beginning of june, three guys rejected me all at once. the span of one week. for a month thereafter, i began every story with that preface.
things is, i owe each of those three men a thank-you-note.
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the languages of love.
mine will be memory. i will remember + record.
b/c i won't be good at voicing the i love you's, the kind words. i won't offer up compliments freely, and i won't take them humbly. but i'll remember it all. your shoes. the cut of the light across the floor.
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it begins under the skin. gets caught in the throat. lines the undersize of the collarbone. lodges below that first set of ribs. trickles down to the stomach.
it's only when it gets there--bottom of the belly--that you're sunk. in deep shit, so to speak. or just in deep.
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october 20.
i took an elbow to the boob at work tonight. boy did that grant some perspective. big picture. means to an end.
getting into the cab at 2 am. it reeks of cigarette. makes me think of that one guy. that totally wrong one. he's married now. i hope he's well and happy. i hope time and a new love...
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she wanted to tell him, he was her christmas morning.
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to try + compare our beauty to someone else's is a moot point.
all we strive for is to fulfill our own capacity to be beautiful--it signals worth (reproductive +...)
to say i'm more beautiful/ less beautiful than her is a waste of energy. waste of time
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she didn't want to say it. didn't want to give voice to it. to answer his question. mutter it aloud, make it real, create a boundary--a set of rules, gift a road map that would mean more lives must pass before they'd see each other again.
but the truth always surfaces. it must
at the age of twenty-four, having just broken up with a man who it'll end up taking you far too long to get over, you'll visit a card reader who will tell you you'll lead a beautiful life. believe her. the guy wasn't worth it. everything after him was.
the hour after waking
most days i couldn't tell you two things about happiness other than sometimes i am, sometimes i'm not.
sometimes it's there. sometimes it's not.
but this morning, this morning happiness was the quick walk to the corner caffe. the white lunch bag with the bagel-and-egg sandwich. the plastic sip-cup of orange juice. this morning happiness was the quiet apartment and a song on repeat. it was the forgiveness i granted myself for the unmade bed and messy floor. the notion that everything--every action, every thought, every sideways glance is a prayer. distilled down, all is prayer, and i am changed by that. that thought, that knowledge, that eternal and ever-reaching love changes me. this morning happiness was the not-so-gentle sense that everything will work out. the turmoil of excitement sitting pit of stomach for a reason that i am not yet conscious of.
this morning happiness was the hour after waking. when the world was mine and mine alone. and there was no fear. only love. in every action. love of waking, despite exhaustion. love of taking the elevator, and studying the windows across the street. love of feeding my body. of taking this suspended time before the day catapults forward and staking a claim.
on little lies, white lies, the big stuff, and all that comes between.
i still remember the first lie i told.
or, well, the first lie i was conscious of telling.
it was mid-afternoon, after school, and i sat perched atop one of the high bar stools framing the kitchen counter. it spun from side to side and i sat, legs folded under, slowly moving and swaying, a yellow box of nilla wafters in front of me.
my mother had made it clear that i was only to have some (alarmingly) low number of them. no more than three, or some such.
nonsense!
(i had a really good mom. among the best).
i ate three. then three more. then probably three more after that. and on and on and on and on and on.
and i remember her coming back into the kitchen,
did you have just the three?
yup. just three.
and there it was. the first lie told.
i don't remember is if she knew. probably. but what i do remember is the stomach-churning it elicited--and how that had nothing to do with too much sugar.
i am a tremendously lousy liar. i don't do it. perhaps that's the dictate of some strict, and often too-rigid moral compass, but i just don't have a knack for it.
no talent, no skill.
every once and a while i'll give it a go, but when i do i make a face that very clearly says i am lying and you know i am, don't you?
just the other day my mother asked me if i'd taken some pill i was supposed to.
yup. silence.
you're lying, aren't you?
yup.
even over the phone it's clear.
i cannot tell a lie and my face hides nothing. more than the question of morality, i think i just want to live authentically.
life is so hard, you know? filled with too many struggles and failures not to embrace them. i just don't want to diminish who i am by lying about it. even if it's a small lie.
