stick a fork in me.
I am so very done with today.
Began with individual therapy – first in 3 weeks since B was out of town. It went well, brought some really heavy insights which only hit me in full about 6 hours later. I left really feeling drained, despite the fact that B apologized for “an hour of being analytical and intellectual” rather than doing any direct emotional work with parts. I burst into tears twice – that’s emotional enough for me, lady.
Totally checked out for my meager 5 hours of work. You probably could have thrown things at me and I wouldn’t have noticed.
Group tonight. Yoga was amazing – led by B. But the group session just fell apart for me. During check-in (yep, still hate that word after 3 months of group therapy) there emerged a theme of “how my family members responded when they found out I had an eating disorder” with the two girls before me (one of my personal rules in group is to go as close to last as possible in check-in). When it came my turn, I freaked. “I’m feeling sad and want to pass” I said as my eyes welled up and my voice cracked like a pre-pubescent acolyte. Fuck. I HATE EMOTIONAL VULNERABILITY. I wasn’t even sure why I was feeling so sad at first but then my head got all swirly about my dad and the way he reacted when I told him on the phone about my eating disorder. I can’t even go there in my head because it makes me want to head down the road to seventy-pound-ville. The next hour of group was spent curled up in the tightest ball I could in my chair with my hands picking and fiddling while I experienced rapidly cycling tears and total dissociation to floaty float land where I’m hovering about 3 feet above my body. Finally I pulled out when the conversation shifted topics and I could engage in some intellectual banter.
Which brings me to the first topic on the agenda for my next individual therapy session – why I absolutely positively do not EVER want to talk about my father in group. I can’t do it. I know it’s relevant and that it’s only fair to speak for the parts of me that are really stirred up when others talk about related topics. But I just can’t. It’s like jumping off the high dive. I’m up there and the time to jump is nigh. I just can’t. I balk and I count to three and I pace and I bend my knees and plug my nose and step away from the edge again and again and again. It’s excruciating really.
And I’m just wrecked. I have about 5 hours worth of crying to do, wedged forcefully somewhere in my tight throat. Since those tears aren’t going to come now I’m just calling it a night.
A Blue family gathering
Tonight, probably as I type this, my entire family is gathered in the same room. Without me. My brother is giving a reading at the university where my father teaches and so they have reason to amass – brother, mom, step-father, dad, dad’s new wife. There they all sit, beaming with pride over my brother. Each set of “parents” holding hands and sitting close on their folding chairs. In my head the picture feels complete. Like no one notices that anything – anyone – is missing. Like I died.
It brought a very sudden and very brief wince of pain and three tears. And then it was gone.
Infinite satisfaction
It seems the snowy day rendered my few hours at work largely unproductive – not a single client. So I had more time on my hands – typically a difficult thing. Even when empty hours of the day are not difficult because of the demons of my eating disorder, they are difficult because I often struggle with regret and disappointment of how I spent those hours. I have such visions of creativity and connection and living the life I want. And, like I said in yesterday’s post, it all amounts to a pile of crap (judgemental part clearly decided to stick around for another night). BUT…but but but…today was different. In my empty hours at work I at least stayed focused on some tasks and avoided the hamster wheel effect of racing thoughts and physical restlessness. On the way home I stopped to paruse the shelves at Barnes and Noble – didn’t buy anything but thumbed through some beautiful art books. Once home, I shovelled the driveway while listening to a podcast. And then came the momentous moment deserving of a giant round of applause from the adoring fans in the orchestra section – I PLAYED MY BANJO.
I haven’t picked up my banjo since last spring – probably 10 months ago. It sat idle initially because I had a wrist injury. And then it was neglected out of fear – fear that I’d lost all the progress I’d made and fear of frustration and fear of disappointment and just a whole boatload of fear to pick up the durn thing and start picking. And, truth be told, because I was up to my ears in a relationship. It really saddens me the more I realize how much I give up in relationships – not because anyone asks, rather because I’m so fucking absent. The phrase that keeps coming up when I think and talk about it is that I “vacate my body” when I enter a relationship. It is so contrary to everything I believe in. When not enmeshed with a man, I intend so firmly not to go down that path again. But it happens without me knowing it. I wish wish wish I knew how to do it right, because until then, I KNOW I cannot be a healthy partner in a loving relationship.
