey likes to remind my stubborn, obdurate self. "You're a beautiful child of the living God who happens to make some shitty choices."
Bearing that in mind, it is true that I've fallen off the wagon deplorably in the last few days. I've purged a good bit, and I'm struggling to get back on my feet. Went to confession again today (that's twice in four days, and still my progress looks totally negligible from where I sit. Urgh.)
All that being said, I wrote the following earlier today, primarily for my own edification, but perhaps it may offer some insight into the intense psychological minefield I'm navigating here.
It's probably the grittiest, realest, most honest bit of self-exposition I've ever penned, so don't be grossed out, weirded out, freaked out, or anything else'd out, please.
RECOVERY MEANS…
...finally being able to see those 10-15 minutes in the middle of every movie I watch in theaters that I generally miss because I’m in the bathroom purging the popcorn.
...not missing 10-15 minutes out of every conversation I have with loved ones in a restaurant, and not having to watch their hurt eyes as I traipse off to the bathroom, giving incontrovertible evidence to the fact that this Thing is more important to me than they are.
...not spending the first 10-15 minutes of every social gathering locating the bathroom and gauging whether I’m allowed to eat or not that night based upon its size, occupancy, proximity, sound-proofness, and degree of seclusion.
...having an ass and being okay with it.
...no more chronic throbbing dehydration-hangovers all day, every day.
...saying goodbye forever to bulimia’s trademark swollen chipmunk-cheek glands.
...no more perpetually chipped teeth caused by tooth enamel eroded by years of exposure to stomach acid.
...not plucking 20 grey hairs a day due to going frighteningly prematurely white from severe malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies.
...no more waking up feeling like I just got run over by a Mack truck -- and having memories of eating everything in sight and puking my guts out at three o’clock in the morning the night before come flooding back.
...no more hypokalemia, hospitalizations, and burning, stinging, agonizing IV drips. [Everything you know about human suffering is purely academic until you’ve been on the receiving end of intravenous potassium.]
...no more muscles in a perpetual state of seized-up charley-horse cramp from potassium deficiency.
...being able to meet new people without immediately assessing their size in comparison to mine, guesstimating their weight, and summarily excising them from my life if I judge them to be too much thinner than I am.
...being able to take a shot of Jose Cuervo, chug Mountain Dew, or drink a glass of water, without painstakingly calculating how much water weight is going to show up on the scale as a result -- and immediately running off to the bathroom to go purge.
... being able to walk into a party and notice the people before I notice the food.
... having a body that functions well enough to walk, run, and play Ultimate Frisbee, and being able to do those things without proximate danger of going into cardiac arrest.
...not living in constant fear of cardiac arrest (or esophagal rupture, or kidney failure, etc.), period.
...not subjecting my loved ones to said constant fear of my going into cardiac arrest (or esophagal rupture, or kidney failure, etc.).
... not being chronically green and translucent from walking around in a perpetual state of near-fatal dehydration, with chafing-off skin, jumbled, incoherent thoughts, dreams of water, parched mouth, and split, flaking lips.
... not crawling up the stairs and lying on my bedroom floor for whole days unable to get up, because I'm too hypokalemic to move my limbs and too dehydrated to have any feeling in them, anyway.
...being able to look at myself in the mirror without flinching or crying.
... no more screaming tearful obscenities at the reflection in the mirror and lying on the floor sobbing.
...not having an unrelenting stream of self-deprecatory thoughts swilling around in my mind interrupting and sidetracking all my substantial, profound ones.
...being able to squeeze my belly fat and laugh it off instead of crying.
...being able to go swimsuit shopping without going into an existential crisis over it and refusing to get out of bed for two days.
...no more frantically, clandestinely plunging toilets clogged from purging, hoping like hell no one will catch you at it.
...no more frantically, clandestinely scrubbing vomit-spattered toilets, walls, and floors, wondering how the hell you ever came to stoop this low, and thinking what a shitty excuse for a life this is.
...no more of those tiny little excruciatingly painful fingernail-rips at the back of my throat from hasty fingers shoved down it.
...being able to look at a spoon, ballpoint pen, or toothbrush without cringing and seeing it as a purging utensil.
...being able to look myself in the eye.
...being able to look others in the eye.
