Hide and Seek

I’ve been adjusting various things in my life lately, and over the last week or so I have realized how much I hide from life.  I hide from moving forward, I hide from trying new things, I hide from so many things, and what I do to hide varies depending on what else I’m doing or not doing.

A few weeks ago, I decided that I was drinking FAR too much.  I had gotten to the point that I wasn’t sure if it was a full-blown addiction or just a habit, but I decided to find out.  I read somewhere that it takes an average of 3 weeks to establish a new habit, so I decided to quit drinking for 3 weeks and see what happened to my body and mind.  I printed out a blank calendar to mark off the days, because otherwise after about the 4th day of doing anything new I always think, “I’ve been doing this FOREVER, I can take a day off!”  Ahem.  I knew that there were a couple of days during that 3-week period when I’d probably have a drink or two with friends: there were a couple of birthdays and a trip home, but outside of that I decided I wasn’t going to drink.  And I didn’t.

The first thing I realized was that I really didn’t miss it - it was more like I wasn’t sure what ELSE to do when I got home.  So I started drinking water.  And lo and behold, after a day or two of that, I noticed that I was THIRSTY when I got home.  The thirst wasn’t new - it was the fact that I recognized it that was new.  Basically, I’d been drinking out of habit, and because I was thirsty.  (Note to self: drinking alchohol is NOT an effective hydration method.  Geez.) 

I was feeling pretty good about the whole thing; like maybe what I was dealing with was less an addcition than a compulsion, and I feel better equipped to manage a compulsion.  After about 10 days though, I noticed that I was feeling sort of tired and rundown during the day.  I looked around for what had changed and realized that although I wasn’t drinking, my sugar consumption had gone through the ROOF.  I was having sugar hangovers every day, and was constantly tired.

So I decided I needed to quit eating so much freakin’ sugar.  I wasn’t going to go to the calendar-mairking method (because I was still working on the not-drinking bit), but I just thought I’d decide to cut back on it.  The first thing I noticed was that I was CRAVING sugar, and not drinking got a LOT harder.  I gutted it out for about 4 days (why is 4 my magic number?) and then felt lots better.  Whew!

But . . . about 4 days after THAT, I started feeling like crap again.  WTF??  So I went back and looked at my behaviors, and guess what?  I wasn’t drinking, I was eating more “normal” amounts of sugar, but . . . I’d started staying up about 2 hours later than I normally do, and I was doing it consistently.  About that time, my 3 weeks of no drinking were up, and the first night after that, for the first time I REALLY WANTED a drink.  I didn’t have one, but the next couple of nights I wanted sugar.  Then back to the weird bedtimes.

I was thinking about it over the weekend.  Sunday I had all this stuff I wanted to do, but Saturday I had a couple of drinks and ate a bunch of cake.  So Sunday I had a sugar hangover like I couldn’t BELIEVE, and I only got about 2 things done (out of the 5 or 6 I’d wanted to do).  But I had an interesting realization on Sunday, while I was giving myself the “why-do-you-do-this-to-yourself” speech: I’m not really after the alcohol, or the sugar, or the late-night  television shows.  I’m after the exhaustion that keeps me from accomplishing anything else.  It’s been totally unconscious until now, but I’ve been hiding all this time behind the physical exhaustion that comes with those behaviors.

See, if I’m exhausted, I don’t have to do anything.  I can write recipes for my cookbook tomorrow, I can see my friends tomorrow, I can run errands tomorrow.  Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow.  And in the meantime, I don’t have to face any of my fears.  If I haven’t written any recipes, then the cookbook can’t be submitted, and if the book can’t be submitted, then I CAN’T FAIL at getting it published, because I never really tried.

I’ve spent most of my life looking for ways to avoid trying, so that I didn’t have to fail.  Maybe that’s common to over-acheivers, or to those of us that fall under the “gifted” category (whatever the hell that means).  I’ve also spent most of my life looking for ways to silence the voices in my head that beat me up for not trying.  Frankly, if I’m tired enough, hungover enough, mentally and physically exhausted enough, those voices will give me a pass: “Ok, you don’t have to get anything done today because you really are tired, but TOMORROW!  Tomorrow is a  BIG DAY!  Full of THINGS TO DO!  So get some rest!”  And I feel overwhelmed by the thought of all those THINGS TO DO, and so I drink.  Or eat sugar.  Or stay up late.  Or sometimes, all three. 

And the next day, I curl back up into my self-induced exhaustion and keep hiding.

Eating Disorders, Religion and Spirituality

Well, yesterday I wrote a post inspired by Rachel’s post and the comments to it, but frankly when I was all done with my post, it was just really annoying navel-gazing.  And I figured if *I* thought that, I probably didn’t want to publish it!  Ha!  So go read Rachel’s post and the comments.  It was really good stuff.

Diets, Disorders and Addictions

Disclaimer: this pretty much came out of my head as-is.  I’ve been trying to put it into a more coherent format, but it hasn’t worked thus far.  So please excuse the utter lack of smooth transitions in this post.

