If This Is Anorexia, Sign Me Up

I want to talk about the character of Emma on the new CW teen drama, Red Band Society. Emma is hospitalized for anorexia. Ignore the fact that it makes no sense that an anorexic is in a general hospital pediatric ward instead of an eating disorders facility.  Most of the series makes no sense.  Look instead to the positive and appealing light with which anorexia is being portrayed in a show targeted to young female viewers. While none of the characters seem all that sick (aside from the missing leg....) I don't object to the other portrayals because one cannot be influenced into getting cancer or having a bad heart, no matter how cool it appears on television.  Anorexia is different.  It can be appealing if pictured as something sexy and desirable. Though most people won't have the mindset to find it so, many of the young girls who are the target audience for this drama will. You can play with anorexia, try it out. For some people it quickly becomes addictive, like alcohol or drugs. And like alcohol or drug addiction, anorexia is at worst deadly and at best, a life long struggle.

Emma is played by actress Ciara Bravo, who is quite tiny but appears very healthy.  Which is good.  I am NOT advocating hiring someone who actually suffers with anorexia.  However, make-up and costuming should be used.  Anorexia is neither pretty nor sexy.  Your hair falls out.  There are dark circles under your eyes.  You are always cold and often your muscles ache and cramp because they are eating themselves away.  Your skin is sallow and even if your face is round, your cheeks are hollow.  There is a scene in the second episode where the camera lingers over her abdomen, breasts and arms.  She looks hot.  Like a model.  There are no protruding bones or atrophied muscles, just a gorgeous young body.  Her hair is long, lustrous, and so very shiny.  Her eyes are bright and engaged and her cheeks are rosy. She has a great sense of style, even when dressed in a hospital gown. It is all very appealing, attractive and alluring.  If that is the face of anorexia, I am all in.

In interviews, the actress states that she has not suffered from an eating disorder (though she has been, in the perverse world of Hollywood, accused of having one).  To be perfectly clear, you do not need to have experienced something in order to inhabit a character.  Most actors are not murderers, rapists, or super heroes. What is required, especially if you are going to talk about it, is understanding. In a Celebuzz interview, she says  "something that I like about Emma is how she doesn't let that [living with an eating disorder] get her down too much. She's still incredibly driven and she's so smart and she's very witty..." What she doesn't understand is that anorexia takes up your entire being. It is eating away at you; when you are studying, at school, at a movie, out with friends, running your tenth mile though you have eaten only an apple and a one inch cube of cheese, and when you are trying to sleep but can't because your stomach acid is eating you alive, your mind is constantly torturing you and you cannot, no matter how many sweaters you pile on, get warm.  You feel all of the weight that you don't have, do one hundred sit-ups to counter calories consumed in the  extra skim milk you put into your coffee, you compare yourself to every person that you come across.  In an article on TheTVPage.com she says, " an eating disorder isn’t something that consumes your whole life.  You are still a person and you still have school to focus on and being a teen. I think Emma does a really good job of portraying that." Wrong. Dead wrong.  That is exactly what a eating disorder does.  It consumes your whole life, defining you. It destroys your body, mind and spirit.  

I think that the fault here only partially lies with Ms. Brava.  While she should be more careful with her talking points, and perhaps more complete in her research, she does say positive things about raising awareness and points out that Emma is getting help. She is a young actress who has been given a script, both on and off camera.  She doesn't have control over the show's styling or script. The producers, writers and directors are a different story.  I understand television.  Actors on the CW are by definition hot young things. That is the network's product and demographic. However, if part of the raison d’etre of the show is to raise awareness of the perils of anorexia, show a hot young thing whose body and soul is being destroyed by this obsessive and fatal disease. Show her hair falling out and her deadened eyes. Show her having a heart attack or seizure. The media is constantly under assault for setting unrealistic expectations for young girls by showcasing models. This is more insidious because though they are claiming she has the disease, none of the effects of it are visible. The final ridiculous element is the major plot point of the show: the romantic entanglements between Emma and the two lead cancer boys.  The likelihood of an anorexic being at the middle of a love triangle is almost non-existent.  Anorexia can be (though not always) about staving off sexuality and sexual relationships.

