Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, short story, story, writing
just thought today i’d check in on the one-eyed girl. she’s been missing, as you’ll remember.
I’m in a hole. The bastard’s guys found me and put me down some deep dark hole where I can’t see anything and all I can hear are footsteps and muffled voices up above me during what I figure must be daytime. Other times I don’t hear anything. I figure I’ve been down here weeks already… Well, that’s probably just because it’s really, really, boring being stuck in some hole by some assholes not able to do anything or see anything. Probably only been a day or so.
This must be what it’s like to be blind.
I’ve always been kindof scared of being blinded. All I have is the one eye and what if someone poked it or I got a shard of glass lodged in it or something? I can’t stand to look at those people who get around with canes and wear dark glasses. Sometimes if I see one of them coming I’ll cross the street just to avoid them. They give me the creeps, seriously.
People always think if you act bad ass then you’re fearless. That’s good. That’s what I want them to think. I’m not scared of anything.
They opened up some kinda trap door in the ceiling and I saw just a patch of light for a few minutes while someone chucked a couple bottles of water, a bucket, and what feels like a paper McDonald’s bag with french fries and a couple cheeseburgers in it.
I wanted to say “Please, let me out, I won’t tell anyone, I’ll do whatever you say just don’t keep me in the dark where I feel like I’m going crazy because I can’t see anything and it feels like it’s been days already.”
What I really said was “You fucking asshole if I ever make it out of here you’ll spend the rest of your fucking life looking over your shoulder because I’m gonna kill you and your children and your fucking dog, too.”
If they know you’re scared it means they’re winning.
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous
There are a lot of “deep” questions of recovery. Who am I if I don’t have my eating disorder? What do I value if my weight isn’t my highest priority? Where has my life gone and can anything ever make up for all the time I’ve lost?
Forget all that. It’s for tomorrow.
This morning my weight was around 106.5. So, for me, this is satisfactory proof that the weight I was at before I began eating regularly without purging and the weight I was at after a week of that were probably about the same. You can’t lose 3 pounds of fat in 2 days. It’s physically impossible. So I’m going to have to admit that the difference was basically water and waste (tmi, but I have moved my bowels significantly).
The other important thing, though, was that I missed my sane meals and didn’t really enjoy my binges that much. I was doing it for the chance to see the numbers drop on my scale, not because I wanted to. Today I’m going back to “normal” and that’s what it feels like- which is beyond weird because remember how I was just dying during the week to be back to the “normal” of binging and purging? Yeah, seems like that isn’t so normal after all.
I think I’m going to stick with this until I see my nutritionist and therapist on Wednesday. It will make it easier to go in to see them knowing I’ve been doing the right things for a few days, and also my face still looks small and cute and I’d really rather not go in and see them with ugly square-jawed puffiness on display.
Call it vanity. I’m not making any promises to straighten up and fly right, now. I still have huge reservations about the weight issue. I’d still like to be 10, 20, 30 pounds lighter. I’d still like to be the smallest skinniest sickest person in the universe. Just… not right now. Right now I want to go back to this new version of normal.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, religion, short story, story, writing
On Evil
It is blindingly obvious to any deity or supreme being that a creation which does not include elements of death and suffering would be stagnant, empty, and uninteresting. In order for life to exist death must pave the way for new variations on the theme. Similarly, in order for intelligence to produce new thought there must be pain and suffering to spur it.
All young gods understand this at a very basic level because the act of creation of a universe involves splitting and severing oneself, shaping parts of one’s own fabric into something new and different. Thus every new world is built on the violence and trauma enacted by a god on it’s own being.
For lower orders of creature, however, it is often difficult to get this basic truth across. In order to deal with the seemingly endless complaints and questions by their mortal populations on this matter many gods find it expedient to create a sort of shadow self. This dark god or devil can have piled on it all the blame for a life’s brevity and sorrows, while leaving to the god in question the praise for the glories of creation.
