nude

Okay, so it would seem we are winning here.
My aspiration to be thin is rising to the top like cream.
I wish I didn't think this way.
I wish I didn't care, but I do.
Sometimes I get scared and think:  If I'm in recovery, I'm not supposed to care about being thin.
But this is not true.  It is also not possible.  At least not today.

However, it is easier to eat when I don't think I must loose weight.
I suppose in that way I am not so different from anyone else.

"The Bather" Oil by James P. Kerr 

But my thinness does not cost so much as it used to.
The jagged edges in my thinking have been smoothed.
I no longer stand in front of the mirror and pinch my fat.
I don't spend an hour getting dressed.
I don't have fat clothes and skinny clothes.
I don't have to run everyday.
I run every other day, or every 3rd day.
I can go 5 days without exercising at all and not hate myself.
I ate a whole donut today and I am not in trouble.
I don't need to go shopping every time I gain or loose 3 pounds.
There is not a single item on my forbidden food list.
I can have sex whenever I want, and I do.  With the lights on.

I am simply a woman.
A 33 year old woman.
I am not amazed by my appearance nor am I disgusted by it.
Both options seem silly.
Today I ran 4 miles.  My pace averaged between a 10 minute mile and peaked at an 8 minute mile.
No part of my body hurt or begged me to stop.
My run was not punishment.
It was simply an action to help me stay well.
In a way, it was not my accomplishment at all.
It was a prayer.  It was a thank you.

The older I get, the more I realize...I have been carried by a thousand arms doing their simple work.
The work which transcends outward appearance and quiets lofty fantasies.  The work that makes dry hands and ponytails.  This ocean of daily life has rolled me into the polished rocks I used to find on the beach.  My grandma had a whole jar of them in the kitchen. The jar was filled with water so their colors would reflect.  I'd sit and stare at it while she did her work.  I remember watching her and realizing that she worked all day.  It looked awful, but she always smiled and just kept doing it anyway.

Degas - Bathers series

4 little pictures

"You're looking really tiny these days."
"Look at you! You've lost so much weight!  You're tiny!"
"You're lookin' hot girl.  What have you been doing?"

These are direct quotes from the last 24 hours of my life.
They are intended as compliments.
But they scare me.
My first feeling is guilt.  Then I wonder,
"Am I ok?"
I am not intending to loose weight,
"Am I lying to myself?  Do I think I'm eating but I'm really not?"
I have not weighed myself in 10 years, but that doesn't mean measurements do not find me.

My response is always some nonsense about how,
"I don't know why...I work out less now then I ever have in my life.  (Which is true)  It must be from chasing and carrying kids all day cuz I don't do anything special, really.  My Grandma said she never had to work out when she had little kids because she was always running around with her little boys.  Now I know what she was talking about."

Awesome, Sarah.

I'm sure they really needed that whole explanation.
Why can't you just say thank you.

Because I am scared.  Guiltly and scared, so I feel that I have to explain myself.
And I cannot take their compliment as intended.
I haven't learned how to do that yet.
Also, it's hard to say thank you when I am not grateful.
The truth is, I wish they would not say anything.
I wish they would keep their judgements about the value of my body to themselves.
But that will never happen.
I never make comments about other people's bodies.
Ever.
It is not my business, and it is not my place to judge another person's body.
I've wasted enough time competing with the rest of the population.
Now I aspire to see other things in the people around me.

Of course - I still do the automatic scan.
"Are they skinnier than me?  Have they gained or lost weight since the last time I saw them?  Does my ass look like that?"
But I can quickly dismiss it, just as I do the impulse to ram a car in front of me when they drive too slow, or to smack my kid and make them stop crying.  Not trustworthy instincts, obviously.

But the comment that hurt most was one made by my husband.  I came home from Vegas with this strip of pics in my wallet.  My daughter Sophie and I escaped an akward moment at dinner with her team-mates and popped into a photo booth.  We found it nestled in a corner of the casino's blasting arcade.
She was struggling with feeling left out by her friends.   I was seated across the table from my x-husband, and her Dad. My eyes burning with tears that needed release.  Not because I missed him, but because I realized that we never get to parent Sophie together.  She never gets to be adored by both of her parents at the same time.  This was the first time, and she deserved it, and we can rarely give it to her.  Too much.  There was just too much going on in that red vinyl booth.  We were both about to pop.
Our eyes met.
"Wanna go for a walk?"  I sparkled at her.
Wide cheshire grin, "Ya."
"We'll be back!"  We chimed in unison, and bolted.