The CW can’t have this both ways.  If they want to raise awareness of anorexia, (while  raising ratings) they have a responsibility to do so honestly, by depicting what actually happens. Characters don’t smoke on television any more for this very reason. The target audience is too susceptible to suggestion.  Anorexia is not someone with a type A personality who won’t eat a cookie. It is the most fatal mental illness, by suicide or organ failure, there is. To portray anything else is reckless and stupid.

Running at Night

I roam at night. Usually it doesn't matter how tired I am or how many times I have worked out during the day.  Eleven PM or midnight hits and something, some thought or feeling or memory drives me from my house. I exit into the cold, almost hyperventilating in fear. Whatever it is; sadness or despair, guilt over a piece of bread or an extra handful of trail mix, an attempt to deflect the desire to once again inflict some sort of self harm, something pushes me out the door. Some nights I walk encumbered by extra weights, most nights I run, music pounding in my ears. The first few blocks are generally covered quickly, as if being pursued. I barely notice my surroundings. However fast I travel, it is always late and dark and unbelievably still.
 
The stillness of the night air evokes childhood memories.  I grew up in a time and place where children were given the freedom and responsibility to ride their bikes to school, to their friends' houses and to their after school commitments.  I often traveled home well after dark, pedaling down the dark suburban streets in the still cold air. I grew up near the San Francisco Bay and I hated riding my bike during the day. The afternoons were always blustery and it was hard work getting anywhere fighting a headwind while toting a heavy backpack. However after the sun went down, the wind also disappeared.  I would ride home in the silence, savoring my time alone. The streets seemed somehow fake and the world was suddenly something else; a movie set, something almost magical.  Late at night as I run alone, it still seems that way.

During my nighttime excursions, once I have momentarily escaped the demons and have settled into a rhythm, I start to look around.  I live in a particularly beautiful neighborhood with tree lined streets, lovely homes and well tended gardens. I usually head up into the hills.  The air in spring smells like jasmine and honeysuckle and rose. The walkways are illuminated and lights are always on in the windows. You can see into peoples' houses at night, differently than during the day. The light shines through, making an opaque world transparent.  I look into those windows as I run by and see bits and pieces of other (idealized) lives.  There is a baby's onesie hanging off the back of a chair, a half finished painting on an easel, the blue light of a television. Sometimes there is a cat sitting on the back of a chair or in a window sill, surveying the outside world.

I have been running at night for years now. I've run towards the ocean in the foggy Sunset district of San Francisco, along the quiet streets of Mill Valley and then back in San Francisco, up and down  the mansion lined hills of Pacific Heights.  It feels familiar, running the hills near Fryman Canyon.  Big unique houses that have the gorgeous patina of money and success.  I live in a monied neighborhood, hiding out in a small cottage behind a big mansion.  I sometimes imagine, while looking into the windows of houses that I will never be able to afford, what a life inside could be.  I know that will never happen.  The life I lead is not one of money and big houses, of a solid foundation built upon stability, a partner, commitment. I find my sadness often intensifies as I look through these windows, as I recognize my outsider status.  I wonder sometimes, could I just slip in unnoticed? Wipe down the kitchen counter, fold some stranger's laundry and slip into one of the over-sized beds?  Some sort of Goldilocks fantasy where I leave my own life and take on that of someone else.

There is something strangely intimate about looking into other peoples' houses uninvited and unseen. There are entire stories that spring up based upon just a tiny glimpse into a life.  The Harvey Edwards poster visible in a second story room transports me to my teenage room and my earlier ballet dreams. The shiny marble counter tops visible in a corner kitchen make me wonder if anyone ever cooks there.  The gorgeous roses everywhere remind me of my mom and her green thumb. Are these roses also tended to by a widow or are the ever present gardeners responsible for the stunning blooms? It gets more personal; will I ever have my own garden or a ballet obsessed teenager?  The answer is likely not. Yet, as I run the dark silent streets my mind can go there.  I can feel a hand on my back as I chop vegetables while standing at the shiny counter top.  I can feel the sun bake down on my head as I prune roses.  I can sigh at the teenager and remind her that an engineering or computer science career is easier on the toes and probably on the psyche.  I can peak into these softly illuminated rooms and imagine alternate lives, lives in which I am not alone or sad or barely scraping by. I have a husband and a child and a bright shiny house with a bright shiny car in the driveway and I don't need to run away from voices that taunt me at midnight, chasing me into the dark.

