The New Year's Blog

The thing about the holidays when you're queer is that you spend all of this time navigating the heteronormative family constructions that are central to both the holiday marketing and the religious observation. So even when you spend time with your partner trying to create your own traditions--mediocre swedish meatballs, stockings and malbec with your closest friends, pet costumes--you still end up feeling empty. Like the holiday wasn't "real". This happened to Cat and I last year. Since we didn't have the money to travel and we weren't particularly welcomed as a couple in my family (my mother had said to me "Cat can come but you know, she's just your friend") we tried to embrace our own queer holiday.

This year, with my family inching slowly toward acceptance and both of us having the advantage of student loans to draw on, we decided to try our first as-couple family holidays. The previous blog captures how well that went for Thanksgiving on my end. The up side: Christmas with her folks was fine. Good even. Everyone was friendly. Her aunt bought me a box of chocolates and her parents bought us her brother's car. As my bestie Deems said last night "so there's nothing for your blog."

Deems, as usual, is kind of right. But this year I'm struggling with something different. A few days before Christmas in 2001, I began my first e.d. hospitalization. I went in because of a myriad of physical problems, a few good friends that had been privy to some recent ER visits, and a high school mentor who made a round of phone calls on my behalf "looking for beds." She was certain that by 2002, without treatment, I would be dead.

I ended up in the hospital the first time for three weeks, spending New Year's Eve learning rummi with soundless noise-makers and i.v.'s.

I have a few good friends who are sober, one of whom is celebrating her ten year anniversary, and there's a part of me that wants to crack the cranberry-seltzer bubbly with her, except that my treatment hasn't worked like sobriety. It hasn't been one wagon.

I spent two years in and out of treatment, two consecutive New Years Eves were spent in hospital. Ten years later, I can't say I've had even one purge-free year.

At the time I went into the hospital I had been sick for more than half of my life. At 28 and a half, my life is even thirds: pre-sick, sick, recovery. But the lines aren't neatly drawn. I thought they could be, beginning awareness, advocacy work, and public speaking when I wasn't even six months out of the hospital. I spent my first New Year's Eve out-of-hospital taking a January-term course in Germany. As I huddled with my friend Rhian in Berlin's wind, being pushed on either side by crowds at the Brandenburg Gate and dodging firecrackers flung aimlessly at our feet, I really thought I had entered a clear cut beginning. Neuenfang.

I've since realized that my illness is chronic. And that each new year is only an extension of the previous years. And so I don't really have much to blog about in terms of New Beginnings and resolutions. I just have the same one I've been working on for ten years. So on New Year's, I'll crack the cranberry seltzer bubbly, kiss my sweetheart, hang out with my queer grad family (a better support than any hospital team or blood relations) and plan the next trip.

Local Gin and Class Evals: Finding Balance at the End of a Dismal Week

So last week turned out to be one of those abysmally bad weeks where nothing goes terribly, life-shatteringly wrong, but the little bad things pile up so that I'm left wondering: what the hell kind of karma glitch am I dealing with? I meditate; I donate what little life-savings I have to the ASPCA and NPR; I buy gifts from local craftswomen; I buy bulk from the co-op; most of my clothes come from goodwill; I recycle my wine bottles. Is it possible that karma made a mistake?

Here's what sent me over the edge. A student decided that instead of submitting the assigned final paper, she would submit a critique of the class that read, in actuality, like a personal attack. What made the personal attack even more tough to swallow--it being stuck in the back of my throat, just out of tongues reach, like one of those canada mints swallowed hole, only dissolving under the pressure of scalding water-- was that this student is a major in my field which emphasizes social justice and what we call intersectional analysis (that everyone has many identities operating at one time, so a woman is never just a "woman" but also affected by things like race, class, sexuality, citizenship, and ability) and a senior. In other words, she is a few short quarters away from graduating.

And her critique stung. She wrote that my class was not a "good" representation of "U.S. Women Writers" and that we only read "insane" women and "lesbians" and she asked rhetorically, "What can I relate to here? And should we be reading the women who have done the real work of feminism?" I was grading papers with a friend at the local coffee shop when I got to this student's paper and I felt like someone kicked the wind out of me. I was breathless as I took a sip from my luke warm coffee. I read it out loud to make sure I was understanding that, in fact, this student was not doing the assignment but issuing an attack. Then I started crying.

Over the course of the evening, as I skyped with Cat, I became enraged and focused on proving my student's critique was inaccurate. In a ten week class, we spent three weeks on Harriet Jacobs. We spent another week on Sandra Cisneros. We spent a week with Hattie Gossett's poetry. All of whom are not insane and not lesbians. In fact, we read only one book by a lesbian. And we read two books where the point was to critique diagnostic models of patriarchal power--i.e. question this idea of insanity that has been cast upon women for centuries. In ten weeks, we sampled 160 years of women's writing. But Cat didn't need to hear all this. Cat knows my syllabus. Cat knows that a student critiquing like this doesn't have a problem with the course or with me but with some deep-seated homophobia combined with some fear of mental illness, maybe.

I didn't respond to the student until I met with my supervisor, who advised that I give the student a chance to rewrite. While I was happy to grade the student according to the rubric and fail her, I also felt like not giving her a chance to rewrite would be vindictive. She took the offer. Her final paper is due in January. Since then, my online reviews have come back as a mixed bag of strong reactions: "Not an easy A but the best class I've taken in college" and "The reading was too dense. Watching "Girl, Interrupted" was a waste of time. She's an arbitrary grader." "She's a fair and challenging grader." It seemed like for every negative critique (and I take grading really seriously--providing a lot of comments and a detailed rubric, so I take being accused of being arbitrary very personally) there was an opposite.

This is a blog about finding balance in my 28th year. As such, I'm not sure what to do about such vastly different reviews of my course. I'm glad I'm affecting students strongly but, of course, I want students to leave with a more open mind; with a complicated understanding of identity and power. So when I was done reading my evals, i did the only thing I could think of doing: I poured myself a strong gin and tonic and collapsed helplessly, wondering if I'm really suited for the next thirty years.

The gin itself if local, made of corn. Five dollars more expensive than what we would normally buy.

As I sip, I remember the student who came up to me after that last day of class, three students clustered around him as I was packing up my bag, who said, "I'm not trying to brown nose or anything. I just want to say that you are a bad-ass teacher and I mean that in a good way." The other students nodded in agreement. I smiled, thinking, "Four out of thirty-four--that ain't bad." The gin tastes sweeter in my next sip. Must be the corn. Or the karma.

The Perfect Protein: The Perfect Comfort Food

Today started out dismally. Downpours. Sick cat. Rejection from a competitive professional development opportunity on the heels of yesterday's article rejection from an academic journal. None of these things are life-altering and a week from now, when Cat is done with finals and here with me in Columbus, this morning will seem laughable.

But for now, it warrants comfort.

Enter: the egg.

Warning: if you are vegan, you will likely not appreciate the following blog. It involves runny yolks.

I grew up eating eggs scrambled. Not even that often. Breakfast time was cheerio time. When we went to diners, I ordered pancakes. Eggs were for flus and snow days. When I became a vegetarian at 12, my mother would tell me, when I turned up my nose in disgust at the dinner table offerings of over-cooked chicken and mashed potatoes, "You don't like it? Make yourself an egg." Which was fine by me. One egg and a spoonful of vegetables became a dinner staple when I was cutting myself to 300 calories/day.

In college, though, I learned that eggs can be hearty. That they come in a variety of disguises--my roommate's favorite being a sweet thai chili soft-boiled variety over english muffins. I've learned that there's something delicious about pressing a fork into the over-easy dome of a yellow yolk, hearing the delicate snap as the yellow spreads and softens the sweet potato hash underneath it. The sour dough toast dams the edges of the plate, making breakfast pool into a soggy, salty, delicious masterpiece.

This morning, opening the free-range egg carton--I spend entirely too much on eggs, almost 4 bucks a dozen from a local farm but the politics are worth it--I found two left. One whole wheat english muffin was buried underneath a carton of yogurt on the bottom shelf of my fridge. The amish butter from the fall farmer's market has a couple tablespoons left.

So I heat up my cast-iron. Watch as a lumpy square of local confection becomes a pool awaiting its swimmers. Two eggs, cracked,whitening immediately. Turn to gold brown. Flip over. Survey the crispy brown edges as the yolk gets a quick sizzle.

Flip over.

Plate waits.

English muffin takes the egg's place in the pan, soaking up the rest of the butter.

Salt.

Pepper.

Eggs meet english muffin meet plate.

This time, as I press my fork into the yolk, my eyes tear. My life, momentarily stalled.

I hope the first bite lightens my mood, as I approach 35 papers in need of compassionate grading. I hope, this morning, that eggs are enough.

I'll Stop Slapping You if You Stop Being a D-Bag: Further Reflections on Thanksgiving

The following is my account. I welcome the reflections from observers. As Cat said, "When you're around your family, you act a little crazy. You go from 0-10 in no time." This is true. And my patience, after missing a night of sleep due to an early flight, was threadbare.