I’ve been reading a lot of stuff in the Fatosphere recently about dieters and whether or not someone who diets can really call themselves part of the Fat Acceptance movement.  The general consensus seems to be that it’s not possible: that you can’t simultaneously accept yourself as fat, and be trying to get rid of said fat.  At first glance, that makes sense to me.  It’s been causing some cognitive dissonanance though, because I’d like to drop some weight.  I’m not willing to be unhealthy to do it (some would argue that dieting is inherently unhealthy, but I’ll cover that in a minute), and I still believe that no one should be discriminated against on the basis of weight or health (or anything else, but right now I’m just talking about weight and health).  Does that mean I can’t be a FA ally?  Some would say yes, others would say no, and a few draw a line between Fat Acceptance and Fat Rights, where I’m guessing I’d fall more into the latter category, although I haven’t asked anyone about that.

So I’ve been thinking a lot: examining my assumptions about myself, weight, dieting, HAES (Health At Every Size), selling out for a smaller body, etc.  And here’s what I’ve come to: when I say that I’m going on a “diet,” I don’t think I’m selling out, and I don’t think that it’s antithetical to FA.  But I have a very different definition of “diet” than most people do.  I would agree that someone who decides to go on a diet solely for reasons of weight loss, and without undertaking any sort of emotional and mental inventory is going to end up mentally unhealthy.  I remember going to Weight Watchers meetings and hearing people say things like, “Well, I used to have a piece of Brie and a glass of wine every evening for dessert, but now I eat 3 cups of sugar-free Jell-O instead and that’s SO MUCH BETTER!”  I remember sitting there at the time thinking, “Um, no.  You’d be better off with the cheese and wine, because at least your body knows it’s FOOD, for God’s sake!  WTF is Jell-O except a bunch of scary chemicals!?”  Ahem.  The WW people didn’t take too kindly to that viewpoint, though.  In their books, of COURSE the chemical food was better: it had fewer calories, and therefore was better by definition!!!!  (And let’s not EVEN get into the idea of “fewer calories” = “better.”  That’s a whole blog post - or 20 - all its own.  Suffice it to say that less =/= better.  Jesus.)

Actually, I had to stop doing WW after a while.  I was losing weight, but I was more disordered about it than I had been since college.  I finally started deliberately drinking lots of water right before “weigh-in” so that I could skew the numbers up.  That way, I didn’t really know if I’d gained or lost, and I couldn’t obsses about the number on the scale.  So yeah, I would agree that kind of a diet is rarely ever healthy.  (I’m sure there are people out there who manage to stay sane about it, but based on the number of women who admitted to starving all day the day of the weigh-in, or brought the same clothes to change into every week, I don’t think there are very many mentally healthy dieters out there.  There’s an exception to every rule, but still.)

I tend to use substances an emotional crutches.  Usually that’s food, but I’ll use alcohol if it’s handier.  Now I’ve heard people say that eating for emotional reasons is an acceptable way to eat, that even thin people do it, and therefore it’s not a contributor to being fat.  That may be true for that individual, and it may be true for a lot more people than that one.  But for me?  I call bullshit.  If I’m eating because I’m sad, angry, tired, lonely, stressed, happy, hyper, bored, etc, then it’s NOT healthy eating.  If I do it a lot, then it definitely becomes a contributing factor in my weight.  And if I’m eating for those reasons, then OF COURSE diets will make me crazy: they take away my emotional sedative (food), and I suddenly have to deal with all kinds of emotional shit that I wasn’t prepared to deal with, on top of a dramatic change in my caloric intake, which fucks with my body.  (Please be advised that I know some people are indeed genetically predisposed to be fat.  Those people will be crazy on any diet, because THEY ALREADY EAT NORMALLY.  Even if they’re emotionally healthy, they’ll go batshit from starvation.)

I watch myself sabotage myself with the way that I eat and drink (not what I eat, so much as the way I eat it: when I’m tired, stressed, angry, etc.).  As an example, I had too much to drink on Saturday.  I had planned to get up on Sunday, go to my crazy-liberal church, come home, hit the farmers’ market, paint some furniture and try out a couple of new recipes.  After drinking Saturday night, I woke up without a hangover, but I was definitely tired and sluggish from my body trying to process the alchohol out of my system.  I didn’t go to church or the farmers’ market.  I lay in bed reading, and then got up and wandered aimlessly around the house for several hours, not really wanting to do ANYTHING.  I finally put some clothes on and went to Lowe’s at 1:00 just to get out for a while.  When I got back, I did paint some furniture (though not nearly as much as I’d hoped), and I did make a Marsala sauce that night (though I didn’t make the other 2 recipes I had wanted to try).  And the sad thing is, I can’t claim that I didn’t know the alchohol would affect me that way.  I know I always feel sluggish and tired and cranky and full of body-loathing if I drink too much (even one glass too much will do that to me).  But I did it anyway, and I shot a good portion of my Sunday to hell because of it.  That is not healthy - and it wouldn’t be any healthier if I had done it with food (a big bowl of pasta eaten when I’m stressed and want “comfort food” affects my body the way that too much alchohol Saturday night did, which is different from the way the same bowl of pasta eaten because it’s dinner time and I’m hungry affects me).

