Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, humor, religion, short story, story, writing
Orphan Universes
We do not wish to shock you, but there exist within the multiverse a number of orphaned or abandoned universes. These sad little corners of creation have often been abandoned, through no fault of their own, by an overwhelmed god who at some point made the decision to ignore the responsibilities of godhead and disappear- without any trace of his or her wherabouts to console the hapless residents of his or her creation. Left to its own devices a universe will quickly fall into disrepair and destroy itself well before the natural course of things would indicate. Society begins to break down, dangerously unstable technologies such as time travel or television may be discovered, and the very fabric of the cosmos eventually unravels into a tangled thread of misery.
This sad state of affairs is only reversible if swift action is taken by another god to intervene and set things back into their rightful order. We ask you, then, to consider some part time volunteer godding of these orphan universes while our Society undertakes to find a permanent arrangement. A few weekends a century would go a long way towards stabilising some of these unfortunate orphan universes that have ended up under our supervision.
In the fullness of time, as your own universe reaches maturity and approaches the apocalypse, we also ask that you consider adopting one of these orphans rather than beginning afresh with a new universe. These poor little creations are desperately in need of the full time attention of an experienced god and we believe that giving such guidance is one of the most fullfilling endeavors any deity could choose to embark upon.
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders, pro-ana, proana
If I could go back in time. And have my job and career path back. But I had to give up the weight loss. Would I do it?
See, when I imagine it that way I can feel myself saying “YES!” and I know that if there was some magic wand somewhere that could do this thing and re-set my life and allow me to be a fat and reasonably well adjusted social worker who had n actual social life and decent finances I totally would do it. I’d sign on the dotted line and be on my way back to normality and who cares if I had to be a bit fat, after the hell I’ve been through it would be completely and totally worth it.
But the really fucked up thing, see, is that I happen to know for an absolute fact that if the magic happened and I was sent back in time with full knowledge of how badly everything turned out when I lost weight I know I’d do the exact same things the second time. I would find fatness and compulsive overeating just as painful and intolerable as ever and if I couldn’t find the magic fairy who set back the clock to let me out of the deal then I’d just set about re-ruining my life in the full knowledge of what I was doing.
Then I’d lose the weight and my life would be a wreck and I’d come to realize I’d made the wrong choice again. The refusal to stop ransoming my entire life in order to avoid fatness, the insanity that sets in when certain triggers start me needing to lose weight, for me that is the core of my eating disorder. All the other stuff is just trappings. Important trappings, don’t get me wrong, but the weight stuff is what prevents me from doing the sensible things that would help resolve all the other problems. The frusterating thing is that I really would trade back my weight loss to get my life back. It’s an easy enough decision from where I’m sitting. I just wish I knew how to prevent myself from making the opposite choice the second I was fat again.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, religion, short story, story, writing
How to Recognize Sentience in Your Creations
Depending on the organizing principles you ser out for your universe, sentient beings may created in one of two fashions. Some gods create fully sentient creatures and plunk them down upon a newly minted world in a way resembling a young girl setting up a battle of toy soldiers (or a boy arranging his stuffed animals and dolls to give a concert). The other, equally valid, approach is to have this order of life emerge in a more gradual manner such as evolution, an annual sporting event between the species, or some sort of poetry contest. In fact we find that poetry contests produce intelligent species particularly quickly, as the pressure to master iambic pentameter separates stupid creatures such as the common sheep or duck from more advanced intelligences like slime molds and toadstools.
In the first case there will be no confusion as to when sentience develops at all, seeing as this quality was built in to your creations from the start. In systems where some sort of competitive or merit based approach leads to variation and innovation in the animal kingdom, however, it may not be immediately clear where the line between the cleverness of a monkey and the wise intellect of a slime mold may be drawn. As a god your omniscience will to resolve the question eventually, but for a deity in a hurry to make some firm distinctions we have come up with a simple test designed to show the presence of those qualities that can only be found in sentient beings. The test we have devised is as follows:
Place a single representative of a species you consider bordering on sentient in a featureless box. Arrange things so as to provide your subject with sufficient nutrients while depriving it of all other forms of stimulation or contact with others of its kind. Then leave the box alone and go about your business for 50 years or so. Return to the box after this period and examine the contents. If you find (along with the decaying carcass of the animal in question) that the animal developed some idiosyncratic form of artistic expression before it expired then it and its species can be said to have developed sentience.
We can also tell you that having a few of these artist-in-a-box contraptions available can be an excellent way of staving off boredom. The more completely deprived a sentient creature is the more creative he becomes in his efforts to mentally escape the torture of being locked inside a featureless box forever. Some of them may even devise a thing or two that you yourself had never thought of.