The turkey had been eaten. Dishes were being swept from the table to the dishwasher by my parents, the only two people that fit in the five foot-by-seven-foot kitchen. When help was offered to my parents, it was declined--my father is o.c.d. about dish deliberations. The rest of us, minus one sister who was standing in the kitchen likely berating my parents about some need or another, were in the living room. My last grandma. My only aunt. My oldest sister, exhausted from the retail season in full swing. I was sitting on the floor next to Cat, whose flight had been delayed and a connection missed, herself arriving just in time for a 4:30 dinner after being re-routed through Boston and catching a bus. I could feel Cat's sleepiness beside me, her body sinking into the ottoman. I actually felt settled.

Then the discussion turns to the Penn State scandal. My sister's fiance, a "few drinks in" as Meredith whispers over the turkey, their second dinner of the day, begins debating me loudly about how this is not, in fact, about football culture but about individual choice. The scandal at Penn State is about just one person who should probably go to jail. It's a bigger problem, I say. A cultural problem. My aunt, politely and democratically from the couch, "Can't it be about both?"

"You know," I said, "I think it's a bigger problem in big ten football schools when the officially-sponsored game day gear calls Michigan a "whore" and then says "Fuck Michigan". I think there's a bigger problem of gendered violence. I think that's why we have people defending this coach and this kind of assault."

"Football isn't like that," fiance contests.

"It's not a problem inherent in the sport," I contest, though frankly, I'm not sure I even believe that but I'm willing to believe it to make my bigger point. "It's a problem about the kind of violence that is sanctioned in the Big Ten Culture."

"No no no," fiance is yelling now. "This is about who saw what. And I think everyone did what they were supposed to do. And you know that in the case of some girls, when they are dressing--" This is the point where I lose it. I stand up. I approach him in his seat. My arms are flailing. Cat thinks that this is indicative of my watching too much Real Housewives.

"No you didn't!" He tries to interrupt me. "You can not go on saying that women deserve it. Because that's just what you were about to say." He tries to interrupt me again. I raise my left hand, think for a split second before feeling the roughness of his cheek hit my palm.

The room erupts. My mom runs from the kitchen, grabs my hands and holds them behind my back (she has de-escalation training in her role as a middle school special ed director) and ushers me into my father's study. I'm pacing in a 2-foot-by-2-foot space, surrounded by bibles and devotionals. "Just calm down." My mother is waving a dish towel in hand. "Just calm down."

My throat is heavy. I'm heaving tears. I'm gagging. "He's drunk--"

"He's not drunk."

"He's drunk and he just said women deserve to be raped. That is not okay. That is pretty much the most offensive thing you can say."

"I'm sure he didn't say that."

Meanwhile, fiance informs my sister they are leaving. He tells Cat that we aren't staying with them. We're on our own for a place to stay. And suddenly our first family thanksgiving as taken a rather unexpected turn.

I call the next day. My sister won't answer her phone. Possibly she never will. Fiance does and I apologize. I say I shouldn't have slapped him. He says he knew he had a few drinks "and maybe I wasn't as p.c. as I needed to be but I wish you would have let me finish". I don't feel like getting into it. I feel defeated. There's no way he could have followed up his defense with a non-woman-hating recuperation. But, of course, I don't say that. The crime of the evening was my violence, not his. "Let's not get into it," I say. "I was tired. It's a complex issue." It's not that complex. Don't hate women. "I shouldn't have hit you."

"It's forgotten," fiance says.

But I know it isn't. And the nausea stays with me until saturday night when, in a fit of laughter at my bestie Prema's house, sharing our third glass of wine and homemade flatbreads, Prema offers to bring me to her family's thanksgiving next year, slapping skills in hand.

The Treatment Dream

Perhaps its because Thanksgiving is looming, a dark hooded figure for bulimics that starts a holiday season of food faux pas and consumption gumption. But I had that treatment dream again. The one where a medical-like figure tells me my behaviors are irreconcilable and I silently contest, wondering what the behaviors are that compel one to call me a "danger to myself" as they handcuff me into a facility that, in the dream, I've been to before. In real life there were never any handcuffs, of course. But there was a bag check. And confiscation of nail clippers and pepto.

And so, in the dream, I sit around in groups, pleading that I don't belong there, that I've been sick before but this time, this time for real, it was just one mistake. One accidental purge. Nothing serious. Nothing compulsive.

And they tell me that we all say that.

That we are all alike.

The other faces around me in the dream are shadowy, a mixture of childhood friends and college roommates and my middle school crush.

And then they tell me my tests are back. My electrolytes are fucked again. I'm on i.v. again.

And I wonder, how did this happen?

The thing about the dream is that the hospital changes every time. Once it was the actual hospital. Another time is was my childhood church. This last time, it was the bedroom in the parsonage that I grew up in, the one my sisters and I shared, seventies wallpaper garishly beckoning an era before our arrival. And my roommate: my sister.

I could spend a lot of time wondering what kinds of tales my subconscious is spinning together but I think the answer is boringly obvious.

Tomorrow morning, I have an early flight home. My partner and I are meeting in my hometown airport. My sister's fouton is waiting for our arrival. This is our first Thanksgiving that we've been invited, as a couple, as part of the family. Our student debt is buying our flights. We're both guarding against expecting too much but there's a part of me that's hopeful. That my grandmother and aunt will welcome Cat around the table, asking about our lives together and our plans for children, as they do with my sisters, our conversation droning out my father as he excitedly discusses Newt's recent climb in the poles.

But the thing about going home is to just accept what's available. To not look for too much. To remember that my sister, after dinner, will have a bottle of wine waiting for us where we will decompress and she will worry again about how my parents are pushing her into a wedding she doesn't care about. A wedding she can't afford. She, oblivious to the dinner where Cat and I sat awkwardly with our mashed potatoes as my grandmother asks me, again, why I don't have time for a boyfriend.

And we will sip from our glasses, wondering when we can be alone, the Thanksgiving turkey heavy in our stomachs.

And I wonder, why was I put here? Whose in charge? How can I get out? What are my test results?

And I remember, this time, it was my choice.

I Have My Beans to Thank

I was just eating lunch and wondering to myself: "Will this ever end?" The usual November gray stares back at me through my kitchen window, menacingly. My bowl, steaming but bland colored, bores me.

Here's my roster of meals I've been making lately: three bean vegan chili, navy bean soup, black bean soup, minestone with extra red beans, vegan chowder with pureed white beans and vegetable stock, black beans and rice, vegan jambalaya over rice, and baked beans with fried eggs and brown bread (this is a throw back to the Maine roots of my bestie, Prema, a meal she taught me in college). The only time I mix this up is the occasional mini-frozen pizza (always a disappointment), lentil soup, or stir fry with tofu (also a bean) and peanut sauce. Sometimes, in the co-op, I walk by the chicken and think, "I could buy some of that" , and my mouth waters at the thought of a chicken taco or chicken pot roast.

As I finished up what only feels utilitarian, I remembered one of the reasons why beans are my staple:

This weekend, I did the megabus to Chicago. The megabus always says it's only seven hours but it ends up more like eight--a full work day cooped up with my laptop, waves of nausea reminding me of my childhood car sickness (a condition that lasted well into my 20's) and the aches in my hips disrupting any meaningful studying I can get done. By the time I arrive in Chicago, I want only Chinese takeout and my partner's arms.

Thursday, we gave ourselves one night without work but the next day, it was back to the grind, absorbing cultural theory in between keynotes at a media historiography conference. I felt exhilarated by the conference material (a field only loosely related to my own but much more in line with my partner's work) but by Saturday, as Cat and I drained a bottle of malbec and watched Cleopatra Jones (this was work, too, a piece Cat it working on regarding Blackploitation), I wanted more time. I wanted a day with Cat that was just us.

The next morning, we got up, walked the dogs along Lake Michigan, and headed downtown for my 9:40 bus. Seeing we still had plenty of time, we popped into a Dunkin Donuts (of course we did--I'm a masshole at heart and while some of us miss the Red Sox and the change of seasons, I miss my medium french vanilla black). As I'm carefully peeling back the plastic of my lid, taking the first sip of what I can only refer to as my own, very different kind of black gold, I looked up and saw a megabus with "Columbus/Indianopolis" pull away from the corner. "Look!" I said to Cat. "My bus is here! Why is it driving that way?"

"It's probably just turning around."

I take another sip, check my phone (9:03) and perch myself on the sidewalk. Then it occurs to me.

"What time was your bus?"

"9:40."

"Are you sure?"

"I think so. The Columbus one leaves at 10:40 so of course it's the same time." I pull out my reservation number and ticket printout. "Shit."

"It was 9:00, wasn't it?" I circumvent Cat's question, this time gulping my coffee, as she grabs the ticket out of my hand.

