A front is moving through
I wish I didn’t have such a tendancy to blanket-statement label days, weeks, months as “good”, “bad”, “healthy”, “sick”, etc. Not only is it over-simplifying but I know from my IFS therapy that it dismisses the fact that even on a “bad” day, there are some really important parts of me present and trying to be heard. Yesterday morning I wound up spending an hour and a half at the gym while my stomach was eating itself with hunger – and this brought several parts of me immense satisfaction and would be deemed a “bad” and “disordered” way to start to my day. But I downloaded a dharma talk by Sylvia Boorstein before I went and listened to it twice just to soak in the reassuring energy of it, which would be deemed “good” and “healthy”. In the talk, she compares our internal states to weather conditions, always shifting and changing often unpredictably. We pride ourselves on our ability to forecast, quantify them and report elaborately the details of their effects. But all this is just thin veneer over the fact that we cannot control them. She encouraged us to merely observe the weather patterns as a way to bring presence. In all honesty – this sounds good in the abstract (especially coming from a Buddhist dharma teacher) but the reality is that when I pause to observe the weather all these parts jump in, screaming “oh shit, it’s a storm. what if it brings a tornado. what if it gets as bad as the twister of ‘99. what’s the plan. batton down the hatches. alarm alarm.” Admittedly, I have some work to do in quieting my mind and reaching that calm observing state.
So my weather patterns are changing really rapidly lately. The past 48 hours have brought moments of tropical bliss followed by hailstorms and gale-force winds. I don’t even know that I’d call it mood swings as much as dramatic shifts in my perspective. Or a rapid “changing of the guards” of which parts are steering my ship. I’m feeling a little distance from them at this very moment. I’m much better at identifying in the past tense what parts I’m blended with. Still struggling to have that self-energy in the moment when maybe I need it most. I extrapolated tonight that Bree’s advice to “stay in the bathroom” is probably just taking into consideration that at this point in my therapeutic work, it may be setting the bar too high to gain awareness of being blended with my strongest protector parts before they act out. I know that this is the goal. The skill that I need – real-time ability to perceive subtle shifts in my parts and meet their needs before they start getting dramatic and blended. But for right now – I need to aim for the post-game wrap-up rather than the play-by-play.
I was just reading a book by the therapist who developed Internal Family Systems Therapy, which probably explains why I’m throwing the terminology around so much. Spending time either doing the IFS work in therapy, on my own or reading about it is the one thing that can calm me down and pull me out of extreme thinking. The fact that there is even ONE thing is a huge step in the right direction.
I’ll share this poem by Derek Walcott, which when I first read it felt like an enormouse inhalation of fresh air:
The time will come
when, with elation,
you will greet yourself arriving
at your own door, in your own mirror,
and each will smile at the other’s welcome
and say, sit here. Eat.
You will love again the stranger who was your self.
Give wine. Give bread. Give back your heart
to itself, to the stranger who has loved you
all your life, whom you have ignored for another…
What if today was a little bit normal?
What if I just ate breakfast because my stomach is growling. And then a snack the next time my stomach growls. What if I just didn’t purge and had a reasonable amount of exercise. How would my mood and outlook on life change if my body was feeling nourished today? I could do this. I know I could. Just for one day. Then tomorrow I could decide what to do with tomorrow’s body. I want want want to do that for myself today. But it would mean missing out on that feeling of pride when I eat my first morsel of the day at noon. When my stomach is growling on my 5 mile run on the treadmill tonight. What does that feeling mean to me? Why do I prize it so much? Where else is there a source of that feeling that I could access?
Beginning last night, I felt I was teetering on the edge of some sort of mini-breakthrough. Primarily emotionally but that always spills over into the ED behaviors’ territory. I’ve read Lola’s lastest post three times now trying to draw from the positive vibes. I’ve squinted and strained to decipher Lee’s letter to her ED. I want so badly for momentum to be on my side and for this consideration of a day of normalcy to tip the scales toward a few days of normalcy. But I’m scared. I don’t want to lose the ground I’ve made. Don’t want to be normal and unspecial as so many who deal day in and day out with these disorders report. A part of me is desperate to be sick sick sick. I don’t lose weight to look “good”. I lose weight to look “sick”. To elicit concern. How can I compromise with this part of me that needs concern and attention? How can I get it what it so desperately needs without the harm to myself.
Important questions are coming up. Not questions of coping strategies or distraction techniques. The big shit. The big WHAT IF’s that will help me in the long run. What if I could get these needs met from a source other than disordered self-torture? I really believe it’s got to be out there. Do I wait for it to come to me, find its way into my life? Do I “work” and “search” for it? How far away is it? Will I need help from others to find it or, once it’s in sight, to reach it?
One thing I am becoming acutely, painfully aware of is how alone I feel on the social front. I really really need some good friends. Relationships that are maintained weekly. Dependable folks to call and have coffee with. People who I feel safe to delve below the surface with and who do the same for me. People who allow the space for words like “scared”, “hurt”, “alone”, “suffering”. That’s why I love the Buddha – who unfortunately is not available for coffee any time soon. Because the first thing he wants to talk about is the suffering. The yuck. The pain. The darkness. He knows that acknowledging that shit is a prerequisite for getting to the good stuff. The hope and the meaning. I need friendships like that. That are based on the honest acknowlegement that life is suffering. And then that lead me around to the flip side – that life has value. Again – do I wait for these people to come to me, entering my life serendipitously? Do I seek them out and work at it?
For all those who’ve taken the curve today – around the bend of despair and are starting to see signs of life and normalcy and meaning up ahead – please share this energy. I really think I’m in an open space to receive it today and want it in bulk.
Impermanence
“In Zen practice, the process of identifying and reducing our attachments to our own beliefs, ideas and opinions is sometimes called ‘putting them down’. Just as we would put down a load that has gotten too heavy for us, so too can we put down our heavy load of self, which we identify with our personal situations, ideas and beliefs.” – Mel Ash from “The Zen of Recovery”
I certainly am carrying a load that has gotten too heavy, but what I can’t seem to get a unified answer from my own mind on is : is the load my eating disorder or life without it? Which do I need to “put down”?
I read Zen teachings, listen to podcasts of Dharma talks and generally try to immerse myself in Eastern philosophy on those days when pill bottles and high bridges start to look appealing. And I find a spot of comfort. For a bit. Then those ED voices start their menacing twisting of things, whispering deviously in my ear.
I find myself asking, “what if it all fell away?” – the job, the wedding, the family, the friends, the adulthood, the getting out of bed. What if I just wasted away into a living non-existence, got shipped off to residential or stuck in a hospital room. Buddhism (filtered through my ED mind) would tell me that the trappings of life such as these identifiers (occupation, age, gender, relationship status) are actually distractors from what I really am, what existence really is. So, releasing into the abyss of this disorder, the depths of sickness wouldn’t really change who I am or what the world is based on. Which is liberating to my ED side but also frustrating. What is at the bottom of the abyss. Whether I let the sickness overwhelm me or I fight like hell to get out of it – what is the point? Who am I underneath it all? What is beneath my daily experience (regardless of whether said experience is recovery or disorder)? What am I fighting for? To be healthy so I can work? So I can have a family one day? So I can visit my mom at Christmas?
More importantly, what am I fighting for on the days when those things lose meaning?
In summary, if you have found the meaning of life, please share it in a comment.