...never again seeing that hurt, reproachful, knowing Look from people who love me when they’re watching me binge -- and are powerless to stop it.
...being able to carry on a conversation with God that doesn’t open with tearfully castigating him for the body He gave me.
...being able to walk into a room after someone’s gone grocery shopping without seeing a glowing phosphorescent sign, visible only to me, saying EAT ME. ALL OF ME. NOW.
...letting a boy put his arms around my waist without its triggering a prolonged, anguished, self-repeating interior monologue as I endlessly wonder if he’s noticing my disgusting, horrific rolls of stomach fat -- and if he’s repulsed by me.
... accepting it when a boy tells me I'm beautiful without entertaining the nagging question: Is he stupid, delusional, mocking me, or humoring me?
... actually wearing a coat in the wintertime and letting go of my fear of its making me look fat and bulky.
... ditto with carrying a cell phone in my back pocket and angsting over whether it makes my butt look big.
...letting myself leave the house with smudged eyeliner and mismatched socks and coming to some sort of peace with the fact that even if I am slightly less than perfect, the universe will probably not grind to a screeching halt.
...no more getting on the scale before I go anywhere to determine whether or not I’m too fat to be allowed to leave the house and interact with people that day.
... no more missing out on events because I was too fat to be allowed to leave the house and interact with people that day.
... a head that doesn't ache, hands that don't shake, a tummy that doesn't hurt.
...not missing the “First Dance” at all of my loved ones’ weddings because I’m off in the bathroom sobbing, mascara streaming everywhere, purging the catered meal.
...being able to stand up for myself, and not feeling obligated to say yes to everyone else all the time for fear they’ll stop loving me if I tell them what I really think.
...looking in the mirror and seeing a beautiful girl for the first time in my life.
...sitting down and working with full attention on a project without poking at my stomach trying to gauge whether I’ve gotten any fatter in the last ten minutes, or being sidetracked assessing the circumference of my thighs.
...buying clothes because I like them, not because I think they best obfuscate my tummy bulge.
...not feeling obligated to capture the undivided attention of every male within a 500-foot radius in a frantic and desperate effort to prove something to myself.
... accepting that it's okay to be a whole, multivalent, multifaceted, flawed, beautiful woman -- and not just an object of desire.
...finally learning something about myself, besides gravity’s pull on me at any given moment.
...not having to avoid social functions with endless food available but no accessible bathroom (cookouts, campfires, etc.).
... not hurting friends by skipping out on events where I know there will be food.
...being able to look a man in the eye for the first time in my life and truthfully tell him that, given the choice, I would rather be with him than weigh 90 pounds.
...finally deciding what I want to be when I grow up -- besides thin.
... not dying young.
...quitting this monomaniacal open-fire on my health that is potentially shooting my reproductive system to hell, so as to actually be able to get married and have kids someday.
...not living in perpetual terror of having daughters for fear they might grow up like me.
...no more cocktail party anecdotes beginning with “This one time, at rehab…”
...not letting down those I love anymore.
...finally becoming a women more concerned about the size of her heart than the size of her jeans.
...learning to cope with stress in ways that aren’t self-punitive or self-destructive.
...being able to sit on someone special’s lap without wondering if they’re being crushed under your weight and are simply too nice to say so.
...no more taking a sledgehammer to your vocal chords by purging, and being able to sing again as a consequence.
...realizing once and for all that perfection is not a prerequisite for lovability.
...being able to walk into a restaurant without being paralyzed with fear and nearly breaking down in heaving sobs over the menu.
...not obsessively Facebook-stalking old acquaintances trying to assess whether they’re still thinner than you.
...just eating the damn donut already.
...no more trippy hallucinatory phantasmagoric dreams about bingeing.
...no more fantasizing about food during waking hours.
...being able to gain and lose five pounds (maybe even 10, or 15) without losing my peace, sanity, or emotional equilibrium.
...being able to conceptualize pregnancy in terms other than “gaining a shit-ton of weight”, and maybe beginning to understand something of the mystery of motherhood.
...not waking up every single morning engaging in a lengthy and anguished dialogue with myself about whether life is really worth living at 105 pounds, or 110 pounds, or 120, or 130, or whether I'd be better off dead.
...not having to deal with people perpetually either forcing food on me or hiding food from me.