"So I guess you're getting on tomorrow's bus." Cat smiles and we head toward Union Station to check prices on our phones and book me another ticket. Fifty-seven dollars later, I'm booked for the next morning. I cancel my Monday teaching. I worry for a second about the money but then I remember: my savings. Every week, I put twenty bucks in the savings account, money I scrape together from grocery bills spent on my soup recipes.

Another sip of my Dunkin, this time luke warm, and my stomach settles into the idea of one more day with Cat. And I have my beans to thank.

The Day Girls: God's Gift to Skinny Jeans

I've often curled my lip up at the stick-figure boys in ratty jean jackets and wanna-be-Maine flannels, their hair delicately coifed in an elvis-throw-back-to-the-days-of-white-appropriation-in -the-jim-crowe-south, wondering "what's their message?" And I've often stared in moderate disgust at their heterosexual-yet-so-alienated white female counterparts, their bodies paralleling their boyfriend's in an androgynous mirror that makes up the pbr drinking 20-somethings.

The problem is, I'm not that interested in watching a torso maneuver around on a pair of muscle- atrophied legs because, quite frankly, it makes me wonder if I should follow closely behind, a stocky shadow waiting to catch them if the wind blows them over. It makes me anxious.

But then a beautiful thing started to happen a few years ago. Everyone started wearing the skinny jean. I began to see more attention being paid to well-crafted leather boots; patterned chiffon re-emerged as a delicate draping across a well-cupped breast (can you tell I'm a lesbian yet?) and off-the-shoulder flap-dance sweaters brought the Reagon-era into the ironic forefront, juxtaposing itself against our black president and his socialist healthcare proposals (proposals I wish, frankly, were actually a bit more socialist).

As I started to invest in cheap trends as a way of updating my teaching wardrobe, I realized that without the skinny jean, my body looked like a large sack. And so I talked to my sister.

I have two sisters. Both of whom have the same ass as me, an ass that has often been admired in our Puerto Rican neighborhoods, cat-called by passing cars in South Boston, and squeezed uncomfortably into poorly-tailored jeans in department stores. Buying pants has been a constant struggle--I know I buy a few sizes up and work to raise hems and take in leg lines, every new or new-to-me pair of pants becoming a few hours on a Saturday afternoon of needle-pricks and tangled thread.

Luckily, when I started to feel like it might be time for me try out the skinny jean, my oldest sister knew exactly what to do: she's spent the last 15 years working in retail and is now currently a store manager for a popular jean line in downtown Boston. "You need to buy a size up," she said. "And you need to buy a jegging--they have more stretch." She loaded my arms up with clothing to try, my own personal shopper who just happens to have my ass, and off I went to dressing rooms. We settled on a pair of charcoal black skinny jeans ("jegging") that have since become a staple in my wardrobe.

Here's what I like about them: I didn't have to do any tailoring. I can do the splits in my jeans (which, technically, because of physical therapy, I'm not allowed to do anymore). I can show off my motorcycle boots. My ass has a shape.

I've been feeling good about my new jeans all fall until recently, when pictures emerged on the FB from a baby shower a few weekends ago. There I am, in the company of colleagues, in a bright maroon cardigan and an orange scarf, my legs thick as they anchor me onto a kitchen stool by the food table. I feel wide. The largest person in the picture. And I struggle to see myself positively: curves, in skinny jeans, making an oxymoron out of a fashion statement. And then I think: perhaps the problem is in the name of the jean. Perhaps the problem is in that double-n that screams off the page, making a mockery of those of us who simply want a little stretch in the fabric of our jeans.

The Catch-22

Last night I went to bed at 10:00. Grad students and single moms and others who are pressed for sleep are probably envious at that line. But I went to sleep because I was alone, watching a movie I wasn't interested in. I went to sleep because this is a weekend without Cat, which is also a weekend, apparently, where three of my other local besties are away at conferences. I tried to read before bed but I couldn't absorb anything. It was one of those nights.

Then I woke up in the middle of it. Anxious because I was getting too much sleep. Anxious that, because I was sleeping too much, I wouldn't be able to get everything read for my exams in time. Anxious that my sleeping meant I was depressed so I then go anxious that I was actually depressed.

So I pulled out some of the cognitive behavioral tools from way back. I started breathing and talking myself out of the anxiety. Remembering that anxiety attacks are just blips in time. And as my body became flushed and clammy, I started "I breathe in short breaths, I breathe out short breaths, I breathe in longer breaths, I breathe out longer breaths". I was trying to envision that, as I was breathing out, I was releasing the anxiety and the depression.

It started to feel that I was doing my mantra forever and it wasn't working. My cats walked across my stomach in their nonchalant way. And as Bob pressed one foot into my abdomen, I felt a release. A breath I had been holding.

And I thought to myself: I. give. up.

I can't even do a breathing mantra while breathing.

I can't even enjoy sleep without thinking sleep is the tip of the iceberg of depression.

And I fell back asleep, guilty and tired.

Third Time's a Bust: Further Reflections

I should probably more aptly subtitle this blog entry: Why I Shouldn't Blog Between Student Meetings. I got a little distracted while posting yesterday and have spent much of last evening really thinking about if I want to go back to that nutritionist--does she deserve a second chance? I don't want to write off someone in a potentially helpful position because of a few blunders on her part and a slightly caustic attitude on my part. Or perhaps it was the other way around?

But last night, my partner gave me some perspective.

I should eat more fresh vegetables. There are some that are totally fine to eat in their non-organic form as long as we peel them (sweet potatoes, carrots, onions) and others that I should only ever buy organic. And I said, "I don't want to support non-organic growers" and she said, "We're in a compromised position no matter what. We can't also sacrifice our health." Catherine is practical but also one of the most value-driven people I know.

And I realized something. My nutritionist and I are not, value-wise on the same page. And here's why. She kept stressing keeping my snack calories below 100. But she also said, "A piece of bread or an apple--it doesn't matter." And I thought to myself: there is completely different nutrition in both of those choices.

When I began to reflect on the ways in which my own body reacts by pulling in its shoulders and tightening its chest muscles when she talks as if a grain and a fruit are interchangeable, or that I should try "light bread" as if synthetic sugars used to make low-calorie bread will only have a positive affect on my long-term health, I realized that I should have been reacting to my gut (pun-intended) from the beginning.

I can't view food by way of calories consumption. I have to view food by way of what kinds of nutrients I'm getting out of it and what can, perhaps, give me more bang for my buck, or more nutrition for my caloric intake. It matters to me if I eat an apple instead of bread; more than that, it matters that I eat a local apple when possible and whole grain, whole food bread when possible. If I want a less dense grain, I'm not going to eat bread. I might eat a tortilla. Or some brown rice.

By thinking about food as merely calorie counts is the first (and maybe only useful thing) I learned in early institutional treatment. And it's also led me to think more politically about consumption.

I don't think this particular nutritionist is right for me. She also spent ten minutes discussing how people binge because they're hungry. I mentioned that binging was a lot more complicated than that--that people overeat when they're hungry but binging is perhaps something different. And she said, defensively, "We're talking physiologically. We're always talking physiologically." Oopsie. I didn't realize consumption had nothing to do with mental health, economics, and industrialization.

So now it's off to the next chapter: do I find a new nutritionist? Will my insurance cover someone else? Or should I try to keep doing this work with good old fashioned common sense? Suggestions welcome.

Third Time's a Bust

It's been awhile since I've dated but here's the routine I remembeR: First date, you're just relieved the person meets you at the bar. And that they're dressed. And they can speak in whole sentences. The second date, you're relieved that the first relief wasn't totally uncalled for. And that your date is, in fact, gay. Third date: you start to notice things. The way your date chews. Some pesky political opinion that inadvertently supports Republican ideology even though they think they're just hippies. The run in her stockings. And maybe, just maybe, it's all down hill from there.

This is how I'm feeling.

There were several things that went wrong today with my third nutritionist appointment. The first thing: that on the scale I weighed five more pounds than I did a month ago. Which means I am exactly where I was when I started this whole thing three months ago. I'm willing to give away the fact that that scale reading is not my nutritionist's fault.

And we talked about the problem of not being able to exercise--the new mandates from my physical therapist to rest for the next six-ish weeks. And I asked about cutting back on the meal plan. "What would that do for you?" she asks.

"Well, when I was on a weight maintenance plan before, in the hospital, and they realized I was gaining, they cut a grain and a fruit."

"I'm not doing that. That's not enough food," she says. "And I really think the meal plan is not a place to trim down. Let's think about extra calories elsewhere."

We talked about my weekend with my partner. The few glasses of wine. The meals out with friends. "How often do you see each other?"

"Every three weeks or so."

"So you need to start realizing that time with your friend still counts." Ummmm....what? My friend? I give her what I imagine to be a look of disbelief. "I mean, you're partner." Strike one. Is this is mistake she would make if Cat was my husband?

"I think you also need to think about not losing weight right now. I'm not comfortable with the kind of pressure that puts on you."