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders
I have some thoughts, and I’d also love some feedback in answer to the question posed by the title. If I was willing to compromise on ‘the weight issue’ what would that mean? What would I do differently? What would I give up, and where could I draw the line?
I can think of two things right off the bat that might be part of my compromising. One is the obvious- agreeing to be at and stay at a weight that was significantly higher than where my head tells me I want to be. Practically speaking I think it might have to entail some sort of upper limit. In other words, I’m trying to maintain my current weight and follow a meal plan my nutritionist and I worked out, but I agree that whatever happens I won’t do anything on my own to try and lose weight unless my weight goes above X.
X would have to be scarily high so that I couldn’t gain a couple pounds and have the escape clause set in. Even as I’m writing this part of my mind was imagining deliberately binging up 5 pounds so that I could reach X and bail out of this cray scheme immediately. Note that I haven’t even started the plan or decided what X would be and yet my eating disordered brain is already looking for the exit. Have I mentioned recently that I really hate my eating disorder?
Thing two that might be involved in the whole compromising on my weight deal is something I hesitate to mention and thus am making this sentence arbitrarily long to avoid typing. Ok. It might be that I would have to agree to stop purging without having totally conquered the binging problem. I’m not sure on this, because I can so easily go into COE, but I’m really hating the b/ping and it’s possible that binging without purging might have to come into things somewhere. Obviously avoiding the binge would be better, but taking away the safety valve of the purge might help move things along. Or it might be a nightmare that led me to gain 50 pounds over the course of a few months.
So those are the two starting thoughts about what a possible compromise might be. Anyone who has been through this or just thought about maybe having to do this please lecture and/or advise me.
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders
So, being out of my bubble for a couple days has me back home in a bit of a contemplative mood. My day has been a mixture of profound depression and serious contemplation, from which I have distilled the following two things:
1. I really am sick of my eating disorder. I might even be willing to compromise on the weight issue, I’m just that sick of living this way.
2. If I want to survive, I need to keep up my fictional writing. It’s the only thing that makes me feel better (besides losing weight or binging), and when I don’t do it I find myself in a bad way scarily quickly.
(more to come on these, particularly point one, tomorrow)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: creative writing, fiction, flash fiction, religion, short story, story, writing
The most wise and undeniably holiest of prophets Achem came before the people to tell them of God’s need for a temple. He declared that God decreed it must be 1000 seraphs by 3000 seraphs and topped with a sphere of gold according to a complicated set of drawings god had given him. He then spread out the holy plans before the people and asked of them each to help in the construction of this temple, for otherwise God might become angry and destroy the harvest that was coming in so nicely this season.
The people looked at the plans set out by the wise and holy prophet and they responded in a way that angered the august Achem. “What’s a seraph?” They asked him.
“A seraph,” the revered and holy father of our people told them “Is a holy measurement that just so happens to equal to the length of that stick you’ll see lying over on the ground there. Take up the stick and make a golden sceptre of the same length which I will use to oversee the building of the temple. God has willed it that way.
The people were much impressed by Achem’s knowledge of divine measurements, and although a few of them may have thought it more likely that Achem had drawn the plans himself (as opposed to finding them on top of a hill in the middle of a downpour but remaining perfectly dry as proof of their divine origin the way he’d told them) none of them relished the prospect of seeing the harvest destroyed, as it was really coming in very nicely indeed.
So did it occur that the holy temple was begun on the highest point of the city on the banks of the holy river, at the behest of the holy prophet, as commanded by the lord of creation himself. The plans called for a vast and grand temple indeed, one which was almost evenly divided in twain between the cavernous space intended for the worship of the father of heaven and the equally cavernous quarters designed to house the most holy and beloved prophet.
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders
I really don’t give my wonderful family enough credit.
I just told my mom how much I was freaking out over going to my uncle’s place for thanksgiving. I told her the truth- that I have no plan on what to eat, that I’ve been dreading it and avoiding thinking about it, that I hadn’t figured out any sort of strategy except to endure it, eat to much, and come home and hate myself and wish I was dead.
The outcome? I will be spending this thanksgiving “helping out at a soup kitchen” as far as that side of the family knows. The other part of the holiday, the time before and after the actual dinner, I’ll be able to enjoy my family, see a movie with them, eat my meals at the same time as theirs even if I’m eating something different, and enjoy their company. But for thanksgiving dinner itself I get a free pass, and for that I am really and truly and utterly thankful.
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders, pro-ana, proana
My dad is picking me up sometime this afternoon for the holiday. Not sure how long I’ll be stuck there. Reason being, my conversation with my dad about when he’d pick me up today:
dad: When do you want to come out on Wednesday?
me: Oh, after dinner would be much better. Anytime convenient for you, you know, if you want to call me after you guys finish dinner that’s fine, or if you want to pick me up as early as 530 or 6 and then you’ll have dinner when you get back that’s fine too.
dad: Oh, don’t worry about dinner- we won’t bother you. I think it’s more convenient for me to get you in the afternoon. I’ll give you a call around 2, ok?