and yet. i am deeply fearful. so i omit things. often, i omit.
lying by omission, i suppose that's not much better. and i conceal by structuring the truth in such a way that it's fragmented and unclear. or purposefully misleading.
i consider myself a deeply private person.
bet you didn't think that--didn't know that. hell, here is all this stuff that i've written and revealed and it's as truthful as it can be, and yet, i consider myself a deeply private, often secretive, person.
how can that be? not sure. but that's how i feel.
i parcel out only bits and pieces, hold the larger truth so close to the chest. i fold truth over on itself so often that the end result is something entirely muddled--language in code.
very rarely does someone stumble upon something i'm unwilling to speak about, but when they do, i smile, side-step, unfurl silence like a ribbon between us, and re-direct. a magician's game.
however, if someone were to ask me something, point blank, i would tell the truth. stripped down, i would answer honestly.
yes. or no. and all the words in between.
and because that's all i know i cannot conceive that other's might do it differently.
that a lie might pass between.
tell me, do you ever tell lies? how do you do it? no judgement here, i'm honestly just tremendously curious.
i went home in november for a week.
i needed to go home.
to swath myself in the comfort of the familiar, to surround myself with family.
i was feeling so low. so deep and blue and bruised.
so i gathered my things into a small suitcase and went in search of solace.
the eating disorder had slipped back in. slinked and seeped right through the fissures and fault lines that living a courageous and open life often invites. the thing is, to live courageously, to thrash about in the unknown, to stand on the brink, to look down and breathe deeply, these are the things that make one well. in the long run, these are the things that make one well, i know this.
but in the short term: it's frustrating. as hell. embarrassing, really. how am i back here again? how am i here struggling with this, this....this beast.
and long as i've lived with it, as often as i've found pockets of peace, i still don't really understand the thing.
the eating disorder.
nor do the people who most love me. god, help them, they don't get it. and i'm not so good at explaining. we've tried. surely we've tried.
part of the problem is there are parts of it that i will probably never share. dark moments that don't belong to me so much as some part of the past, rough and jagged, in which the smallest, saddest, girl once lived. in which she roamed the aisles of grocery stores engaged in a fight with what could not be seen: don't do it. just this once, don't do it. don't binge. if not for yourself, for your family--the family who loves you and can't bear to see what's happening. time and again the argument unfurled. time and again she stood there, before food that had no tie to nature or the earth or anything good, seared by the cold and clinical fluorescents of overhead lighting.
she never won those arguments. even that love of family, the knowledge of their desperate need for her to be well, it was not enough. my heart breaks for that girl, that once-me so hollowed out, so carved upon by things that had no worth. it was a realm in which love had no place. in which love was not enough. what a dark and terrible sphere.
i'm not there anymore. that girl no longer exists but for those rare moments when i move my head in such a way as to catch her shadow's flight. always and only from the corner of my eye, i see her recede. not often, though. not too much anymore, and for that alone i must get on my knees to give thanks.
so november. damn, i'm really not sure how to write about it. maybe i've let it go too long or maybe there's too much to say. let me try:
when things get tough, people always say, do what you know. do those things that you know pull you out of it.
but here's the thing, what may have worked in the past, may not work today. i wake each day a new woman, for better or for worse i am newly born each morning. and so each day i have to learn how to orient myself in relation to the eating disorder. each day i must take stock of the relationship and go from there. find my feet, find my footing. most days it's easy. most days it happens without me ever consciously thinking of it. those are the good days.
i went home. had a few soul-wrenching talks with my mother--the kind that take place in the car (always in the car). i attempted to shed more light, to make it all a little better, in which we slowly allowed ourselves a little more honesty than ever before.
and it helped, much as it could it helped, but some things just take time.
and there's always more information. and i'm nothing if not a forager of information. i wanted to swim around in the confusion of this bout and come out wiser and better prepared for the next.
this is what i got. there was no easy rebound this time. it was slow and painstaking. no moment where i looked in the mirror and thought, oh, thank god, there i am again. in fact, my relation to the mirror changed in that it didn't have so much worth. what stared back at me wasn't so important.