symbiosis

My tidy husband has swept old journals back into their box and up to the shelf.  I had hoped to pick up where I left off yesterday.  Now they are out of reach and I am left grinning at my childishness and his care-taking of me.  He prompts me to wear my seatbelt, to bring the insurance card, to vacuum the mini-van. I accept all this guidance because I know I am only mostly an adult.  Like a teenager, I still believe I don't need a seatbelt, and all ailments will be cured with a stout, sweaty 4 mile run.
When I wear high heels, our noses meet.  Without them, my head rests under his chin.  This creates an illusion.  He is stronger than I am.  He is taller, wider,  heavier more capable with his rough mits for hands.  I used to hold his palms in mine and study them.  I'd turn them over and over like a sandy, beach treasure.
How can they be so dry and not hurt?  How can you just let them crack and bleed?  How can there be spots  which will never come clean?  Engine grease is pressed so deep into the crevises that it didn't even come out on our wedding day.
He can withstand things I can't understand.
He props up my everyday life.  He is my steel frame.

Pepper and Dad at our first house

Because he of him, I am free to simply tell the truth and let it be.
I get to write without worrying that it will ever be lucrative. He offers me a luxury far better than any object.  I have stumbled over this often, but never told him.  Without Andrew's support, I would feel immense pressure to BE something.  One thing I learned in school, when you MUST be creative, it is nearly impossible to think of anything good enough.
Without a partner, I could not be a whole-hearted artist and a mother.  My energy would be sucked away by the daily tasks and expenses, which he assumes for me, for us.

I get to be with our kids every single day.  I greet them when they wake up and hold them in their jammies.  I sing to them, "Good morning to you....we're all in our places...with bright shining faces."
We stay in our p.j.'s until 10, and make pink waffles.
They move in and out of days with ease, one trickling onto another like a pond accumulating a delicate soul.

Sarah

This is my gift to him.  This family.  Sarah, Sophie, Pepper and Beckam.

Sarah to fold into at the end of the day. Sarah to sit on the back of the toilet and listen to his stories while he takes a shower. Sarah to make morning coffee.  Sarah to dance with at weddings.  Sarah to catch eyes with across the room and to know without words.

Sophie

Pepper

Sophie to battle and to adore.  Sophie to challenge his authority and make him laugh at himself.  Sophie to flip through the house and stir up the air.  Sophie for tenderness to Pepper when we have none left






.


Pepper to wear sparkly shoes at the end of whispy legs.  Pepper to squeeze into Dad hugs.  Pepper to ask questions from her world of imagination, "Do elephants use their trunks like a telescope when they swim under water?"  Pepper to remind us to read books and to slow down.

Beckam

Beckam to marvel at the strength of his noggin.  Beckam for being stout and studly.  Beckam for his red hair and for looking just like Grandpa Andy.  Beckam to snuggle the tags of his tattered blankie.  Beckam to bop his head to a music beat in the back seat.  Beckam to bring us all together, and sew up our family tight.



Thank you husband.  For being exactly what you are.

Blind spots

The Golden moment - 60" x 48" acrylic 

Back sore like a set of old scaffolding threatening to collapse.  Every morning I wake up with aching muscles.  I can always find my age somewhere, in the arch of my foot, the small of my back, the ridges along my waist or bolting up the front of my thighs.  It used to be I could run everyday and experience no pain.  I could climb rocks in the desert from sun to sun and not ache.  Now I am always aware of my deficiency.  And once again, I am having the experience of "Those old people knew what they were talking about."

I am not fresh anymore.  I am not invincible.  I am not immuned to the rigors of time.
Yet, I always think I was "better" in the past, and this is not true.  I imagine I was more free, strong, honest, creative...so I look to my old journals, and I find that I have been doing basically the same thing all along.

This one's from 2005.  The year I quit drinking.

 Degeneration of sunflower 60"x 48" acrylic  2008

"Talking about writing as artists and dreamers do.  
In our flip-flops
 in our lounging
 in our thick-rimmed glasses
 in our apathetic shaggy hair
 in our youth
 in our uncertainty
 in our sickness
 in our hope.

barely able to breath through the cloth of our pretense we are all eager to try.
It is so satisfying to put it out there - all that we know.

And  I jump right in 
wagging my tail, tongue sloppy, eyes darting for the next bone."

6/2001

These are the sunflower series I painted in school

"Last night I was haunted by my artwork.  Every painting seemed to be alive and so desperate. Each one had been intended for the answer, but instead became just another beautiful expression of something so much smaller.  Ironically the sadness was in the beauty.  You would think that was the whole point, to create something beautiful.  But that's only part of it.  It is to create something which reflects the madness I feel. To stop it in it's tracks long enough, and completely enough that I can look at it and find peace.  So that I can know it has some sense.  It is real, and not merely circumstance or pre-programmed feeling.  That's why I'm in such a hurry."

