lotus

"You look really skinny today," my friend noticed.
    "Ya, it's cuz I'm weaning Beckam.  It's the last 10 nursing pounds."
"Oh...the magic 10 pounds.  Aren't you so happy?"
     "No...not really," and I almost started crying.

I feel like I'm loosing substance.
My body is just mine now.
I fear my ocean's tide will pull backwards, into a life I've already known.
Now that I get to do whatever I want, will old waters rush in?
I have permission to be skinny.
Along with it comes an implicit allowance to avoid food all together.
I don't have to eat for anyone's well-being but my own.

Luckily I am nestled in the center of a hundred reasons to be alive.

In Buddhism the lotus flower is a symbol of rebirth and awakening..
The blue lotus symbolizes the spirit's victory over intelligence.
I have known many women with eating disorders.
We know more about nutrition than any other species.
I can tell you how many calories are in just about anything.
I usually know the fat, protein and carb count too.
I know which kind of exercise produces lean muscle.
No fad diet passes without showing up on my radar.
HCG, Atkins, Fat-free  Weight Watchers, Raw, Acai berries,
Intuitive Eating (which for us, isn't actually a diet at all...)



All of this knowledge served as a club with which I beat myself,
either into submission or shame.
"You may only eat eggs."
"Fat is unacceptable."
"Carbs are unnecessary.  You can and should burn only your own body fat."
"Anything not grown in the ground has too many calories, and you don't need it."
Just as I viewed myself with a magnifying glass, the diets themselves exploded into absolute mandates.
If I veered from the absolute in the slightest, I had to binge because I had already blown it.
Then a purge was necessary so I could stay alive.

In the end, my thinking brain is not so reliable as I thought.
For years I have carried a duty to it.
The bag is packed with college books and the expectations of my father.
Even as a young girl of 14 I would engage for hours with him.
My thinking brain matching his, trying to keep up and walk with his elongated strides.
In early recovery, my prayer was, please help my brain be in its proper place.
Please take my fear of not listening to it.
In the end itt is my spirit that rises to the top of the sludge just like that flower.

Black Leather couch

I knelt down to pray with Andrew this morning at our black leather couch.

We have been doing this together for years.

Instinctively we fall on our knees into a pile.

I nestle my head into the space under his ribs.

He kisses the tops of my folded hands.

Our first year together

I pull his smell through my nose up into my memory.

I remember why we are doing this.

I remember why we are tired, why we are blessed.

My first thought is always, "Thank you.  Thank you for this."

Then I start praying for what I think I'm supposed to...

"God please take my fear.  Take my fear of food, of what my body looks like..."

Today I realized, this has been my prayer for long enough.

I've experienced how this fear, this eating disorder, teaches me.

Maybe I cannot pray it away.

So I stopped.  

"Please help me rest in this fear.  Please help me accept it.  Please help me live in the midst of it.

If it is not time for it to go, please at least help me not to hate it."

I have tears in my eyes writing this now.

Because it feels like relief and it feels like the truth.

The engine on his boat failed so he's paddling.
Lake Powell 2006

I have no idea what Andrew prays for.

We pray silently to ourselves.

In this moment we are neutral with each other.

Maybe he has something just as persistent, something he is trying to pray away too.

I hope he knows I wouldn't pray away any part of him.

I knew I was ready to marry him when I looked across the beach in Lake Powell.

I saw him as a boy and a man at the same time.

I had the distinct thought,

"I don't know what that man has to go through, but whatever it is, I want to be right next to him."

I meant it, and I didn't feel scared of marriage anymore.

After we stand up, the tide of life rushes in to sweep away our safe place.

We become adults again.

I go my way, to change a diaper or unload the dishes.

He chugs his iced coffee.  The screen door slams behind him as he goes to work.

I am alone again.

I used to fear being alone in the house.

I was afraid I couldn't fill up the time with enough goodness to keep the food away.

Or I was afraid to check out, all my energy consumed by denying myself.

Now it is peaceful in the house alone.

I get to write.  

I watch the kids sleep.

I drink coffee and do the laundry.

I feel the ache in my muscles and stretch.

I get ready to listen, play, and go until the sun sets.

Early in recovery I heard,

"3 meals a day and Life in between"

Today I am living it.

