Yes. So far.
I know what their needs are. I go days without realizing mine.
_________________________________________________________________
A friend gave me the book Women Food and God.
I read it this morning while Beckam was in the bath.
There is a wooden step stool by the sink. Pepper uses it to brush her teeth. I perched my butt on it like a clown in a tiny circus car. I read for a whole 10 minutes before being interrupted by her chirping.
I read that my beliefs about food reflect my beliefs about the world, about myself.
The author claims at some point I was let down. I was abandoned by people, love, safety i.e. God, and food came rushing in.
Maybe she's right. I don't know how much that matters now.
I remember not having enough money for food. I remember being on welfare from the bishop's store house. I remember concocting strange meals with my siblings of home-made frosting and graham crackers. We scavanged the neighborhood for apricots and cherries in the spring. Like animals we hopped fences and took what we could gather.
At 13 years old, my family unraveled. The blanket which had muffled the outside world's screams, her reality, her cold, fell from my shoulders. At first I cowered. Then I grew thick. My callouses took on the guise of philosophy, education, sex. I decided. I will have no needs.
Of course this is impossible. My pendulum swung wide and fast.
I need nothing.
I need it all.
All the food. All the speed. All the warm blankets fresh from the dryer.
Then I'd curse my weakness, shlep backpack onto shoulders and head straight out into the cold again.
But I already know all this.
What I struggle with is trust.
Why should I put the gun down? I am in a draw with life, and for good reason.
If I surrender my weapons I may be fatally wounded.
Yes.
Life is one long, drawn-out fatal wound.
I can preserve nothing.
So I stop trying to preserve my weight.
The dillusion that I am able to dominate.
I used to hear people say,
"Eating disorders are about control. Food and weight is the only thing a person can control so they become obsessed. It's not about how much they weigh. It is an attempt to gain authority in their own life."
'That's so stupid,' I'd think. 'I just don't want to get fat.'
synonyms for Control:
 |
| "Restraint" pastel drawing 2007 |
___containment___
predomination, regimentation,
I could use every one of these words as an ideal I've held for myself.
For how I need to approach food, exercise, and what I see in the dressing room mirror.
Myself.
I was afraid of myself.
Of my impulse to run.
My ability to be lost.
I still get scared.
So why trust?
Why welcome humanity?
She is destructive, gorgeous, unpredicatable, irrational, and heart-breaking.
Because I am going to die anyway.
My painting professor used to say, "In the end, all art is a response to the fact that we are going to die.
It is an attempt to avoid it or come to terms with it."
He would seem to be correct.
I wish I could have understood this stuff when I was actually in college.
Better late than never...
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