...being able to sit down for a nice dinner with friends and understand that they did not devise making it for me and inviting me over as a unique form of Chinese water torture, but because they loved me and wanted to spend time with me.
...having more time on my hands than I know what to do with. If one gives (what is sadly a conservative estimate) of three hours a day spent bingeing and/or purging, I have spent the equivalent of one full day out of every week for roughly the last eight years stuffing my face and/or with my head in the toilet. Not a pretty picture. That works out to 52 days a year. In other words, I’ve lost nearly two months out of every year -- over a FULL YEAR OF MY LIFE -- that I will never get back. And that’s not even taking into consideration the time spent weighing myself, obsessing about food, etc., which would exponentially inflate the amount of sheer lost time.
...being real, substantial, abundant, alive, instead of a wan fey tortured spectre with haunted eyes, going through the motions of living with one foot on the scale and an uneasy backwards glance at the mirror.
“I have enough stories,” says Sandra Bullock in 28 Days. “What I would like is a life.”
Okay, not ontologically. "You're not a shitty human being," as my friend Kelsey likes to remind my stubborn, obdurate self. "You're a beautiful child of the living God who happens to make some shitty choices."
Bearing that in mind, it is true that I've fallen off the wagon deplorably in the last few days. I've purged a good bit, and I'm struggling to get back on my feet. Went to confession again today (that's twice in four days, and still my progress looks totally negligible from where I sit. Urgh.)
All that being said, I wrote the following earlier today, primarily for my own edification, but perhaps it may offer some insight into the intense psychological minefield I'm navigating here.
It's probably the grittiest, realest, most honest bit of self-exposition I've ever penned, so don't be grossed out, weirded out, freaked out, or anything else'd out, please.
RECOVERY MEANS…
...finally being able to see those 10-15 minutes in the middle of every movie I watch in theaters that I generally miss because I’m in the bathroom purging the popcorn.
...not missing 10-15 minutes out of every conversation I have with loved ones in a restaurant, and not having to watch their hurt eyes as I traipse off to the bathroom, giving incontrovertible evidence to the fact that this Thing is more important to me than they are.
...not spending the first 10-15 minutes of every social gathering locating the bathroom and gauging whether I’m allowed to eat or not that night based upon its size, occupancy, proximity, sound-proofness, and degree of seclusion.
...having an ass and being okay with it.
...no more chronic throbbing dehydration-hangovers all day, every day.
...saying goodbye forever to bulimia’s trademark swollen chipmunk-cheek glands.
...no more perpetually chipped teeth caused by tooth enamel eroded by years of exposure to stomach acid.
...not plucking 20 grey hairs a day due to going frighteningly prematurely white from severe malnutrition and vitamin deficiencies.
...no more waking up feeling like I just got run over by a Mack truck -- and having memories of eating everything in sight and puking my guts out at three o’clock in the morning the night before come flooding back.
...no more hypokalemia, hospitalizations, and burning, stinging, agonizing IV drips. [Everything you know about human suffering is purely academic until you’ve been on the receiving end of intravenous potassium.]
...no more muscles in a perpetual state of seized-up charley-horse cramp from potassium deficiency.
...being able to meet new people without immediately assessing their size in comparison to mine, guesstimating their weight, and summarily excising them from my life if I judge them to be too much thinner than I am.
...being able to take a shot of Jose Cuervo, chug Mountain Dew, or drink a glass of water, without painstakingly calculating how much water weight is going to show up on the scale as a result -- and immediately running off to the bathroom to go purge.
... being able to walk into a party and notice the people before I notice the food.
... having a body that functions well enough to walk, run, and play Ultimate Frisbee, and being able to do those things without proximate danger of going into cardiac arrest.
...not living in constant fear of cardiac arrest (or esophagal rupture, or kidney failure, etc.), period.
...not subjecting my loved ones to said constant fear of my going into cardiac arrest (or esophagal rupture, or kidney failure, etc.).
... not being chronically green and translucent from walking around in a perpetual state of near-fatal dehydration, with chafing-off skin, jumbled, incoherent thoughts, dreams of water, parched mouth, and split, flaking lips.
... not crawling up the stairs and lying on my bedroom floor for whole days unable to get up, because I'm too hypokalemic to move my limbs and too dehydrated to have any feeling in them, anyway.