5th Position by Harvey Edwards

Resilience...

These things can exist at the same time: The desire to disappear, to die, to float, to fly, to become one with the air. Young ballet students making a huge beautiful leap forward followed by an unrelated soul crushing disappointment. A view so beautiful that it takes your breath away and tears spring to your eye and a remark so cutting that it has exactly the same effect...a swell of pride at a job well done and a wave of despair which erases all sense of accomplishment. A small child can just move from one to the next. As adults, our emotional state tends to be less fluid. We question and get overwhelmed. I am told that to weather this you must choose moment to moment which emotional state to let rule your world, that one is objectively no more powerful than the other. I am not sure that most adults see it that way, we give each experience a different value. Apparently, this is not the path to contentment.  If you are a happy (read as "good") person you will choose the happy experiences and if you are a sad (read as "bad") person you will look to the harder situations to frame your experience.  The key is that it is all within your control. That, at least, is the story told by all of the new age blogs and books and healers. Just decide to be happy and you will be. Follow the four or seven or ten rules of happy people. Sometimes that works. It does. Sometimes it doesn't. There is often another force at work. There is what lives inside, everything that has come before. Some of that prior life experience is clear and worked through and doesn't get confused with the present moment. But some of it isn't clear and hasn't been worked through. It slaps you when you least expect it.  These are experiences that remain fluid in your being, that reemerge unbidden as unformed images or intense sensations or whispers and bring up a host of emotional reactions.  Sometimes the reaction is fear that bubbles up and threatens to kill you. You know that you cannot actually choke on that fear, on the self hatred that rises in your throat, cutting off the air and making you see blurred shapes and hear the whisper of ghosts.  You know that all you have to do is ride it out. Feel the pain and move on. But, it is going to kill you. This feels certain but it won't. What it will kill is your ability to make that previously mentioned choice; the choice that happy people make, to focus on the positive. So you find yourself in a trap, reliving this fear over and over, unable to find or even recognize the positive choice. As a result you find yourself diminished, damaged, and could eventually disappear entirely.

Damaged people live in the grasp of memory. The world of theater and literature is filled with them.  A Street Car Named Desire, The Glass Menagerie, Merrily We Roll Along, and the more recent August Osage County spring to mind. The stories can be beautiful and can move an audience to both laughter and tears. You can learn about the human experience through these fragile and generally lost souls and be enriched in the process. In real life these people (and I count myself currently among them) are harder to accept and to keep in your life. They can be depressed, stuck, and are often angry in a self deprecating or destructive manner.  I believe that these memories are holes in the heart, black holes that suck energy. The memories can be specific and identifiable or unformed and vague. Either way they manifest as holes; God shaped holes or ex-husband shaped holes, dream shaped holes or parent shaped holes. Amorphous holes that take up space and don't allow for the retention of new experiences. People move in and out of your life. Normal people  possess the ability to refill the spaces that are left when a relationship ends or a dream dies. They move on and find a new boyfriend or lover or dream and start over. Those of us who don't know how to refill them just walk around with the holes in our souls, the memory of the person or the experience or the yearning for an explanation. It is the difference between the person who ends a bad marriage yet is happily dating six months or a year later and the person who is still alone years down the line, guarded and scared and smaller.  A person who sees a possible relationship as a risk that will simply rip them open further and create additional dark matter.

The question is then, how do you change? How do you become the person who can fill the empty space inside, accept the loss or the uncertainty. How do you learn to allow for the presence of ghosts and sad memories and accept the hurts of the past while still moving on? That is the challenge. It looks so simple on paper: fill the hole. Yet, we know how many people do that: alcohol, drugs, over-exercise, food.  Filling those holes with people or love is much harder.  From here, where I sit, it seems impossible. I watch other people move on from disappointment and heartbreak and I believe that I must be from a different planet. The air I breathe does not allow for such fluidity of spirit and soul.  I do not understand how they make it happen. I sit on the sidelines and watch. I watch marriages and kids and divorce and starting over.  I watch careers take off and flounder and resume with greater success than before. I watch. And I wish........

Photo credit: morningmeditations.com

Yearning for an imaginary friend....