"But I need to not gain, either. I want to keep off the 13 pounds I've lost since January. I've gained five pounds."

"I'll give you two. You're wearing winter clothes. And you see how you're rounding up?"

Is she negotiating numbers with an eating disordered person? Like I don't remember the exact reading of the scale last time? And also, should this be up for debate? Or maybe she should address my concerns? Strike 2.

The appointment continues, though I feel like walking out the door. My left ass/hip hurts, as usual. I fidget in my seat. She takes this fidgeting as emotional discomfort. "I know it's hard," she says. "It must be so frustrating."

"I'm frustrated cause my ass hurts from walking over here with my laptop."

I'm likely her worst nightmare. But I don't have the patience. We review the meal plan. We discuss limiting alcohol consumption for the next six weeks. To nothing. Fine.

She talks about eating more vegetables. I explain that I make 1100 bucks a month and vegetables are expensive. She tells me to buy carrots. I discuss the problem of buying environmentally friendly vegetables. "Sometimes you have to trade off some of these rigid values," she says. "You don't want to paint yourself into a box." So it's either cancer and environmental deprivation or weight loss? Strike 3.

As I'm about to leave, she asks if I have change for a dollar so she can fill her parking meter. But I know the basics of baseball: a batter is only allowed three strikes. And I can see a run in her stocking.

"How to Tell Your Doctor a Thing or Two"

I love my p.t., Pam. She's always telling me the gossip in the sports world (which involves a lot of behind-the-scenes dirt on OSU's football scandals--yes, I used plural), stressing about if her football teams are going to win, and chatting about her rescue dog that is too timid for strangers. Really, my twice-weekly visits are a window into a world utterly unlike my own. So even when she kills me, causes two days of pain in the left side of hip and makes my body feel flu-like, I still can't hold it against her. She's likable.

But the doctor that she works with is a little rougher around the edges. She's hard to read. Rarely smiles. Bends me legs and stretches my hips in a matter of fact manner. She seems curt. And as a result, it's taken me awhile to open up to her. But today, I took some of my own advice from the Sociopolitical Issues in Women's Health class I teach: I "told my doctor a thing or two" (I just tried to see if the internets had a link to this foundational women's health movement pamphlet that I use in class but to no avail so you'll just have to trust me....).

She suggested an MRI. Not only am I not significantly improving, but I'm now experiencing sciatica. I pushed her. I asked how the treatment plan would change if the initial pelvic MRI were to prove something. She said complete rest. I said, "Well, given the MRI is going to cost me a $500 co-pay per slide, I would like to try the rest first". She agreed. If some of my symptoms go away, I will still need two or three more slides to see if I have another unexpected problem, like a tear that needs surgery.

Then she offered me "steroid burst" for five days. I thought for a few minutes while she stared at me expectantly. The burst would significantly help pain and inflammation. Finally, I told her I was scared of the steroids. "Why?" She asks.

"Well, I was on steroids a few years ago for some bad poison ivy and I couldn't sleep and it suppressed my immune system so much that I ended up with mono."

"Oh, yah, you won't be able to sleep. That's just a side effect. So I usually tell people to expect that and just get stuff done." Not sleeping is the worst thing for someone with an anxiety disorder like mine. In the midst of exam prep. I explained this. She said we could hold off and see how the rest does. And that some of sciatica is stress-related.

Then she asked what I do for pain. "I take an aleve sometimes, but to be honest, I'm nervous about too much pain meds."

"Why?"

"Because I had some bad internal bleeding a few years ago and I don't want to start something up again."

"What kind of internal bleeding?"

"A mallory weiss tear."

"Oh." She pauses. "What was that from?"

"I was bulimic for twelve years."

"So it was probably from that."

"Likely."

"You're not still throwing up, are you?"

"No." I could explain more here about the ups and downs of recovery but I'm exhausted. It's raining out. It's monday. And I have to go OccupytheOval at noon.

"Well, let's not have you on Aleve." She had been prescribing a high dose of aleve when I first started seeing her. Apparently, medical records don't transfer. "Let's do tylenol. Two tablets. Three times/day. And we'll change your routine with Pam."

And as I walked out, I felt like I had achieved something. I'm not taking meds I'm not comfortable with. In voicing my concern, the doc asked follow up questions pertinent to understanding my body a bit more holistically. And for now, I can hold off on an MRI and take the time to find some student loan money to cover the slides in a few months.

Perhaps today was a small victory against the medical industrial complex.

NPR: An Essential Part of a Treatment Plan

With the gentle lull of the annual begathon accompanying my meals this week, I found myself, as I was microwaving leftover lentils and rice after a late class on Wednesday, donating sixty bucks I don't have to my local NPR station.

I think my reasons are political. I think my reasons are personal. And I know that it's not a melodramatic exaggeration to say that public radio, and the people who invest their time in collecting stories and reporting injustice, have saved my life.

I didn't grow up in an NPR household--my parents are too conservative for that. But when my parents moved us from a working class mill city in Massachusetts to a burgeoning hipster city in Southern Maine, I was eating disordered. I was depressed. And I was a good writer. After taking my first journalism class my sophomore year, one my colleagues recruited me to train at our local community radio station for something called Blunt. And so for three years, I became involved with community radio public affairs: hosting shows on genocide in Central Africa, corporatizing of our city by Walmart; creating features before the days of Pro-tools and other digital editing on re-visioning of Columbus Day and Gay Proms. I fell in love with writing for radio and began to do stories of my own life. And it was one of these stories that clued in my mentor and radio advisor, Claire.

If I hadn't had a reason to write, I'm not sure how much cardiac arythmia and internal bleeding would have had to surface before anyone noticed.

It was Claire I called from the hospital my first New Year's Eve in treatment. It was Claire I introduced my first girlfriend to a few years later, when the pieces of my trauma puzzle were beginning to fit into place and I knew part of my recovery meant coming out.

And from working in Community Radio, I became an NPR addict. It's been my constant meal companion--when I'm too anxious to slow down with the food in front of me, when I'm too tired to make it through a plate, when I'm sitting with uncomfortable fullness I tell myself: make it through this one feature story. Then another. And another. Until the moment has passed.

And sometimes it takes several meals of listening for something to sink in. That war that has been consuming my entire adult life: this morning, I heard it. I had been hearing it, of course, for the past 24 hours, but today, over a breakfast burrito and coffee, I teared up. It was over. Our troops--troops we should be apologizing to--are coming home. And I felt a lightness after my meal; a changing of tides; a new story beginning to unfold.

Statement of Professor Support at OSU for Occupy the Oval

For once, I am proud to be a buckeye! Please see below:

Professors Support

Occupy the Oval

On Monday, October 24th, Ohio State students will take their place at the front of a student-led movement to Occupy the Oval.

As educators at The Ohio State University, a publicly-funded state university, we join with educators state- and nationwide who are concerned about the impact of corporate interests and privatization on our ability to provide the world-class teaching and research our students deserve.



We bear witness to...

...the exorbitant debt our students are taking on in pursuit of an education they've been told is necessary to making them competitive in a contracting job market.


...the privatization of the university’s public spaces and goods.




...continued attempts to eradicate the presence of unions from college campuses, relegating the vibrant U.S. labor movement to the pages of history textbooks.

Our students’ actions offer practical lessons in democratic citizenship.

Indeed their protest exemplifies the University's motto: Disciplina in civitatem.

Thus, we stand proudly behind our students as they seek social justice.

We stand with our students as they labor to build a civil society that reflects the interests of all people, not just the wealthy 1%.

How can educators support Occupy the Oval?

* Come to the teach-in speak out on Monday, October 24^th, 2-3pm and discuss with students your ideals for higher education


* Link course materials to the the Occupy moment taking place globally

* Connect movements from your days at university to the struggles students face today

* Debate House Resolution 365, a bill that includes forgiving student debt to stimulate the economy

* Discuss the historical precedence for the right to free assembly, protest, the privatization of public spaces, and the financialization of daily life

* Create an "intellectual scavenger hunt" connecting the themes of the Occupy moment to your course content. Book smarts meets street smarts!

More-With-Less: What Shopping at the Co-op has to do with Wallstreet Protests

I have this cookbook: a spiral-bound number made of a cardboard cover and sun-yellowed typing paper. The cover is adorned with a photo of dried beans, millet, rice, a bit of rolled out dough, making the shape of what I can assume is a dove. It's very flower-child, which is why I was surprised during college to discover it in my parents' collection of homemade church-lady cookbooks (one for every season, every church?) and Joy of Cooking tome. Then I read the subtitle: "suggestions by Mennonites on how to eat better and consume less of the world's limited food resources". Agh. So the hippies had a Jesus-angle.

Turns out, the copyright is the year of my parents' wedding, 1976. As I appropriated the book (as my mom said, "just take it, we never used it much anyway") I've found the recipes for just about every country's version of rice and beans (except, of course, from Western Europe and Scandinavia), cheese dishes from souffle to fondu to torta, stews made from peanuts, and breads from soy flour. As a strict vegetarian, this book became a God-send (thank you, Jesus!), even though there are dishes with meat ("basic meat curry" and "hamburger stew"). Because the cookbook is premised on the idea that there is limited food and a world hunger problem, the Mennonites understand that having a more plant-based diet is beneficial for stretching the world's nutritional resources.