...being able to look at myself in the mirror without flinching or crying.
... no more screaming tearful obscenities at the reflection in the mirror and lying on the floor sobbing.
...not having an unrelenting stream of self-deprecatory thoughts swilling around in my mind interrupting and sidetracking all my substantial, profound ones.
...being able to squeeze my belly fat and laugh it off instead of crying.
...being able to go swimsuit shopping without going into an existential crisis over it and refusing to get out of bed for two days.
...no more frantically, clandestinely plunging toilets clogged from purging, hoping like hell no one will catch you at it.
...no more frantically, clandestinely scrubbing vomit-spattered toilets, walls, and floors, wondering how the hell you ever came to stoop this low, and thinking what a shitty excuse for a life this is.
...no more of those tiny little excruciatingly painful fingernail-rips at the back of my throat from hasty fingers shoved down it.
...being able to look at a spoon, ballpoint pen, or toothbrush without cringing and seeing it as a purging utensil.
...being able to look myself in the eye.
...being able to look others in the eye.
...never again seeing that hurt, reproachful, knowing Look from people who love me when they’re watching me binge -- and are powerless to stop it.
...being able to carry on a conversation with God that doesn’t open with tearfully castigating him for the body He gave me.
...being able to walk into a room after someone’s gone grocery shopping without seeing a glowing phosphorescent sign, visible only to me, saying EAT ME. ALL OF ME. NOW.
...letting a boy put his arms around my waist without its triggering a prolonged, anguished, self-repeating interior monologue as I endlessly wonder if he’s noticing my disgusting, horrific rolls of stomach fat -- and if he’s repulsed by me.
... accepting it when a boy tells me I'm beautiful without entertaining the nagging question: Is he stupid, delusional, mocking me, or humoring me?
... actually wearing a coat in the wintertime and letting go of my fear of its making me look fat and bulky.
... ditto with carrying a cell phone in my back pocket and angsting over whether it makes my butt look big.
...letting myself leave the house with smudged eyeliner and mismatched socks and coming to some sort of peace with the fact that even if I am slightly less than perfect, the universe will probably not grind to a screeching halt.
...no more getting on the scale before I go anywhere to determine whether or not I’m too fat to be allowed to leave the house and interact with people that day.
... no more missing out on events because I was too fat to be allowed to leave the house and interact with people that day.
... a head that doesn't ache, hands that don't shake, a tummy that doesn't hurt.
...not missing the “First Dance” at all of my loved ones’ weddings because I’m off in the bathroom sobbing, mascara streaming everywhere, purging the catered meal.
...being able to stand up for myself, and not feeling obligated to say yes to everyone else all the time for fear they’ll stop loving me if I tell them what I really think.
...looking in the mirror and seeing a beautiful girl for the first time in my life.
...sitting down and working with full attention on a project without poking at my stomach trying to gauge whether I’ve gotten any fatter in the last ten minutes, or being sidetracked assessing the circumference of my thighs.
...buying clothes because I like them, not because I think they best obfuscate my tummy bulge.
...not feeling obligated to capture the undivided attention of every male within a 500-foot radius in a frantic and desperate effort to prove something to myself.
... accepting that it's okay to be a whole, multivalent, multifaceted, flawed, beautiful woman -- and not just an object of desire.
...finally learning something about myself, besides gravity’s pull on me at any given moment.
...not having to avoid social functions with endless food available but no accessible bathroom (cookouts, campfires, etc.).
... not hurting friends by skipping out on events where I know there will be food.
...being able to look a man in the eye for the first time in my life and truthfully tell him that, given the choice, I would rather be with him than weigh 90 pounds.
...finally deciding what I want to be when I grow up -- besides thin.
... not dying young.
...quitting this monomaniacal open-fire on my health that is potentially shooting my reproductive system to hell, so as to actually be able to get married and have kids someday.
...not living in perpetual terror of having daughters for fear they might grow up like me.
...no more cocktail party anecdotes beginning with “This one time, at rehab…”
...not letting down those I love anymore.
...finally becoming a women more concerned about the size of her heart than the size of her jeans.
...learning to cope with stress in ways that aren’t self-punitive or self-destructive.
...being able to sit on someone special’s lap without wondering if they’re being crushed under your weight and are simply too nice to say so.