After the pictures we walked with arms about each other's waist through the casino.
We both had the tears on our lashes, but they were not tragic anymore.
They were simply human and we had grins to go with them.
She looked up at me as we rode the escalator down and smiled.
She leaned her head into my torso.

When I got home from the trip and showed the pics to my husband he said,
"You look sick."
I deflated.
It wasn't an accusation, he said it with concern, and rightfully so.
Maybe I was.  The truth is, I struggled to eat on that trip.  I got slammed with more emotion than I expected.  I was traveling with a man whom I used to be married to.  He is Sophie's Dad and he's very good at it.  I was in mourning all over again.  Then at the same time immensely grateful that we were there together supporting her.  After all my worry for her well-being when we got divorced, she is okay.  The whole weekend was a paradox of pain and joy and reverence.  But the pain made it hard to eat.
"Really?"  I wimpered, "That was a pretty important moment for me."

He didn't mean to hurt me, I'm certain.  He was just trying to tell me the truth.
I will fluctuate.  My ability to eat healthy is still growing, and sometimes, it is not there at all.
People's arbitrary judgements of my exterior stand to rob me of what I know about myself.
But they don't have to.
I know I am doing my best, and that my best is not consistent.
I suppose I'm just scared because I don't want to go back.
I don't want to pretend I am well when I am not.
I'm afraid I'll forget how to be honest, and I will find myself in the cage again, looking out and wondering how I got there.  It has happened before.
My hope is - to write and feel and eat and question and stay free.

Night Drive

I prayed out loud last night, in my car.
I was driving home from picking up cold medicine for Pepper.
It was 10 p.m. and I nestled deep into the nest of my Northface down coat.
I felt my hair growing longer around my face, and a small sense of success.
I've been trying to grow it out.  The only way I can let it grow is to ignore it.  I clamp it into a banana clip and don't wash it for days.
One day it will be long, and I probably won't care very much.
 I'll be accustomed to ignoring it.

The thing I wanted most a year ago was to loose my pregnancy weight.
"One day I will fit into all my old clothes.  I will be thin again, and feel more like myself."
Now I do.  I fit.  But I don't feel any more like Sarah.
I miss the fluency of my writing a year ago.  I miss the acute nature of post-birth pain.
I miss my baby boy Beckam who fit right under my chin.  I miss our 2 a.m. movie dates when the whole house was asleep.
I don't remember the extra 20 pounds.  They are not in my memory.

So why do I work so hard to keep them at bay?
The why never comes when I am begging for it.
I stumble over the why as I walk the path, unconcerned with it anymore.
If I don't ask why, then I am just left with is.
That's what I prayed about - what is now.

"God, I am sorry I am still this way.  I'm still scared.  I still struggle.  I don't want to, and my brain knows better.  I know I don't need to starve or loose weight.  I know that it doesn't work.  But this is deeper than knowing.  This is about what I believe....it's about what I am.  It's about how I'm supposed to be small and big at the same time.  And I'm mad, and I'm scared, and I can't be just one. I don't know how to do this.  I guess I still want something based on my good intentions rather than work.  Is the work just time, and life?  Or is it the absence of work?  Am I working against myself?..."

"Of course you are."

Then God and I had a good laugh...

I remember noticing this in philosophy class during college.
The only truth existed as a paradox.
Whatever is also necessarily isn't.
And then class was just funny.
Because the whole point of philosophy is to discover truth - I think.

one million sorries

I woke up at 5 am just so I could have a chance to write.

It is 6:56 - and I am just now starting.

I've spent the last 2 hours reading other people's blogs and writing emails to friends I've been thinking about.

My right eye is burning.

I could fall asleep, sitting straight up like Ghandi.

My mind is blank like his.

This is supposed to be an ideal, right.  

A quiet mind...or perhaps mine is just not awake...which is not the same thing at all.

Artist PJ Lynch

I used to model for artists.

I would sit for 3 hours per session in 1/2 hour chunks, the air running over each curve.

After a while, if I was in the right pose, I could sit for an hour and have no need to move.

Usually, I would cry, compact my grief into one tear.  It was all I could afford under such scrutiny.

"Is the model crying?"

That may be a distraction.