Since then: nutritional research has blown up in the past 35 years. We now understand a plant-based diet is really beneficial for the majority of Americans who have really sedentary lifestyles (hello! I literally read and write for a living). Less heart disease, less obesity if done in a balanced way (and this cookbook leads the way in balancing proteins and grains for you!), more energy. So to know what's good for the individual body is also good for social justice makes cooking more-with-less that much more appealing.

But here's the other, really important thing about this cookbook: it gives you the opportunity to avoid corporate food sources. Recipes involve dried beans and legumes and grains like millet and barley. At the "giant" grocery store next to my apartment complex, I can barely find any of this stuff in more than a one pound/bag quantity. And it's usually in the "ethnic" food aisle. But I'm lucky. I live two blocks from The Community Market, a local food co-op. It's part of the reason I'm paying a slightly higher rent to be in the neighborhood I'm in. Once a month, I walk to the market, load up a couple totes with 60 bucks of dried bulk goods, keeping my grocery bill to 20 bucks a week the rest of the month (unless I buy wine). I haven't actually had a co-op membership before but I've realized something this week: investing in my co-op will encourage me to avoid corporate food as much as possible; it will put money back into my community and my pocket (by my getting a small percentage of the proceeds at the end of the year), and it will be one tiny thing I can do to support the Wallstreet protests.

My food politics have changed since I was an out-and-proud vegetarian (perhaps another post) but one thing remains the same since my early treatment days: I care about social justice and understand that what I consume is part of it. So this week, more-with-less is my stand in solidarity.

Occupy/Decolonize Columbus

Last night I got teary over a bottle of wine with one of my besties, watching coverage of the around the world occupy protests. I know Columbus had a strong showing; I know Chicago protestors got arrested. And I know Rome saw some violence. All of this and I'm beginning to feel like there is a movement happening, locally and globally.

And I'm frustrated. I want a response. I want to believe that I think protesting will work. As my partner pointed out to me this morning, my own jadedness is frustrating me. And in my frustration, I ate a bowl of leftover pasta too early for it to be lunch. But I kept it down. And questioned the ravenous hunger my body was telling me.

Then I thought to myself: do I have time to go downtown, even if the standing causes me physical pain for the better half of the week? I continued to read my exam material around welfare policy and feminist interventions in understanding who are actors in the policy making process (everyone!)

Then I looked up Occupy Columbus happenings. I wrote down the next protest gathering (October 24th, OSU Oval) and began to feel jaded again. When is someone in power going to respond? How many gatherings need to happen? When will peaceful gathering not be enough? And what other kinds of tactics are there?

My partner reminded me of two things (via text message on her way to show support for OccupyChicago). That I can open a credit union account and pull my money from corporate banks before November 5th as part of a worldwide effort to allow the banks to use less of my money--something I've been planning for over a year anyway but haven't done because of the logistical pain in the ass. When I looked in my planner to find a time to do this, I realized I would have to cancel one of my pool visits this week. And I got anxious. I don't want to sacrifice what little exercise I'm allowed.

Then my partner sent another text, her second reminder: "Besides, we live our lives with revolutionary principle and action".

I don't feel very revolutionary lately.

But I think my mental health relies on my doing something. So no pool on Wednesday. To the credit union.And no more using debit and credit cards for every transaction. Banks get something off of that. Cash whenever possible.

And I guess, in my own small undergraduate literature course, I can keep teaching my students about structures of oppression and hope that some of them take it upon themselves to meet me on the Oval on the 24th.

But I want us to be asking for something bigger: I don't want us to be upset, as a country, about losing a middle class lifestyle that was never environmentally sustainable anyway, that relied on oppressive gender roles of a mythic norm. I want us to decolonize. To think broadly about what equality looks like and how the banks have continued to create global inequalities. Then I want us to ask as we're standing in solidarity: what can I do about my own lifestyle? What can I do to dismantle more structures of oppression? What, in addition to the banks, is culpable?

"Occupy" Wallstreet/Decolonize Land: Why My E.D. Makes Me Care About A Forward Movment Toward Leftist Politics

So this might seem like a stretch because I am trying to blog about the process of finding balance in my 28th year, which means, for me, losing some of this weight I've put on in grad school and continuing my e.d. recovery. But I actually DO think that the "Occupy Wallstreet" movement is really important to this project and I'll try to reflect briefly here on why I think this is.

The first thing I feel when I see the protesters from my perch here in Columbus is pure, unadulterated jealousy. Beautiful weather for hanging out on the streets of NYC (even if it is stupid, smelly wallstreet) accompanied by the wafting smell of the Shake Shack Shroom Burgers in Battery Park. And the time not to experience bleary-eyed dissertation reading from the confines of a cold-war style basement bomb-shelter graduate office.

But then of course, I know this makes me sound fill-in-the-blank and bit like I'm missing the point.

And I remember the time I spent in early recovery in the anti-war protests. Standing every Friday at noon outside the post office with Women in Black, joining weekend vigils around New England and New York, which, in my memory, were always in the deepest freeze of winter. There's something about the comraderie that protests facilitate that makes focus on something as important as state-sponsored mass violence that we call wars-on-terror feel like the only important message in the world. These protests brought me outside of myself, made me feel like my letters to the editor and my contributions of NPR as a young journalist were worth something. And it's not that because I'm 28 I'm jaded now. I still think protesting is important. I still think ending this war-that's-been-happening-my-entire-adult-life is really, really important. But physically, my body protests protests. And my standing in solidarity can only be metaphorical.

And here's the bigger reason why I'm "standing" in solidarity. We need a radical left movement. Period. And this is directly related to my mental health.

Once I got past the institutionlizing and not-always-as-helpful-as-it-could-be focus of the eating disorder treatment industry, and I became healthy enough to spend time in self-reflection, I realized all of the ways that my bulimia was a really clever tool for dealing with all of the institutionalized oppression I was feeling related to class. We don't talk about class in the United States (unless, of course, we mean "saving the middle class" which is really about saving a particular heteronormative, patriarchal family ideal stemming from the mad-men-era consumer campaigns of the 1950's), but here is a small microcosm of facts as I have experienced them. Because of my class, and the way we fund public schools on property taxes, I had a dismal early education. So dismal, that not only did we not have access to things like libraries and gyms and cafeterias and after-school programs and arts education, but for a three year-period we didn't even had a building. It was condemned when slates flew off the roof.

This, in turn, made it difficult to succeed in standardized tests (a skill learned early in school and class and raced privileged as a result). It also made it difficult to develop "extra curriculars" that colleges look for to give scholarships. When time came to go to college, I went to public university where, because of poor funding, we lacked resources and internship opportunities. Because I was paying my own way, I worked three jobs.

When my medical team questioned why I was missing appointments or lapsing in treatment, I would explain my work schedule or my lack of health insurance.

And school made me bored and restless. I needed more. After graduating with minimal loans and working poverty-wage jobs (because Maine was already going through a recession), I realized that in order to get into a PhD Program, I needed to invest. So I did a MA for $50,000 of debt. I have succeeded in getting into a PhD program and anticipate entering into the relatively class-privileged field of academia. Except that, with loans between 74,000-90,000, I will have repayments of over $700/month. My partner will have the same. For which we will "pay back" a government that charged us in the first place for education that should be free. Education we got to do social justice work, work the government should be doing.

And we'll continue to only be able to eat the cheap foods--the ones produced from industrialized scraps from corporate America because good food--nutritious food--is being sold by Whole Foods, a corporation that is colonizing land for profit-making enterprise the way Europe colonized indigenous land in North America.

All this to say: we need a leftist movement. We need a government that is responsible for the well-being of its citizens: providing affordable, nutritious food, preventative healthcare, healthcare of illnesses like cancer which are a result of environmental practices of profit-making corporations, free and equal education at all levels, and a legislature free of the persuasive money of the less-than-one-percent of Americans. And until this happens, we will see Americans continue to come up with creative ways to manage institutional oppression, some of these creative ways being extremely detrimental to long-term health and wellness.

Health is not individual.

My health relies on a forward movement toward state principles of responsibility and care.

Principles of profit and exploitation hurt all of our bodies.

Thank you to the Wallstreet Protesters.

The Brunch Strategy

I have a love and hate relationship with the fact that Americans think of eating as an activity. On the one hand: why not build a whole day around brunch? On the other hand, don't we have something more meaningful to do than consume?