(Random logic jump here.)  I hate the word “recovering.”  Hate it, hate it, hate it.  I’ve had more than a passing acquaintance with various 12-step groups in my life: mostly family members, although I tried Al-Anon and Overeaters Anonymous at different times in my life.  I got through my disordered eating/exercising in college pretty much under my own power, although I did see a therapist from time to time.  I think the 12-step method has some valuable stuff going for it, but the idea that you never get better - you NEVER recover - I think is bullshit.  I think it perpetuates a victim mentality, and I’ve seen it over and over in my family and friends (and subscribed to it myself for a while).  Again, I’m not saying it’s true for everyone, but I’ve seen it an awful lot of that mentality in the various 12-step groups I’ve been to: probably about 90% of the people exhibit some sort of victim mentality, regardless of how long they’ve been in the program.  The belief that, “I’ll never get better - I’ll be an alcholic (addict, whatever) for life, and I’ll never rid myself of the behaviors related to alcoholism/addiction,” is bullshit.  Isn’t that what a “searching and fearless moral inventory” should be?  Your best attempt to find the root of the problem and then DEAL with it.  Get therapy, throw some pillows, spank your inner moppet, whatever (no, it’s never that easy, but you get my point).  But don’t think that just because you glimpsed something at the bottom of the dark space in your head - just because you saw the reptilian scales glimmer faintly in the half-light - don’t think that THAT is a “searching and fearless moral inventory.”  Get down there, face it, fight it, forgive it, love it, and let it GO.  THAT is how we get better.  Not by rehashing every bad thing that ever contributed to our current state of being: rehashing will only cause you to remain the same as you are right now.  Do you really want to be where you are now in 5 years?  In 10?  In 20?  (This is all related to that “When do you become responsible?” post from a couple of days ago.)

SO.  Having said all that, when I say that I’m going to diet, I mean something different than “cut my calories under [x] number and exercise like a maniac.”  I mean that I’m going to examine why I eat what I do and when I tend to eat it.  I’m going to focus on digging out the emotional issues at the bottom of things.  I’m going to learn to deal with stress and anxiety using methods that don’t involve burying said stress and anxiety in my body with food (or alchohol).  And I know from previous experience that when I do that, I lose weight. 

At this point, I would call that HAES, except for two things.  FIrst, that the fastest way for me to bring my emotional crap to the surface is to stop eating (or drinking) when I’m anything but hungry (no pasta when stressed, no glass of wine when I’m tired, no chocolate when I’m bored).  Witholding that sedative will unleash a mental and emotional shitstorm that will knock me on my ass, and force me to deal with the stuff I’ve been avoiding, but it IS a “restricted diet,” so I’m not sure it would fall into HAES.  Second, HAES stresses that weight loss be an ancillary, not a primary motivation.  And honestly, although I wish I could say that my motivation is strictly related to my health, it’s not.  My motivation for fixing my internal self really comes from about 60% wanting to lose weight, and 40% wanting to fix my emotional and mental health.  Mostly I really want to lose weight, but I know that for me, there’s only one way to do that in a healthy manner.  My choice to get healthy is really a choice to “diet” without being disordered.  So what does that make me?  Am I a “dieter?”  Am I practicing HAES?  Or is it more complicated than either of those things? 

Now, I realize that not everyone has this experience.  There are people out there whose genetics predispose them to be fat.  There are people who eat too much.  There are people who really do clean out their houses and lose weight “releasing clutter.”  There are people who have royally screwed up their systems with disordered eating and their bodies don’t work the same anymore.  There are thyroid problems and medications that cause weight gain.  There are SO MANY FACTORS, and most FA people will tell you that being fat does not always (if ever) equal calories in=calories out.  They’re right.  But the overwhelming message I’ve gotten is that weight-loss, unless practiced under HAES, can only be disordered and antithetical to FA, and I’m not convinced that’s always the case either.

Cognitive dissonance, part 3 - or maybe not

I love Carolyn Myss.  No, really.  I own most of her books and most of her CD lectures.  I like that she holds a lot of the same “energy-woo-woo” beliefs that I do (what?  I can call a spade a spade) but that she’s grounded and even a little cynical.  I think it makes her easier to relate to. 

I wrote yesterday about her theory of “woundology,” and I’m going to stay on the Myss bandwagon for today, although on a different topic.  Today I’m thinking about archetypes and how they relate to my daily life, specifically to my relationships with food.  This is a VERY brief version of her stuff - if you want to read more, go buy her book ”Sacred Contracts.”  The abridged version is that everyone uses various patterns/archetypes to work out their energetic crap in life, but that EVERYONE uses 4 of the same ones: Victim, Child, Prostitute and Saboteur.  The post on woundology yesterday is an example of the Victim.  Staying in a job you hate because the money is great is an example of a Prostitute.  Anytime you say, “I’m doing [x] because I DESERVE it,” or “It’s not fair!” you’re working through your Child.  The Saboteur says, “There’s always tomorrow,” or “You’re not strong/smart/short/tall/thin/fat enough to do [x].”  Get it?  Ok.

So here’s the thing.  I’ve been reading a lot of Fat Acceptance blogs lately.  I’ve also been thinking a lot about my own body and how I feel about it, and more importantly, how I feel about food.  I run a lot of my food relationships through my Child.  I find myself thinking that if I’m not dieting, and I can eat anything I want, well then I WANT cheese!  Except . . . cheese makes me sick.  I can’t claim that it’s healthy for my body, but if I tell myself, “I’m not eating cheese anymore,” my Child (Brat?  LOL) has a FIT.  I sometimes end up bingeing on the very foods that I KNOW will make me sick, because “You are not the boss of me!”  Way to cut off my nose to spite my face, there. 