I suppose there will always be some sense of inadequacy.  Maybe I will always know that the perfect expression is impossible.  Because I have blind spots.  But what a shame it would be, if I let this keep me from trying to express what I do see.

Owning Orange

So, I've been invited to write for this blog called: owningpink
Trouble is:  I haven't been writing.
I go onto the site and it's all about the transformative power of telling your own story.
It says if I can teach what I know, to even a handful of people, I will be amazed.
And I am.
I know.
This last year of writing Chrysalisbreak has brought me to tears on so many mornings.
It made me hear my Sarah voice again.  The one I never doubted as a young girl.  She is the one who has always known where home is.  The one who wrote pure poetry at the age of 11 and never stopped.
But I undervalue her still.
Because it is still easier to have no needs.
My writing has stopped because I have stopped valuing her - me- whatever.
And now I'm crying again.  It happens so subtly, like falling out of love.
I don't understand these airbrushed photos of women who always have time to wash their hair....and blow-dry it.
I don't understand their struggle and how they turned it into money.
I don't understand how I would ever fit.
I don't know that I want to.

looks simple right?

Because women who are sick don't believe women who are well.
At least not that well.
Not well enough to be on Oprah.

But I started out this whole thing because I realize I will never be "fixed."
There is nothing to fix. I wanted to help people like me, if I could.  I thought, "At least we won't be alone, and maybe we could have less shame.  Maybe I will learn something."
Apparently, I was not the first one to have this thought.  People are making money with this idea all over the internet.
They're called life coaches, and they are replacing God.  Or maybe they're just supposed to be the conduit, I don't know.

Last weekend I sat in my kitchen with a good friend picking at my salad.
Not eating it.
"I don't know,"  I trickled, "I've never known this version of myself.  I'm afraid I will look back and realize that I was asleep.  That I should've been more passionate or that I mistook slumber for peace.  Maybe I just feel quiet because actually I am asleep......I probably am."

But if I'm writing.  I know I'm not asleep.  It flows like water, even if it has to find the one crack left, it will come out.  And by "it" I mean the truth.  I know it because I cry and I find myself writing things I never would have known were there.

What is there now?
I am afraid I will be absorbed by my husband and my kids.
I'm afraid I already am.

Yesterday I went climbing and remembered what I am capable of.
I realized, I am not 20.  I realize it even more today.  I walk like an arthritic woman up the stairs.  I have to gather my breath when I pick up a kid, and I make a funny face like I've just sucked on an atomic fireball jawbreaker.
My thighs ache.  My ass aches.  My lats ache.  My abs ache.
I felt fear.  I dragged my kids through the dirt.  I carried two toddlers up and down mountains.
I climbed a crack that kicked my ass 12 years ago, and it did it again...but not quite as bad.
It was me - it was Sarah - doing all that.  Sarah whose hair turns to fire in the sun.

I watched 10 year-old Sophie climb a 5.10a crack.  She never voiced fear.  She was a tiny woman in her taut calves and the arms of her father.
The trail up to the climb  is the same one I hiked 11 years ago when I was in labor with her.
I called my Aunt from the top,
"I think I'm in labor."
"Where are you?"
"Up in the canyon rock climbing."
"Why are you in the mountains if you're in labor!?  Get down and go to the hospital!"
"It's not that bad yet.  I'll go down soon..."

I can withstand so much, but not stagnation.  It will kill me faster than anything.

Sophie took this picture of me, and I didn't know it.  So I guess it's pretty accurate.

Fever

I've spent the morning reading Johanna Wendell's psychology thesis on the Eating Disorder Spectrum.
She is relating this spectrum to low "psychological flexibility."
Psychological flexibility refers to one's ability to "go with the flow" without being defined by it.
It is to know their worth, independent of outside stimulus.
Easier said then done.  Good solution.  Can you bottle that, please?

Of course it is all broken down into miniscule parts and WAY too many words.
The reason I am interested is because she uses the term Eating Disorder Spectrum.
She acknowledges about 60% of the female population display ED symptoms, and that most of them are never diagnosed as clinical cases.
This population is suffering, but not enough to get real help.
They exist in a low-grade fever which sucks life from them, but never kills.
This is the population I am concerned with.
It is me.  These are my people.

Lalla Essaydi. Converging Territories #26, 2004.