...no more taking a sledgehammer to your vocal chords by purging, and being able to sing again as a consequence.
...realizing once and for all that perfection is not a prerequisite for lovability.
...being able to walk into a restaurant without being paralyzed with fear and nearly breaking down in heaving sobs over the menu.
...not obsessively Facebook-stalking old acquaintances trying to assess whether they’re still thinner than you.
...just eating the damn donut already.
...no more trippy hallucinatory phantasmagoric dreams about bingeing.
...no more fantasizing about food during waking hours.
...being able to gain and lose five pounds (maybe even 10, or 15) without losing my peace, sanity, or emotional equilibrium.
...being able to conceptualize pregnancy in terms other than “gaining a shit-ton of weight”, and maybe beginning to understand something of the mystery of motherhood.
...not waking up every single morning engaging in a lengthy and anguished dialogue with myself about whether life is really worth living at 105 pounds, or 110 pounds, or 120, or 130, or whether I'd be better off dead.
...not having to deal with people perpetually either forcing food on me or hiding food from me.
...being able to sit down for a nice dinner with friends and understand that they did not devise making it for me and inviting me over as a unique form of Chinese water torture, but because they loved me and wanted to spend time with me.
...having more time on my hands than I know what to do with. If one gives (what is sadly a conservative estimate) of three hours a day spent bingeing and/or purging, I have spent the equivalent of one full day out of every week for roughly the last eight years stuffing my face and/or with my head in the toilet. Not a pretty picture. That works out to 52 days a year. In other words, I’ve lost nearly two months out of every year -- over a FULL YEAR OF MY LIFE -- that I will never get back. And that’s not even taking into consideration the time spent weighing myself, obsessing about food, etc., which would exponentially inflate the amount of sheer lost time.
...being real, substantial, abundant, alive, instead of a wan fey tortured spectre with haunted eyes, going through the motions of living with one foot on the scale and an uneasy backwards glance at the mirror.
“I have enough stories,” says Sandra Bullock in 28 Days. “What I would like is a life.”
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
A Belated Tuesday Entry?
Will write more later, but noticed I missed yesterday.
Monday was horribly bad. I was snowed in and did pretty much nothing but violate my Lenten objectives all day.
Yesterday I was (thanks be to God) pretty damn near impeccable. Made it to Mass, spent the day being productive and the eve with good friends. No purging, no drinking, etc., etc.
Today is... blah. Trying to fill out my FAFSA, which I'm admittedly half-hearted about. Going to see Father John later and go to a badly, badly needed confession -- it's been two and a half months and I spent the bulk of those months being exceptionally bad, so here goes nothing.
I have far, far more to write, but I wanted to make sure I gave a reckoning of the last few days at the very least. Profound thoughts pending, I promise!
Monday was horribly bad. I was snowed in and did pretty much nothing but violate my Lenten objectives all day.
Yesterday I was (thanks be to God) pretty damn near impeccable. Made it to Mass, spent the day being productive and the eve with good friends. No purging, no drinking, etc., etc.
Today is... blah. Trying to fill out my FAFSA, which I'm admittedly half-hearted about. Going to see Father John later and go to a badly, badly needed confession -- it's been two and a half months and I spent the bulk of those months being exceptionally bad, so here goes nothing.
I have far, far more to write, but I wanted to make sure I gave a reckoning of the last few days at the very least. Profound thoughts pending, I promise!
Monday, March 2, 2009
Madness
I keep freaking screwing up. After an entire day that had gone swimmingly, I screwed up last night. And then blew it again about five minutes ago. I'm angry, and I'm frustrated, and I'm discouraged, and I'm pissed at myself.
"Madness," writes Chesterton, "does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed."
Will write more later when I'm more lucid and even-keeled and have come up with a game plan to keep this from happening again.
"Madness," writes Chesterton, "does not come by breaking out, but by giving in; by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas; by being tamed."
Will write more later when I'm more lucid and even-keeled and have come up with a game plan to keep this from happening again.
Sunday, March 1, 2009
"Ever Try. Ever Fail. Try Again. Fail Again. Fail Better." (Samuel Beckett)
I went to Front Royal yesterday, had a fantastic day, and then failed epicly last night. Twice, in fact. Nearly back-to-back. Pretty damn pissed at myself.
