Now, I'm not sure which one it is, but in this mouth, there is a sweet tooth...
Although I've been settling for 7/11 snacks (p.s. Life in Thailand revolves around 7/11 - they cover the country like Starbucks in NYC and are where I pay for my electricity, purchase water, anddd get credit for my phone), I have to say, they've got some mean ice cream cones - all for pennies! I'm sorry, but it is the recession and there is freakin' chocolate in the bottom of the cone! Tell me that's not delicious!
Jokes about ice cream and Dewberry cookie fantasies aside, we don't often think about how many decisions we make each day about food, yet, from morning until midnight snacks, we are constantly making choices about what we eat, when, and why. The shenanigans part for me is that somewhere on the journey from dysfunctional teen to now, an emotional baggage component latched on to this decision calculus and sabotaged any element of normal eating behavior. Baggage, I've learned, that can start off as simple calorie counting and evolve into a lifetime of abnormal eating.
I am writing about this because I've recently started to see how common disordered eating is and the feeling of being alone in this struggle has been lessening, a little (we do tend to always feel alone in our endeavors - carrying the weight of the world on our backs as we stumble to overcome the challenges life hands us, don't we?). It was while laying on the beach in one of the most beautiful places in Thailand, a place where you shouldn't have a care in the world, that a friend of mine joked with me that she had always considered herself the type of "beer goggles mistake" that leaves a hook up ("hook up": referring to the other person involved, not the event - to clarify and maintain the structural integrity of this sentence) wondering the morning after, "What the hell happened last night?". I laughed while shooting back, "Me too!", thinking about the shell of makeup and alcohol that allows us to feign self confidence. It took a second for the the seriousness of her confession to sink in; this girl, someone who I consider one of the most beautiful people I have ever met, was harboring a massive insecurity. In my mind, I was wondering, "How is it possible that someone, who I consider absolutely gorgeous, can feel like this?"
It absolutely blew my mind that she had the same thoughts as I, not the hook up thing (event this time, not the person - haha), but concerning her self image. For me, I've known for a long time that instead of getting over my hang ups about food that emerged as a teenager, I've only gotten worse, but I'm only starting to understand that my insecurities, taking form in disordered eating, are not abnormal. When we think about eating disorders, many people's minds immediately jump to an image of a 14 year old gawky teen who skips lunch and calls herself fat, but the reality is that disordered eating isn't isolated to high school kids, but develops across all demographics - even in the 20 to 30 age range - during our "mother fucking decades!" (as I refer to them).
Turns out, there isn't an expiration date for self consciousness. There isn't a magic age we reach where we have it all figured out. When I was doing that whole community organizing thing, I was working alongside women, 60 +, who, in between our phone calling and political discussions, would communicate their insecurities, their disordered eating patterns, and their struggles. We connected over it. We understood one another because their concerns and irregularities were the same as mine. One of my favorite volunteers, a 67 year old with a firecracker personality, would use her volunteer hours to gush to me about "gentlemen friends who were only interesting in sex", her daily trials and tribulations, and her struggles with anorexia, divorce, children, loss, depression, and love. It was through these pseudo therapy sessions (therapy for us both), that she helped me to realize that we don't wake up one day with our lives together; we don't have some "eureka" moment when we understand how to love ourselves. Instead, we are constantly redefining our lives and searching for what "works" - learning how to love.
When it comes to food, too many of us have tumultuous relationships with the stuff. I sometimes wish I could be a character in Brave New World, just taking pills and being regulated without any of the real emotional stuff! For as this volunteer divulged her self esteem and eating issues, I was sent down memory lane to the emergence of my own struggles. I remember, as a "tween", having my mom talk to me about how her life was shaped by, well, shape. She claimed that one of the hardest things she went through, when she was young, was "being fat". She would repeatedly tell my sister and I about how quitting ballet and taking up the hobby of baking had contoured her life in a literal and figurative way. Additionally, she believed that she could protect us from this painful path by obsessing over our own eating and weight, repeating, "bodies are beautiful", without knowing how to love her body either. Thus, nature and nurture culminated in a twenty something who can't be 8 years old when it comes to food.