I also spend a lot of time with my Prostitute when it comes to food.  On the one hand, I don’t think I should have to diet.  On the other hand, in some ways life is a lot easier when I do, even if I don’t talk about it.  So then the question becomes, How much of my integrity am I willing to compromise?  The Prostitute can cause depression, illness, stress and a host of things that most of us would like to avoid.  Think about it: when you are doing something you really feel is wrong, it stays with you.  It sticks in your head, in your heart, in your gut.  You are literally selling out: you’re selling your energy to something you DON’T EVEN BELIEVE IN.

Here’s the really interesting thing about this archetype, though: if you’re not investing your energy in what you’re doing, it won’t have the same effect.  Myss uses an example of a single mother who had a really good job that she didn’t particularly like, with office politics that she thought were horrible.  But when Myss asked her about it, the woman responded, “I have a job that pays really well and allows me to spend a lot of time with my kids.  I vote the party line at work because honestly, I just don’t care about that as much as I care about my kids.  So I stay in my job for those reasons.  If it really bothered me, I’d leave - but at this point, it doesn’t bother me enough to make the financial trade-off.”  So even though this woman was “selling out” in some ways, it wasn’t affecting her health because she had made a CONSCIOUS choice and had come to terms with that choice.  She knew what her limits were, and acted accordingly.

I bring all this up because lately I’ve been struggling with my weight and self-image.  On the one hand, I’d really like to lose weight.  On the other hand, I’m not willing to be obssessed and disordered and completely fucking crazy about it.  I’m actually going to ask my holistic doctor to run a nutritional profile on me and I’ll probably start learning to eat according to that.  At this point, I know that I could lose some weight without going crazy.  I don’t know when I’ll hit the point where further loss will require my craziness, but I DO know that when I hit that point, I’ll have to reevaluate my priorities, because losing weight is NOT worth being fucking insane.

Here’s my Prostitute in action, and also (800 words into the post - ha!) where the title kicks in: I absolutely believe that we should live in a culture that honors everyone, and every body type.  At the same time, I know from previous experience that (assuming I’m not insane over it) I feel better when I weigh less.  I have more energy, my system runs more efficiently, I can actually digest the food I eat (no, really - right now I’m having all kinds of problems).  But that’s not really the whole truth.  The whole truth includes my health, but it also includes the bald-faced fact that I’m selling out a little bit.  Life is easier when I’m thinner, and if I can get there without being crazy, that would be great.  But at least I recognize it for what it is: my Prostitute in action.

So I’m on the back side of the pendulum swing: I was dieting to the point of disorder, then I was rabidly NOT DIETING, and now I’m kind of/sort of dieting.  After a little of this, I’ll probably be kind of/sort of NOT DIETING, and after a few swings back and forth I’ll find my balance between bingeing on ice cream and eating nothing but tuna and lettuce.  In the meantime, I know that the Fat Acceptance stuff is there to remind me that my size is not inversely proportional to my worth, and that 2 pounds gained or lost doesn’t make me a bad person (or a good person, for that matter). 

As one more example (and probably a more concise one that I can give regarding food and weight), several years ago I had a really good friend who decided to get a boob job (totally unnecessary, IMO).  I was then (and still am) adamantly anti-plastic surgery.  There’s something wrong with the thought, “Hey, you’d be way better looking if you cut your body open and shoved foreign objects into it!”  That’s FUCKED.  But when J told me that she really wanted a boob job, I told her I would support her.  She was pretty shocked, considering how I felt, but here’s the thing, and what I told her: I can be angry as fuck with a culture that tells women they need surgical “enhancement” in order to be attractive, but I can’t fault an individual for doing what they need to do in order to feel like they can function in that culture, even if that includes surgery.  That’s just not my call to make - we all conform to society in some ways, and rebel in others.  We all have different tolerances for which battles we can fight, and far be it from me to tell anyone else what their battles should be. 

At the moment, I’m not sure I have it in me to be militantly NOT DIETING.  (I have other things I’m militant about, LOL.)  So for now, I’m playing with my weight.  I’m not going to talk about the particulars here, because a) although I recognize that I’m playing the social game, I don’t want to encourage (or discourage, if they want to do it) anyone else to do so, b) because talking about diets is just boring, both for me, and also for everyone around me (I figure if I don’t care what you ate for breakfast, you probably don’t care what I ate, either), and c) because the level of self- and diet-obssession required to blog about it every day is precisely the kind of craziness I’m trying to avoid.  This will stay an anti-diet talk blog, and that will include me.  Gotta play by my own rules, right? 

What I WILL talk about are the emotional issues that come up for me during this process; one of the things I’m trying to do is root out the woundology I’ve built around food, and I can’t do that without acknowledging and examining it - and I can’t do THAT when I’m either starving, bingeing or deliberately eating foods that my body rejects.  If there is a safe and healthy way to use a “diet” or “nutritional plan,” I’ll learn it - and if there’s not, I’ll learn that, too.  Either way, I’ll have to deal with my own issues (including not only my health, but my actual weight too), and I figure that’s not a bad thing. 