We suggest that in creation of this creature to personify evil you take care that its power remain on a scale that is comfortable to the members of your society. Rather than imagining this creature as an evil force engaging in mighty battles with yourself have it engage in individual barganing sessions over the minutae of every day life. The adversary can play little games with mortals only to be outwitted and made foolish, or it could be blamed for silly things like promiscuous sexual behavior instead of more serious societal ills that might seem overwhelming to an indivudal moral person. This helps to maintain social order and has the added benefit of making evil seem less frightening to your poor mortals.
Remember, your mortals are pitiful little things. They live brief lives in vast uncaring universes of which they have barely any comprehension. The wise deity knows when to go easy on them.
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous
first off i want to send a shout out to my reader warrior, who is hopefully on her second day of no binge/purge today. keep going, and let us know how it is. if it’s as hard for you as it was for me today is gonna be a toughie- i promise it gets easier!
do you want the good news or the bad news?
well, lets get the bad news over with. i binged and purged a couple times yesterday. i weighed myself many times throughout the day, and again this morning. btw- weight down to 109 today. thank you, binging and purging (and yes, i know it’s water weight. shh!)
the bad news from a mental perspective is i am just really torn about this weight thing. i know it seems from a rational perspective that if i have weighing a certain amount on one hand and every imaginable good thing in life on the other the choice should be obvious. if you don’t have an eating disorder let me just assure you that the choice is NOT obvious. even knowing full well all the reasons why my weight shouldn’t be the most important factor in my entire life i still can’t quite bring myself to agree with that. in the past i’ve chosen losing weight over school, work, family, friends, romantic relationships, financial stability, everything. it’s just what having an eating disorder means, in my case. it means i often make the wrong choice knowing it is wrong and will lead to disaster. because the alternative just seems so horrible, so terrifying, so unthinkable. to allow myself to gain weight, to accept a higher weight than i’d like. it just makes something inside me cry out NO! over and over again.
ok, enough with the bad news. the good news is that i’ve made appointments for next wednesday with both my therapist and my nutritionist. so even though i’m still torn, i’m starting to do the right things in that area. also, yesterday i binged and purged but i really didn’t enjoy it much and found myself missing my nice, normal meals and snacks. if i could get past the weight thing i think i’m really headed in the right direction with my eating.
this is huge, by the way. i have a long history of following minimum food plans and fighting to be still restricting even when i’m supposedly doing what i am supposed to. going a week without binging and purging is one thing- going a week where i truly was eating enough not to be hungry, where i wasn’t cutting corners, where i didn’t start with one meal plan and whittle it down until it was 300 calories less than the original. that was a really significant step for me, and i’m proud of myself for taking it.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, short story, story, war, writing
There are pictures of children on the walls of this house. There were also unmade beds and a few unwashed bowls in the kitchen when we came here. It is quite a modern house, the nicest to be found in the small village where my husband has brought me.
One night when he seemed calmer and quieter than usual I asked him about the children on the walls. He said to me, wife, take the photos down if they are troubling you. Summoning my courage I persisted; I asked where were those children and who had lived here before us. Friends of the militia, his answer.
The friends of the militia had at least three children. A boy, about six in the latest picture, and an even younger daughter, and a young woman whose wedding pictures I found in a box in the closet, at the top of a stack that reached back into her girlhood.
These friends were an older man and his wife, much younger. In a photo of her with the youngest as a baby she looks to be perhaps in her late 30s only. Her husband is more elusive, showing his face in only one or two of the photographs. Here he is, on a family vacation by the sea somewhere, when his oldest daughter was just leaving childhood and his son was a tiny baby. He is stern and white haired.
The militia must have had a great many good friends within this village. My husbands chief advisors and captains have also brought their wives and some of their children here to stay in nearby houses. The people of the village who remain avoid our eyes and talk in whispers when one of us wives passes. They refuse to charge us for our flour or milk or vegetables. Have it, please, they beg us. We are friends. We are all friends to the militia.
Filed under: politics | Tags: convention speech, Democrats, obama, politics, Republicans
For what it’s worth, I think I’m starting to form an opinion of Barack Obama.