Instead I stored it all up, let it fill me.

Then I'd say,

"I'm sorry....I'm sorry....I'm sorry....I'm so sorry."

When you die, they say your life flashes before your eyes.

Mine was played on a screen in front of me.

Each pivotal moment.

I saw myself chugging gin, trying to sing Radio Head all wild and hair flying, then crying in a shriveled up raisin ball.  I saw the 2 liter of orange soda and Alkaseltzer.  I saw Sophie.  

Artist Stephen Davis

I saw myself in the morning holding my sour stomach explaining to my husband where I had been all night.

I saw his eyes be lost.  I saw myself drive away in the little green get-away car to do it all over.

I saw white bed sheets and myself folded into them with the too-bright sun.  I told myself,  I will never leave here.  I will just drink and sleep and wait for him to come home.  He will bring gin, and we will laugh.  He is the only one who understands me.

I saw it all crumble.

At least when I was in self-destruct everything was acute.  

I knew exactly my pain, my failure, my place.

Now I don't know.

I live in the not knowing.

Love is not too scary.  I don't run from it.  

But people run from me, just like I used to.

And I watch them tear across open fields knowing they will never find a stopping place.

I watch them, and I love them, as they become tiny black dots.

Sometimes they come back, and want to apologize.

Don't apologize to me.  Apologize to you.  I am ok.

I want you, but  I don't need you.

That has been the hardest part.  Maybe all that time I was apologizing to myself.

But I don't hate the Sarah who ran.  Not anymore. My one million sorries have been said.

So now what....?

artist Carli Ihde

I wonder if now I have more sitting to do.

I can feel that I do.

I just emailed my artist friend to inquire about doing some modeling again.

Because I cannot sit here.

At least, I haven't learned how to convince the toddlers yet.

Fry Flow...

Two nights ago I laid awake thinking,
"I shouldn't have eaten those fries."

Then in the morning, my run was HARD.
I felt.  heavy.  slow.  guilty.
My thighs morphed to a size 16 overnight, and I watched them thunder along the treadmill.

I've been writing this blog for a year.
I guess I thought I would be better by now.
I thought if I wrote all the truth out - it would get used up and there would be no more.
Like one final purge, and then I'd be clean.

When I write it down, I see how unrealistic this is.
I didn't even know I hoped for it, but now that it hasn't happened, I can see that I did.
I wanted to get it all out.
But the thing about being human is - my needs are constant.
And I know eating disorder recovery is about making peace with my humanity.
Being gentle.
In order to recover I need to accept that:
Sometimes I wll eat French Fries.
Sometimes I will run slow.
Sometimes I will blow up at people for things that don't really matter.
Sometimes my car will be a disgusting meal cart on wheels for weeks on end.
I will not work out everyday.
I will not know how to deal with my family.
I will gain a few pounds when I eat a lot and exercise little.
I will not write every time I have something important to say.
I will forget that I utterly adore my husband.
I will not mop the floor when it's been filthy for 2 weeks.
I will not fold every load of laundry within 5 minutes of taking it out of the dryer.
I will not be the writer I think I should.
I will not be the artist, the teacher, the mother, I think I am supposed to be.

The list is never-ending.  I can't name everything.

For example:
Today I am still in my sweats and it's noon.
I need to wash my hair.
Pepper is wearing the same clothes she wore yesterday.
We are moving in 3 weeks and I haven't packed a single box yet.

But:
I cradled Beckam last night until 4 am because he was sick and throwing up.
All of his bedding is washed and bleached.
I got Sophie to school on time.
I made Pepper pink waffles.
I wrote 2 blog entries.
I wrote my husband a letter telling him why I appreciate him and left it by the coffee pot.

In order to remain clean and clear a lake must have inflow and outflow.

Grown up tricks

Feeling obligated to write yet far from insightful.
The laundry is on a conveyer belt which follows me from room to room.
It snakes through my life.   It is never finished.
I just manteled myself up over the washing maching and lowered my legs into the thin slot between the machine and the wall.
I dropped the scoop for the detergent down there.
Quite an agile move for a 33 year-old woman.
10 years worth of lint grasped at my bare thighs as they slid down the wall.
Gross.
I cringed when my toes hit the floor.  There's gotta be a dead mouse down there.
It seemed I would pop his head with my foot.  Nope.  Solid concrete.
I reached down with my big toes and pinched the laundry scoop, then slowly brought it up to my hand.
Yet another good trick.
All this so I can continue on as a slave to the conveyer belt.
I thought about just leaving the scoop down there, but then the laundry would stink and fill up with ants.
If I leave a pile on the floor for longer than a week it grows ants.  I don't know how.

