Still en-route.

in


I've lived in Brooklyn for five months now.

When I counted out the time on my fingers tonight I found that number--five months--absolutely startling. I blinked and June became July became November.

I anticipated this move for such a long--the move out of Manhattan, the move into a space of my own own, the move away from what was known and done.

And here I am and it's been five months.

And I just blinked.

I knew this move wouldn't change my life--at least not in that bedrock-shifting-sort-of-way that one always secretly hopes for. I knew that happiness in a place wouldn't necessarily make for a happier life--it would help, surely, but happiness is more than a place.

When I first moved everyone asked how it was. And I would bow my head and take a breath and say, I'm so in love with it. 

But it hasn't been easy. And because this place feels so right and so good it has served to magnify and highlight other areas of my life that are all-of-the-sudden-just-not-good-enough.

Does that make sense? The bedrock didn't shift in any life altering way, it simply settled. And I found myself on solid ground and equal footing and suddenly things that had been fine no longer were.

You know when you're in the presence of someone you're desperately in love with and how for the first ten minutes your face is flushed and you can't believe the tumble of your stomach, but once you sit with them long enough you're encompassed by such a profound sense of comfort and safety and you feel more yourself than ever before? That's sort of how I felt--how I feel--in this little patch of Brooklyn, as though I've found the place in which I'm totally swaddled and cared for.

But I'm so overwhelmed by the largeness of this feeling that I am without words for it. And few things frustrate me more. When will language catch up? When will there be enough words to say what needs to be said?

And because this one section of the puzzle feels so assembled I'm desperate to get the rest sorted out. And so I'm constantly struggling just to catch up with myself. This, as it turns out, is not a helpful feeling.

I was having a rough day about a week ago and a few things conspired to make me take the long walk from DUMBO to Carroll Gardens. It was late and the air was finally cool with October on its back and as I walked I thought, so I'm not there yet. I'm still en route. I'm not totally well and I don't have everything figured out and there's still so much to do.

And I have to tell you, few thoughts have been more helpful than that notion--not there yet. 

It was just a rephrasing in my mind--a move from feeling like I'd arrived on the side of well and was constantly then failing to live up to that versus still just plodding. And still-just-plodding makes life easier to live. Still-just-plodding gives me enough space to forgive myself for my many failings and to love this new neighborhood for exactly what it is--even if I don't always have the words for that love and even if it sometimes feels too-right in the shadow of all else that's yet to be decided.



On a separate note: I spent the hurricane with Natalie. I wasn't in an evacuation zone here in Brooklyn and didn't feel at all unsafe in my apartment, but I knew that if I the whole of the city was going to be holed up for a few days, it'd be good to do it with a friend. We are both so grateful that in her midtown apartment we were completely safe--with power and water at all times. When I finally returned home last night (via cab) it was a very eerie thing to drive through a completely powerless downtown Manhattan (it looked a bit like a ghost town). I know there are people out there saying that New York and New Jersey overreacted in anticipation of this storm, but they didn't. Some of the flooding was extraordinary and I'm so grateful to our leaders for taking charge in the way that they did. My heart is full this morning thinking of all the people not as fortunate as Natalie and myself. And I think all New Yorkers are a bit overwhelmed today as we face the reality of the cleanup and of navigating a city that, as of now, has an extremely limited transit system. 


weathering sandy.

in



i've got miss natalie to keep me company. we went out this morning and were able to snag more water and some votive candles (i was shocked the corner store still had them). not sure how this will all play out, but i'm praying for the best and hoping life returns to normal as quickly as possible.

Inspiration from elsewhere.

in


some weeks there just ins't a lot to say. or maybe it's that i don't know how to say it.
so i read what other people have said and take solace that somewhere, someone found the right words at the right time.



"My life story is the story of everyone I've ever met."

"I never confused what I had with what I was."

(Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close)



"Falling into Place: deciding everything is falling into place perfectly as long as you don't get too picky about what you mean by place. Or perfectly."

(Brian Andreas)



"Ever notice how 'What the hell' is always the right answer?"

(Marilyn Monroe)


WEEKLY WELLNESS// we're eating our veggies this week.

in



Weekly Wellness is a community driven project to help each of us adopt a more mindful lifestyle. It is a twelve week experiment wherein we (Laura, myself, and whoever else wants to join) commit to one small change for each of those weeks in an effort to see how even a small shift can reap big rewards. (For the introduction read this and this.) 


I must apologize for missing last week's recap. What follows here doesn't deal with one specific week of the challenge, but I wanted to share it nonetheless. While I'm not one to usually pay attention to stats and numbers, I can tell when a post is read more than others, and I'm constantly surprised that the posts dealing with health and body issues are among the top. It is my great wish that there is information contained in what I've written over the years that others find helpful. (This is my way of saying: thank you--for your continued support and kind, kind words). 