I recently read Matthew Dicks' delightful, touching, incredibly creative and imaginative novel Memoirs of an Imaginary Friend. The book opened me up emotionally in unexpected ways and created quite a dialogue in my head.

My name is Budo.
I have been alive for five years.
Five years is a very long time for someone like me to be alive.
Max gave me my name.
Max is the only human person who can see me.
Max's parents call me an imaginary friend.
I love Max's teacher, Mrs. Gosk.
I do not like Max's other teacher, Mrs. Patterson.
I am not imaginary. 

There is a desire in everyone to be seen. To be substantial. To matter to those who surround you. To be able to trust your instincts and to have an awareness of that ability. I think. I think that these desires are true. The search for life's meaning is something that most sentient beings embark upon when we reach a point of stasis in our lives. I started the book with these detached intellectual questions and observations.  However, as I read it and lost myself in the world and quirky characters, an unexpected swell of feeling arose as the intellectual faded away. I started to feel a primal, visceral yearning for a friend like Budo; a friend who loves me unconditionally, one clever enough to rescue me, not from a real world danger, as Budo does Max, but from myself. I simultaneously identified with Budo. If someone could just see me, communicate with me, then I could save the other Nancy, the one is such dire straits. I could explain-in language clearer than is currently being employed-what is wrong and what she needs.  I started reading as if in school; Is Budo an extension of Max or an entirely different being? Why were certain words and phrases chosen?  What would I have written?  After a while that logical approach faded away and I just connected to it and let the story's emotions flow through me.

I often feel like two people; one watches my life and my (often questionable) choices and one makes them. One is hopeful that I will pull it together and one (currently in control) is bent on destruction. This is not a completely analogous comparison, as I think that an imaginary friend is something different than simply two sides of a self. Budo has a much broader world view than Max. He knows things that Max doesn't. Max however exists in the outside world, is the person seen by everyone else.  Of course I am being too literal, as this is a novel and BOTH Budo and Max are imagined beings. That said, what was ignited by this story is not imagined but a real, intense desire for two things: a friend like Max, who would fight for me, even when I can't or won't fight for myself and attached to that, the ephemeral desire, one that I am not even sure I admit to, of salvation; both by myself and from myself. 

Fighting depression is a daunting battle, not the least because you have to muster your will; your will to live, to engage in the world,  to nurture the physical. My will has left the building. I find that when left without the structure of work and responsibilities to others, I don't care. Working hard quiets my mind somewhat, and on long days with no breaks, I do better. Other days are tortured and endless. I don't want to talk to people, to eat, to leave my house. My mind circles around itself, in smaller and smaller spheres.  If I can break the cycle,  I do sometimes feel better. When I pull it together to have coffee with a friend or take a dance class; when I put on my mask of normal, I can follow the script for a while. Working out is the only thing that I find I do not need prompting for, which is probably due to a combination of the endorphins released and the anorexic side of my personality urging me to somehow whittle away yet few more pounds. On the positive side of that addiction,  I also feel, when running or cycling, that somehow the negative voices can't quite catch me. I stay just half a step ahead of them. In doing so, I think that I can almost hear my desire for creativity, for connection, for success and work coming through.  I can hear my desire for all of these things while running the streets both morning and night, a wanly voiced desire usually drowned out by the one clamoring for self destruction.

There is a question posed here;  What do I need to change this dynamic? This is an almost silly solution but perhaps the creation of an imaginary friend is an answer. In saying that, I do not dismiss the love and gratitude I have for my actual flesh and blood, quite wonderful friends.  I have a few dear people in my life who are begging me to take the help that is offered, who remind me that I matter. Friends with whom I can laugh and who let me cry (not that I let down my guard to do much of that....), friends who occasionally even let me care for them in return. But my need is so overwhelming that I believe that if I really let them in, the weight of it will crush them.  If I share, in the moment, how much I am struggling, how hard it is to get through each day, how incredibly heavy my heart is, they will disappear. I see the fear and pain in their eyes when they get even a glimpse. Most have already pulled away, not willing or in a more likely scenario, not able to witness or partake in this journey/struggle/insanity. To my horror, I have also found myself lashing out at those who stay. Their optimism, when everything feels so incredibly dark, feels like dismissal. When timidly asked if things are getting better or when someone says something complimentary,  I get angry and frustrated at my inability to answer positively, to absorb the praise, to let an attempt at care make me feel better on any level.