This weekend, my partner and I, evidently, did not. Well, perhaps that is a little harsh. We worked on our graduate work and spent time both days together walking the dogs along Lake Michigan but we also planned a whole day around that mid-morning, sweet-meets-savory weekend meal. Cat spent (likely) weeks researching our options, most of which had a one word restaurant name (Jam, Bread, Oil, Fat, Carb....) before we decided on M Henry, located in a neighborhood that would only take about 30 minutes to get to. Our morning: wake up, walk dogs, make espresso and shoot the shit with roomie, walk dogs, leave for train, walk through new neighborhood while scouting out shops to pop into afterward, EAT, visit antique shop with fantastic vintage girl scout camping canteen (which looks like this, but which I still can't justify buying even on EBay), home, work, walk the dogs.

The problem with brunch is that it's trying to count for two meals, I often eat enough for three, and then am hungry for the second meal only a few hours later because I ate a bunch of sugar and salt and then over-caffeinated.

But here's what I've realized after my weekend with Cat that makes brunch successful. We share everything. We go out to eat, we order family style, we don't keep track of how much of what we consume, we just eat and enjoy and wait for fullness.

So when it comes to looking at the brunch menu, we choose a sweet dish (berry blast pancakes!) and a savory one (peasant quiche with green salad!) and swap back and forth until our waiters have returned to fill our water glasses a third time and are dizzy from our passing of plates. Why does this work? Why does this keep us from eating too much? Because we drink water between our switches, to clear our palates. Because switching itself takes time, which slows us down. Because knowing you are sharing food with someone adorable across the table makes you think about what you're leaving for them, causing you to take more balanced bites (not eating all the cherry tomatoes and buttery quiche crust). And you emerge from brunch satisfying your sweet tooth and your lean protein needs. Not to mention: you've slowed down and made an occasion out of a meal. Thirty bucks poorer, you make it to the train with only half a day ahead of you to waste on work.

Kickin' It

The wind outside today made some less-hearty buckeyes wear gloves and scarfs but those of us from New England know better: this is just fall. With the sun bright, the grass dewy, and a hodge-podge of undergrads, I participated in a kickball tournament to raise money for the Dave Thomas Adoption foundation. I was recruited by my PhD colleague, an adoptee herself and an adoption scholar who knows I am always game. Physical Therapy warnings and all.

The following is what I am feeling right now:

The outside of both hips is sore.
The top part of my quads feel like led.
My nose is runny--allergies or on-coming cold?
I committed five hours to kickball when I should have been reading conference abstracts.
Adoption is important.
States should let all kinds of families adopt (read: queer families, however they may come).
There should be a federal law against adoption discrimination.
Adoption is tricky.
We need to pay more attention to kids in foster care. Period.
We need to stop making money off of kids in Korea and China (my adoption scholar friend calls this the Adoption Industrial Complex) and provide the resources people need for parenting everywhere.
We should probably think through, as a culture, what is really needed to parent.
Wendy's chili was a surprisingly good lunch.

Today was one of those days where I probably sacrificed physical health for mental. And I can't say I regret it just yet--as I put on another pot of coffee to get started on my work of the day.

The First Nutritionist Follow Up

Today's the day I realized I can't actually do this without my nutritionist.

It's my first appointment since the project began. I felt heat run through my body as I entered the waiting area, flushed and nauseous. It has taken me a few years to pay attention to the changes in my body as it enters different social spaces and I'm not always the most adept at it but today, the change was immediate. I thumbed through a magazine (seven articles of clothing, 31 spring looks!), took some deep breaths (that scarf looks stupid as a belt, let's be honest--but as a sarong shirt, fabulous!) and tried to think through my body's reaction.

I know I feel like I've been failing the project. Last night, while flea-bombing my apartment, I hung out with two of my besties, sharing a six-pack and some cheetos and watching their dvr. The night before, I ate an extra bowl of cereal to ward off a binge. I was seeing extra calories everywhere I looked. I had not had a perfect day and since I came back from Chicago and I don't have an excuse. I control my cooking. I control my exercise. I felt like the appointment was a surveillance. I felt like the appointment would be a treatment-style battalion where all of my failures would come to the fore-front. And I think there's still a small part of me that believes, eventually, some day, I will end up back where I started ten years ago.

Of course, it wasn't like that. We sat and talked about the last few months. She was practical. She was compassionate. She said that not having eating disordered behavior is all she wanted from me. That weight maintenance would have been great, too. That losing the weight was only secondary.

I argued with her. I pointed out my physical therapist's concerns.

She pointed out I was over the hardest part. That this idea of beating myself up over a few beers was eating disordered.

We worked with my tendency to move around pieces of my meal plan. Eating Disordered. My feelings of not being able to exercise hard enough. Eating Disordered. The realities of my not being able to afford the foods I need. Not Eating Disordered.

"But what if it doesn't work?"

"It will."

"What if it stops working?"

"Then we'll deal with that."

"What if it's not working now?"

"Let's see."

She pulls out the scale. We talk about my not weighing myself alone anymore. Only in her office.
I kick off my doc martins. My body flushes as I step up. Five pounds down.

"That's not fast enough." I say. "I'm behind my weight goals."

"Get rid of those. The body doesn't work like that." Eating Disordered.

My body: a (sometimes) walking freak show

This is the scene:

I'm laying on my stomach. A middle-aged, energetic lady athlete with a blonde ponytail and those athlete-khakis and track jacket, is standing above me to the left, one hand on the bottom of my foot, the other hand behind my knee. She's slowly lifting my leg off the physical therapy table. "Do you feel that?"

"No."

"That?"

"No."

"How bout that?" There is a slight surprise in her voice.

"No." There is a slight annoyance in mine.

"Come here," she calls to her two P.T. interns, wearing those same athlete-khakis. "Take that leg." She motions toward my right leg. "Now lift it like this."

One of the interns takes my foot, bend my leg, and begins to lift. My belly stays flat on the table. The second intern stands by head, hands on her hips, poker-faced.

"Do you feel that?" asks boy-intern holding my foot.

"No."

"That?"

"No."

"I wish I could bend like that," says girl-intern, moving closer to the other end of the table, so to get a better look.


"If you could," say my P.T., "you would have her problem and not be able to walk." She pauses, readjusting her hand against the laces of my shoe. "And this? How to you feel here?" I can feel the sole of my shoe gently graze the back of my neck.

"There's a little pull, I guess." I say this because I don't want them to think I'm a total freak. Girl-intern gasps.

"Were you in gymnastics?"

I did two years once a week at the Y when I was in elementary school. I don't tell her this. It's not the answer she's looking for. I wasn't training. I was standing in line waiting for my turn to do a hand stand on the uneven bars while my sister braided my hair. I'm not an athlete.

But that information came as a surprise, evidently, as I walked into campus yesterday for a quick swim before spending my evening with one of my besties watching the Housewives.

"You must be an athlete." A black gentleman around my age speeds up to meet my stride. I mention he's a man of color here because it has only ever been men of color who compliment me on my body, with one exception in my memory. When I was early in treatment and a bit under-weight, I was forced to take a college Health class, which required a 3-day a week "lab" in the fitness center. Despite my treatment team's phone calls to the school to get a medical exception (I was out of my first hospitalization for only a few weeks when I had to begin these "labs") and then a disability accommodation, the school didn't budge. I had to be in the gym but I would only be required to walk laps for 45 minutes (counting laps is really excellent for anyone prone to compulsive exercise). Once a week, one of the personal trainers would join me on my laps. One week, having read my charts, this thirty-something white guy asked me "Why do you do it?"

"Do what?" I ask.

"You don't need to lose weight. Your body is perfect just the way it is."

I ignored him. He pulled my arm. "Hey. Look at me. It's really fine the way it is."

I kept my pace and gazed at my feet. He was an idiot. My body was not fine the way it was. My heart beat irregularly. I had internal bleeding that was still not under control and my electrolytes needed constant monitoring. But that's fine. Judge away.

Back to yesterday, walking to the gym: "You must be an athlete," the gentleman repeats. I wasn't sure he was talked to me.

"Huh?"

"Your legs are huge!" I'm at a loss for words but I don't break my stride.

"Yah, well..." I shrug. Is there an appropriate response here? Thanks?

"No! It's not bad. They look really powerful." I glance down. My jeans are loose and holey and partially covered by my trench coat. "Do you work out?"

"Yes."

"What do you do?"

"Swim."

"You must be fast. Are you fast?" Here's the thing. I don't really swim. I got to the pool and spend thirty minutes practicing laps.

"No."

"I bet you're fast." I keep walking. "You look good." And just like that, he breaks his stride with me and turns right toward the bus stop.

And I'm left, my big, slow, bendy legs carrying me through the rain.

Spinning My Wheels, Syncing My Breath

This will likely sound like the cliched lifetime movie I wrote in my last post. But I'm wrestling with numbers again. In terms of the "Project 28" itself as a weight-loss project, I feel like I'm spinning my wheels a little bit. I keep going back and forth with the same three pounds and I'm beginning to become discouraged.