But I’m getting off track. Point being that I picked up the banjo, did some MAJOR tuning and set the picks flying. Turns out I hadn’t lost much ground. Strength in my hand muscles, yes. But the chords and rolls and my Gillian Welch impersonation were spot on – according to, well, me. So the moral of the story, class, is don’t let anything keep you from your creative outlets – not fear of failure, not a stack of red Netflix envelopes, and certainly not a relationship.
The confusing aftermath
I was excited to come home from work this evening and read. To make a collage or sew. To write a card to a friend or pick up my banjo. To tap into the juicy and creative parts of me.
So why am I now cleaning up an empty PB jar and crinkly bag of chip crumbs? How did I get an episode and a half of Grey’s Anatomy and a startling amount of junkfood under my belt before I got up off my arse and took the dog for a walk? I’m not beating myself up here (or at least the part that judges the self-beating part is not), but I’m just really confused. Why am I making these choices? They don’t feel like me or at least the parts of me that I want to nourish.
The good news is I’m not purging. So this eating and mind-numbing feels like it’s coming from a different place. I want to find that place. Not to destroy it, but to better understand it.
Happy Birthday, Sam the dog!
Things I love about my Sam:
-his eager offers of a paw to anyone giving him affection. however, he reserves “two paws” only for a select few favorite people in the world
-the size of his vocabulary (40+ words) (and also his keen ear for the sounds of specific people’s car engines outside)
-his dairy addiction. he ONLY steals food if it’s straight dairy (whole sticks of butter are his favorite but he’ll settle for yogurt, cream cheese, ice cream, shredded mozerella or sour cream)
-his VERY sensitive stomach and restricted, special diet (like his mama) **this diet does not include whole sticks of butter, for the record!
-his daily excitement to come to work with me and his supreme patience with rowdy kids with autism who don’t always respect his needs or wishes (I’ll spare you the gory details of the time a kid orally pleasured my dog … except to say that Sam did not seem to mind this particular affront! ew.)
-his ability to heel nicely for a 30 minute walk on the sidewalk but his instantaneous insanity when we walk through snow any more than 4 inches deep – he gallops, bucks, eats snow, sticks his head in snow and generally acts a fool
-the smiles I see in my rearview mirror when people behind me at a red light notice the giant brown face staring out the back windshield of my VW hatchback
-the look on his face when he caught a pigeon in his mouth on a sidewalk in Brooklyn. He immediately dropped the unharmed and wildly flapping fowl and shook the feathers from his lips.
-his cries outside the bathroom when I purge
-the neverending amusement of his responses to his own farts – either startling and bolting from the room in fear or sniffing towards his own rear end and then sheepishly relocating.
-the gratitude he evokes in me. I owe him my life. At my lowest points, I had convinced myself that he would be the only person to miss me if I was gone. But the thought of breaking his heart kept me here.
Happy Birthday to my onliest Sam. Here’s hoping that these 4 years are the first of 100. 
*in case anyone was curious – he’s a Rhodesion Ridgeback + Boxer
jinxed
All that talk about my bed and sleep and how dreamy the whole thing was going to be last night and there I lay, flopping around like a fish on the wooden deck of a boat. All night.
Until about 3 years ago, I was a sleep guru. I swear I had magical powers of slumber. Then came ED, anxiety, Prozac, acid reflux (thanks to ED), a sleeping partner with nighttime PTSD flashbacks (which I may or may not have PTSD from), another sleeping partner who snored and smothered. The good sleep vibes come in spurts and seasons now, dependent on my emotional wellbeing, physical state and the alignment of the moons of jupiter. But even after several years of nocturnal challenges, I have an embarrassingly low threshold for frustration with insomnia. Case and point – when I checked the clock for the first of 13, 273 times last night – I could have sworn it was 4 am and I’d been flopping through the night. 10:50, I stand corrected. It seems I’d only flopped for about 8 minutes. Damn. And so began a night of restlessness and disappointent.
My “fix it” part went wild -
“maybe it’s too bright in here” – blinds secured, doors closed, towels tacked over the windows
“maybe I need the dog in bed with me so I don’t feel alone” – he was, not surprisingly, very willing to lend assistance
“maybe the dog is keeping me awake” – he reluctantly resumed his post on his plush doggie throne
“maybe this yucky taste in my mouth is keeping me awake” – brush, rinse, drink a glass of water, apply chap-stick, crawl back into bed CONFIDENT that this would do the trick
“maybe I need to pee” – grrrr
My calculating, obsessive part ticked through the endless data
“If I fall asleep in the next 3 minutes, I will be able to get 4 and a half hours of sleep.”