Now, to rewind for anyone who doesn’t know, I’ve weakly supported Barack Obama since before the first primary. I was an “ABC” or “anyone but Clinton” primary voter, motivated by my dislike of Hillary more than any fondness for Obama. Between Obama and Edwards the edge went to Obama because I thought it would be neat to have a black guy. As I said- mostly it was about “not Hillary Clinton” instead of really having a strong positive feeling for Obama.
My politics are far to the left of any mainstream Democrat. As a Massachusetts resident I know the dark side of the Democratic Party establishment. The cronyism, the waste, the corruption, the machine. I have no fondness for the Dems but the presidency of George Bush convinced me of the importance of gritting your teeth and casting a vote for the lesser of two evils. It does matter, even if you don’t really like the guy you’re voting for.
So with all that said, I am very slowly starting to form an opinion of Barack Obama that isn’t based on what the columnists and pundits and bloggers and newspapers tell me. What I’m starting to think is that Barack Obama is a good learner, and that might be good news if he attains the presidency.
What I mean by saying that Obama is a learner is that he is open to critique and to new information and is able to use it constructively. Most people resist information that contradicts their pre-existing beliefs and even when they do come around they don’t know how to use the new information. Barack Obama’s campaign, from the win in Idaho to the loss in New Hampshire to the back-and-forth slugfest of super Tuesday and beyond has shown quite an impressive ability to react quickly and appropriately to setbacks. Take the “Big Race Speech” in reaction to the thing about his pastor. Or take last night’s slightly dull acceptance speech.
I don’t know, but I think Obama may realize that the deeper charge within the “celebrity” critique is that Obama’s inspirational speaking manner inspires something that can, from a distance, look a little bit like a fascist dictator or a corrupt populist. It gets the crowd going but from the outside the crowd looks a wee bit frightening. They’re giving their allegiance to this man, and what is he going to do with it? That’s why it was important last night to give a slightly duller speech- at least, I think that was part of it.
The point, in my mind, is that this is a person who can look critically at his own greatest strength and within a very short time begin to make effective corrections. The “effective” part is important- because he didn’t give a bad speech, and he covered every other base that people said he needed to cover with it also.
For me, this is starting to seem like it may bode well for his candidacy. Which is nice, if you’re left of center. Even if you aren’t, though, it may bode well for his presidency if he is elected. If this is someone who is able to effectively judge and react to new situations and new information- again effectively is the key, we don’t want a puppet ruled by popular opinion polls or the whims of his advisors- then he may actually make a decent president.
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous
it’s 110.
what an annoying number. 2 pounds lower and while i would have been unhappy i would have absolutely no doubt that it was a weight i ought to just accept and try not to react to. 2 pounds higher and i would feel perfectly justified in turning my back on recovery for as long as it took to get my weight back under control. this 110 number, though, is right in the middle. too high for me to feel i can accept it, too low for me not to feel a bit foolish and like i’m over reacting.
basically, i’m up 5 pounds from where my average had been hovering.
i think i need to do some thinking.
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous
Seven days ago I made a decision on the spur of the moment, right after a purge, that I needed to go a week eating sufficiently, no purging, and without weighing myself. I wrote it on a little piece of paper and if I’d left it at that I probably would have changed my mind by the next morning.
I thought for a little while, and decided to put it up on my blog. I did it quickly, before I had a chance to think better of it. Then after an hour or so I thought better of it. I’d had no hits on my website in between so I literally could have taken down the post and no one would have known. Instead I told myself, no, you can do this. You need to do this.
By the next morning a few people had seen the post, not many, and I flirted with the idea of taking it down without comment. Later on I thought of posting that I’d changed my mind. Same to the next day, same to the next day. Almost every day for the past seven I’ve gone to bed composing in my mind a post called “failure” about how I tried, but couldn’t make it. I’ve also thought of lying to you all and saying I was still going when I wasn’t.
Every time I’ve had those thoughts I have resisted. Mrs. B said in one of her comments that I’m stronger than I think I am. With the caveat that it would be very hard NOT to be stronger than I think I am (since I have a low opinion of myself and my strength) I think she was proven right on this one. It hasn’t been easy, and there’s been nothing and no one forcing me to follow through. Without the blog and the vague idea that someone, somewhere, needed me to REALLY succeed and not just say I had I know I wouldn’t have gotten this far.