We walk around believing our spouse thinks we are not good enough.
We exercise while our kids watch cartoons.
We make dinner for everyone else and don't eat.
We hide and nibble protein bars in the pantry.
We exercise when it does damage to our bodies.
We measure our waist by pinching imaginary love handles 7 times a day.
We are lured in by every new diet.  We often bite and get dragged.
We are not sick enough to get help, and not well enough to eat.

She also claims college students are especially vulnerable to this spectrum.
Because of their high aspirations and constant evaluation of performance, they are at risk.

In order to achieve, I must not deviate.  
There can be no mercy for me.  If I am gentle, I will slack and ultimately fail.
I can rest after finals.  Everyone else can do it and I have to keep up.
I can't be the one who falls behind. 
Flexibility equals mediocre, and I've worked too hard to be mediocre.

Yes, this was my brain in school.
This was my brain long before school.
It was my reaction to gaining weight and the loss of identity which came after.
It is the voice of Lydia.  (the voice of ED)
It is the hardest one to love, and the one necessary to embrace.

Lalla Essaydi. Converging Territories #30, 2005

I haven't read this woman's whole thesis yet. I am curious to know her solution.
She had better offer one.
My solution is to bring these voices out into the open.
It is to acknowledge the 60% and let them know, they are not alone.
We do not have to compete with each other.  There is no arriving at the top.
There is only the fear of falling, and the queasiness from looking down.
We perpetuate this sickness.  We generate its heat with our jealous leering at one another's bodies.

"I already know all this,"  I thought, as I read.
This is the crux.  I knew all along, but I didn't want to let go.

I am going to keep researching the concept of an Eating Disorder Spectrum.
I can't find much on it right now, but I believe it is the next step for ED recovery.


Here is the link if you want to read it:

http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1084&context=psych_theses

Also, here is the artist bio for Lalla Essaydi.  I think she fits the perpetuation of female imprisonment as equal to beauty.

lucky charm

Finally got my computer back!
Andrew had ACL surgery, and he took over the office.
Then Grandma came to stay and the computer is in the guest room...which I am not complaining about in the least.  I love it when Grandma comes, and would gladly give up the computer in exchange for her presence.

So, for the last 2 weeks I have been writing blogs in my head.
I have forgotten all of them.
Now the loudest thought in my mind is,
"I don't see what all the hype is about Dunkin' Donuts coffee.  I think it sucks."

As far as eating disorder recovery goes, my head is stuck.
It keeps returning to this article I read on Intermittent Fasting by Sara Solomon.
Apparently - IF - which is the ridiculous abbreviation for this tactic - is the newest diet craze.
How did I fall for this?
How did I get sucked into believing the right strategy will allow me to eat without guilt?
The how is irrelevant.
I should have known when I saw her pictures and read the language.  This is just another quick fix.
I should have known. This is not truth.
Images of her taking a photo of her own ass in the mirror should have told me.
"All you have to do is eat whatever you want for 6 hours a day and fast for the other 18!"
She may as well have been saying,
"All you have to do is maintain control and you'll be sexy like me!"

talisman string for every diet I've tried...

This is no different than any other promise I have made to myself.
And I always fail.
I fail because I am not meant to be a diet.
I am meant to be a whole person.

I've been afraid to write about this
I wanted to believe Sara Solomon.
I wanted to carry her like a secret charm in my pocket.

But I knew.  I owe it to myself and to my handful of readers, to be honest.
I started this blog with the intent of holding back nothing.
So here I am.  Admitting that I fell for it once again.
Now this is me, throwing my little charm into the D.I. box.  It holds no value for me.
It is a cheap imitation of life.

To be alive is to gaze out beyond tightly wound compulsions.  It is to perceive the entire rotation and to stand in awe of my meager place.  I am just one butterfly still in chrysalis.  This is also the relief offered to me by truth.

Last night I drove in my car with a girl new to recovery.
"I never used to notice the changing of seasons,"  she said.
 I smiled.
We sailed along Foothill drive above the valley and watched a cantaloupe-colored sun sink into the great salt lake.
"It looks almost tropical,"  she said.
"It does.  That is the perfect word for that color of sun," I replied.

hoopty truck

Driving with Sophie listening to the new Maroon 5 song on the radio.

We're on our way home from gymnastics.

She knows I like this song, so she leaves it on the station.

"And when the daylight comes I’ll have to go
But, tonight I’m ‘gonna hold you so close
‘Cuz in the daylight..."

"Mom, Why does he have to go?"

I am staring into sky turning turquoise.  She can tell something is inside me.  Her glance keeps flickering over from the passenger seat.

"Because sometimes you have to leave the people you love."

"Why?"

"It's just part of life."