Why even ask when I want to be picked up in the first place?
Not like it makes much difference, though. My plan is just to stay in my room the whole time, except when I’m forced to go to the actual dinner, and ask to be brought home as soon as possible. Then I’m thinking maybe a crash diet of some sort would make a good follow up.
(my good mood seems to have been a couple days anomaly. plus I have a story idea that is refusing to materialize as an actual story and vexing me terribly. maybe i’ll feel better when it’s all over?)
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: awesome, creative writing, getting older, Uncategorized, writing
The next time you find yourself within earshot of a mom with children at a local park or playground keep those ears open and most likely you’ll hear mommy using the word “awesome”. “Look how high I can climb!” “Look what I found!” “Mommy I can use this piece of grass to make a whistle like they showed me how in summer camp!”
“Wow, that’s awesome!” says the mommy, 8 times out of 10. Words cannot convey the subtle horror this experience can hold for an adult female who is not herself anybody’s mommy, nor does she care to be, nor does she think of herself as having at some point without her knowledge become mom aged.
When could the misappropriation of this word by mommies possibly have happened? Don’t they understand that they’re the grown ups now, and as such ought to have placed certain areas of the English language off limits? Have they no shame, repeating words like awesome as if they’re perfectly entitled to employ them? What exactly is it about the fact that they are now grown ups and ought to behave in an upstanding and age appropriate fashion have they failed in understanding? Gentle reader, I share your horror- but I cannot hide the facts from you a second longer. Awesome is a mom word.
I can actually remember learning the word “awesome”. My friend Ellen’s big brother used it and I had to ask Ellen later what that big word David said was. I was a pretty fucking precocious kid so this was pretty far back in history. It was probably right around or just before I entered kindergarten. That makes it… hmmm… about 25 years ago?
I’m fairly sure that one criteria for having become an adult is that you can talk about something you can remember happening 25 years ago.
I wonder if kids these days say awesome. Maybe they learn it from their moms, instead of from someone’s older brother. Maybe really little kids, babies really, will say awesome the same way their moms do. Then if they get to kindergarten and say it all the other little kids laugh at them for using such a mom word. After all the kids laugh at the baby who said awesome they probably all seal themselves off in their plastic learning pods, jack their brains into some sort of portal that connects up to a hard drive, and map a complete and unabridged version of the alphabet directly onto their grey matter.
The unabridged version is more advanced than our old timey alphabet and has letters that sound like “tshc” or “ftp” or “xmeee” or what have you.
I’m pretty sure that someplace on the internet we think we know there’s this other hidden internet that kids use. Once they finish downloading their lessons (while the teacher still thinks they’re plugged in to their learn-a-trons) they go off exploring the web and find their way to places only kids know about. Obviously these places were most likely created and maintained by huge multinational corporate interests in order to sell children more candy but they also serve as clearing houses for new slang terms we grown ups never get to hear about.
That parts just a theory, of course. Maybe the kids use cell phones to text each other new slang words and make fun of lame adult stuff like saying “awesome”. Only lame is probably also lame so I’m not sure exactly what they’d be calling it. Maybe lame only without the vowels and with numbers in there somehow. I think the “e” is represented by a 3 in text language, but don’t quote me on it.
One thing’s for sure, and that’s that no one’s saying “awesome”. Awesome is a total mom-word.
Filed under: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorders | Tags: anorexia, bulimia, eating disorder recovery, eating disorder treatment, eating disorders
Well, today is going well so far. I finally finished the section of “instructions” I’d been meaning to finish for weeks, which leaves me feeling more free to write whatever I feel like again.
Meal plan compliance is much improved, mostly because I’m hoping to look presentable when I see the family and that means I need to not be binging and purging till then. After yesterday went well I’m once again hopeful that this is possible and who knows- even if it’s just for vanity’s sake maybe I’ll get out of the habit of b/ping and be able to carry that forward. Stranger things have happened.
I cancelled my therapy and nutritionist this week, though. I just want to focus on getting through the holidays and talking about it will only make it more stressful and make me more emotional. That’s my theory anyway. I can see myself going to therapy and crying for an hour again and having it make things all the harder. Better to look on it as an unpleasant but brief necessity than something that needs to be talked over or something that could be solved or made better. The problem with wanting to make it better is that if that turns out to be impossible it makes it harder to just shut up and deal with it.
Much more sensible to focus on how short a period of time dinner will be in the grand scheme of my life, and make fun of myself for making such a big deal over such a small thing. Therapy would only confuse matters- I’m going for stoicism, not deep insight or emotional blah blah blah.