So that’s my cognitive dissonance: fight for the cause, but pick my battles.  Hate the sin, love the sinner.  Blah, blah, blah.

I tried to work this link into the post, but I’m already at 1400 words, and haven’t managed to do it, yet.  So just go read it.  Much like the debacle I referenced yesterday, this echoed and clarified a lot of things that I’ve been thinking about lately.

When do you become responsible?

So there was a major debacle in one of the online communities that I like to lurk in.  Basically my perception of what happened was that one person was singled out as making others uncomfortable.  That in itself is nothing notable (as far as I can tell, it happens fairly regularly in the blogosphere - geez, I can’t believe I just used that word), but the reason given for singling this person out was that s/he was accused of being “judgmental” and “bragging,” and of writing things that others found “triggering” to their mental health as it relates to food.  (Ironically the person singled out has food issues of his/her own, and as far as I have seen, is extremely conscious of his/her words and how the affect others.)

I came a little late to the party - everything was over by the time I started reading, so I never did put my two cents in.  It was really horrible for all parties involved, but it coincided with something I’d had rolling around in my brain for a while.

See, I really feel like my reactions to things are MY responsibility.  If someone makes a comment that i find “triggering” (for lack of a better word), I don’t believe it is incumbent on that person to change - I think it is incumbent upon ME to examine my own reaction and come to terms with it.  As an example, say I survived a horrible plane crash and any mention of people flying made me uncontrollably anxious.  Is it the responsibility of everyone around me to refrain from mentioning plane flights for the rest of my life?  Or even for a few years?  A few months?  Or is it my responsibility to get some therapy, do my best to move on, and if I can’t move on, at least acknowlege to myself in those moments that what I’m experiencing is not normal, and is not the fault of the other person?  In other words, at what point do I become responsible for managing my own neuroses?

Now, of course you could take this to its illogical, Jonathan Swift-ian extreme and use that logic to excuse truly horrible behavior.  I can imagine a racist telling an African-American, “If you don’t like my use of the word n*gg*r, then maybe you should examine your OWN reaction!  I don’t have to change!”  [FWIW, I originally wrote that word out, but couldn't bring myself to leave it in the post.  I HATE that word.] 

So where is the line?  How do we know when behavior is truly abhorrent, and when we’re just CALLING it abhorrent in order to justify our own neuroses and martyr complexes?  Is it a truth-in-numbers game?  “If more than 100 people think it’s bad, then it must be bad!”  Um, no.  I could round up 100 racists - does that mean their views are right?  Not so much.  Obviously the line is there somewhere, but where?  How do we find it?  Does it move, depending on the circumstances?  I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately: when do I examine myself and when do I stand up and say, “No, this outside thing is WRONG?”  (I realize that racism is an extreme example, and I’m not trying to trivialize it by comparing to plane-flight-anxiety.   Quite the opposite, in fact.)

Here’s something else: when did we STOP asking ourselves that question?  When did we start to assume that our comfort and peace of mind was someone else’s responsibility?  When did we start to define who we are by what is wrong with us?  Seriously, when did we all become such victims and martyrs?

Carolyn Myss has a wonderful term for this: woundology.  It’s the idea that we have become a culture that only relates to each other through our wounds, through what is wrong with us.  It’s an older version of “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” and sometimes, “Let’s see whose is bigger!”  It’s become how we define intimacy: we tell someone what is wrong with us, and if they accept that, we decide that we are “safe” with them.  Why do we do this?  What do we GET out of it?

THAT is really the $64,000 question: what do you GET out of your victimhood?

When I was in college I blew out my knee in dance class.  It healed funny, so that sometimes it would spontaneously dislocate.  It always popped right back in, but it was extremely painful.  It was a legitimate problem.  But here’s the thing: I found that I got all kinds of payoff for being “wounded.”  I got out of classes (even when I didn’t really need to) because “my knee hurt.”  I got sympathy, I got attention, I got taken care of.  I didn’t have to be responsible for myself because I could always blame “My Knee.”  Now don’t misunderstand: I wasn’t making it up.  That fucker really did hurt.  But it also didn’t help that I wasn’t really doing anything to fix it, either.  I held on to that injury far longer than I should have, because I WAS GETTING SOMETHING OUT OF IT.  Now that’s not to say that my knee isn’t still a little weird.  About once a year, I’ll reach for something, turn funny, step off a curb at just the right angle, and find myself sitting on the ground holding my knee and hollering, “Ice!  Ice!  I’m fine, but get me some goddam ice NOW!”  But outside of those instances, I don’t really think about it anymore.  I climb ladders and carry boxes at work.  I run up and down the stairs in my office building.  I do a lot of yoga so that I can keep my knee strong, because I like to run in the park.  But I don’t talk about it.  I’m not ashamed of it; it just doesn’t come up.  It’s a quirk of my body, but it doesn’t define Who I Am.