When I moved to Thailand, I thought that rice and green tea would finally make me look like a skinny Thai girl without curves or meat on my body of any kind, but unemployment and a partier's heart put me on the fast track to a beer belly with no money for climbing. Moving here was fantastic for me, but different, as Phuket is not an active place in the same way that Flagstaff, Arizona is active. I used to ride my bike nonstop in Arizona, walk everywhere, hike constantly, trek to the climbing gym, and then climb all afternoon. However, in Thailand, my bicycle was traded for a motorbike, there is no "urban trail" system between my house and work, and with the exception of climbing, my activities began to diminish. On top of that, eating out in Thailand is cheaper than cooking for yourself, therefore, "family dinners" with climbers and an organic food store catering to my binges on berries instead of ice cream were replaced by junk food and restaurant portions. I felt trapped in foreign waters and a downward spiral.
With my first teaching pay check, I decided I needed to make some changes. I signed up for a membership at a local gym, a month before my birthday, thinking to myself that 23 years old is too old to not love yourself. I started getting active again - doing yoga, running, lifting weights, getting in more weekends of rock climbing, but without much change to my negative self perception. I got stronger and I ran faster, but I still felt ashamed of myself and how I looked. I was trying to fit the mold of what I wanted to look like, what I felt I should look like, but with my emotions contingent on a scale with growing numbers, I reverted back to obsessive calorie counting, calculating meals versus exercise output, cutting various foods from my diet, then messing up and binging, followed by purging, more binging, then purging again. Ugh, what a spiral!
In my head, I was shouting, "Why can't I be normal? Why can't I just eat what I want to eat, exercise because I want to - not because I'll feel guilty if I don't, and look good?" I felt more and more out of control. I was like this exercise cookie monster - a bad version of myself, where I couldn't stop beating myself up for not looking a certain way, but kept on binging without knowing how to quit. Can't stop, won't stop.
I've got a sugar tooth. I've got some baggage to work through. I'm writing about this, because I used to think that I was just screwed up, that too many years of disordered eating had piled up - fluctuating back and forth between low points and "better", that I was alone in this journey to "get right" with food. However, I'm learning that it is normal to be abnormal, which is fucked up, but comforting, because - 1. It means that it is not just me going through this and 2. I realize that it is something that I can conquer. I'm not destined to end up like my favorite volunteer, a fantastic woman, but someone who has let food struggles define her life, not just as a twenty something, but beyond our mother fucking decades, to the present. I don't have to be like my mom, still fighting ghosts from a lifetime past. I don't want to be like that. I don't want to wallow in self hate. I don't want to look back on my existence and see a girl who let disordered eating define her. So many of us have stories like this and it is unsettling, but despite the normality of abnormal eating, there are many people who have made the transition from disordered eating to healthy living in both mind and body. There are success stories that conclude this tale and it starts with stopping the comparison, in taking a second to appreciate the magic of our bodies - despite what we look like or don't look like, the number on the scale, or the size of jeans you squeeze into, and redefining our relationship with food.
I'm not a monster, I'm just at war with myself, searching for "me" between fat and skinny. Though a long way from normal, I'm staying active, abstaining from 7/11 ice cream (though not making rules against it), and trying to work towards being healthy. It is through acknowledging my struggle that I hope to alter my negative relationship with eating and have my fights with food look more like cafeteria food-fights. (I think they might be a little bit more fun.) I don't have all of the answers and the journey remains unclear, but I'm working to break the cycle of my past, keep all of my teeth, and look forward with optimism, motivation, and love. Fortunately, for loving myself, I can read of the ingredients - it contains a little bit of forgiveness and a little bit of "one step at a time".
http://mypurposefullife.wordpress.com/2011/10/12/health-by-the-numbers/ (My friend, Laura, has been writing an amazing blog about her own struggles with disordered eating. It is informative and inspirational.)
I love your comment about "not being able to eat like an eight year old," those could be some of the truest words ever spoken!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment, Charlie. Fellow 8 year old :)
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