Who is this imaginary friend that I need to create? There are no boundaries on who he or she can be, look like, what powers he can possess, so mine changes at will. He is intensely masculine when I need to feel held by a partner.  She becomes soft, comforting, and envelopes me in warmth when I need to be cared for by a mother. Sometimes my imaginary friend is a cat, snuggling in just to remind me that there is sweetness in the world, sometimes a horse to help me run away. My imaginary friend is also able to help me be social and masks the unbearable shyness that often runs my interactions in public by waving a magic wand.  My imaginary friend doesn't get upset or angry at me for being broken, like real people do.  Self destruction threatens our sense of balance and world order and humans get angry at those perceived to be throwing their lives away.  Many take it as a personal affront. What gets lost in all of that concern manifesting as anger or rage is the inability of a depressed or suicidal person to control the fall.

So, you create an imaginary friend to guide you through the dark times and then what?  That is also explored in the novel.  In the story, when no longer needed, all of those loyal and loving companions fade and disappear.  The story seems to imply that their soul lives on, but I don't know.  I have a slightly different version in my head.  Assuming a positive outcome, which is a stretch in my current mindset, I think that when the need for an imaginary friend passes, it is because rather than disappearing, the imaginary friend is absorbed into the imaginer, almost like glue, mending all of the broken pieces of the soul, filling in the holes and creating strength to move forward and up, out of the dark.

Matthew Dicks' Website

Becoming transparent

I am trying to become transparent. Literally.  I have this belief, which is crazy I know, that if I just get thin enough I will be able to see deep inside my body and in doing so I will be rewarded. I will discover what it is that comes back in cycles and makes me so unhappy. The secret that is buried there, that makes my existence here on earth seem like a mistake even though the outward appearance of my life is fine, that secret will slowly be uncovered as each layer of flesh is removed, similar to the text revealed as the sand is brushed off of an ancient slab of stone .  Ever since the end of last year, when my internal world slipped once again off of it's axis, I've been whittling my body down. It wasn't intentional at first.  It started subtly, but then accelerated.  Five pounds, then ten, maybe close to twenty.  I don't generally weigh myself, so it's hard to be precise, but it's been significant and I'm a petite person to begin with.  It's not so much about imagining that I am fat, though it would be dishonest to ignore that those voices have returned as well.  It is instead an admittedly twisted need to be solely spirit, to acknowledge no need of the physical.  The answer to my heartache (a pathetic and imprecise word to be sure) is to ultimately disappear entirely.  The reality (absurdity) of this and of the fantasy are completely separate.  As my therapist stated, with a rather sad smile, an answer is not actually etched on my bones. I am not going to be able to see words written there. More concretely, the real world result of becoming so thin that one disappears is death. That is not a sane nor reasonable desire. In spite of that inevitable final destination (or perhaps in longing for.... which is a darker truth), in spite of weekly therapy and medication and frustrated friends and family, I'm holding onto this path of self destruction because a very loud part of my being believes it is the only way to be free of this recurring spiral of shame and loathing.   Maybe there is an answer in the DNA, in the depths of my experience, locked into the bones. Maybe that is why they ache at night, why I struggle to stay still, to spend time at rest.  There is a story trying to come out. And the part of me that lives in the combination of metaphor and body thinks that maybe I can help it by becoming air myself, even if that means I no longer exist.

Image via Tumbler

I am a dancer. I communicate through my body. It makes a sort of twisted sense to me that I would look to it to find answers to what is wrong.  Movement is the only language that I understand. Shaping and molding my body has defined my entire life. It feels, maybe this is simply an attempt to excuse it, as if I am exploring, using my body in a new way to work through this unnamed unidentified horror that has once again resurfaced. I separate into two people and can defend what I am doing yet I am not blind to the damage I am creating.  I am destroying my health, my relationships, my professional life and reputation. I am also not deaf to the other voice that says that my time here is up, that death and darkness will be preferable to this life that can turn from something manageable and within the realm of normal into an internal nightmare for no discernible reason. 

