i believe....

in bright lipstick.

(that's it. that's all i got today).

i'm actually tremendously thankful for the damn thing

i remember the first time i told tom i was glad to have had the eating disorder.  it must have been nearly three years ago and i probably didn't use the past tense because it was still very much present. he immediately challenged the statement: you're glad you had it, or you're glad in spite of it?

 

that question has hung in the air between us for years now. tom knows the answer. and he knew, even those three years ago, that i knew--deep down i already knew. but he also knew it would take the intervening time to know i knew and then be able to articulate it. 

 

yes. the whole thing. the whole fiasco of a thing (a thing i would never wish on anyone) i count as one of the great blessings of my life. 

 

and let me tell you why: the eating disorder proved the single greatest educator of my life. or if not the educator, it was at least the classroom in which i learned.

1. don't put all of your eggs in one basket.  happiness is a tricky thing, wouldn't you say? it's always somewhere else. over there. contingent upon when i's and if i's and the like. for me, for so long, it was well, when i'm thin, if i ever get thin then i'll be happy. i won't feel sadness, i won't feel anxious. i'll get the parts i want, i'll get the guy i want, i won't have to worry about sidelong glances from this person or that person, i won't have to fear.  i won't have to fear.  that was probably the big one. thin would eradicate all the ills of my life. it would be the plateau on which i would coast. here's the thing. thin does none of those things. absolutely not one. don't get me wrong, it has its advantages, but it does not heal relationships--it doesn't heal the part of yourself that is so hurting and broken--the part of you that becomes co-conspirator in this fallacy so that it gets left alone to fester and brood. a few years ago when i was coming out of the worst of the disease, but still very much in it, i dated a man many years my senior who made me feel like a giant among women (in the best possible way) until he didn't. you're so young, he would complain. you have so much to learn, he'd reproach. and all i could think was, but i'm trying. are you? i wake each morning fighting to get better and be more and inviting the demons into the ring with me. do you?  he wasn't worth it. so i didn't really ask those questions. he's not the only person i've cared deeply for who i look at and think, all that wasted time. all those many years spent disliking yourself--spent focusing on this or that just to avoid dealing with what you clearly need to deal with.  the eating disorder forced the boil. it made manifest my problems in a way that i couldn't help but deal with them. and for that i'm so tremendously grateful.  the perfect job, the acclaim, the moment you become a parent--if you expect those singular moments in time will bring lifelong happiness, well you set yourself up for one hell of a fallout when you wake up weeks, months, years later and realize it wasn't everything you expected it to be.  and man, does that fall hurt.  i may be getting a late start now on certain things (careers and relationships and the like), but i'm pretty damn confident in the foundation i've built.

off switch giveaway.

i'm so very excited to kick off the week by offering you all a chance at your own print copy of off switch magazine (volume two). 

while you can already view the magazine online (and i highly encourage everyone to do so), it is also available in hard-copy form--(you better believe i'll be purchasing one!).  

in order to enter, peruse the magazine (volume two) and leave a comment below letting me know your favorite part. was there a particular article that spoke to you, a photo you can't stop thinking about, or did you like me go check out lower lights burning immediately? 

there will be two winners chosen thursday morning. giveaway will close thursday morning 9 EST. 

just a quick note:

i have to tell you there is something about most print fashion magazines that always leaves me feeling depleted. after an hour of looking at barely-there women and clothes i can't afford i inevitably feel like i've just indulged in way too much sugar and i'm already coming down from the high. that's not to say that vogue or elle or the like doesn't print some pretty fantastic articles (to this day i remember some damn good ones in elle about michelle williams and lindsay lohan). i suppose what i'm saying is that i'm excited about the shift in media that's allowing for the various online publications (and print!)--publications that focus more on content than sales, publications that when i look at the people photographed i'm struck by their joy and vivacity as opposed to the slimness of their face or the thousand dollar birkin bag they're carrying. 

what's in a name

it hurt her to hear his name said aloud.

to have it hang in the air.

it was a physical pain, as real as the splintered wood of the chair poking the back of her leg.

the sound of it snagged her breath. made breathing shallow.

you don't get to say it, she wanted to say. it's not your name to say.

but nor was it hers.

and that was what hurt.

that she had no more right--no more power--than that half-stranger across the room who had released it into the air--that half-stranger who mistook the easy smile for the whole of the truth.

that he was not hers to love or know or think about. that she might never say his name and have him hook her round the hips in pure ecstasy just at having heard it uttered by her perfect lips, in her own imperfect way.

that she might never see him again, know him again, love him again. that all that would be left would be his name hanging in the air, uttered by someone else.

so yes, the pain was real.

two months. six years.

i don't know that i've ever felt so beautiful as i did this past summer.

something shifted and i felt myself living in my body, breathing as a relatively normal person, and thinking, alright, here goes...