“If I reset my alarm for 15 minutes later and fall asleep in the next 45 seconds, I will get 3 solid hours.”
My blaming part chimed in
You shouldn’t have drunk that tea. Everyone knows tea has caffeine in it.
Why didn’t you go to bed an hour earlier?
Just relax, damn it. You are always so WOuND up!
While I’m tempted to wrap up this post with ooey gooey optimism about the next 6-8 hours of my life, I’ll refrain.
g’night.
my REDvolution
Some people spend hours in front of the TV. others gather armloads of glossy magazines from their mailboxes. Nicholas Sparks novels. So what’s you’re brain candy? Mine is (are?) PODCASTS: Dharmatalks, Oprah Spirit Channel broadcasts and NPR’s This American Life, and most lately Hip Tranquil Chick. I admit that it took awhile for me to get past the bubblegum pink and animal print motif of the website, but once “over it” I discovered that Kimberly Wilson has a nack for interviewing really fascinating women and, well, inspiring me to think outside my little NB box.
Most recenty I was absolutely mesmerized by an interview with Sera Beak, a scholar of comparative religions, mysticism and a thinker I’d love to have tea or tequila shots or a tarot card reading with sometime. I tracked down another interview with her down (iTunes is my bitch) and promptly went out and bought The Red Book: A Deliciously Unorthodox Approach to Igniting Your Devine Spark. People, it is rockin’ my world and I need Sera to put out a sequel pretty damn quickly because I only have 100 more pages to go.
Today it inspired me to have a little ritual around the assembling of my bed. The bed itself is pretty magnificent – an antique white wrought iron beauty. But it’s story is splendid – way back when little toddler NB graduated from her crib – her first “big girl bed” was this white wonder. It has been with me for the long haul, waiting patiently at my dad’s house while I completed college and graduate school. And then tolerating storage in various garages and attics through my two last relationships (my bed gets booted because it’s only a double and apparently queens are all the rage). The bed is on its 3rd state of residence (NC, VA, VT) and the battle scars in the white paint only enhance the authenticity of this vintage masterpiece. So, yeah, I love my bed. My friend came over and helped bring it down from the attic as well as a box of my salmon and sage colored bedding, a little wrinkled from the storage but still pretty. I lit incense, put on some music and had a little bed-making ceremony. I set the following intention:
In this bed, I will sleep alone the way I did when I was five. I will read books that will inspire me. I will cuddle with my dog and receive his plentiful kisses. I will nap and lounge. I will hide under the covers. I will make forts out of pillows. And I will dream the dreams that I will wake each morning to chase.
Creating symbolic rituals in your life is a key element of a Red life, according to Sera Beak. And I must admit, I am looking forward to some shut-eye in my big girl bed tonight.
empty.
today was the day. 5 hours out of the house with Sam the dog so that J could move out. i was busy. socializing, driving, haircut, gym. upbeat and energized. and then i came home.
the apartment is empty. sad. quiet. dust bunnies rolling across the hardwood like fog blowing across a pond at dawn. so many things gone. things i’d forgotten the owner of, that had become “ours”. so many things i reach for and – poof – gone. “oh yeah – his,” I remember like a sharp smack across my cheek. it’s like turning on the coffemaker in a power outage – “oh yeah, that runs on electricity, too”. Instinctively flipping lightswitches upon entering a room, feeling more and more idiotic as the hours pass. When will I remember that he took the trashcan and so refuse now goes in the hanging plastic grocry bag on the doorknob. When will I stop looking for the TV. When will the rooms and the remaining furniture and the empty cupboards stop feeling all wrong.
I’ve wondered a few times over the past two weeks if I was ignoring sadness. If it was down there and I was just covering it up with a thick layer of “things will be better” and “this is good for me”. It’s here now. Maybe it just needed less furniture so it could spread out, take up space, spill out over the whole floor. I’m knee-deep trudging through it. slow. resistive. exhausting.
Inner stirrings of joy
I’m amassing a stockpile of journals and colored pencils and fantastic books and quotes and ammunition for a collage and pretty turquoise stationery on the kitchen table – a surface previously reserved for credit card bills and insurance EOB letters, for receipts and to do lists.
These are the liferafts in the dark sea of emptiness, the arctic waters of lonliness. Where once I wallowed and panicked, I can create and explore. Without expectation of quality or quantity of performance, I merely intend to invite some joy and contentment.