I am not at a place yet where I have a solution to this (obviously) untenable position that I have put myself in. I don't yet want to give up on the quest for an answer, though this is not a logical path. Logic has never been my forte. For now, I am dealing with the chaos in my mind by pretending that all is normal. I  just get through each day and try to be as honest as possible with myself and with those who are trying to work with me, while attempting to not let too much angst and pain into my relationships with those who are not paid to deal with such things.  It's a funky crazy balancing game, but one that I am (mistakenly?) telling myself that I can play. Like a teenager, I have a belief that I am actually indestructible.  I will work this all out, be thinner than a piece of paper and still go on with my career and life.  I can balance on my toe in a pink satin shoe. Surely that is training to balance between one plane of existence and another......

she asked.....

how is it possible...no.

rephrase.

is it possible for a heart to break, not once, but over and over.....

each night as the clouds gather and the dusk falls

and the temperature drops and the nicks and tiny slights of the day add up

is it possible that those miniscule little hurts could break something as strong as a heart

over and over and over and over and over again?

no one answered.

her throat closed and tears welled up

and it hurt for real

in her heart

and head

the tips of her fingers and down to the depths

of what?

her soul....

melodramatic are we not???

the wind whispered and the house echoed the silly question

the heart breaks each evening and over night it heals, cracked and battered

but sewn back up into one piece by morning

why?

laughter....soft and sweet.

so that it can be broken again. 

but of course.

what comes next.....

I wrote an upsetting and slightly hysterical post last week. Slightly removed from it, I am first of all mortified that I was so careless and let my shame spill out.  That I let people see, however clumsily and ineffectively,  how hard I struggle, most days, to just appear happy and stable. I am also deeply touched by some of the responses and grateful for all of the love that came my way.  I think, in re-reading it, that I made it all seem petty and silly and narrowed down to a lack of a partner or a secure job, to the same loneliness that bedevils most single women.  There is truth in those things.  I am lonely most of the time and my career is not anything like I dreamed it would be.  I haven't been on a date in years.  Literally years.  These very concrete holes in my life do exist, yet that is not the gnawing I feel ripping through my chest and into my fingers.  I feel myself spinning into a familiar yet uncontrollable place and it frightens me.  I don't know how or even if I have the will to fight my way back.  I don't know if all of the work on coping and the training that I have done over the last two, five, ten, the last twenty years is enough.  These are old battles, ones begun in the years before adolescence. I have once again made food an enemy.  I have an almost uncontrollable urge to rip off my skin.  I am exhausted during the day, yet can't sleep at night.  None of this stems from the day to day.  My daily life is, if I look at it objectively, better than it has been in a long time.  I had an amazing year in 2012 and have so many wonderful projects in the works for 2013 and beyond. Beyond that, I have gained knowledge and skill, especially over the last two years. I know how to move from this spiral of shame and hate.  I  know how. I wrote a post about a year ago to a friend's brother and said, life doesn't get better, you get better. You get stronger and smarter and you find what makes your heart sing.  I believed what I wrote then. I still want to believe what I wrote,  but there is this nagging voice. What if I was wrong?  What if I had it backwards? What if, even when life does gets better, I don't? I walk around with this false confidence that doesn't quite reach my eyes and an eternally broken heart which does.  I pretend that I am smart.  I pretend that I have healed, whatever the fuck that means.  I talk and talk and talk about eating disorders and cutting and depression and suicidal idealization, as though they are completely defanged; foes long dead and buried. I buy into the "act as if" school of thinking.  And I am lying. I know in my core that I am lying.  But, there is this; my core could be wrong.  I hang onto this one little thread of hope that says that core fear of not ever being okay is wrong and I will, once again, dig myself out of this spiral and get to a place where I can talk of wanting out as a long ago memory....of it being something I just felt once....as something from then and not from now.  I am just hanging onto that thin shiny strand and hoping, hoping that I am wrong.

I question the intelligence of writing this, in the throes of the spin. After this entry I won't continue to post about it.  Although there is a value in writing for an unseen audience, of attempting to clarify your thoughts enough for others to understand, possibly empathize a bit, and maybe, just maybe see themselves in your struggle, at this point I feel that this discussion needs to once again become private. It probably should never have left that realm. It is hard to put on your public mask when you know people are reading about your private shame and I need to be able to wear that mask, to smile and say I'm fine and have it end there.  So for now, I'm fine.  Thanks for asking.  We'll talk soon.  Love, Nancy