I didn't know what a calorie was until I went to college. 


I mean, I have a vague recollection of the 2,000 calories per day dictum, but beyond that, nothing--I had never looked at a nutrition label in my life. 


I grew up on chicken and rice and peas. Every night. For dinner. Bless, my mom because she made the dinner each night and around the table we sat--food only part of the experience. But, to this day, if I ever go out, chicken is not my food of choice. I've had enough of that bird to last a lifetime.


When I got to college and gained the standard freshman fifteen the proposition of losing weight was daunting. And that was the task at hand: losing weight. Not switching to a healthier diet, or a healthier lifestyle, not learning to read the whole of the nutrition label, but learning to lose weight and quickly. And what that meant was learning to read calories. 


And learning to read calories was, as it turns out, my very own Pandora's Box. 

My pediatrician recommended Weight Watchers. And then my gynecologist, as well. And so I embarked upon that path. And I did what I was told. I ate the fruits and vegetables and I made sure to eat no more than my 20 points, and no less either.

And it was so easy. So easy that I wondered how anyone could ever struggle with their weight when, with the right information, to lose it was the easiest thing in the world. 



Oh, the hubris. 


Now of course I look back and can see I was a woman obsessed--a woman who went to bed each night with the pain of hunger just below my ribs--a woman fed by information that was totally and completely wrong. 


I lost my period immediately. 


And so I went to the same doctors who had suggested the diet plan and I told them I didn't have a period and everyone told me not to worry, it'd be sure to return. 


And it did. Months later, when I began to eat again. 


I followed the plan. I ate the allotted points. And those allotted points added up to roughly 1,000 calories.


1,000 calories is not enough for a woman of my height. At 1,000 calories I was starving myself. This is not opinion. This is fact. And I know this now because other (more informed) doctors have told me this. Someone once commented on one of my posts saying that Weight Watchers is not about deprivation, it would never endorse starvation. But I'm just laying out the facts: I ate the points suggested to me for my weight and height--in a program recommended by more than one doctor and I starved. Until my body couldn't starve any more. And it did what it had to do to make me eat: I began to binge.


You know how if a person hasn't slept for a certain amount of time (I'm talking days) the body will collapse--actually inducing sleep? Or if blood isn't getting to the head fainting occurs so that the head is on the same level of the heart and blood can reach it more easily? The body takes control. It takes over.


That's what binging was. The body taking over. That's why it felt so beyond my control. Because I was starving, my body bypassed my conscious mind (my will power, if you will), and it fed me. A lot. Fed me to the point of over-feeding, because my poor body was so damn terrified that it would never be fed again. And then it clung to every single calorie and I watched, helpless, as the weight accumulated. 

I was at war with myself--my body engaged in trench warfare, shoveling in food, because it couldn't trust that I would ever again feed it.


I still eat too much sometimes--enough that people would label it a binge. But I know better, it's not a binge, it's just too much food over a short period of time because I'm feeling guilty or bad or just worn down--the reasons are many and often without sense. But I am not driven to binge the way I once was. I am not possessed and out of control. 


I used to say that recovery is like a grain of salt tunneling through a glacier. It takes ages. It took my body a really, really long time to trust me again. I would sit on the train and have an unhealthy thought like I've had enough today, I need to eat nothing else and I'd feel a tightening in my chest--like a large door closing and immediately I'd be hungry. I'm now pretty sure that tightening was panic on a cellular level--was my body recognizing the thought and preparing itself for what was to come.


It took a lot of time, and quite a bit of proof (food) too, for my body to forgive me and know that I'd never again withhold sustenance. And only once that trust was built was I returned to myself. 


It's still a process. It's still slow. And that gran of salt is still trucking. And it moves by the small choices I make day after day, week after week. A little more water, a good book in my hand, more vegetables, and getting myself to the exercise class even when I think I might lose my lunch during the worst of the squats. 


That's why I'm so enjoying the Weekly Wellness challenges that change with the weeks. Because it's to say, yeah, I'm doing this, I'm in this. I'm doing what I can to make my life better. It's not an overhaul--it's small, mindful choices tunneling through the crap of processed food and a society with ridiculous beauty standards and a whole diet industry that says the calorie count is the end all be all.

I had to learn how to unlearn what a calorie was. That's been the game-changer. Giving up the low-fat and fat-free and "healthy" foods. Forgetting the points assigned to eggs and tortilla chips. Trusting that my body will tell me when it's had enough if I can quiet my own fears and the hum of all-that-wrong-information enough to listen.