I've seen other progress. I've never been much of a swimmer but when I started swimming laps in early Spring, I could barely get my body to do one--my coordination was off, my muscles weak, my breathing out of sync. Two days ago, getting in the pool for the first time since Chicago, I swam ten laps without stopping. I can't do the cool looking turn-around-thingy other people in the pool do but at least I am getting a momentum. Swimming is a lot different than any other exercise I've done. You can't listen to music. You can't read. You can't really do it socially (in the sense of carrying on a conversation). It's thirty minutes of nothing but me with my body. And in that way, it feels like a gift.

So I'm trying to focus on that right now and not get too caught up in the frustrations of losing weight. And I'm trying to come to terms with the fact that I may never reach any sort of doctor-prescribed ideal. In fact, this whole project might just fail in the weight-loss category. And if it does, how am I going to deal with that? How am I going to insist, against the medical industry, that I am healthy? And what if, at the end of the project, I'm not healthy?

The Eating Disorder Melodrama--or Why I Will Always Watch a Lifetime Movie with Hunger in the Title

After a week of moving hell, Cat and I finally got settled in Chicago and got our internet installed just in time for her to spend the next day at a Grad School orientation. Which meant: I am alone in an apartment with the World Wide Web. Given that I was in a new city with plenty more neighborhoods to explore, I might have found myself cafe and museum hopping. But nope. It was kind of grey outside. I was a little achey. And I had the internet for the first time in over a week. I could have caught up on my news sources--Huffington Posting myself out and actually figuring out what is happening on the Syrian Lebanese border. But nope.

I went to hulu. And what did I find on the front page of their "movies" section? A list of lifetime movies. Usually, lifetime movies I could take or leave but what I really truly love is a good eating disorder melodrama. It's probably some really fucked up subconscious identity relation thing that pulls me to click on the link "Hunger Point". But here's my rule of thumb about these things: if it is a two word title and one of the words is "hunger", I am basically going to give up everything for the following two hours.

I was in luck this time. The cast involved Christina Hendricks (of Madmen fame) in 2003, playing the older sister (and main character) of a woman who eventually dies from her anorexia. And of course, Hendricks is the "fat and sensible" character, the foil, who, in her grief, dabbles with bulimia before their father catches her over the toilet and says "I can't lose you, too". And just like that, her eating disorder is gone. And she gets a middle-class job after losing waitressing jobs for the past few years (this film is obviously made in the doe-eyed years before the recession) and, lucky her, finds a man who loves her. It's all heterosexual utopia. It's all predictable. And yet the hospital scenes with her sister on the eating disorder ward are strikingly realistic--the fidgeting of the patients creating a mis-en-scene reminiscent of my treatment days.

Here's the thing. I know these movies are TERRIBLE. They play on cultural fears of mental illness. They still promote images of true health as a heterosexual, reproducing female body whose adolescence is stolen from her in her pursuit of thinness. And I don't believe eating disorders have much to do with body image. I don't believe that surveillance technologies of mainstream e.d. clinics are effective. And I actually don't believe that there is "recovery" in a utopian "I've found my authentic self and now I don't have a problem" way.

But just like I watch the L Word for queer representation even though there are a myriad of problems with representation on the show (perhaps another entry) as a way to escape the heterosexual-everywhere of the world we live in, I watch these Lifetime dramas as way to escape the ableist-everywhere. I believe mental illness is illness and is best understood as a kind of disability. I believe that we need to accommodate and not expect utopic transformations (does everyone in a wheelchair eventually get up to walk? maybe in lifetime movies...) of people with all sorts of mental illness. We need to think about diversity as accommodation and inclusion, not assimilation. And while lifetime gets representation of mental illness, eating disorders included, wrong so much of the time, there's also something to be said for the moments they get right--the defeated-looking therapist when approached with pro-ana website material; the older sister who, despite her best efforts to understand her sister's world, still fails in her offer of half a sandwich to her sister; the minute movements of patients in the clinic who attempt to subvert surveillance at any cost. Perhaps lifetime melodrama isn't always the most effective way to approach mental health representation but it begs the question: effective for what? And how do we read it? And what do we get out of it?

When Cat got home from orientation, I told her what I watched. She rolled her eyes. We made dinner. I felt relaxed for the first time in a week as we fell into bed.

A Good Guiness and Chicago Crooks

There's something about being surrounded by an igloo of brown U-haul boxes that makes a Guiness taste like holy water. Well, maybe not, but it is a welcome bite at the end of a long series of evenings holed up in a comfort inn with retired- in-laws while apartment-hunting, lawyer-hunting, and bathroom-crying.

Cat and I thought our move from Boston to Columbus was possibly the worst a move could get between severe poison ivy that required emergency room visits and steroids, mono, a broken down truck in upstate new york, and a pair of movers recently released from prison on a felony charge. But the thing about that last move: at the end of it all, we had a place to lay our heads.

This time around, our health has been remarkably good, by comparison.

It took nine and half hours to drive caravan with Cat's parents to Chicago (it's usually a six hour drive). I drove most of the way in the Uhaul (I gave Cat a two hour leg with her still-new license) despite my physical therapist warning against it. At the end, my hips felt as if knives were searing through from the outside while pinching ants were attacking from the inside. When we gps-ed our way to the new apartment and got out of the car, I could barely stand. But I thought: we will unload quickly, grab a pizza, then sleep. Then its over. The three months of moving will be over. I felt like what I imagine the Boston Marathon runners feel when they hit Heartbreak Hill.

As we jimmyed the front gate open, ascended the stairs, and saw our first glance of home, we felt relieved. Then we turned on the kitchen sink to give the dogs water and it sprayed all over the floor. The fawcet was not connected. The tub had blue paint-tape x's over the jets. There was a dead christmas tree on the postage-stamp-sized deck. We started counting the myriad of other maintenance problems when Cat realized this wasn't even the right layout. The apartment had been switched.

We found out later this is a common scam in Chicago by leasing agencies. We drove away. We called the person who had shown the apartments. He didn't know what happened. We should talk to closing. We called them. We had signed the lease--they said--so you need to talk to the property manager. We went to the office the next morning, which was Friday. The property manager was out of town until Tuesday. We left a message. We found out about free legal services through Northwestern, where Cat is starting grad school. We sent them a message. But they are free, and not in until September 20th.

Meiver, our roomie, woke early and made a list of Craiglist apartments to follow up on from her home in Boston.

Cat got a call from the property manager: there's not another apartment in the building but they are evicting two families in mid-September: do we want to be on the list for those?

Our dogs are costing us 30 extra bucks a night to stay in the Comfort Inn. Which they think is fine--in fact, they might actually prefer the funky smelling carpets of the hotel to the hardwood floors of our apartments.

I made appointments.
A condo-owner took pity on us. Cat's dad offered up the security deposit.
We moved in the next day.

Tuesday, Cat and I went back to the office. Property manager was out, showing apartments. Can we come back later?

I sat firm and said we would wait.

Twenty minutes later: He'll be back at 1:30. Great. We'll get lunch and return.

Property Manager is all "there's not much we can do, you signed the lease" and "I've lost time showing this apartment"
Me: "We've lost nearly 2000 bucks and you have first month's rent"
Cat: "We just want out of the lease right now"
PM: "Well, I don't know what I can do"
Me, impatiently: "Here's the thing. We have already been in touch with a lawyer from Northwestern and they think we have a case of misrepresentation so we can either take care of this now or"
PM: Slams his chair back: "That's it. I can't talk to you." Puts his hands in the air. "The second you mention a lawyer, I have to talk to my lawyer. And this is going to get messy. I was going to let you out of the lease but now I can't do that because you brought a lawyer into this"
Cat: "Just let us out of the lease so we don't need to bring in legal services"

He leaves. He's a big white dude the size of my father, the age of me. I think I really fucked things up with my bravado. Cat reminds me its all a performance in masculinity. Right. She's calm. My palm's are sweating. For her, this is research.

But I know the money terrifies her. All of her savings--gone.

Eventually, he comes back, sweetly, with a lease release. It says nothing about not being able to ask for our money back later. We take notes and pictures and photocopies for our meeting with the lawyer. We feel success, even if only partial.

I haven't been able to walk for days.

Exercising in our igloo of boxes is almost impossible. Our days have no routine. I can only try to get as much movement as possible as we scrub, paint, and unpack.

And the guiness: a bitter, biting ending to a bitter, biting week.

The Weight Number and E.D. Utopic Rhetoric

I am convinced that we all have one. An ideal. A less-than-ideal. A "I have become that guy" number. But perhaps I am wrong. Perhaps some Americans go about the world without even thinking about it. But with every other news story being related to "America's Obesity Epidemic" (talk about a misuse of the term epidemic), I have a hard time believing that even the most well-adjusted conscious consumer doesn't have a set of numbers shelved in the back of their subconscious, retrieved every once in awhile when insecurities come knocking.

When I went to my first nutritionist appointment in July, she asked if I had a number. She asked after we talked about my eating disorder medical records. I knew the "right" answer. "No," I said. "I would like to lose between 20-30 pounds because I think I would be healthier and closer to my weight range but I don't think my body will ever fit into the weight range doctors prescribed. I think my body will decide where it wants to be." She nodded in approval. This is what an eating disordered person in remission would say.