All night I've been  trying to decide if my shorts fit tighter.
I've changed my mind about 16 times.
I finally decided that since I can't be sure, it may not actually be happening.

Andrew went to watch the UFC fights.
I wanted to go with him so bad.
Like the ache for a sleepover with my best friend in 7th grade on a Friday night.
I didn't get to go.
Someone had to stay home with the kids.

I used to go watch the fights when we were first dating.
I'd fold my legs up into a wad on the couch.
I'd sit in his armpit and pretend to care.
I actually hate watching those guys hurt each other.
I wonder if they're Moms watch.  I wouldn't.
But I loved that spot with Andrew on the couch.
I love how the men act like little boys and get all riled up.
I love being quiet in the midst of their yelling.
It makes me smile.
It's an odd thing to love, but that's how love is.  It makes no sense.  It is simple sensory delight.
Like how I still want to eat Andrew's breath sometimes.
I wanted to eat it tonight, but he left.

So I took a bath and shaved my legs.
Sophie sat on the edge of the tub with her feet in it, getting her jeans wet.
She read her book and told me to stop splashing the pages.
"You're the one who decided to read your book in the bath," I scolded.
But I was glad she was there.

Now the house is quiet, and I will go to sleep.
I have to sleep in a lot of clothes when Andrew's not here.  I get cold.

The Honeymoon year 2006.
 Andrew watching me be weird with food at the OP restaurant and hopefully adoring me...perhaps not.

The Hill

I've had the same songs on my ipod since Mother's day.
2 playlists:
"Run Sarah Run"
and "Cool Down"

The running songs are chosen for the beat.
If the beat matches my running stride - it's good.
If it's too slow or too fast, it messes me up.
It feels like I'm running against the current
Surprisingly, Eminem raps at the same pace by which I run.
We may disagree on a lot of other things, but for about 40 minutes, I'm right there with him.
Also on this list are Evanescence, Black Eyed Peas, Cardigans, and Mickey Avalon.
I've been running with these guys for years.

My cool down playlist is set for the rush of emotion that comes when I walk back to the house.
Running is a release for me.
It loosens the crust which forms when I ignore myself.
I have to ignore myself in order to get things done.
"Destruction of self-centerdness"  - a spiritual ideal.
But just like all things - there is a balance - otherwise I'm just absent.
So when I check in with myself, I often find sorrow for the times  I fall short.
I find sorrow for all the hours spent in solitary acts of duty.
And I listen to this song by Marketa Irglova "The Hill."
Every time I hear it, I want to write about it, but I never have my computer handy.
She is singing to her husband, a song he will never hear:

Walking up the hill tonight
when you have closed your eyes.
I wish I didn't have to make
all those mistakes and be wise.
Please try to be patient
and know that I'm still learning.
I'm sorry that you have to see
the strength inside me burning.

But where are you my angel now?
Don't you see me crying?
And I know that you can't do it all
but you can't say I'm not trying.
I'm on my knees in front of him
but he doesn't seem to see me.
With all his troubles on his mind
he's looking right through me.
And I'm letting myself down
satisfying you
And I wish that you could see
that I have my troubles too.

Looking at you sleeping
I'm with the man I know.

I feel stupid to admit these feelings.
It seems like I'm complaining.  I'm not.
If anything, I suppose I'm begging.
How silly to beg when he's asleep, but it's the only time I'd do it.
I don't even think I'm begging him.  I think I'm begging Grace for a reprieve.
Ironic though, I'll bet he could sing the same song to me.
I know his loneliness matches mine.
I know he tries just as hard.
I know he misses me sometimes too.

This is why we keep saying,

"I'm sorry."
"I hear you."
"I'll try."

For the first few years of my recovery I struggled with a deep feeling of,
"I am not enough."
I thought my husband made me feel this way.
I thought my kids, and my Dad, and my clothes made me feel this way.
Now I know that I've used this guilt to drive me, and I don't need it anymore.
Sometimes I think I do, but then I remember.
I can stop trying to get enough, be enough.
I don't need the measurements.
Not for me.  Not for him.