We keep driving.  The hole I've just exposed is still a mass of cold blue concrete.  We pass the off-ramp to Big Cottonwood Canyon.  Her Dad and I used to live up there.  I remember coasting down the exit in his grey truck.  It smelled like desert dust and sweat.  It smelled like him.  A huge metal "cow-pusher" sat on the front.  We'd ram it against a big stump on our flight into the driveway during winter time.  It took a lot of momentum to get up our hill in the canyon snow.  Every rally was a miniature triumph.

I was pregnant with Sophie in that snow.  We had fires every night at the Cabin in the Pines.

Sometimes I cried alone in the bathroom, looking at my belly and trying to understand what was about to happen.  

"Mom, what are you thinking about."

"I'm just thinking about Dad, about how I loved him and I had to leave.  I was thinking that probably doesn't make sense to you."
"It does."

This response surprises me.  

"I loved him so much.  When we met, I could never imagine not wanting to be with him.  Then I got so sick in my heart, and I couldn't find it anymore.  I was confused and I kept trying to find the thing we used to have and I couldn't find it.  I didn't know...I just didn't know.  In a way, I guess I still don't know.  I don't know why it had to happen the way it did."

"I know, Mom.  It's okay.  I am sorry I used to be so mad at you about that.  Remember?  When I was so mad at you?"  she asks.

"You're not mad anymore?"

"No."

"I'm glad.  You were mad for a long time."

We are in the parking lot of Dick's sporting goods.  Tears squat in her thick eyelashes.

I reach over and put my arm around her gymnast shoulders.

We go inside and find her Dad a birthday present.  A swift blue cycling jacket.  

They are going to the desert this weekend.  I wish I could go with them.   I know I made my choice, and I wouldn't undo anything.  But I will always love that little threesome which started my family.  

Passionate Tuesday

My husband is having surgery today.

I passed his crutches by the front door like a stranger in an elevator.
He is having his ACL repaired.
This means he will be home with us for a whole week.
I am skeptical of this set-up.
We got married because we wanted to be with each other.
Because magnets set up by God sucked us into each other and we could not push back.
I guess you could call this "wanting."  In a way it seemed impossible to do anything else.

He crawled into bed hours after I'd fallen asleep and whispered,
"Come 'eer.  snuggle.  This is your last chance for 2 weeks."
I groaned,
"Ugh...you're so cold, and I'm so warm....I'm sleeping...."
He chuckled and I could hear his smile.
"Come on Kappos."
I roll over and kick my right leg onto his thigh.  My head finds its groove in his shoulder pit.
I breath him deep in through my nostrils.  I exhale all my air.

We have gone to marriage counseling twice.
I'm sure we will go again.
Our first counselor called us a hand in a glove.  His strength fits my weakness.
I hold space for shapes he cannot see.
Andrew has taught me how to be consistent, how to respect other people's time and work.
He has taught me the power of doing the same thing over and over day after day.
He has taught me there are no right or wrong feelings, just feelings.
I've learned how to put myself into shoes I would never want to wear.
My definition of myself has spread into a whole woman, not the flighty, over-romantic girl I was when we met.
I am thick.  The veins of life run under my eyes.
I no longer see how things are supposed to be, I see them as they are.

On Saturday I drove my Grandma to Uintah.  It's about an hour drive.
This means I had a whole hour to myself on the way home.
Rare time alone, and I got to listen to my own music.
As Amy Lee sang, I could see her whole mouth splayed open.
Her voice roars up her throat and out completely in an ultimate purge.  She leaves nothing behind.  All of her air is exhaled.
I remembered passion.   Salt Lake City is full of people overcome with passion right now.
People burning and aching for a phone call or a painting or a partner or a ticket to somewhere else.
It sits in their gut and consumes them at stop lights, at the movies, while they fold laundry.
I don't ache for anything.
Not now.  Not usually.  Hardly ever.
To some, I suppose this is sad.
For me, it is just new.
I had my time.  I chased passion for 10 years.  I know exactly what it tastes like.
So when I hear Amy sing, I can still smell it, and it makes my stomach rumble.
But then I remember. I am not hungry.  The creases under my eyes fold into the same smile they have been making for 33 years and I am sated.

I had the urge to keep on driving so the aroma would stay with me.
Instead my hands and feet drove me home.
I found Andrew at the kitchen sink.  He was prepping his ice machine for the upcoming surgery.
I lasso arms around his broad shoulders.  My fingertips could hardly reach and I was on my tiptoes.
I smiled into him holding back nothing.  I am young.  He couldn't help but melt into a grin.
I know this face.  It's his - "I wish you'd let me get back to work, but I adore you." - face.