I don't believe this. But as a health conscious person, as a person seeking balance, as an academic who focuses the bulk of my research on the Women's Health Movement and the Disability Movement (including the anti-institutionalization movement), I want to believe this is true. I want to trust that my body knows something that the rest of me doesn't. But I actually think this kind of rhetoric is a utopic metaphor. I don't believe my body has a separate set of knowledge from my brain--the two work together and are also the same thing. Panic attacks are a great moment to realize how much the two are actually the same.

My partner-- an athlete, a radical lefty, a visual culture theorist-- recently got on a scale herself after six months of krav maga training. She confided that she was surprised that she weighed the most she ever has. After a few days, she followed up: "I decided I am just going to embrace it. I'm healthy." Which is true. But the medical charts would likely tell her to lose weight (those bmi models were created during the depression to regulate starvation and have not been updated since--yet we are basing an "obesity epidemic" on them).

Cat, the most balanced person I know, has a set of numbers. She doesn't fixate on them. She doesn't base her self-worth on them. But when she hits some sort of "oh shit" number, she takes some time to adjust. And I think following a "trust your body, it will do it's thing" model, which is a utopic premise reiterated like a mantra at many eating disorder clinics (including the one where I spent two years), ignores important cultural meanings that need to be thoughtfully contested. Numbers exist. The same medical industry that mainstream eating disorder treatment centers are pandering so hard to in order to be considered legitimate are emphasizing diagnostic models based on numbers. And while clinicians base much of their praxis following medical industry protocol, they are telling their patients that numbers don't matter. This is one way the medical industry is maintaining its control.

What happens to an industry's power when individuals question numbers, hold numbers accountable for representing well-being as opposed to ignoring them? Where is the balance between the practical reliance on numbers and the body/brain knowledge?

The Emergency Cookie

Those close to me (I won't name names, but you know who you are) don't believe the following is a real recipe. But it works. I swear. It actually came from my aunt, who bakes constantly for church and does mini-catering for funerals and other church events. I have relied on this recipe when in a pinch for years.

1 cup peanutbutter
1 cup sugar
1 egg
Makes 12 cookies. Bake at 350 for ten minutes-ish.

This is what I like about this recipe: you probably always have the ingredients in your cupboard. It also only makes 12 regular-size cookies, which means they won't hang around the house too long. And unlike the pre-made dough that you can buy and slice and make one or two cookies at a time if you so wish, this is cheap.

When my nutritionist was asking me last month a little bit about my eating disorder history and how I ended up in the hospital, she asked if I had any "binge foods". My response: "I was purging 5-6 times a day for a couple of years by the time I was in the hospital, so I would say everything." Her response: "So it was just a lifestyle."

This is true. It was a lifestyle. But it is also true that there are some kinds of foods that affect our brain chemistry in a way that makes it either hard to stop eating them (because they don't make us feel full, because, as with sugar and caffeine, they have some addictive qualities) or hard to keep down (because they make you feel too full--they are greasy, heavy, or cause indigestion). Just as bodies react to alcohol differently, each body as its own way of responding to food combinations. When I was just beginning recovery, I wanted to make my space a safe zone so I was careful about what I kept in my cupboards (hard to do with roommates, but that is why I always had roommates who I was completely "out" about my disorder with--being out was a prevention in itself). This meant no snack food, ever.

As I got more confident in my recovery, I became more lax and tortilla chips and salsa and pbr became a staple in my fridge (I always wanted something to offer when people came over). Once I started dating my partner, I would say our cupboards became "normal"--Cat likes to keep one salty and one sweet snack stocked (we are on a budget so our snack food is at a minimum). But cookies are something that she LOVES (that, and ice cream). So we often don't keep them in the house because they risk getting eaten too quickly. If we want them, we go to a cafe or an ice cream shop.

So last night, Cat and I are sitting on the couch watching Spike Lee's 1986 film debut and I needed cookies like it was going out of style. I had been busy helping a friend with her new baby all day and packing boxes for her and had completely missed lunch. So even though I ate my other snacks and two meals, I still had missed a substantial amount of food. At first I thought it would just even out over the next few days but around nine o'clock, I was ravenous and craving. The up side: I knew exactly what I wanted.

Enter: the emergency cookie recipe.

Even with our food split between two houses (turns out, the baking sheet was also in the new apartment, which meant I had to bake the cookies in muffin tins), we had the stuff for cookies. Twenty minutes later, I satisfied my craving. And made the house smell phenomenal.

No binging. No scavenging. No regrets.

On Gear-Heads and Common Sense

Yesterday my partner appeared, adorably (as usual), at my apartment door with a pack of tennis balls and two small wooden rackets ala 1960's (we think). Three dollars spent at goodwill. We had an evening of hilarity at a tennis court that is a thirty minute walk (along a river bike trail) from my house. I was proud of myself because I had made gym plans earlier in the day and when she arrived just before lunchtime with our new equipment, I was able to let go of my "routine" for another activity. This flexibility is key for me because of my history of compulsive over-exercise. My nutritionist advised that as long as my activity is around 30 mins/day, I don't have to worry so much about what I am doing to get my heart-rate up and my muscles moving. This is a relief because given my chronic pain and mobility issues in my hips, a lot of repetitive exercise is off-limits. Because neither of partner or I is an actual tennis player, I wouldn't say the tennis playing itself was much of a workout but combined with the sixty minute walk, I would say it was successful movement. But here's the other thing I realized: I liked having the outlandishly old equipment. And here's why.

Experts are always saying that the key to losing weight and getting healthy is finding exercise that you like doing. I'm personally finding that the other key is finding something not excruciatingly painful. But I know I find myself a little less willing to learn new physical things as I I get older because I'm self-conscious about my body and my coordination. My family never had the money to invest in dance classes or karate and my neighborhood (a working-class, working-poor neighborhood in urban Massachusetts) didn't offer much by way of sports teams. And of course, with the budget cuts in the early 1990's, we had no phys ed in school and for a time, no playground. Needless to say, my physical skills are limited.

It took a few years with a phenomenal anti-racist, anti-classist feminist therapist in Boston (who is against participating in DSM diagnosis) to figure out that part of what was keeping me from learning new physical things was a feeling that if you don't have the advantage to learn something early on, you shouldn't do it. It's not available for you. And this is one way, I think, class oppression continues across generations. It's not just in how much material wealth we have, but in how much we feel opportunities to learn new things (intellectual, physical) are available to us as adults. My parents, for instance, haven't taken a class unrelated to work for as long as I can remember. Anyway, I broke this cycle in Boston. I took my first dance class from one of my grad school besties who studies Middle Eastern dance. I was atrocious. But I moved. And I got to show off my flexibility, even when my coordination was suspiciously absent entirely. I also signed up for university yoga classes. I had been doing yoga since being involved in a high school yoga club (which functioned as a lunch time catch all for all the new kids who had no friends--I had just moved from MA to Maine) but did most of my learning through books and dvds because I felt classes were too expensive. I got in a little bit of a rut again when I moved to Ohio but the four months of Krav Maga classes with my partner this winter helped me dig my way out of the "undeserving" mindset again.

I think I've gotten a little off-track. Here's the thing about gear-heads and playing with old tennis rackets that I'm trying to get at. The idea that you need expensive special equipment to be involved in sports is not only materialist and ridiculous, but it actually functions as a form of class oppression. I led girl scouts on hiking and camping trips around Alaska in a three-year-old pair of 60 dollar LL Bean boots. I've hiked all over Germany in doc martins that I waitressed in for six years. 3 dollar pajama pants work for yoga (or, if you are in your living room, your underwear). You can bike in sweatpants. Goodwill tennis rackets are fine. This isn't to say that biking shorts that wisk away sweat aren't nice, that smartwool socks that cushion hiking boots aren't helpful, that yoga shorts themselves don't help when you reach a certain level of balancing postures (fabric can be impeding). But unless you are training, you don't need stuff to work out. You need company. You need to replace your running shoes every 6-12 months (regardless of how much you pay for them). You need to pump up your bike tires (my bike was bought used from a fabulous Boston organization Bikes Not Bombs and has been running great for years. My bike pump cost me six bucks).

I went to college in the mountains in Maine. There's a certain subset of people who hike who are obsessed with the lightest gear, the most high tec gortex boots, and wool hats that have specific branding emblazoned across the front. These people profess that its dangerous to go out without specific kinds of gear. The problem with this is that it make mountains feel off-limits to a whole class of people. What's dangerous is going out without common sense and a water bottle.

Two days ago, I was walking from the pool to the locker room in my one piece red flowered swimsuit that I purchased as a first-summer camp counselor when I was 18. A twelve year old waiting with her little brother said to me: "That's a pretty swimsuit. Where did you get your tattoo?" And pointed to my back. And I thought to myself: all I need to workout is my body.