I wish I could say that I don’t hold on to anything like that anymore.  But I’ve been dealing over the last few months with a number of things that fall squarely into the category of woundology, and I’m learning how to let those things go.  Because the problem is that no matter what I get from them - no matter how much attention, sympathy, ego strokes, whatever - I wind up losing more than I get back.  I lose my independence, my self-esteem, my belief in my own abiities and capabilities, my sense of personal worth.  I give all those things into the hands of other people and then get angry and affronted when those people don’t cater to my every personal comfort.  It’s just not worth it.

But it is pervasive. 

Shifting ground - the rest of the post

My mom and I had been kicking around the idea of writing a cookbook for a while.  And then, a couple of weeks ago, I was watching Giada on the Food Network and I couldn’t help thinking that Mom and I should pitch a cooking show.  Mom thought it was a great idea, and I know people who have contacts at the Food Network (and who know how to pitch a show), so it’s actually within the realm of possibility.  So after crying on the couch forever on Monday, that was what we came away with. 

Mom and I are going to write a cookbook, and then based on that cookbook, we’re going to pitch a cooking show.  I figure we’ve got a couple of good hooks: there’s the mother/daughter angle, and the fact that she’s a vegetarian and I’m not.  We figure we’ll pitch the mother/daughter angle as the entertainment factor, and the fact that a lot of families are blended vegetarians/meat-eaters - and how to cook for those blended families - will be the “educational” angle.   So yay!

I may also go back to school for a CPA certification as well.  We have a friend of the family who is a CPA, and he decided to do that so that he could stay home with the kids.  He works 3 months a year like CRAZY, and the rest of the year he takes care of the kids.  He has an income in the mid-six-figures because he only deals with condos and HOAs - no individual returns. 

For now I’m pretty much focusing on the cooking show and the cookbook, though.  And I LOVE cooking, so I’m really excited!  :)  Maybe I can have my cake and eat it, too: I’ll get to be on TV and not have to deal with quite so much of the BS that goes with acting.  We’ll see how things go. 

Shifting ground

Here’s another post that starts with, “Over the last few weeks . . . “  I gotta get some new material, LOL.  Either that or start writing more frequently again, so stuff doesn’t pile up!

Anyway, over the last few weeks things have been tough, emotionally speaking.  I’ve been dealing with the cognitive dissonance created by trying to lose weight while simultaneously trying to learn to love myself the way that I am, I’ve been dealing with the stress of learning a new aspect of my job, I’ve been dealing with the fact that as much as I want to be an actor, I can’t always seem to get off my ass and go do the things that would help me along that path.  I’ve also been dealing with financial stress, because although I’m not in any trouble, I’m thinking about buying a house while the market is still low, and so although I’m not stressed about paying my bills now, I’m a little stressed at the thought of “Buying A House.”  I’m also dealing with the realization that although I always thought I didn’t want kids, I’m really thinking that I’d like to adopt.  And in order to do that, I have to make enough money to support myself and a kid, and frankly a beginning actor’s lifestyle isn’t exactly that kind of a life. 

Oh, and did I mention that my mom and I are writing a cookbook in preparation to pitch a cooking show to the Food Network?  That, too. 

So Mom came up this weekend and yesterday we went to Ikea to look at some furniture.  We were wandering around the fake living rooms, and came across one that I LOVED: white wood floors, white kitchen cupboards, overstuffed furniture.  I looked at that room and thought, SOLD!  I want a house.  And that was sort of the last crack in the dam, so to speak.  All the things I’d been worrying about over the last several weeks and months came flooding to the front of my mind. 

When my mom and I got home yesterday, we sat down and I just cried.  I love acting, but I’m not willing to be here in another 10 years, auditioning, working not-so-great jobs and freaking out with excitement if I manage to land a 1-liner in a commercial.  I have a friend in her mid-40s who’s in that position, and although she seems happy, it’s not a life that I want for myself.  I want a house, I want to be able to take vacations and have friends and family around.  I want kids running in and out of the house, I want a family - an unconventional one, maybe, since I don’t want to get married, and I’d rather adopt than “have” kids - but a family, nonetheless.  (Frankly, if I could have Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s arrangement, I’d be a happpy camper.)  And as far as I can tell, none of those things are compatible with acting, unless you’ve either already made it as an actor and are fairly established, or you’ve married someone with enough money to provide for 80% of that lifestyle, while you contribute the remaining 20%.  Since I have neither of those things, I’ve been dealing with the realization that the “plan” I had for my life isn’t exactly working out the way I thought it would.  (I keep thinking of that old joke: ”How do you make God laugh?  Tell him your plans.”)

And on top of all that, there are things that I really don’t like about acting: I don’t like that I have to drop everything and take off when I get an audition.  I’ve bailed on weekend plans with friends and boyfriends because a last-minute audition came up, and I had to go.  I don’t like the constant physical scrutiny I’m under.  I don’t like the uncertainty of the profession: always wondering if I’ll get another job after this one. 

But I can’t see myself living out the rest of my life in an office.  I know it sounds funny to say that my “fall-back plan” is to go climb the corporate ladder at Major Movie Studio and wind up as a Senior VP in Marketing, but that’s really the case.  I figure if I started now, I’d make VP in 10 years, and SVP in 10 years after that.  It’s a good life: my boss has a house worth several million dollars, a wife that doesn’t have to work, kids who went to private schools and private colleges.  But I don’t know if the trade-off is worth it.  I don’t know if I am willing to show up in an office every day for the rest of my life.  That’s the fall-back plan, if nothing else pans out.  (LOL, not a bad fall-back plan though, I have to admit.  In fact, it would be many people’s first-choice plan!)