I have a few hours left in the day, of course. I planned ahead to have my posts in the key danger zone, which means I won’t declare complete success yet. Still, as of 6pm it will have been 7 x 24 hours since I put my scale away, made myself dinner, and started this journey. So lets just say mission pretty much accomplished.
Tomorrow I’ll probably post first thing in the morning. Assuming I weigh myself I’ll want to blog about how that goes, at the very least. Thanks again to all my lovely supportive readers and commenters. Couldn’t have done it without you.
Seven days done, give or take a few hours. A lifetime left to go, one day at a time. Keep Going.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, politics, short story, story, taxes, writing
“Honey, what’s this?”
“Oh that’s just the new tax choices form. Remember last year we had that big thing with the ballot question?”
“I think I remember. We shouldn’t have to pay for things we don’t support!!”
“Yup, that’s what this form is, so we get to choose what we want to pay for. You want to do it? I’ve been putting off looking at it.”
“Well. I won’t have too much trouble. I know what I’ll decide and it’s ‘NO!’ on most everything. That way we’ll get a nice big refund.
Let’s see here. OK, looks like a couple things are mandatory. Infrastructure - whatever that is. Public Schools – oh, they think they’re clever. I never would have checked that one. Police, Fire… Here we go. Public libraries? Can’t remember the last time I set foot in one. No check. Public hospitals? We don’t use any of the public hospitals, do we? I think those are all in the city. No check on that one. Trash collection? Honey, you wouldn’t mind hauling the trash to the dump, would you? OK OK, I’ll check that one, just kidding. Prisons? Well… I guess we better keep the prisons checked. Water- you don’t want to dig a well, do you? Kidding! I’m kidding, honey.
It certainly is a long list, all this wasteful government hooey. Homeless services, bye bye. Food pantry? Wellllll… I guess we could pay a little for the food pantry. Oh- look here on the very bottom it says ‘Premium Plus Package’”
“What’s that mean?”
“It says if you want superior services in every area become a Premium Plus Citizen. Well, that’s us, then.”
“But it’s more money! I thought you were going to-”
“Honey! I like to think we are the superior type of citizen. We can certainly afford a little more to have the Premium Package, can’t we?”
“Yes, dear. Of course we can. Premium Plus it is, then.”
Yes, Dawn- in case you wondered this was inspired by our recent political back and forth. Just meant in jest, though, don’t think I don’t know you think things through a lot more than the silly woman in my story.
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders, overeaters anonymous
My face is back! Long live my face!
The only part of my body that I like better when I’m not purging is arguably the most important part- my face. Purging makes my cheeks swell in a very particular way. I don’t get a truly “fat” face- actually I never had a real full face even when I was obese. It was fatter than now, but I just don’t have a round, full face no matter what.
Instead what happens to my poor face is that the swollen cheeks make a sort of square jawed effect that makes me look more masculine and uglier. I find it very unpleasant and when I was struggling after getting home from treatment one of my cheif motivations and fears were that if I started purging regularly again my face would start to swell and look uglier.
I always wondered how long you’d have to go without purging before the facial swelling went down. It happened at treatment, of course, but I was so miserable the first few weeks that I didn’t notice the positive change until well after it had happened. So I’m pleased to learn that the correct amount of time for facial swelling to have mostly gone is about a week. It’s hard to be certain, because I think I can still detect a little bit of swelling but it may be paranoia. I definitely noticed my face was clearly still swollen for the first few days, and yesterday it was significantly better.
I’m glad I haven’t been weighing myself. It’s going to be a shock when I finally do, of course. I’m still small- my clothes fit, etc etc. But the number takes on such significance. If it’s above 110 I’m really, really going to have a hard time with it.
Oh well, no reason to start making myself miserable ahead of time. I’m on the home stretch, guys. Thanks everyone who reads for your awesome supportiveness and warrior, are you getting nervous? I believe we had a deal that it’s your turn next!
Six days down (!!!!!) One more to go. Keep going!