He and I leave for Lake Powell in a month.

It will be our 6th year on the water together.

Every time we go, I find the man from the beach, and the little boy.

We get enough momentum to love each other for another 365 days.

Rainbow at Powell

 

My 20 year old self

I stumbled upon this poem in my hotmail account
It was written in 1999.
I was 20 years old.
Funny that I read this today.
This morning I mopped the floor with my foot and a dirty dish towel and thought,
"I have surrendered so much of who I thought I had to be.  Maybe that is the gift of motherhood.  Maybe I can stop trying to maintain myself and just go all in."
_____________________________________________

I do not practice preventative life.

I drive down the street despite bloody road-side wreckage

I eat chicken despite salmonella.

I board planes even though Buddy Holly died before his time.

I make love although I don't know whether it will be him rocking beside me on my front porch in wrinkles and near death bliss.

I sing out loud even though I get sour faces and sour notes and cracks in the perfection of my voice.

I hike the mountains.

I swim in the ocean.

I say I don't know.


I don't know if it is bad or if it is good...

But *I* guess I'll find out ---

I'll find out in mid-flight

or high speed song.

perhaps I'll feel it transparent in a thin line drawn down my bare skin

or maybe...

I'll see it lying there...

in the bottom of an empty bowl.

Empty Full Boat By Toni Littlejohn

Shedding skin

Up at 5 a.m.

Newborn Beckam

The first time I've nursed in 24 hours.
My milk is drying up.
This is my intent, I think.
Beckam is 8 months old.
I am leaving for Lake Powell in 5 weeks.
I will be away for 8 days.
I didn't expect this to come so soon.
I've been counting down.  Powell in 6 months.  Beckam is 2 months and 12 pounds...3 months...15 pounds...Powell in 2 months...Beckam at 20 pounds.  
Now here it is.  Weaning time.  I'm not ready.

I will miss Beckam's little body snuggled into mine before the world wakes up.
Now one more degree of separation will happen, and he will become more of his own.
This makes me cry at my computer.
I probably look silly, unprovoked.
More time would not make it any less sad.
Besides, he is a big baby.  He weighs 22 pounds.
It looks like I'm nursing a toddler.  My body has outdone itself.
But I still feel like someone is dying, and I am begging Grace to leave them here for one more day.
As if one more day would make them stick to my bones like oatmeal.

Along with loosing my milk, I am loosing my last 10 baby pounds.
But, I would keep them.
After all this wishing they would go, I find they are not so bad.
My soft body was good.
Now I look at my breasts and they are just small, not better.
I thought I would feel more free without them, but I don't.
I thought if I were thinner, I would feel like my real self.
That's not true either.
I have been myself all this time.
I do not need to separate out thin Sarah from curvy Sarah and evaluate their worth.  There is only Sarah.
With each baby comes a cleansing, a shedding of old beliefs.
This time the one to go is:
"I am only my real self if I am a certain size.  If I am thin."
That is a big one.  Perhaps THE one.

These beliefs are only shed on the other side of experience.
I cannot think this skin off my body.  Just as a lizard, I go through the actual and very real experience of letting it become loose and then wiggling out.
I look back at it and know it will never fit again.

Still wishing...

I really don't want to eat lately.
I wish I had a health condition that would force me onto a liquid diet.
I had a friend once who was an alcoholic doctor.
He drank his liver into a putrid useless broken thing.
He died in the very hospital where he practiced..
He had a health condition too.

There is no set of circumstances which will eradicate this eating disorder.
I wake up with her every morning.
I want to start another blog, just so I can ignore her.
It has only been 6 months.  I've been writing this blog for 6 months, and what do I expect?
To be magically healed?  Yes...I do hope for that.

But that would be like wishing to wake up not human but an angel or a saint.
An individual who once suffered and had fear, but not today.
Today she can exist in the truth all the time.
She will never run from terrors created by the shadows of her own doubt.
She will never wish for anything.
She will look up to wish on nights' stars and want nothing from them.

No this is not me.
I still want.
I still send out feelers looking for other warm bodies.
My longing is still stirred by the right song at sunset.
And now, as the sun rises I am lacing up my running shoes.
Because I still want to be alive with blood pumping, and so, I suppose I welcome suffering.