Anyway, so I came home yesterday and did some thinking.  I talked with my mom a lot, and came away with some new plans, and some realizations.  Go read part 2 of this post, because this is getting too freakin’ long: WordPress says I’m at 865 words here. 

Everything and nothing

For the last couple of weeks, I’ve been completely swamped.  Last week I was in Las Vegas coordinating our group (for Major Movie Studio) during the ShoWest convention, and the week before was a whirlwind of how-to’s and last-minute planning.  And on top of that, I really haven’t had much to say.  I still don’t feel like I really have any coherent thoughts to be honest, but I’ve been waking up at night feeling anxious, and I think it’s because I have a lot on my mind - it’s just that what’s on my mind isn’t coherent.  If that makes any sense. 

I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about Intuitive Eating vs. Habitual Eating vs. Eating-Because-My-Inner-Brat-Wants-It-NOW-NOW-NOW!  Ahem.  I started thinking about it more over the last few days because of a post where the author mentioned using FitDay software to track her nutritional intake.  (I’d link, but I don’t remember where I read it, to be honest, and I went back through the fatosphere posts and still didnt’ see it.  So, meh.)  She decided that she was eating a little too much fat: didn’t like the percentage on the FitDay pie chart, and she already had avocado on her sandwich, so she decided to stop using mayonnaise on her sandwiches.  She said she didn’t miss it.  (That part’s important.)  There were a couple of comments that made me stop and think though.  One person asked if the poster wasn’t just caving in to “conventional wisdom” about fat being BAD.  But I couldn’t help thinking, she’s still eating avocado on the sandwiches, so clearly it’s not that fat=bad.  And frankly, unless she’s making her own mayo at home, she’s probably better off leaving that chemical-laden crap OFF her sandwiches, anyway.  I couldn’t help wondering if the commenter would have had the same reaction if the poster had said she was ADDING fat to her sandwiches: telling her that she should just be eating intuitively, and if that means mayo on the sandwich, then just eat the mayo.

And THAT got me to thinking about Intuitive Eating vs. Habitual Eating.  Frankly, I put (preservative-free, eggs-oil-and-lemon-juice) mayo on most of my sandwiches, but if I think about it, it’s not because I WANT the mayo, which is the point of IE: eating what you WANT.  I just put mayo on the sandwiches, because . . . well, because I’ve always done it.  But in point of fact, I could happily eat a turkey sandwich with avocado (for the fat), lettuce, red onion, tomatoes and mustard - and no mayo.  On the other hand, if I eat an egg salad sandwich, part of what I’m craving is that creamy, mayonnaise-y goodness.  I would never leave mayo out of an egg-salad sandwich, because the mayo is part of what I want.  Does that make sense?

I just have a hard time with the idea that if you’re eating intuitively, then you’re ONLY eating what you really want.  What if your mom always made cookies with egg whites and so that’s how you make cookies?  Are you craving egg whites, or could you use whole eggs and never know the difference?  What if you grew up eating meatloaf with ketchup in it?  How do you know you want the ketchup if you’ve never tried the meatloaf without it?  (My mom never put ketchup on meatloaf, and since having had both, they aren’t interchangeable for me: sometimes I want ketchup, and sometimes I don’t.)  See what I mean?

And I’ve been trying to learn to love myself EXACTLY the way I am.  But . . . I work in film.  When I’m 20 pounds lighter than I am now, I work TWICE as much.  If I’d lose 40 pounds, I’d work all the time, but I’m not sure I can do that without being crazy.  So I’m trying to eat Intuitively, and trying to love myself - and at the same time, I’m back to trying to lose some weight.  I’ve already noticed that I have to keep an eagle eye on the voices in my head: the voices that think eating fewer calories is a game and that if I could eat NOTHING and still exercise, I would win.  :P  I have to watch them, and make sure I keep refocusing them.  I find myself constantly having this conversation:

Voice 1: “I want that chocolate!”
Voice 2: “NO!  That will make you FAT!  It’s BAD and YOU will be BAD if you eat it!”
ME: “Chocolate is not ‘bad.’  You can eat it if you want to.  You can eat whatever you want, whenever you want it.  The only reason you’re eating more carefully is because you made a conscious choice to play someone else’s game by losing weight, but your weight doesn’t affect your worth.  Do you want that chocolate?  You can have it.”
Voice 1: “It’s not bad?”
ME: “Nope.”
Voice 1: “And I can have it later if I want?”
ME: “Yup.”
Voice 1: “OK.  I don’t want it now.  I want acting jobs more.  But I might want that chocolate later, ok?”
ME: “Sure thing.”

Living in paradox is freakin’ EXHAUSTING.

Just checkin’ in

Ok, I know “depression” was not exactly the kind of term I should go silent on, LOL.  I’m still here, still alive.  Just nothing worth saying right now.  This weekend might be one of the few weekends I actually blog.  I’m not promising anything before then, though.

Talk to you all later. 