and then came september. and october. and november.

and all i could think was oh, shit.

i felt so low. so deep and blue and bruised.

even after all this time i often lack the courage to use the right words. and so i use other words. sadness. i'm feeling blue,i say. to make it palatable, understandable, manageable.

one of my dearest friends, over a cup of coffee, looked right at me and said, we all get blue, meg. that's life. we all have those moments. 

and i knew what she meant and i love her dearly and think her wiser than almost anyone i know, so i closed my mouth, sipped my coffee, and directed the conversation to... something else, anything else. men, probably.

but what i should have said is this: i can handle the blue. i can handle the sad. i don't live in it, i let it pass through. it's this damn eating disorder. it's something all-together, entirely different and it's suffocating. do you understand that? that i'm slowly panicking over here in this corner, and that i'm only ever (at best) two paces from losing it?

it slipped back in this fall. slinked and seeped right through the fissures and fault lines that living a courageous and open life 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 on the road to well is not-so-well and really-really-really-not-well and a lot of pit stops in between. and it’s exhausting.

it was back in november that i took down the link from the sidebar.

it was back in november that i went home for a week. last minute. unexpected.

why did you take the link down from the side of your blog? my mother asked in one of those talks we had in the car, paused in a parking lot, me crying, her helpless—as any good parent in that situation is. she sat and she listened and cried with me and then asked me that.

because i don’t want that story to define me. i’m done with everyone knowing.

i don’t remember what her response was, but i remember about a month later climbing the hill from my apartment here in new york and having the though: it only defines me if i say it defines me. only with my consent. it is as big or as small as i allow it to be.

and when i’m doing well, as i am most of the time, it’s just as big as i need it to be, which is to say, not at all.

but back in november, the shadow it cast was large and unforgiving. and for a moment there i lost my footing.

everyone i loved told me to let it go. stop thinking about it so much. but i was determined to really know the thing this go round. if i was gonna be stuck in the middle of it I was gonna study it from the inside out and i'd be damned if i didn't emerge just a little bit wiser about the whole thing.

back in college we studied the alexander technique. it is a method of learning about and freeing the body. it has to do with posture and energy and blockages and is tremendously helpful for actors. one of the things you do is trace your body. meaning you, or a partner, feels along the ridges of the collarbone or the shoulder blade or some such--it's meant to help you know the anatomy of the body--to feel the whole size and breadth of each part.

one of the hallmarks of an eating disorder is something called body checking. we most of us do it without even realizing--little things like checking our reflection in the store window or taking note that our pants are a little bit tighter today. but back when i was was really unwell i checked by body often and in strange ways. like feeling for my collarbone--checking to make sure it was there--judging my weight, my worth by that bone alone. or using my middle finger and thumb to see if they could wrap around my wrist. comparison was the hallmark of the body checking. is this easier to do today? can i feel the bone more easily today? i'd ask myself. when i returned to my second year of school having lost nearly twenty pounds from my frame (two months on weight watchers) i remember thinking, it'll be so much easier to trace my body in alexander this year.

oh boy. big red flag.

when i did weight watchers i lost three pounds the first week. and two pounds the week after that. and two just about each week following. and each week i defined myself not by my weight, but by my loss. by the space between. i’m seven pounds less this week, i’d think. seven less than when i began. i’d study my body in the mirror carefully take stock of the changes. my face looked leaner. my collarbone protruded a bit more. this dress fit better than the last time i tried it on. it was never just this dress looks good, it was better than. comparison to a past moment. the difference, the subtraction.

comparison. always, always comparison. comparison isn't just the thief of joy, it is the thief of the present moment and the slippery slope to what feels awfully akin to insanity.

the body is a constantly changing thing so if you keep trying to look for the changes and is it different and maybe it’s not—you loose your footing quickly and you stop seeing it at all. everything’s refracted, distorted, and you lose the sense of which way’s up, which down. it’s a tremendously confusing and terrible way to live your life.

now there is a chance that someone, somewhere is reading this thinking: she lost twenty pounds on weight watchers? okay, that's what i'll do then. and off that person'll trudge to a meeting and they'll count points and follow the plan and they'll lose weight too.

so let me be very clear in how i say this: i did weight watchers for two months. i lost twenty pounds. and i  spent the next six years paying the price.

two months. six years. do the math.

and i followed the plan. i ate the twenty points each day. twenty points was roughly 1,000 calories. 1,000 calories each day is starvation. period.

weight watchers was recommended to me by my pediatrician. 

 

i think i've lost track of why i began writing this post.  something to do with comparison. how coming out of of this last bout of blue had much to do with waking each morning and making the active choice to not study myself in the mirror or lift my shirt to check the flatness of my stomach.

and to put the sidebar (FED) back up.