There's a principle every eating disorder sufferer has been bludgeoned about the head with more than a few times in recovery by some shrink, therapist, clinical assistant or another, and that's H.A.L.T. -- never allow yourself to become too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. I foolishly allowed myself to become all of the above, all coalescing at once, catalyzed by a major fight with a parental unit who made it very clear to me that my recovery wasn't a priority of his. I consequently embarked on a whirlwind tour (or two) of the inside of the toilet bowl, and spent the greater portion of the evening last night sick and sobbing, feeling inadequate, hopeless, pathetic.
Then I woke up with renewed determination to shelve the old man (or woman, I suppose) and put on Christ. This is bullshit. I am better than this. I have come too far and made too much progress to take orders from leftover Mexican food, or to allow a cruel and thoughtless comment to shatter my whole weltanschauung. So I went to Mass this morn, then went out with a girlfriend of mine to Starbucks afterwards, where we sat and talked about life, men, and the cosmos for hours. It made me sad, a little, to think of how many friendships I've sacrificed for the sake of my addiction and haven't bothered to maintain because I've been too busy killing myself. Somehow I don't think God will be altogether impressed at the end of days when my response to "Did you clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, counsel the doubtful, comfort the sorrowful, etc.?" is "Sorry, no, I was too busy selfishly navel-gazing and sticking my fingers down my throat." Which makes me really want to start working the 12 steps, because one of them involves making reparation and restitution as far as it is possible to those you've wounded along the way through your addiction -- caught in the shrapnel of your own open-fire on yourself.
In that vein, I just printed out a whole list of 12-step meetings [Eating Disorders Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous] in the Maryland/D.C./Virginia area, and am going to come up with some sort of schedule once I figure out which it's reasonable and practical for me to attend regularly.
Currently headed out to watch movies with Rachel and Peter. I've found that a tight schedule -- and keeping myself in the presence of those who love me and are pulling for me -- is the most effective anti-drug.
It's snowing! Snow is, I think, God's reminder that the world will go on. More tomorrow. My thoughts are a little scattered today, and staying the course today is taking all the energy I can possibly muster. I have no words. :-/
There's a principle every eating disorder sufferer has been bludgeoned about the head with more than a few times in recovery by some shrink, therapist, clinical assistant or another, and that's H.A.L.T. -- never allow yourself to become too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. I foolishly allowed myself to become all of the above, all coalescing at once, catalyzed by a major fight with a parental unit who made it very clear to me that my recovery wasn't a priority of his. I consequently embarked on a whirlwind tour (or two) of the inside of the toilet bowl, and spent the greater portion of the evening last night sick and sobbing, feeling inadequate, hopeless, pathetic.
Then I woke up with renewed determination to shelve the old man (or woman, I suppose) and put on Christ. This is bullshit. I am better than this. I have come too far and made too much progress to take orders from leftover Mexican food, or to allow a cruel and thoughtless comment to shatter my whole weltanschauung. So I went to Mass this morn, then went out with a girlfriend of mine to Starbucks afterwards, where we sat and talked about life, men, and the cosmos for hours. It made me sad, a little, to think of how many friendships I've sacrificed for the sake of my addiction and haven't bothered to maintain because I've been too busy killing myself. Somehow I don't think God will be altogether impressed at the end of days when my response to "Did you clothe the naked, visit the sick and imprisoned, counsel the doubtful, comfort the sorrowful, etc.?" is "Sorry, no, I was too busy selfishly navel-gazing and sticking my fingers down my throat." Which makes me really want to start working the 12 steps, because one of them involves making reparation and restitution as far as it is possible to those you've wounded along the way through your addiction -- caught in the shrapnel of your own open-fire on yourself.
In that vein, I just printed out a whole list of 12-step meetings [Eating Disorders Anonymous and Overeaters Anonymous] in the Maryland/D.C./Virginia area, and am going to come up with some sort of schedule once I figure out which it's reasonable and practical for me to attend regularly.
Currently headed out to watch movies with Rachel and Peter. I've found that a tight schedule -- and keeping myself in the presence of those who love me and are pulling for me -- is the most effective anti-drug.
It's snowing! Snow is, I think, God's reminder that the world will go on. More tomorrow. My thoughts are a little scattered today, and staying the course today is taking all the energy I can possibly muster. I have no words. :-/
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