Stress and depression

For the last several days, maybe a week, I have been getting more and more depressed.  A lot of things have happened since the beginning of the year, and if they had happened seperately they would have been manageable, but happening right on each other’s heels like this they are slowly but surely overwhelming me.  Some of these things are external and some are internal, but ALL of them are stressful.

First.  The holidays killed me.  My long-term boyfriend and I decided to do Christmas with his kids this year, which meant that we basically ADDED a Christmas to Christmas.  We had one with his kids and my family, then we each had our own Christmases with our own families.  December was a jumble of stress and anxiety.

Second.  Then, in January, we broke up.  It was both predictable and totally unexpected, in that weird way that those things sometimes are.  But it hurt like a bitch, and for various reasons the breaking-up process dragged out over about 2 weeks.  I’m still not totally over it, which is to be expected, but the hurt crops up at unexpected times and in unexpected places.

Third .  I decided to recommit to acting, and joined a group of women in film who get together and set goals and talk about what exactly they’re doing to move their careers forward.  Since I have a tendency to sabotage myself, I figured this would be a good thing, and it has been.  But.  The reason I sabotage myself is because I’m afraid (what I’m afraid of is a topic for another post, too lengthy to go into here), and joining a group where I’m held accountable, even in a loving supportive way, means I have to actually DEAL with my fear and work on moving past it, which is ya know . . .  stressful.

Fourth.  My friend got promoted.  Woot!  Her bosses asked me to take her job.  It was very flattering, but her job is quite demanding, and it would have meant giving up the acting altogether, which I’m not ready to do.  Since that particular job rolls over every couple of years (it’s the “get-promoted” job around here), I opted to try acting for a couple of years and then see about moving into that position.  But in the meantime there was a lot of pressure, both subtle and overt, for me to take her job, and I had to figure out how to say no without shooting my prospects down for the next time that job comes up.

FIFTH.  My friend who got promoted organizes our department to go to major film conventions twice a year.  She books the travel, makes sure the hotel rooms are right, sends out our promotional materials for display, makes sure people have all the appropriate access, tickets, reservations etc.  One of those conventions is happening in two weeks, and since she doesn’t have a replacement yet, they don’t have anyone who will know how to do the second convention later in the fall.  So they asked me to do it.  I’m actually really excited (it means I get to travel with them and go to dinners and play golf and meet major film “players”), but there’s a LOT to learn, and not much time to learn it in.  So I’m also hellaciously stressed out about this.  I just bought a suitcase, because I can’t really pack work clothes in my trusty duffel bag.  ::::sigh::::

All of that stuff I could probably handle, but then I added ANOTHER layer on top:

SIXTH.  I’m trying to change the way I think and feel about myself and my body.  I know that for me (actually, I think this is true for most people, but since I don’t personally know “Most People” I will limit my sweeping generalizations - ha!), changing a belief system like that happens from the top down.  Which is to say, I grasp the concepts intellectually long before I can really internalize them in my heart.  And I “get it” in my heart long before I can really incorporate it into my gut feelings.  Basically I go through 3 stages of change. 

In the first stage, I say, “My body is fine just the way it is.  It’s beautiful.  It’s healthy.  It’s perfect.  It doesn’t have to lose 20 pounds (or 30, 0r 40 or fill-in-the-blank).  I’m healthy, therefore I’m fine.”  But while I’m saying that, I’m having a hard time believing it in my heart.  While I’m saying that in my head, every positive thing is countered by the voice that looks in the mirror and shouts, “Cow!  Fat!  Gross!  Disgusting!”  My head becomes a very noisy, chaotic place to live in.

In the second stage, I start to really believe that there is truth in the words I am speaking: “Health is the only goal.  Losing weight doesn’t matter.  Beauty comes in all sizes, regardless of what Vogue says.”  I believe that in my heart, in PRINCIPLE - but I don’t think it applies to me.  The name-calling voice is gone, but it’s replaced with a smaller, quieter voice that says, “All of that is true, but I WOULD be a little prettier if I lost some weight.  Is it really so bad to want to be pretty?  I could get so much more acting work.  Health is great, but why do I have to stop there?  Why can’t I be pretty AND healthy?  I know other people are pretty at every size, but I’M DIFFERENT.”

And in the third stage, I finally get it.  The voices stop.  My weight does what it wants to, and I don’t worry about it, because I’m too busy thinking about how great life is, and how healthy I am, and how good I feel.  I might gain, I might lose, but it never matters. 

I’ve gone through that process before, with other attitudes, so I know that’s the route it will take.  But that doesn’t change the fact that right now, I’m still in the first stage.  I can spout the “party line,” but I can’t pass a mirror without thinking I’m gross (even though I know intellectually that I’m NOT).  So right now, the fighting in my head and heart is intense.  And of course, stressful.

I have more on this in “Cognitive Dissonance, Part 3,” but for the purposes of this post, suffice it to say that I am depressed.  And I’ve progressed from sleeping too much to not sleeping enough, which means the depression is starting to snowball, because I am exhausted.  (I can GO to sleep just fine, but I wake up at 4am and can’t go back to sleep.)  Things that wouldn’t have bothered me before are starting to get to me.  And the cognitive dissonance that is created by trying to change my attitudes is not leaving me much emotional fortitude to deal with everything else.

Fuck.